My name is Denise Ferris and I'm currently the Head of the School of Art at A&U and I welcome people who are visiting us tonight and of course normally welcome all of my colleagues. Anthea Callan was until June 2014 the Professor of Art, Practice-led Research in the School of Art. First arriving here at the school in 2010 as a visiting professor in painting. She is also Professor Emeritus of Visual Culture at the University of Nottingham. So strictly speaking Professor Callan is not as I previously described her our professor but is in fact and will be our Emeritus Professor. We're not travelling, Anthea lives and works in Limited Spa in the UK and in the South of France, we're on her. Anthea Callan is a scholar and painter. Her expertise in art history, visual culture and the gender politics of visual representation spans the 18th to the 20th centuries. Notably in France and Britain. Her research specialisation in 19th century artists, materials and techniques means she works regularly with museum conservators and curators. As a painter she has a strong personal as well as a professional interest in the 20th century in 20th century modernism and contemporary art. Especially feminist and women's art practice. Anthea Callan trained as a painter and printmaker at Birmingham College of Art and Design now Birmingham City University in the UK. She went on to study and establish a career in art history and visual culture while maintaining her art practice. She is a painter whose primary interest is in a human figure and its form. Studied through drawing and colour using a wide range of mixed media from oils to pastels and inks. Most recently Anthea delivered a lecture in the symbolising death session on the 20th September last weekend at the hearty successful Art and Motelics Symposium organised by Professor Callan Innes the Centre for Art History and Art Theory at the School of Art. The insight that Anthea's paper, Death and the Surgeon's Art, left from me was the similarity in the way surgeons and artists may approach an understanding of the body as a subject. Anthea Remart and I wildly paraphrase here, so forgive, prop. The pleuro-sensorial gaze is definitely not the gaze of the flammeur, which is a touch or seeing or knowing kind of gaze.  Touch, seeing, pleuro-sensorial, multi-sensory is the medical and the artist's gaze. In the audience you can readily imagine why Anthea's association with us with the School of Art and with the practitioners at the School of Art has been so incredibly invaluable. Anthea Callan has studied artistic anatomy as well as formal light drawing of a human figure, and this interest clearly crosses over into her art history work, where she researches the historical use of anatomical study in art as well as artist training in the discipline. Her upcoming book is The Work of Art, Plain Air Painting and Artistic Identity in 19th Century France. I ask you to welcome Anthea in her lecture this evening. What a fantastic welcome. Can you hear me? Is this in the right place? I'm so mic'd up I can't believe it. I'm going to have these attachments all over me. Okay, what I'm talking about today isn't anything to do with art and death, but in fact there are very real parallels because what I'm trying to do with both is to kind of pull back from the intellectual into the actual material of practice. So I was trying to do that in the art and mortality paper called The Surgeon's Art, and in this paper I'm also trying to do that. So to locate very specifically the ideas and arguments within a material, a very material practice. And let's see how it goes. I'm actually starting with a rather delightful quote. I should say I've divided this talk into two parts. Context, which kind of lays out the ideas and arguments, and then a brief case study. Okay, picture. The first context picture. Here's my delightful quote. It's from a theoretician called Jean-Pierre Thénault, or Thénault as we probably say in French. The cours complet de pesage from 1834, page 5. I'm giving you it in English. It's hard for anyone who has never drawn or painted from nature to have a fair idea of the interest the artist experiences when choosing, or rather ardently seizing, a well lit view enriched with happy accidents. He prepares to make the portrait. From the first moment he read his crayons and brushes, he readily sees, he already sees, the enterprise completed according to his desires. With each mark grows a pleasure made all the more intense by the difficulties he suffers, the resistances nature seems to offer to his eagerness, the efforts he redoubles to seize her. His pleasures finally at each favor he obtains. And it's really actually important that the word that Thénault uses for this is the French word jouissance, which actually also means orgasm. Ah, you wouldn't have guessed, would you? So that kind of lays the groundwork for what I want to try and say today. The greater era of French plein air landscape painting that my book that is just complete considers spans the long 19th century, beginning with artists in Rome in the 1780s and effectively closing in Paris with the advent of Cubism. Standard practice for all French landscape painters from 1817 onwards, plein air painting became widespread and highly visible. Can you see it clearly enough? Artist plus female muse of course, she's not actually painting, she's in this kind of nice flouncy white dress. She's a sort of both a metaphor and an actual embodied personage accompanying the artist en plein air. This is by a painter called François Français and dates from 1847 I think. And interestingly it's called les artistes contemporains, so it literally means the latest trend. Already common during the 1820s, plein air painting was ubiquitous by the 1840s when the railways began to make travel easier. By the 1850s landscape painting was the most popular of all genre in France, both as exhibits at the Paris Salon and among dealers and collectors. Perhaps it's no coincidence that the radical plein air painting now associated with the impressionists in the 1870s in fact had its origins in the period immediately before the French Revolution of 1789. The work of art, what I'm writing about, explores the continuities and changes in methods and materials of landscape painting over the century and its role in the formation of modern artistic identity. I'm interested in the concept of the work of art. How do particular kinds of painting practice denote different ideas of labour in the material processes of art, rather than just in its imagery and its iconography? Why did this issue become especially important during the 19th century when the modernity of an artwork could be found in artist material practice, the physical processes of painting that became simultaneously the subject, its subject and its object, the work of art? What I want to argue, what I argue in my book is that it's the work of plein air painters and the changes their practices affected that were in the work of plein air painters and the changes their practices affected that the real innovations in painting were generated. In terms of modern artistic identity, truth to the self and the new attention to relations between making and meaning. And since artists always refer as much to each other's work and to past art as to external nature, this is not inevitably a question of progress, but also one of continuity. And I'm showing you this delightful image of Domié's idea of the landscape painter in the mid-1860s. So this is the point I'm making here, that art is as much about other art and other artists as it is about looking outward into nature. Labour in the work of art became, in 19th century France, a key factor for artists, critics and collectors alike. Whether they were for or against the idea of visible mark making or facture, as it's called in French, the aesthetics of finished or unfinished were central in artistic debates and avant-garde practice in the period. In my book I argue that landscape painting in general and plein air oil studies in particular were key drivers of change in artistic practice in the period which culminated, didn't start with, it culminated in impressionism and post-impressionism and the birth of modernism. The concepts of work I address include not just the act of painting, but the materials, tools and methods of making. Facture in the work of art itself, as well as ideas about the work a painter embodied in the appearance and persona, the performance of painting and the painted objects. So I'm trying to bring all those components together. Almost all the work in my book is by men. The main exception being Bert Morisseau. This is a rather monochrome version of this painting, it actually is much more colourful.  But for me this is one of the most sensational portraits ever painted. It's just extraordinary. Anyway, this is Bert Morisseau painted by Manet 1869-17. So the exception that I'm flagging up is Bert Morisseau.  It would be actually interesting to do a study of sale room prices because I suspect that Morisseau's work still sells more cheaply than your Monet and your, well, Cezanne and whatever. But in terms of scholarly attention it's much more equivalent now. In the book I therefore focus primarily on male agency in 19th century landscape art and the reasons for it. How did modernism come to be defined by the early 20th century as a predominantly masculine domain? In terms of gender the question of modern artistic identity is particularly interesting given that during the later 18th century women artists actually began to gain a serious new eminence. Whether Elizabeth Vigée Lebrun here in a self-portrait with her equipment, whether Vigée Lebrun her portrait dates, the self-portrait dates from 1782. This is actually a variant of the original that she made herself. In France or your Angelica Kaufman in Britain. Despite their educational constraints and lack of access to the new life model many privately trained and sought after women artists flourished in this late 18th century period. However in the 19th century consolidation of bourgeois society and its ideologies of femininity and the growing identification of women with domesticity. Women artists became further restricted for example to appropriate media, feminine pastel and watercolour rather than manly oils. And to lowly subject matter such as children, portraits, flowers and interiors. In France this trend actually came slightly later than in England so that the exclusion of women from the workplace or gendered spheres of life as it came to be called. Despite its inscription in the Napoleonic Code Seville in 1804 in practice did not wholly take effect in France until the Second Empire so that's after the 1848 Revolution. The professionalization of women artists between 1800 and 1850 in France came actually in the context of a lowering of the mean social class of artists of both sexes and a rapid expansion in the overall number of professional artists. So you know if it becomes a common trade women are allowed in basically. It's been argued that the radical independent art movements of the 19th century championed the genres lower down the academic hierarchy which in turn gave women painters greater involvement and prestige. Yet from the outset landscape painting and the theories that underpinned it meant prohibitions for women comparable to those of studying from the nude. In both ideology and practice the new planarism enabled male painters to carve out an almost exclusively masculine territory. Whether amateur or professional women artists required chaperoning and were thus restricted very frequently to work in the home in the garden or in their own private studio. A small number of images before 1850 like this very early Corbe from the mid 1840s include a female artist. But in reality the social constraints on movement imposed by their middle or upper middle class or upper class status ensured women artists marginalization on the terrain of the outdoor male painter. Around 1800 the all but obligatory Italian sojourn for aspiring European artists was impractical for most women while the difficulties entailed in travelling around France itself were problematic as well. In an era of growing female artistic ambition therefore planar was a woman free zone that marked the field as indisputably masculine. It is clear from Domié's caricatures we've had one already but this one is these two this pair which are from the 1840s rather than the 1860s so taking the whole thing back that you know generation earlier almost. Show landscape painters hiking as you can see hiking intrepidly in mountainous terrain looking at I've said here a sympathetic for a sympathetic site. In fact the caption has them saying you know where's the nearest sympathetic tavern where I can get a 12 egg omelet and a pint of you know Guinness whatever. So it's actually you know they're not even looking for a good motif they're looking for a good pub at this point. And the one on the right hand side which is which is captioned looking for a forest in champagne. I mean there are forests in champagne but you know not as many as you'd find in the juror for example. And the colored version of this there's a wonderful tinted version of this which I hadn't got a slide off for you and actually this guy at the back that they're totally wrongly dressed for what they're doing. They're wearing city clothes you know checks and fancy trousers and what they're walking through here is mud and you know they've got sort of muddle over their feet. So it kind of contextualizes that clearly they don't know they're asked from their elbow basically and they're kind of traipsing around the countryside not knowing where to look for a good motif. Okay so you can imagine in this context just how challenging it would have been for women in their crinolines or you know even whatever. Maneuvering up mountains and up and down hills and through the mud. So hence working in gardens is quite a good idea. Also the potential isolation, dangers, physical rigors and endurance associated with work outdoors in all weathers at all times of the day and year permitted male artists to carve out this identity. Akin to their brother colonizers of the new worlds. Rugged adventurers conquering new terrains which you can also read of course is raw female nature. So I think there's a real parallel here with actually colonizing activities that are going on throughout this period as well. Further from around 1850 the swaggering masculinity that Corbe affected and here I'm showing you his meeting with his patron Bruyas from 1854. And the masterly virility of his painting technique stamped this persona onto the landscape again as female nature to be tamed. In ways that only color with its feminine association could hope to modify with the rise of impressionism. Yet even this was vexed. The male appropriation of landscape, of color and of matière, the messy paint materials that had a feminine as well as a manual artisan association. That impressionism was trying to take over for itself that male appropriation. Proved a mixed blessing for women painters like Moriso whose work was in fact consistently stereotyped as feminine. So I mean it's kind of double bind there. Oh I've got a slide of her work. This is a little oil study of the harbour in Nice from 1882. Gorgeous. Of course the identities under review here are also explicitly classed as well as gendered. The work of painter was in fact rarely working class as such. Although many of the artists involved in what became called the petit maître of landscape painter, the small masters, never mind the big masters like Corbe, the small masters of landscape painting were often from humble or artisanal beginnings. The career of artist itself was only in the process of professionalizing during the late 18th and early 19th centuries having previously been a craft practice associated with skilled manual labour involving as it did dirty hands and traditional craft skills. Indeed for the emerging professional artist distinguishing the cerebral from the physical was one of the key ideological functions of the Paris Academy. Which taught and regulated the fine arts and its highest genre, history painting, where the idea was preeminent and the mark of the maker, the sign of hand crafting, was orbited faced. Yet with the rise of republicanism and democracy in France, many artists sought to reclaim, celebrate and identify with that very craft and the guild heritage from which their immediate forebears in the academy had sought to distance themselves. So for example in 1873 the proto-impressionists established their anonymous cooperative exhibiting society based on the charter of a baker's union in Pizarro's home village of Pontoise. So this was symptomatic of the new democratizing tendency and its associated artisanal traditions. The quest of a craft identity however was also more vexed for women than for men in the 19th century. It was a double-edged sword, on the one hand it was a label deployed to sideline women's achievement as actual crafts professionals, for example in weaving, pottery and needlework within creative sectors where a sexual division of labour reigned. On the other hand for the woman painter the label was a means to downgrade her status as a fine artist. In a period when ladies' artistic accomplishments were burgeoning and highly valued among the middle classes, so in other words as amateurs, to the ambitious professional woman, therefore the craft label smacked of amateurism rather than skill. The masculine artist worker identities elaborated in my book involved a complex play then across the boundaries of class that for women artists further troubled already compromised their already compromised position as aspiring art professionals. This was an era when ladies did not work and the term working women at least in 1848 after the revolution of 1848 in Paris was synonymous with loose morals and prostitution. So to be called a working woman meant you know you were street walker. The unconventional life of realist and animal landscape painter Rosa Bonner demonstrates the difficulties faced by ambitious women artists at mid-century. In order to prepare for her monumental paintings of animals this is 16 feet long this painting by 8 feet high. In order to prepare for works like this which dates from 1855 in fact she visited horse traders and slaughterhouses in Paris to undertake the relevant anatomical study. To do this she had to gain special dispensation from the French police to wear trousers and a smock in public. In other words she had to adopt a male persona in order to engage in the research necessary for her practice. And I think it may be significant too that actually her work is more appreciated outside France because I mean it's so verile this work it's extraordinary. But they loved it in Britain and they loved it in the States. This is in the Met in New York whereas in France they were probably just a bit... Why didn't she put a skirt on? By the 1860s some women ventured outdoors to paint and on their teacher Camille Coro's advice Bette Morisseau and her sister Edma who gave up painting when she married which was the more frequent course than Bette Morisseau's case. They executed studies together on plein air which really can be dated to the first expeditions to the mid 1860s. Morisseau also painted landscapes viewed from indoors and in gardens. Gardens of course are like a private extension of the domestic space they are effectively landscaped domestic spaces. But Morisseau was exemplary in continuing throughout her life to make plein air oil studies and watercolours whether in the Parisian suburbs or on holidays in England Normandy and the Côte d'Azur. Okay so now I'm going to take you now into the laundry. Having laid a kind of framework for thinking about Morisseau and thinking about landscape painting and plein air painting. I'm now going to just do a brief case study around the idea of laundry and laundresses. In the form of naturalist genre painting laundry and laundresses had been a popular eroticised subject with semi-clad working women kneeling and leaning forwards in their labours and generally dealing with intimate apparel. From as early as Chardin and Hubert Robert in the 18th century through to the more sceptical mid 19th century realists like Jean-François Mille or Camille Pizarro himself, one of the impressionists. Landscapists like Corot and Dubigny here, Dubigny, locate laundering you have to look really hard, locate laundering on rural river banks, yet at times they're so discreetly placed that the laboring figures are almost impossible to see. Urban realists, do you want me to show you where they are? Sometimes you get more of a red accent to kind of locate them, kind of coroesque red accent, but not always. Urban realists on the other hand confronted this women's labour directly in the claustrophobic confines of Parisian basements which Gordon's going to be looking in detail at very shortly. Dugas highly skilled ironers, a really interesting example, very immediate direct cropped, close confrontational images of ironers, but I should emphasise the work that these women are doing, it's the highly skilled end of the trade. This isn't the mmm in the river, this is proper, right at the top of the hierarchy, if you like, of the laundry trades. So the scale and cropping of figures like those of Dugas within these compositions make the brutal reality of their labour unavoidable. However Caillebotte's Riverside composition, here Laundry drying at Petit Genèveilier and it's actually opposite Argente on the Seine, just kind of west of Paris. Caillebotte's Riverside composition reveals Laundry as a suburban hard labour, bloody hell, look at that. Despite the sunny gaiety of the setting, the hundreds of identical whites, what are they, linen, shirts, chef's whites, shows the enforced, oh no, hang on, that's the wrong line, signal an enterprise on an industrial scale, this is industrial laundry here. Although what we have in fact is the washboats here moored to the side of the Seine, at which this laundry was executed and then hung to dry on the bank. No buxom Laundry's is here to humanise or eroticise the drudgery. Within the enclosed confines of Manet's Argente garden, his Laundry's shows the enforced intimacy of domestic service. In hanging Laundry, however, Bert Morisseau draws back. Her elevated viewpoint reveals an almost rural landscape. We have here a sense of not just I think distance though, I think we have the painter taking greater control of what she sees. Almost a rural landscape, yet the distant chimneys of Paris factories counterpoint the very material reality and the immediate foreground of the manual drudgery entailed in women's labour in the Laundry trades. And I think this is Poissy, again a suburb of Paris where she frequently stayed. So although herself distanced from domestic work by her class and her profession, she nevertheless draws a parallel between this women's labour and her own as a painter. And this is where I'm trying to argue the way in which the artist, and I've talked in the book about the Manet and the Kaibot in this context as well, but differently. The way in which she's using as a metaphor the women's labour for the labour that she's doing. The small scale and lively immediacy of Morisseau's study suggests that it was rapidly executed probably in a single sitting. High key in palette, it was painted on a canvas primed off-white, which plays a crucial role both in the picture's overall luminosity and as highlights amongst the applied colours. Such broken touches of colour and a sketchy facture, the handling, were all associated with capturing the effect with directness, spontaneity and truth to the artist's personal sensations in front of nature, but also to their work as artists in rendering it. So what Kaibot represents is a more impersonal view of anonymous women's physical labour. There are no figures where Manet used a posed figure in painting his laundry. It points up in contrast the non-figurative element of Kaibot's approach, anti-narrative in his choice of subject matter. Here the energetic movement he represents of the wind in drying linen would not exist in duration. Each second the scene would change. So what Kaibot in the 1890s shows us of women's labour, unlike his own large-scale figure paintings of skilled male artisans in the 1870s, this monumental, the painting is actually more or less the same size, in fact I think the laundry drawing might be even slightly bigger than this. The kind of monumentality he gives to the male body, he just effaces the woman worker in the laundry trades. This is the floor scrapers from 1875. What we have instead, sorry I'm going to go back to that one, what we have instead in this Kaibot laundry drawing is only the traces of hard manual labour, the clean linen. These traces are simultaneously records of the painters and the laundresses' work. These traces are rendered visible in solid, heavy, crusty paint build-up, layered over time. A record not just of the paint application and the artist's work, but it's just like the washer women's time-consuming work made visible stretching out along the line. Kaibot's marks represent the linen built up over time and his repeated rhythmic strokes across the canvas echo the laundresses' wooden bats beating the linen in flaying the dirt out. So in his act of painting the marks both mimic and represent the work of mass washing, yet without the female presence crucial to the intimacy of Moriso's painting. In Moriso's hanging laundry the women's work explicitly retains its association with domestic drudgery and with the mark of its woman-maker. Her labour as an artist mirrors the labours of the women she represents. Thank you.


Hey there festive friends. If you're anything like me, you've got a list and you are checking it twice. Welcome to the annual Inside the Hem holiday gift guide where I have personally curated a collection of must have goodies for the sewest in your life. All of the brands I'm about to share with you are small businesses. Most of them are women owned and I just love partnering with companies like this around the holidays. These are products that I use all the time in my sewing. You've seen them in my videos. You've heard me talk about them before. These are tried and true products for me. And I just know that you, if you're shopping for yourself, I see you or your loved one is absolutely going to love them. So without further ado, let me get into the gift guide. First up, we have a brand new product from Oliso. These are my favorite irons. I have used them exclusively for years and years. And this is their brand new M3 Pro project iron. It's their new take on the many irons that you have seen in the past. So some things that are the same are the storage handles. There's a silicone piece on the bottom, but it has a built-in hook. So you can just hang it on your wall. If you take it off, flip it over. Now you have a mat where you can rest it and make sure that it protects all your surfaces. We also have this super, super long cord. So it's gonna reach and stretch across any room and give you the freedom to move around your iron. Okay, some things that are new or at least enhanced are the ergonomic handle. So it still has a really sleek design. It sounds a very small footprint, but the handle, the shape of the handle has changed a little bit to make it a little bit more ergonomic. It's going to be perfect for all of your smaller seams, all of your smaller projects. It'd be perfect for bias tape. You can leave it right next to your sewing space. So for all those seams where you're normally having to get up and sit back down and get up and sit back down, this is really great to have right beside you because it is so compact. It's just as powerful as a full-size iron is. We have three heat settings and we have plenty of steam. And then something new this time is you can choose whether you want just the bottom to release the steam, just the top to release the steam or if you do them both at the same time, they will release it throughout. We also have a little light that has been installed. This is so smart to me. This is just the thing that Alyssa does that nobody else does. They really think about the user and they know that when we are in our sewing spaces, sometimes they are dark, sometimes our ironing spaces are tucked away into a corner and having that little extra LED light is going to be so, so beneficial to make sure you can see exactly what you're doing. So it comes in three colors. You can choose from pistachio, which is this one. It's kind of like a muted like lime green. There's also coral and aqua. So check the description box for the link. It's going to take you right to Amazon where you can purchase it using your prime shipping and all the other benefits that Amazon has when you shop from them. So Alyssa M3 Pro Project Iron is first up. Next up is the Yazi Mini Craft Organizer. This little bag is going to revolutionize the way that you think about storing and organizing your craft projects. It's not just a bag that you can throw everything in and like your stuff's in there. It's a bag that does that, but helps you organize them too. So let me show you through it a little bit. So when you open up the lid, you have a clear pocket here with a zipper pouch. Then you have another one with a fabric quilted back, a third, a fourth, a fifth, and then in the very, very back, there is also this zipper pouch as well. And then this, because it's gusseted, you can actually store stuff in here too. You're going to have one for obviously carrying everything to and from like sewing class, or if you travel and bring your sewing machine with you, if you're going to those locations or the retreats or whatever it is, you'll want one of these for sure. But it's also great to store your projects. So think about all your works in progress, right? And how you could put like the pattern in the bottom, maybe like your fabric pieces in the bottom, and then you could have like the pattern pieces.  And you can store them all in one thing. Just another idea for the craft organizer. Obviously this was developed for crafters, but it is perfect for cosmetics, for jewelry, for so many different areas of your life. So maybe you grab this as a project organizer, and then when you're not actually traveling for sewing or you're not taking classes at the moment, but you are going on a big cruise or something, you'll grab this and you'll be multipurpose. So you can use it in your craft room and elsewhere. These are great. You're going to absolutely love them. I have a coupon code for you guys. So check the description box for the link that'll take you directly to this product. And then use the code HIM23 for the year and 2-0 for 20% off, HIM2320. We'll get you 20% off of this bag. Okay, next up, I'm excited to shine a spotlight on a small woman-owned business that I have been in love with for years. I've been using their products for a very long time. You guys see me use them all the time in my sew-alongs. I'm talking about Stitch Buzz. Stitch Buzz makes creative tools for sewists, but I just wanted to highlight a few of them today. First up is the seam allowance curve ruler. When you are taking away seam allowances, when you are redrafting something, you have to add a seam allowances back and you just need to get that perfect 5 eighths. You can do that along any curve that is on your pattern. We have like a hip curve here and then it goes into arm size and necklines and crotch curves and all of that as we get through this curve here. It's also see-through, but it's the neon green see-through. So you can see it on white paper, which is really, really nice. I also pulled out the curve runner. This, think about this like a pizza cutter with a ruler on the blade. So you can see how we have all those numbers there. That is so you can measure the length of a curve. How often are you trying to measure your crotch length or an arm side? Or if you wanna add a neckband to a t-shirt pattern, you need to know the length of the neckline. This is gonna allow you to do that and measure all of your curves super accurately. So you'll just start on zero, right?  And then finally, I would be doing a disservice. If I didn't mention the most basic product that they have, but one that I literally use daily. And that is just their little baby five eighths inch ruler. I grab this all the time, almost more than I do my hem gauge. All the same benefits as the curve ruler, clear, but that neon green color, five eighths inch wide. These are six inches long and we have all the eighths marked this way and this way. This is a small but mighty, great little tool, perfect for a stocking stuffer or something. I just absolutely adore this little baby ruler. So that's it. These are the products from Stitch Buzz. The coupon code for 20% off is inside the hem to zero. So head to the link in the description box, head to Stitch Buzz, use the coupon code and grab one of these or any of their other amazing products. All right, next up we have the MD Stitch Monthly Sewing Kits. This is basically a project, a garment sewing project in a box. Let me just show you what you get in the box first. You get a digital download for the pattern and its instructions, but they go ahead and include a large format print. You also get the yardage of the fabric that you need. And there are usually options of fabric that you get to choose. And then in addition to a fabric and a pattern, which you would expect to be in a sewing box, you also get literally every notion that you could possibly need to finish that project. I mean, literally. So you also get needles, like the right needles for that fabric and coordinating thread, it's Gooderman thread. And then this project also requires some one inch elastic. So the one inch elastic is also included. Here's the deal with creative people, right? Like a lot of times we are creative, but we get frozen by the idea of having to think about like all the decisions that have to be made in order to make a project. So let's say we find a pattern we love, okay? Well, now I have to think about how am I gonna get the pattern printed? When am I gonna do that? How am I gonna get the fabric? If I have to order it online, where am I gonna order it? Is it gonna be the right fabric? Now, what color do I pick? And so by that point, you're so overwhelmed with decision fatigue that you may not end up making the project at all. You know, decision fatigue is a real thing, but that shouldn't inhibit our creative process and our creative ability and our desire to want to make our own clothes. So I love the Indie Stitch. I love the subscription box. There's two ways that you can get this for the holidays. One, you can buy a subscription. One, three, six or 12 month subscriptions are available. They have like gift cards that you can present at the holidays like yay, you get a 12 month subscription. Another option is a non-membership option. You can just purchase a ready to ship box. It's a box that's already been curated. It's already sitting ready to go. It gets to you in like one or two days and you have something physical to actually show. So I've included a link to the page where you can see those two options and pick which one are best for you. They're gonna be doing all kinds of deals throughout the holidays. There's not an exclusive coupon code per se for this video, but use the link in the description box. Stay abreast of what they've got going on through social media and their email list. I just love this concept so much and Indie Stitch kills it every time. Next up, we have the thimbles for you shadowlings. Now, those of you that watch my videos have heard me talk about thimbles for you before. It is own and run by a woman named Jan Larson who is a silversmith and she designs and creates custom thimbles but also shadowlings. And if you aren't familiar with what they are, so basically it is a silver thing about necklace but its purpose is to hold all the little things that you need to have at hands reach while you're sewing. They're a very popular back in the 17th century kind of have very utilitarian use. They were worn like on belt loops and things like that for people to carry like watches and things like that on. Then they've had a bit of a reemergence as a sewing shadowling. So obviously you would be attaching a thimble to it. You can also attach needles. You can attach scissors, pin cushions, literally anything that you'll need to have right here. If you are doing any kind of hand sewing, stitch work of any kind while you are seated like away from your sewing room, think like doing work on a sofa while you're watching movies. Think traveling in a car or on an airplane or a train or whatever, where you don't wanna be rustling through a bag to grab what you need and you need to have it all right here. A shadowling just in and of itself is for you. Jan's shadowlings are stunning. Her work is so beautiful and intricate and detailed. So like I said, these are more of something that's gonna be an heirling piece. Maybe you get it with the intention of passing it down generation to generation. It's gonna last lifetimes, multiple lifetimes, being silver, being handcrafted, being done by an actual silversmith who's very, very skilled at what she does. So check the description box for a link to Jan's website, Thimbles For You. You can learn more about shadowlings there. You can view some of the different designs that she has. So I just think the concept of a shadowling is so, so, so great and Jan's work is amazing. So those two things together just make a really meaningful, long-lasting, important gift for any psoas that hopes to like pass it down. Next, I'm gonna be a little bit vulnerable and admit that I have a problem with collecting scissors and rotary cutters. These are just a few of the collection that I have from Kai. Kai scissors are made in Japan. They are made of stainless steel and they are superior quality. There's a reason why once I got my first pair of Kai scissors, the raspberry set, I never looked back. I have only used Kai scissors for fabric cutting ever since then. So let me talk you through some of the, what they offer, some of what they have and then you can decide what's best for you. The raspberry set was my first for a reason because it is the quality at a really good price point and you get three scissors in one set. So I thought that was a great entry level to Kai because you get to experience, you know the quality of their product. Then you get into your professional series and that's what these black label ones are. Yes, it is a lot heavier. Even though it's heavier, they feel like they have more control and I think that is the beauty of it. It's a lot like a kitchen knife, right? Like we want the balance between the blade and the handle so that we have control over where we are cutting and where the scissors are headed. But I have the N52110 here and I have the 7250SL here. This is my most reached for. It's the biggest, you see me using these all the time. I also have their serrated set. So the serrated scissors are really, really great for slippery fabrics. So if you're using rayon, silk, polyester, all of that stuff a lot as we tend to do in the spring, you're gonna love having the serrated scissors. It just grips those little slippery fabrics so easily. And then finally we have rotary cutters and they have two settings in the back. So there's a light setting and a heavy weight setting and that determines how grippy the rotary cutter is to the blade. So if you need to cut through thicker fabrics, it provides that kind of tension so that you can get through them really easily. And then they come with different types of blades. So we have the straight blade, obviously. There's also a wavy blade and a zigzag blade that's a lot like pinking shears. Check the description box for a link to where you can get Kai scissors. I'm gonna link you guys to their Amazon store. So again, you can shop quickly, get it delivered quickly and utilize all the benefits of shopping with Amazon. Next on my gift guide is Seamwork. You have probably seen me talk about them because I've made many of their patterns in the past. I've done a couple of sew-alongs for them. But what you may not realize is that Seamwork, Seamwork is not just a pattern company. It's a community, it's a creative hub and a source of inspiration for sewists at any level. Their catalog consists of more than 200 sewing patterns and then two new patterns are being added each month which is great, right? And that's probably the bulk of why you would join their membership program but they have so many other features that they offer with the membership that you may not know about. One is this community aspect. It's basically a private community where makers can connect with other makers to get questions on the pattern, get advice, get suggestions, get all of that. But it also connects you with the Seamwork team. So if you're coming across a problem and you think there's an error, you've made it with this huge mistake and you don't know what's going on, you can contact the Seamwork team members through this community as well. There's also an element of goal writing and tracking. So it's not just a physical thing of doing the physical work to produce the garment. There's also a mental aspect of it too to your sewing.  There's sew-alongs and then there's member exclusive bonus pattern hacks. With your membership you also get access to a three-day e-course. You get a digital download. There's just so many things that come with your membership other than two patterns. It really is the perfect balance of structure and creativity. The structure that you need to actually get stuff done and then the creative freedom to explore their vast pattern catalog and design a wardrobe that fits you and your lifestyle the best. So I have a link in the description box for 50, 50% off of your Seamwork membership. There's no coupon code when you click the link it is already applied. So I encourage you to check out Seamwork especially as we are getting into the new year, you're thinking about your sewing resolutions, you're thinking about how can I be more productive? How can I reach my sewing goals? How can I be more creative? How can I push myself, push my limits a little bit with what I've been making? Seamwork, the community, the patterns, the resources will all help you with that. Last up, I would be remiss if I didn't include my own products in this gift guide. So I have designed and developed a whole bunch of sewing themed products. The most popular one is the sewing clock. I just adore this thing so much and she's just really cute addition to your sewing room. It's just a fun little kind of whimsical way to say this is my sewing space. The little designs are all done in watercolor so it's not, it's vibrant but it's not like crazy. It's not gonna distract from what else you've got or what other designs you've got going on in your sewing room. So yeah, people are just loving the clock and I really love it too. I love how minimalist it is, how clean it is but how it gets the point across like we love sewing. On my Etsy page, I also have sweatshirts, t-shirts, coffee mugs, license plate covers that say I'd rather be sewing. I just, I really use it as a way, as another creative outlet for me to design products that I would like to have that show off my love for sewing without being so like corny about it. In my opinion, my designs are a little bit more elevated. So yeah, go check out my Etsy store. I'd really appreciate it. I am running a coupon code for you guys, a 10% off of $50 spent on the store running today through December the 15th. So go ahead and grab yourself the clock, a sweatshirt, t-shirt, some digital downloads, whatever it is that your heart desires and show your love of sewing no matter where you go. And there you have it. My holiday gift guide filled with goodies to keep the creative juices flowing and spark joy for any sewists. I hope that you found something that you'll be adding to your list or if you're shopping for someone else, you found the perfect something for that someone. Remember, the best gifts are the ones that spark creativity. So I'm wishing you guys a very, very happy holiday season filled with joy, lots of love and lots of sewing. That's gonna do it for me today, y'all. Thank you so much. I will see you soon.


So really happy that today we're launching next lot hub 5 which is also will be immediately available and for the first time We actually picked Theme so next lot hub 5 has a theme an overarching theme over all the improvements We did and this is the digital workspace in five big improvements. So we will have now five Sorry 10 different improvements. We spend a lot of time in front of our computers whether it's for work or for personal things It's probably in front of a screen. This is why we announced next lot personal last year. The interface is clean Your wallpaper still shines through so as you change your wallpaper, it reflects across your entire next cloud But of course, that's not all we also have added advanced teaming options for people who would like to white label their next cloud In this release we completely redesigned the contacts app Now at the office you work with colleagues on the project now online You also have such a digital workspace and that is of course next lot hub And so in next cloud the project manager would create a circle that is a custom group in our context app And then out some team members the next step is to create a space for collaboration at the same time next cloud also itself Automatically brings together different resources using the related resource feature where you can for example See that there's a chat room or a project board that is shared with the same group of people and that is related Now you might be aware that next lot has a tagging feature This is very helpful if you want to give tags to files so you can much more easily find them But you can also say hey, this is an internal project or these are sensitive file security critical files Now these tags are now visible in the file view and as a user or as an administrator You can automate a variety of actions on these tags if a file is called internal project X Then people outside of the project X team are not able to access these files So this is a very good way to keep files secure now next up You have the option to share but block downloading of files and people can still see it Now of course you don't want them to make screenshots of everything So then you can enable the watermarking and this will make sure that while people can see the document And you can even give them editing rights They will not be able to download the documents or easily taking screenshots and the watermarks will show So all these improvements together help make next lot ready for use in situations where you even have official security classification systems Like for example, VS, NFDA in Germany Now this way your team can work together without having to worry about data leaks When you start a conversation you have group mentions In that way you only address the people you want to have in that call and not the complete chatroom So now we're all in the call and you have the ability to share your expressions Through emojis which will fly over the talk screen Now in Hub 5 we support breakout booms which allows you to split up your project team in smaller groups With the smart picker you can easily share information all across Hub In this example we share a task directly with your team member within talk As you know while in a video call in Hub you can edit your documents But now we also made it very easy to chat while you are editing and having those video calls Next Cloud Talk is available on mobile clients like iOS and Android And today we have one more exciting thing to announce Because today we are releasing Next Cloud Talk for the desktop We will be supporting Mac We are supporting Windows and of course we are supporting Linux You can use Next Cloud Collectives for collecting information and collaborating across teams Now the best thing about Next Cloud Collectives is that it stores your knowledge in an open and easy Accessible markdown format instead of some proprietary database format And that of course makes it so easy to share the files within your knowledge base Next Cloud Collectives will help you collect and manage your knowledge Apple, Microsoft, Google and so on They all have access to all our notes, all our deepest thoughts, all our Work to-do lists and so on And yeah that's not right So yeah we fixed that Of course we worked together with our amazing community To make the Next Cloud Notes app a really great experience And in this release we also redesigned the web interface a lot And we implemented a feature that was much requested Which is the three-column interface And what we also added is the Smart Picker in Notes So as you've seen in other parts also the Smart Picker is supported Same here in Notes You can insert for example videos You can simply search for videos, insert them, play them from directly inside your note All the notes are stored in an open format It's just simple text files So you can just easily sync them with colleagues or share them And yeah it's just like Next Cloud Files And I use Next Cloud Notes myself all the time I really hope you enjoy it as much as I do You want one place where people can ask all the questions And your team is able to answer them So now with Next Cloud Mail You can configure the mailbox With which a team can have a shared identity Or you can just manage it in the name of a project manager You often get asked some questions Which have got one standard response And for that we included something called text template To access the text template you will need Smart Picker Now with just one click you can unsubscribe to an email When you get a calendar invitation for a meeting It goes to the calendar But what if you receive a list of tasks in your email Now you can convert your email into the task And all your tasks are going to appear in Next Cloud Deck Our Nimble Kanban project management tool You can edit the board real-time with rich text With supporting images and tables where needed Let's check what's new in Next Cloud Calendar With this release others can also book an appointment for you So they just need to click on the calendar icon This and select the date on which they want to make the appointment And then you will receive a notification about the meeting In this release we made it super easy to refer to any of your colleagues From any place using the Smart Picker It's super simple, just insert the link And with just one click you can see more details about their profile And even their social activity stream Next Cloud Social was built entirely using Activity Pub Which means that if you wish you can even connect it to external services Like the FedEverse and have it interact with MasterDawn as well A lot of software companies are forcing people into the cloud This includes Microsoft SharePoint Where it is continuing their on-prem solution And this is why we created the Tables app It really allows you to do a lot of things in a structured way So for example you can create a wide variety of tables You can create customer lists You can use them for internal processes And so much more Basically your imagination is the limit And with the new release we added a ton of improvements For example single and multi-select of columns Sorting, filtering and search Rich text editor for text fields And the ability to manage tables via an API And another thing that we added is actually import So you can import CSV and XLS files As you see we come included with a bunch of useful templates You can use and adapt There are trillions of documents out there already And we need to get those into NextCloud Hub 5 And give people the control of their documents Give them their digital sovereignty back And allow them to collaborate around those documents in real time Drawer perhaps is not a container that's as known as it should be So you can get your Visio diagrams in Actually even Microsoft publisher files in some cases If you're in a meeting and someone hasn't shown up It's absolutely vital that you can give lots of work to them And encourage them to show up next time So at mentioning is a great way of doing that with comments Or just like in NextCloud Talk and other parts of the NextCloud Suite Another key thing here of course is the smart picker Just like in mail, collectives, talk notes All of these other components You have that same rich functionality providing so much power And all of these exciting plugins that go into that And I think as we link documents more and more It becomes really important to look at those links And it's a bit of a pain Having to follow every link in your document to check it's nice So isn't it cool if you can just mouse over there And you can see a thumbnail It is a correct link It goes to where we want to And not just linking But deep linking inside documents So I think this is a really unique feature here You can then link directly into Chart or a heading or a specific piece Of a rich legacy document Another key thing we've been doing Is making those large documents easier to navigate So we've added this sidebar To see the structure of documents So many features So multi-page floating frames Multi-stop gradients Data pivot tables I've just this There's just so much going on Now Nexot Hub is a powerful application platform And there are tons of integrations In third-party applications And tools that are available Recently we introduced integration with Miro Integration with Collabor It's a Bluepoint as well as with X-Wiki Which is an open source And on-premises wiki That has really really nice Nexot integration Now MatterMust And we worked with our friends At the Open Project community Open projects allows you To basically select files from Nexot And connect them to a project And the new integration we did Is integration into Notion A popular design and note-taking app The second thing that we worked on For integration is integration in GPT-0 Now there are also integrations In big external projects There are over 300 apps And integrations already in our App Store Another thing we did Is that we have been working on Improving the Open Collaboration Services API We are launching four software development kits That make it possible to develop For Nexcloud Using Python, Rust, TypeScript, and Go Now, Sundant has been working on A major rewrite of the ad And built on the latest Microsoft technologies And this has a number of benefits First of all, it brings with it support For macOS As well as the Microsoft Outlook Web Interface Now there is more of course To Outlook integration And that's why we earlier Introduced the Microsoft Exchange Connector This syncs Nexot calendars and Outlook calendars Now the third is Microsoft Teams integration So this integration will make it easy To share files into a Teams chatroom Directly from Nexlot So at the very beginning I told you for this release That we for the first time have a theme Something that really binds all the features together And that's of course, as I said, a digital workspace And you can really see I think From all the different pieces we had here How this all fits together into one Very nice integrated collaboration suite So at the beginning I told you That we have 10 areas of 10 big improvements That's of course, or not of course It's not completely true Because actually we have a special one At the end, an 11th So I believe that technology Like Nexcloud has the job To make our life easier And of course AI and machine learning Has a huge potential to do exactly that The problem here is that there's also like A sort of a dark side of AI After a lot of discussions brought up To the Nexcloud ethical AI initiative They can make sure that we have the Good parts of AI without the bad parts So we decided that we want to measure The ethical AI score That we developed according to three requirements The first is open source Only if you have the software The source code If you can really look inside the box Then you can see if this is all efficient And if not, you can improve it Second requirement is that the machine learning model Is freely available And then it's running on-premise And no data is sent somewhere else Then last but not least The training data also needs to be freely available Because if there's a bias If there's some discrimination Some bad content in the training model To be able to verify to check the training data So what we developed now Is this traffic light system So the user can really decide Which plug-in to switch on and off Just to be clear All of these AI features are optional Let's go through our functionalities And see how this rating system applies The suspicious login detection And this is a system that we built ourselves No data is leaking anywhere Then end of last year We launched our new photos app And here again we're using a machine learning model That runs completely local Where the training data is completely transparent The source code is open and so on Object recognition And again this is using a machine learning model That we developed runs completely local The last example I want to give here Is of course our We have this proudly invoked Where the very very important males Are specially flagged and showed at the top And of course it runs completely local No data is going anywhere else But now let's talk a little bit About the bigger AI features Image generation That's obviously very cool and powerful feature But this is an optional integration Into the Dali image generation service Which of course as you might know Is a red service according to our rating This is just a service that sits on the internet No one sees the software No one has access to the model No one sees the training data This is why we also developed an alternative to that So we also integrated stable diffusion And stable diffusion is actually an open source system That can completely run locally It has a model that runs locally And also the training data is transparent So if you work in an international global organization Like next cloud, you constantly have to translate Documents, text We integrated here the DPL system And also chat GBT So obviously both of them are red services And I'm really happy that in this release We have our own machine learning model Which can completely run completely local Can translate all kinds of text Into each other different languages So this is a really completely green Completely ethical AI service that we have here And I really think that this is a big deal And because of that we're so happy with it We integrate into more places For example here in next cloud talk Then there's a directly translation system Directly built into the chat You can just go to a message Say translate And have it translated And no data is leaking your system at all I'm also very happy that in this release We have our own dictation system Which runs completely local on your machine So we really like this feature so much That we also use it in other places For example in next cloud talk We have this very beautiful feature to do Recordings And we integrate it here directly So directly after this call You also get a very nice transcript Which led me then to the fourth and final area I want to talk about And that's of course the big one Around text generation The text generation which large language model Is of course a big deal So what we did we integrated optional again ChatGVT integration into the smart picker And different places of next cloud In the project management tool deck You can just like If you're wondering how should my project plan look like I have this task and need a project plan It can automatically generate a complete project plan for you But of course you know it This is a red service And we thought about it really really hard And several months ago We because of that started an initiative We are in the process of building the next cloud assistant Next cloud assistant is based on the large language model It can do all these features that ChatGVT can do It will be 100% open source The model will be completely freely available The training data will be completely transparent And we are working on that at the moment We will test internally already And this will be released later this year In one of the next releases So this rounds up this release So next cloud hub 5 Is really the biggest release we had so far So next cloud is a great tool for home users For the education sector For government use For service provider And also for companies and organizations I really think that next cloud is the solution here And that's what we are building And next cloud hub 5 is the next big step in this direction Thanks a lot


The most frustrating thing about biorejuvenation research in 2021 for me is that thought leaders like biojarentologist Dr. Arbery DeGray have been saying for years that we can make incredible progress in biorejuvenation technologies quickly if his 501c3 nonprofit sends research foundation or SRF receives more funding. Yet year after year, SRF hasn't received the type of funding that Arbery has wanted. Well, we have incredible news to share in this episode of Lifespan Our story starts with Richard Hart, an early bitcoin adopter who was mining bitcoin on his personal computer about a decade ago. Lucky for us, Richard was also volunteering for a medical research charity called the Methuselah Foundation even earlier in 2008. Arbery also co-founded the Methuselah Foundation and Richard has wanted to do more to help support Arbery's work for many years. Richard has gone on to become the founder of Hex, the first high-interest blockchain certificate of deposit which lets users stake their Hex tokens in return for interest. Now Richard is launching a new cryptocurrency called Pulse. As part of that launch, Richard has also arranged an airdrop to donate some of the new Pulse cryptocurrency to SRF, which is one of the most important players in the context of organizations conducting biorejuvenation research. Arbery is the co-founder and chief science officer of SRF. The goal of SRF is to combat human-age-related diseases through the development of therapies that can reverse the damage that aging does, thus keeping us biologically younger and healthier. At the time of this recording, the Pulse chain airdrop has raised over an astounding $23 million for medical research at SRF. To put this into perspective, this is about four times the annual revenue that SRF has normally received the last few years and is around half of the Buck Institute's revenue for an entire year. And if that was not incredible enough, this money was raised in just a few days. This money will be transformative for SRF and could allow SRF to increase the scope and pace of research at the foundation and potentially help to bring therapies to the clinical trial stage sooner. The airdrop works by people making a sacrifice to SRF during the sacrifice phase. A sacrifice is simply a donation. People who donate to SRF during this time will be placed into the airdrop and will get the chance to win some of the new Pulse cryptocurrency once it launches. SRF has asked people to read its instructions for donating through the airdrop before doing anything. Check the description for those instructions. The Pulse chain airdrop is another example of how cryptocurrency and Healthy Life Extension technology have been intersecting over the last few years. To learn more about SRF, Pulse chain, Hex, and Richard Hart, check the description for links to their Twitter, Telegram, and YouTube channels. We'll also have a link to this story from Lifespan to IO's editor-in-chief Steve Hill. Other recent examples of the intersection of crypto and longevity are Ethereum's co-founder Vitalik Buterin donating millions of dollars to the Methuselah Foundation a few weeks ago, which you can learn more about by clicking the card above or in the description. Vitalik has also donated to SRF and other aging research initiatives. We've also recently seen the launch of VitaDal, which is a decentralized collective funding early-stage longevity research. I interviewed VitaDal's co-initiator Tyler Galato a few weeks ago on my personal YouTube channel, which you can watch by clicking the card above or in the video description. Cryptocurrency-based funding offers a great alternative to traditional sources of funding such as grants, which come with a host of issues including risk aversion to fund moonshot research goals like Healthy Life Extension. It isn't hard to see how progress could be greatly sped up thanks to cryptocurrency, which is free from these restraints and so allows science to explore the directions it truly wishes to instead of having to appease grant givers or pander to conservative views within the establishment. Pulse Chain is one such initiative that has the potential to help drive our field forward and make Healthy Life Extension one step closer to becoming reality. It's incredible to see Richard using the influences earned in crypto to spearhead funding for medical research that may one day save the lives of so many people, maybe even all of us eventually. Thanks so much Richard.


Live from Seattle, Washington, it's theCUBE. Covering Smartsheet Engaged 2019. Brought to you by Smartsheet. Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of Smartsheet Engaged here in Seattle, Washington. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Jeff Frick. We're joined by Mae McCutcheon. She is the program director at OvalV. OvalV, thank you so much for coming on. My pleasure. So, OvalV is a huge name in the advertising industry, but why don't you give our viewers a little bit of background about what you do and the company itself? One of the fun little stories that I like to tell is something that our founder said so many years ago.  You want to hire someone bigger than you and you end up a company of giants. And I feel like that really sums up OvalV. It's such a big name in the industry. 70 years we've been around. I'm program director, I work in operations. I also work in resource management. I like to think that I'm a utility player. You know, wherever the fire is, I'll go and try to help out. Smartsheets made that a lot easier for me in the last couple of years. My origin story of Smartsheet is I was working with an account and someone had to leave suddenly and they asked me to step in and do some of the account executive duties. I had no idea what some of those were. I am lifelong operations. I am not lifelong advertising. So, I was like trial by fire, but I had recently been introduced to Smartsheet. So, I had this tool and I went to meetings for like two weeks and I gathered every piece of data I could. And then after that time, like images came out of the mist and suddenly like the world made sense and my boss one day was walking by and saw like a pie chart, what's that? And we're like, oh, I just made this because it's helping me learn about the account, right? And he was like, oh, we're making an appointment with my boss and like on it went from there. So, you should have been in operations forever. So, what brought you to Smartsheet? Clearly, you've worked with other tools. You've worked in complicated projects before. What was so different this time? I would say the ease of use and the instant adoptability with other people and the functionality being able to attach a file. And this is long before there were dashboards, before any of that stuff, just attaching a file. The comments on the line, really ease of use. That's a big one. Yeah. So in your line of work, there are so many different assets that you need to work on and the way that the advertising industry has changed so much, you only have so much time to get the customer's attention. Can you talk a little bit about just those changes and then how that's changed, what you need to do and what your team needs to do on a day-to-day basis? We spent a lot of time tracking. We still spend a lot of time tracking and customers will say, you guys talk to us too much and then they'll say, we didn't get the right information. So I think I've talked to other people here at the conference and nobody really wants to say, my company's having a difficult time grappling with this torrent of data that we're all living with. I miss things for my kid because I miss the email in my inbox about the school, even though I'm looking for it. So I think it's a large problem that a lot of companies are dealing with and nobody really wants to admit it. But we're finding that we're changing the way we work and it's making a big difference. Like the tools that we used to use don't apply anymore because they don't make any sense. Like, you know, if you have like a shared folder on a drive, good luck. You know, we'll have a flashlight and like a, you know, you're never going to find it. So these kinds of tools, Smartsheet is helping us, is helping us really change the way we work. The other thing too, the complexity of which you guys deliver. You made a nice customer video for the Smartsheet team and really goes through on some campaign for a shoe or something. You know, you kind of got your core theme that you develop but you guys are making so many derivative assets for so many derivative platforms to be used in such different ways that kind of the variation, I assume the version control, the variance based on geo or whatever the speed, completely different working situation. We're very excited about Slope, the asset tracking software that Smartsheet has purchased and I think we've started a pilot and we're really excited to see how that works out because that's something that all of the stuff that we're building in Smartsheet will then be able to talk to this other system. So the tracking system will be able to talk to revenue projections or whatever else you wanted to talk to, you know, of capacity planning, resource management and yes, of all the versions that we have to deal with, there's two pieces of the versioning. One is like, what do we need to deliver to the client today? Do we have the right version? We got to ship this out, it's going to print, you don't want the wrong one going out but then also two, three years from now if somebody comes and says, hey, can you give me the version that shipped? And everyone's like, oh, I don't know what, it's one of these, I don't know which one because in our industry, people rotate off accounts. You work on one account for a number of years and then you decide you want some B2B expertise or some consumer products good expertise and the company's very good about enriching people's careers that way and moving them around but that means they're taking their knowledge with them. So one of my favorite things about Smartsheet is not only does it help us track and there's transparency and automation and all that stuff but when we finish a project, if we've used it correctly, it's beautifully archived. So not only can you find all of the assets, even the little itty bitty ones, but you can see a chat trail on which one was used, this time and you can, I like also you can right click on a cell and see the cell history, like who made that note or who put that number in, it's perfect. It's a mini handbook that you can hand over to on-ramp someone onto a new project. Like if you could talk to the person that was there that did it. The intuition that's there is great. So what does this do in terms of changing the culture of your organization and the ways in which employees are interacting with each other? I'm really excited about this. I'm really excited about the culture piece because I'm going to talk about it internally and then I'll talk about it with clients.  Like every month give me these numbers. So we go down to them and we say, this is it. I need you to fill out this column and the months. That's it. They can then, with Smartsheet, do whatever else they want with the sheet. They can add columns like some of them track quarterly and some of them track by behalf and some of them weekly. They can do all that as long as my numbers are in and I have that in report. So all of these cultures are slightly different. Ogilvy has a culture, but so do our clients. And when you work with a client closely, you adopt part of that culture. So I don't want to say to anybody in the company, this is how it's going to be and this is how you have to do it. I think that kills morale. I think it kills creativity. I think it kills innovation. So that's one thing that I love about Smartsheet is it helps you preserve culture. It helps even underscore it. And do you think it's made you as a team also more wanting to lean on each other in different ways in the sense of wanting to, unlocked creativity piece is what I'm trying to get at here. Creativity and accountability. Yes, I think it's much easier to define who's responsible for what with that clear communication. You know, you can get a card view and you'd be like, that's literally your lane. That's what it's called. It's called your lane. So I think that helps people. Like I know what I'm accountable for and I know what I need to do. And so I'm going to be better at it. And I also am going to have a better picture of the whole project instead of just what I'm doing. So knowing where it's coming from and where it's going to go after in that context makes me better. And are you seeing one of the big themes for all these types of software is that, you know, it frees up people from doing less mundane, less routine, less rote kind of your example of rolling up the numbers so that it frees you up to do higher value activities. You know, are you seeing that? How's it manifested itself in your guys ability to deliver? The automation, let's see. Let's see how that, we haven't, I was talking about, I said I would get back to the client a minute ago and I didn't. I can't think of a time when we use, we use automation a lot internally. I'm trying to think about what we do with clients because client facing is obviously a little bit different. But internally is probably the harder challenge though, right? It's easy to get excited about a new client. I think it's harder to get excited about another day on week three on an eight week project that you're just grinding through. I kind of love them. I don't know why. I love the internal stuff. I think because of the camaraderie and because of the team building, I sent out, I used a form recently. Asked some people that I've been working with how they feel about this new project. And it was so easy. I mean, it was like, I had fun making the form. And I'm happy to say that I'm also having fun reading the responses because they're mostly good and some of them are critical but it's delivered so well. The comments are like, oh, we needed to hear that. We can actually make this better now. That's great. Seeing the big picture though, I want to hear as a business leader what that means to you. And in particular, what it was like before when you didn't have full information and you couldn't exactly get the real time status report and understand what needed to be done and what wasn't working so well. We had people working off of different sort of playbooks. So you have one department and they know what their focus is and they know what they're doing. And another department has a different responsibility. They go to a meeting and they kind of hear different things because they're thinking about, what am I going to be doing with this? And the other one's thinking about, how am I going to do it?  And so now if everyone's working off the same document, you don't have that problem anymore. Does that answer your question? Yeah. Yeah. All right, so I want to shift gears a little bit, Mae. And talk about where we are kind of as a society in terms of the attention economy, right? That's the hardest thing to get these days is people's attention. I think in your little video, you guys talked about the number of impressions per day, which of course is infinite and the time for impression is just basically zero plus a little bit more. And you guys are right at the leading edge of trying to capture that attention, facing that challenges. I wonder if you can just kind of speak generally as the evolution of that and the way that messaging and images and kind of types of engagement have to change when your opportunities are very, very short, but they're spread across a lot of different things. And if it's targeted right, the opportunities for a match on a good target, as someone said, if it's a good match, it's magical. And how you kind of look at the challenge and the opportunity of operating in 2019 where attention is so hard to get. I think to give you a really good answer to that question, I would need someone from the media department, someone from strategy, someone from creative, and someone from the CEO's office. But I- We'll be in New York in two weeks. We'll get that going. There's so much that goes into it and clients are so different. Some want this really long, long list of different deliverables that they want and it's on a tight pace. And then some are more interested like, oh, just like an overall brand. We just want some brand strategy. One thing that we do well, and that is our core, is we make brands matter. That is the Ogilvy Ethos right there. So no matter what's going on with the industry as it's changing, and this week it's banners, next week it's social or whatever, we're always focused on the brand first and whatever makes sense on that day, in that era, we will choose the platform and the software and whatever else that helps us best service our clients. It's still staying to that core mission around the brand, the brand values, what it represents. That is the number one thing, yeah. So what's next? I mean, when you're here at the Smart Sheet Engage and you're talking and hearing about how other companies use it and how other teams are finding new collaborations, and what are you going to come away with? What are you going to bring back to your team in New York? I think the most exciting thing for me so far has been, I mean, I love the multi-select dropdown and I mean, there's a lot of great things, but when they talked about a little bit of a touch on AI and how the platform will be watching the way you work and I don't want to use language, people get so creeped out, you know? Like, are you watching it, what are you watching? No, it's just like, you know, following a pattern that it will suggest things. So I think that's going to help search and then it's going to know like, well, every other time you ran that report, then you wanted a dashboard, want me to kick it off for you, I am really excited about that. I think, because right now the automation is good and it's getting better, right? You have like, you can set by time, you can set reminders by date and lots of great things that you can do with the forums, but I think that AI piece is really what's going to make a change. How would you say that your team feels about that?  I don't talk to them about it. I just pretend like it's not there. It's just something you don't have to do. Right, right, right. I mean, but do they see it as the potential benefits that could come from it? Yes, I think a lot of people already in a recent project, everyone's like, the drudgery is gone. It's just gone. And sometimes I feel like, because one thing I ask them is, do you feel like you're spending more time on this or do you feel like you're spending less time and do you feel like you're spending more time but you're more informed and better to do your job? Right, so sometimes it's both. Sometimes I spend less time now that I'm using Smartsheet. Some people spend more time because they're getting more information that they need it, you know? Right, right. I love your example how you just need that one cell filled in and whatever it takes you, the individual to get to that number, you don't really care. I don't care. The flexibility. So you can organize your thoughts, your way of working, your way of organizing information, whatever makes sense for you to get to that answer. That flexibility is so important and I see it. Every team that I give this, you know, I have one document I need, six numbers a month, it's all I need. Six numbers a month. And every sheet is different. And I've told them, I'm like, well, you're the admin and you can make all these changes that you wanted to, and it's a little bit risky, you know? What if they delete one of my columns? Well then I'll go and put it back and tell them, don't do that. But everybody does it differently. Somebody took the name column and put it on the end.  Dude, do you bring them together at some point to say, here's how you did it, here's how you did it? You know, here's the best practices, maybe you guys, you know, Susie over here did it this way, seems to work really well. I do one on one whenever I can. I really like it. I like the engagement, you get to know someone. I also say, my sick file has my cell phone. You can Slack me, you can call me, you can text me, middle of the night, doesn't matter, we're here. Like, I have two clients, you know? There's the clients that we service in the world, the other companies, but then for me, my clients are the employees, and the employees that are servicing those clients. That's great. Great. And as you said, when the drudgery is gone, that makes four people who want to come to work and who are more satisfied, so then they give more of themselves during the work day, and it does become a virtual circle. They're also more relaxed, you know? Because I think we were alluding to this earlier, it's like before we were using Smartsheet, you weren't always sure, like some project was going to jump out from behind a lamppost on your way home at night, and ruin your life for a day, you know? So now we can see that guy from far off, we're like, ah, I got my eye on you, you're not going to get me.  So we're starting to scope for the next year, and we're setting the Smartsheets up for people like, oh my God, there's the view, it's beautiful. Right, right, I think we need to create a new Smartsheet yoga pose for you now. I mean, let's do it, let's do it. Do you know what I'm always on the hunt for? The weirdest use of Smartsheet. What's the weirdest you've found so far? The weirdest, somebody mentioned something about a writer who uses Smartsheet to track all the ways they procrastinate from writing. That's pretty good, pretty good. Another woman used it for her Thanksgiving shopping. I'm like, okay, that's like, next level cooking as far as I'm concerned. And then also on the way home from the grocery shopping for Thanksgiving, the wines she was going to buy. So she's tracking her wines and her food. That's good though for the pairings and which, I like that, I mean, yeah.  News you can use. Me, McCutchen, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Thank you. I'm Rebecca Knight for Jeff Frick. Stay tuned, you are watching theCUBE.