In this presentation, we will take a look at multiple choice questions related to budgeting going through the questions and then practicing test-taking skills with them. First question, budget figures are developed A. First, a word from our sponsor. Yeah, actually we're sponsoring ourselves on this one because apparently the merchandisers, they don't want to be seen with us.  Like this CPA thinking cap for example, CPA thinking CAP, you see what we did with like with the letters and this CPA thinking cap is not just for CPAs either. Anyone can and should have at least one possibly multiple CPA thinking caps. Why? Because based on our scientific survey of five people, all of whom directly profit from the sale of these CPA thinking caps, wearing this CPA thinking cap without a doubt according to the survey, increases accounting productivity tenfold. Yeah, at least. Apparently the hat actually channels like accounting energy from the quantum field ether directly into your head, allowing you to navigate spreadsheets faster. It's kind of like how in like the matrix when Neo learns kung fu or at least that's what the scientific survey saying. So get one because the scientific survey participants could really use some extra cash. If you would like a commercial free experience, consider subscribing to our website at accountinginstruction.com or accountinginstruction.thinkific.com. From the top down, B from the bottom up, C by the C F O D by the C E O E based on last year's numbers. Let's go through this again using the process of elimination. Budget figures are developed a from a top down. So if we might see that say I'm not even sure what we're talking about top down and then B says from a bottom up. So again, we might say I'm not really sure on those two and then C says by the C F O, which is a chief financial officer. That sounds kind of reasonable possibly and E says by the CEO chief executive officer office. Another big person in the company seems kind of reasonable and then he says based on last year's numbers. And we know that that's kind of the starting point of a budget. So the first one I'm going to remove is is going to be here. However, because anytime that a budget process in a formal in a question says it's only based on the last year's numbers. It's not normally going to be the answer. It's got to qualify that somewhere. The last year's numbers are the starting point. They aren't we can't just take last year's numbers and roll them forward. It doesn't. That's not how the budgeting process is going to work, at least for a book problem. So it's not going to be E. So let's go through this again. Budget figures are developed either from a top down or bottom up. And then we've got the C F O or the C E O. Now of these four, these two, the C F O and the C E O would indicate that all the figures are developed by one person in the organization, the C F O or the C E O. As if they just kind of like one person is going to win a big company. They're going to know how to do the whole entire budget with no help. That's that's not going to happen. That's not the way it's going to work. So it's not going to be these and notice that the C F O and the C E O also line up to what we would think of as a top down approach. In other words, we're talking about the structure of the organization being, you know, these are the big guys at the top making the decision top down. And then they just communicate that decision. And, you know, it's kind of like the coach making the plan without discussing it with any of the players or whatever. And then just telling the players what to do from a top down approach. And so a then would line up with either C F O or C E O you would think as well. So and really what we want here, typically we're thinking that the budget for a larger company is often going to be a bottom up type approach. Again, a very small company is probably going to be completely run by like a, it's almost like a dictatorship, right? Because it's a small company and the one owners doing doing is just running the thing. They're the one with the vision. They're the one with the implementation of it. But the larger the company gets when you get a large company with different types of departments, of course, then it's too big for one person to just come up with the budget. The departments have to come up with the budget because they're the ones that are running in the numbers. It has to be decentralized in some kind of way. So when we get a larger company, we've got to go from the bottom up type of budget. We got to go and get the numbers from the people in the departments that are there and then put those together in a bottom to top kind of structure. So final answer B budget figures are developed be from the bottom up. Next question. Preparing budgets for each of several future periods and then revising those budgets as each period is completed is either a participatory budgeting B adjustable budgeting C strange budgeting D continuous budgeting and E master budgeting. Alright, let's go through this again using the process of elimination. Preparing budgets for each of several future periods and then revising those budgets as each period is completed is so we got the full budget and then we're going to revise them basically as we go a participatory budget. I mean, it might sound reasonable. I'll keep that for now. B says adjustable budget. That sounds kind of reasonable like what we're doing. C says strange budget. It does sound strange, but I doubt we named it the strange budget. So that's probably not and then D says continuous budget. Again, that kind of sounds like what we're doing. It's kind of like a continuous thing. And E says master budget. And that's kind of what we've been looking at. So I'll keep all of these and go through this again. Preparing budgets for each of several future periods and then revising those budgets as each period is completed is. Now, of those note that the participatory budget doesn't sound reasonable. I think all budgets are going to be kind of participatory because they're going to try to communicate with the company, but I don't think that's what it's going to be called. E is the master budget. And this one seems to be some type of deviation from the normal master budget that we've been talking about. So I don't think it's E. And then the other kind of unusual budget names we would have adjustable budgeting, continuous budgeting. Those both kind of indicate just by the name of it what we're doing here in some way. The continuous budgeting is actually the term that possibly we recognize that's the one that it's actually called. Final answer. Preparing budgets for each of several future periods and then revising those budgets as each period is completed is. D. Continuous budget.


It's called Scaling the Artisan. And it's about what it means to be a senior developer. By way of introduction, I'm Coraline Eda Emke on Twitter at Coraline Eda. I judge how well I did her in a talk by the number of people who tweet about it. So please be kind. I am a code witch. And I once had someone ask me, Coraline, why do you call yourself a code witch? And I'm like, I write code, and I'm literally a witch. So it seems to go together nicely. I have code witch stickers with a wonderful 8-bit witch on it. So if you want code witch stickers or greater than code stickers after the talk, come up and say hi. I built my first website in 1994. And I'm proud to say it was in the top 5% of all websites. My new website looks a little bit different, but it's still in the top 5% of all websites. I've been an open source contributor since 2004. I won a Ruby Hero Award in 2016 for my work in diversifying open source. I should warn you that according to Breitbart News, I'm a notorious social justice warrior, so you should take everything I say with a grain of salt. I'm a founding panelist on the greater than code podcast, which I strongly recommend to everyone. We have an incredibly diverse lineup of guests, and we talk about the human side of software development. And perhaps best known as the creator of the contributor covenant, the first open source code of conduct. And it has over 40,000 adoptions, including Angular, the .NET framework, Bootstrap, GitLab, Electron, Eclipse, RubyGems, JRuby, Alexa, Swift, Jenkins, Yarn, and Rails. I'm a principal engineer at Stitch Fix. I've been there for just under a year, and I'm really enjoying it. Stitch Fix is one of the sponsors, and we have a booth. So I'll come by and say hi. So I'm going to start with a simple question. Who are we? Are we architects? An architect is someone who plans, designs, and reviews the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings. They have, as their principal purpose, human occupation. I don't think we're architects. Are we scientists? A scientist is a person engaging in systematic activity to acquire knowledge that describes and predicts the natural world. A scientist uses scientific method, formulating and validating hypotheses. I don't really validate hypotheses in my work. I don't think we're scientists. We like to call ourselves engineers. Engineers design materials, structures, and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality and regulation. The foundational education of an engineer is a four or six-year degree followed by four to six years of practical, peer-reviewed professional practice culminating in a project report or thesis. A lot more disciplined than the work that we do as software engineers. Are we artisans? An artisan is a skilled craft worker who makes or create things by hand that may be functional or strictly decorative. Artisans practice a craft made through experience to achieve the level of expression of an artist. Naming things is really hard. Maybe we should call ourselves firefighting space cowboys and be done with it. Firefighting space cowboys who, of course, love cat guests. We all know that naming things is hard and it's not even easy to name our profession. But of all the options available to us, artisan seems to come the closest. We're going to go with that for the purpose of this talk. So what is an artisan? We all want to preserve our high-paying jobs and work somewhere that we're respected for our skills and talents. We want to be like artisans. So what exactly does that mean? An artisan, as I mentioned, is a worker in a skilled trade that produces things by hand. Artisans were the dominant producers of consumer products prior to the Industrial Revolution. The best artisans work directly for merchant princes and nobles and produce unique artifacts that were practically works of art. In medieval times, artisans formed fraternal orders to exchange innovations in their craft with each other while protecting their public secrets, their professional secrets from potential competitors and the public at large. Over time, these orders developed their own jargons, symbolic frameworks, and elaborate rituals to represent and preserve their hard-won knowledge. Some of these orders survived to the modern era, still steeped in mystery and rumor and legend. By the 12th century, to ensure the smooth succession of artisans and the continuity of their traditions, Gilles developed a system of apprenticeship. In the 16th century, seven-year apprenticeships were a legal prerequisite for becoming a craftsman or an artisan. So I'm gonna take you on a little historical journey and talk about something that we take for granted in our daily lives, the screw. The screw thread was invented around 400 BC by Architus of Tarentum. He was a contemporary of the philosopher Plato and he's sometimes called the father of mechanics. Archimedes further developed the screw principle and used it to build machines that raised water. Early screws were used in olive presses, machines that compressed olives to extract their oil. This is Hero of Alexandria, a mathematician and engineer who lived in the first century BC. He tutored Alexandria's museum and wrote many books on mathematics, geometry, and engineering, many of which were still in use as later as the medieval period. He also invented the first known steam engine. In the second volume of his book, Mechanics, he outlines the five mechanical powers, the windlass, the lever, the pulley, the wedge, and the screw. But it wasn't until the 15th century that screws and threaded bolts became started to be used as fasteners. Gutenberg famously used screws as fastenings on his printing press. The use of screws in this capacity gained momentum and they started appearing in mechanisms like clocks and in items like armor. For centuries, screw heads for fasteners were cut by hand. There was no standardization. A craftsman would carve and file individual mated pairs of screws and nuts. Interchangeability was not a requirement, so custom fitting was the norm. This was true until around 1800 when an inventor named Henry Modsley invented a type of metal lathe that enabled the manufacturer of standard screw thread sizes. With Modsley's lathe, you could provide, you could reliably produce screws that were interchangeable. At first, different manufacturers had their own standards for screw threads. A national standard wasn't established in the UK until the mid 1800s. And even into the 20th century, there was no international standardization of screw threads, which created significant supply and repair problems for the Allies during the World War. In 1949, finally, the unified thread standard was adopted by, not making this up, the through-scred standardization committees of Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. In 1947, the International Standards Organization was founded. 15 years later, the metric-based international standard of units was created and the ISO metric screw thread was adopted as a worldwide standard.  Artisans produce machines and tools, but the most profitable endeavor for artisans for almost 4,000 years was the production of weapons. The sword, as we know it, was developed during the Bronze Age and was a natural evolution of the dagger. The earliest specimens were actually made of arsenic copper and date to the Turkish region of approximately 1600 BC. Occasionally, a swordsmith would mix iron with optimal amounts of carbon and accidentally produce a steel blade, but it wasn't until the early Middle Ages that this became a repeatable process. By medieval times, the process of sword-making began evolving largely in response to the availability of more and more sophisticated materials. The availability and quality of raw materials drove improvements to the process of sword-making, not the other way around. By the 16th century, knowledge of the manufacture of guns arrived in Europe by way of Middle Eastern trade. Throughout the 18th century, guns in Europe were made one at a time by artisans known as gunsmiths, and each gun was unique. If one single component of a weapon needed replacement, the entire weapon had to be sent to an expert gunsmith for customer repairs or discarded and replaced by another weapon. Although the killing power of a gun was significantly higher than that of a sword, firearms did not supplant the sword into the early 19th century. American gunsmiths were few and far between, and the American colonies of the early to mid-18th century their records of less than 20 gunsmiths. Government tried and failed to entice and mandates gunsmiths to practice no other profession. The raw materials for gunsmithing were scarce in the Americas, so most guns were imported from France and Germany. Gunpowder and firing mechanisms also had to be imported. A gun back then cost about a year's income for an ordinary farmer. For comparison's sake, a basic rifle now cost the equivalent of three days of labor at the average national wage. There were attempts at producing professional standards for gunsmithing in Europe, but not in America. This means that every gun produced in America is unique to the artisan that produced it. At the end of the 17th century, Maryland reported an inventory of only 20 muskets, 38 carbides, 16 horse pistols, and 78 barrels of powder accumulated over the past 25 years. In the years leading up to the revolution, they had 200 muskets, 86 carbines, and six pistols in usable order. For each working musket, there were two or more that were deemed worthy or capable of repair. Before the Civil War, America had only two armories, one at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, and one in Springfield, Massachusetts. In an attempt to equip the militias sufficiently to protect the newly independent country, Congress ordered the production of 7,000 muskets in 1793. A year later, it had only managed to buy 400. In the late 18th century, a French general named Grubeval saw this resource-intensive approach as a problem and promoted the idea of standardized parts for weapons. This approach came to be known as the System Grubeval and became law in France by way of royal order. So by around 1778, France began producing some of the first firearms with interchangeable flintlocks, but the parts were still made carefully by craftsmen. In the U.S., Eli Whitney saw the potential benefit of developing interchangeable parts for the firearms of the United States military. In July of 1801, he went before Congress, built 10 guns, all containing the exact same parts and mechanisms, then disassembled them in front of all the congressmen. He placed the parts in a giant pile and with help reassembled all the weapons in short order. They were sold. It was the development of interchangeable parts that led to predictable production. We no longer needed artisans to produce weapons and artisans could shift their focus to design and innovation. Today, of course, guns are mass produced and can be bought for under $200. 5.5 million guns were produced by the United States last year and their ready availability means we have a whole new set of ethical dilemmas to deal with. The Industrial Revolution upended many aspects of society, making some better and some worse, but predictable production with interchangeable and standardized parts, generally speaking, raised the quality of life for most Americans and let us realize the promise of new technologies. Today, we associate mass production with low quality and low skill labor. We prefer to buy things with artisanal in their name from sandwiches, to bread, to beer, to clothing. To many of us, mass production smells like commoditization and we don't want that in our profession, but that's classist and elitist and I don't want that in our profession either. So how does the changing nature of artisanal work and the impact of the Industrial Revolution apply to our industry? I would argue that we're at the beginning of the process of standardizing on interchangeable parts and we're gonna soon have to deal with the commoditization of code. Early computing pioneers had to invent everything. This is a picture of a bomb, one of the earliest computers. It was developed by Alan Turing during World War II and was used to break the Nazi enigma cipher. The hardware and software to run the bombs was tightly coupled. Hardware standardization in the 70s and 80s led to the creation of more general purpose programming languages that can be compiled across a small number of architectures. Standardized hardware platforms were a material innovation not unlike the consistent production of steel in the medieval times and allowed us to focus on things that we produce on top of the material layer, in other words, software. With the advent of the web and the increasing versatility of front-end frameworks, the browser is becoming our main platform and this is only possible because of the creation and wide adoption of standards. TCPIP is a lower level protocols like HTTP and HTTPS on top of it and the standardized front-end language like JavaScript. And just like the standardization approach that the ISO took for screws, these standard protocols are making possible a revolution in the production of software. Behind the scenes, of course, is our back-end code written in a variety of languages but running on increasingly standardized server platforms. In the early days of the internet, servers were owned by the same companies that produced software and they spent a lot of time on the reliability and maintainability and security of their data centers. These days, most servers live in the cloud and we don't know or care what hardware they use. So data centers became a commodity. The age of DevOps arrived and more than ever we can focus on crafting software instead of crafting tools. Commodalization happened to hardware and server infrastructure and software is next. More and more software development is shifting to reusable components like NPM modules or RubyGems that can be assembled to provide large swaths of functionality for our apps. We no longer have to roll our own authentication or data visualization or ORMs or even UI frameworks. And AWS provides building blocks for enterprise class software architectures. We no longer have to invent or create or maintain our own data storage, file storage, caching, search or messaging services. Our tools generate scaffolding on top of which we build our applications. We don't have to write boilerplate code anymore. As an aside, the term boilerplate was first used to indicate reusable chunks of text that typesetters didn't need to be set by hand for use in newspapers. And there was a metaphor for the 1840s innovation of large rolls of metal and flat large plates for use in making steam boilers. We're using more and more standardized parts to build our software and shifting our attention from assembling machines from reusable components instead of inventing steel or machining our own custom screw threads. And today, I don't know if you saw this, but NASA is even working on a machine learning system that will allow users to produce programs without writing their own code. In short, we're inventing ourselves out of traditional software jobs. Software development is increasingly about connecting pieces of existing technologies together with a small amount of glue code and a sprinkling of custom algorithms. And this is just like the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, but just as the Industrial Revolution didn't eliminate the need for artisans, neither is this the end of software development. It just means that we have to adapt. The job of the future is not the job you're doing today. So let's talk about artisanship in a modern context. There was a tweet exchange between DHH and Sarah May a few weeks ago, and Sarah says we're starting to differentiate software developers from software engineers. An engineer builds complex software systems that run in the context of people and a developer writes code. And I took exception to this because it struck me as very classist. It's not us and them. It's not engineers versus developers.  And it's our job to bring them up to our level. So I responded, I think it, where it here is the ability to create software in the context of people is a great to have for early career developers, but it becomes part of doing your job with increasing importance as you progress in your career. A senior dev without empathy for end users is not a senior dev. Maybe you thought that as you progress in your career, the only thing that should be changing is the quality of your code and designs, but that's short-sighted. You're expected to deliver more complex code, code that is readable and elegant and performant, but your job now is about more than delivering story points. You're no longer responsible simply for writing code. You're moving from being a producer to an innovator. You're now expected to focus on creative solutions to challenging problems. And some of these problems, some of these solutions won't even involve code, but when they do, you'll be the one designing custom algorithms with a clear focus on exactly the problem you're trying to solve. And you have the skills now to invent what needs to be invented. Questions you should ask yourself, should we solve this problem with code? Some problems are best solved with a process improvement that doesn't require a code solution. Not every spreadsheet that someone in your company uses to track work should be turned into a new Rails application. That runs contrary to what I used to say, which was every spreadsheet was an application waiting to happen, but sometimes a spreadsheet, even on paper, is good enough. We should ask ourselves, can we fix this with better communication? Most software problems are people problems, and most people problems come down to a matter of communication. Many process related features that we're asked to develop are organizational scars over a communication wound. If the feature that your team is asking to build, you should ask yourself, are you just putting a band-aid on a bad communication channel? Is this something we should build ourselves? It's our job to distinguish between the category of just doing business versus doing something that's unique to our business. If your company's in the fashion retail business like mine is, you might consider machine learning to pick out styles and make recommendations to your stylist for what customers might like. But if that's your business, you probably don't wanna design a custom data warehousing system because that's not core to what your business is doing. There's nothing wrong with building it yourself if you really need to, but we need to evaluate third-party solutions in a way they're cost against the cost of engineering. Often what you'll find is a 90% solution. Is the missing 10% painful? It may be, but it takes someone with experience to distinguish between a good enough solution and the best solution. We can ask the question, should we extract this into a library? A library is a good way to show and make sure that your innovation becomes more widely used in your organization or in the larger open source community. It's a way to demonstrate best practices to other devs and it's a way to democratize the output of your labor by having other people use it, modify it, fix it, and extend it. Our second job is standardization and that means picking the right components and standardizing on best practices and sharing knowledge through communities of practice. The questions we should ask ourselves, how do we wanna do things around here? This might involve creating a style guide or establishing architecture patterns that will be repeated across all the services in your application infrastructure. How do we build consensus? Good, solid, healthy development organizations don't do things by fiat. When you're trying to build consensus, start with something that everyone agrees on. For example, a shared database is a bad idea. Then let people share their ideas and alternatives. Focus on one alternative at a time and describe each alternative's strengths. Then do the process again, describing each alternative's weaknesses. Make sure that everyone is heard and make room for dissent and make room for people of all skill levels who often have insights that we as senior devs don't have. Draw them into the conversation deliberately. Say, Sarah, we haven't heard from you. What is your opinion on this particular approach? And even if you can't reach consensus, at the very least, everyone will feel like their needs and ideas were heard. Finally, how do we spread best practices? At one company I worked for, we actually had community of practice meetings every other week. It was a video call where people who were interested in a particular language or framework would come together to discuss ideas. At my current job, we have a principles meeting where all of the principal engineers come together to discuss ways to improve the quality of the code base and standardize. We also maintain a shadow backlog of engineering debt and technical debt and engineering ideas that we want to implement and we share that with the broader team to inform the decisions that they make as they're developing features. And of course, you can always use a Slack channel as a special interest group for a particular language or framework or technology. Our third job is being a forced multiplier and this involves mentoring and teaching, helping our teammates level up and giving back to the community. Question you could ask is, do we have a good mix of people? Diverse experiences and diverse experience levels lead to better problem solving and we have to recognize that not every software problem requires a senior principal developer. We have to ask ourselves, are we pairing people in an effective way? In his book, Apprenticeship Patterns, Dave Hoover lays out what he calls the boxcar theory. So imagine a train with boxcars and there's an engine at one end. Toward the end of the train, you have early career developers and as you move right toward the engine, you have developers with increasing levels of experience. A lot of companies will pair a very senior person with a very junior person and this is actually a mistake because people who are closer to one another on the train have a greater memory of what it was like to be at that previous stage. They have more empathy as a result and they're better able to share a knowledge and remember the tips and tricks that got them through when they were leveling up. And we ask ourselves, how do I help the team level up? And it's through mentoring and pairing. Code, show and tell is a great way to do this. We do this at Stitch Fix where when our developer has created something they think is cool or innovative or a good solution to a problem, they walk through the code in 20 minutes and share their ideas and share what they did with other developers and get feedback. And of course, humane code reviews come into this process as well. As a senior developer, your code reviews should not be vicious. You should never ask why didn't you just and you should never be overly critical of the code. You should always be asking questions and helping people arrive at their own conclusions. So innovate, standardize and multiply. But are we done? I mentioned that the mass production and ready availability of guns created an ethical dilemma. So does the mass production and ready availability of software. No one wants to be accountable for gun violence as we've seen in the political situation in America today. And also no one wants to be accountable for the injustices done by naive, biased or altogether malevolent algorithms. And this is on us to figure out before it becomes an epidemic if indeed it has not already become an epidemic. This is our fourth job. And in some ways, this is our most important job. We have to be conscious of our companies. We have to be the conscience of our companies and our industry as a whole. We have to decide what is possible versus what is right. There are a number of questions we should be asking ourselves and our companies about the software that we're writing and what its repercussions could be. Examples, the Facebook Cameraman Analytica data scandal involved the collection of personally identifying information for over 87 million Facebook users and it actually started in 2014. The data was used to influence voter opinion on behalf of politicians who hired Cameraman Analytica. We knew about this as early as December 2015 when the Guardian reported that the politician Ted Cruz was using data from Facebook and the subjects of the data were unaware that the company was selling their information and that politicians were buying that information. Engineers just like us built the system that was exploited and engineers just like us exploited that system to influence a presidential election. This is a moral failing on a part of engineers. Facebook engineers didn't do their jobs. They didn't ask the question, can the data we're providing be used for unjust political gain or even to undermine our democracy? Another example, the gay hookup app Grinder, which has 3.6 million daily active users across the world was just recently revealed to be providing its users HIV status and last tested date to other countries, other companies. Because the HIV information is sent together with GPS data, phone IDs and emails, the data could actually be used to identify specific users. Grinder's engineers didn't do their jobs. This was an ethical failing. Their engineers didn't ask the question, is the data we collect and share putting people's lives in danger? Another example, algorithmic hiring. More and more human resources staff rely on data driven algorithms to help with hiring decisions and then navigate the vast pool of potential job candidates. Software systems like these can be so efficient at screening resumes and evaluating personality tests that 72% of resumes are weeded out before a human even sees them. But there are drawbacks to this level of efficiency. Man-made algorithms are fallible and may inadvertently reinforce discrimination in hiring practices because algorithms mimic human decision-making that basically trained based on past successes which may embed existing bias. There was an experiment in which recruiters reviewed identical resumes and shown they selected applicants with white-sounding names rather than people with black-sounding names. So if the algorithm is trained on data like that and learns what a good hire is based on biased data, it's gonna make biased hiring decisions. The result is that job applicants are judged based on subjective criteria such as their names by latching onto the wrong features. This approach discounts the candidate's true potential. Algorithms are not neutral. When humans build algorithmic screening software, they may unintentionally determine which applicants will be selected or rejected based on the wrong information. Going back to a time where there are fewer women and minorities in workforce, for example, leading to legally questionable and morally unacceptable results. Engineers who write algorithmic hiring software are not doing their jobs. This is an ethical failure. These engineers are not asking themselves the question, is the algorithm or creating perpetuating systemic bias? Safia Umochin-Noble, a professor of communication at the University of Southern California, recently published a book called Algorithms of Oppression. She argues that while most people think of Google and other search engines as a public library, a trusted place to get accurate information about the world, these platforms are increasingly not trustworthy at all. She did searches on terms like black girls, Asian girls, and Latina girls, and found that pornography was the primary way they were represented on the first page of search results. That's not a fair, credible representation of women in color. It reduces them to sexualized objects. Search engines aren't merely selecting what information we're exposed to, they're cementing assumptions about what information is worth knowing in the first place. There's a dominant white male Western-centric point of view that gets encoded into the structure of information, and an algorithm is just a structured decision tree. If these keywords are present, then a variety of assumptions have to be made about what to point to, and all the trillions of web pages that exist on a web. Google's engineers are not doing their jobs, and this isn't ethical failing. Search engineers are failing to ask the question, is the algorithm we've developed reinforcing stereotypes? In 2013, the city of New Orleans entered into a relationship with a company called Palantir, which is largely funded by the CIA to implement a predictive policing program. The city's agreement with Palantir was secret, never revealed to the public, and never subject to a vote or deliberation. The company provided the police force with hit lists of people that their algorithms indicated were sources of potential violent crimes. But government-funded research cast doubts on the effectiveness of predictive policing, and studies are showing increasingly that it can have a disproportionate impact on poor communities of color. Predictive policing patterns perpetuate systemic bias against overpoliced communities of color. Palantir's or engineers are not doing their jobs. This isn't ethical failing. These engineers failed ask the question, is the algorithm we're creating putting marginalized people in harm's way? Facebook's chief technology officer, recently in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, told the media that the company will start mapping out potential threats from bad actors before it launches products. 10 years after the formation of Facebook, too little, too late. If you're not thinking about how your features could be abused and put people at risk, you're not doing your job and this isn't ethical failing. Marco Rogers wrote, Facebook is literally destroying the internet.  All the employees doing the dirty work of these places are gonna be fine. We're putting blame on the business people who request features like this from us, but ultimately we should be held accountable for the code that we write. We need to acknowledge that software doesn't exist in an ethical or moral vacuum. William Butler Gates wrote, nobody running in full speed has either a head or a heart. We need to slow down and consider the impact of the software that we're creating. Algorithms can be weapons and if you're willing to build a weapon, you'd better be comfortable accepting the responsibility for the people that it kills. So innovate, standardize, be a forced multiplier and be ethical. Those are our jobs. And what does that mean for the future of our jobs? We need to scale our craft. Just as the Industrial Revolution didn't eliminate the need for artisans but changed the role of the artisan, moving their focus from production to design and innovation, we can foresee the same thing happening to software artisans. Artisanship in a production capacity doesn't scale, but just as raw materials drove improvements to the process of stored making, perhaps the greater availability and quality of software developers can also drive improvements to our craft. We now have tools at our disposal that make producing code easier and lowers the bar to entry. We don't have to waste artisanal effort on low value parts of the system. Tackage solutions are often good enough and the output of a less seasoned developer may also be good enough. We don't need senior engineers to build every feature in our software system. We can save the effort and cost of the artisanal approach for the parts of the system that matter the most. Artisans, after all, are rare and expensive resource and we need to use them wisely. Predictable low-cross friction means that the attention of the artisan can shift away from manufacturing. Artisanal effort applied to design becomes a force multiplier and a source of previously untapped value. The fear of competition among artisans created bottlenecks in innovation and production that it took the industrial revolution to overcome. Competition drives innovation but only up to a point. To truly change the world we need to turn our attention to creating standards, technical standards as well as ethical standards. By working with our peers and finding opportunities to teach, to learn, to help and to grow and to most importantly work in an ethical way we foster innovation, we become better at craft and we ensure the generation of new groups of artisans. No secret handshakes required. Thank you. I wanted to take a moment to announce a new project that I have in the works, a book that I'm writing with Naomi Freeman called The Compassionate Coder. In the book we're describing a framework for dealing with the changing role of software developers, practicing empathy and software development, empathy for the modern age. The book will help you learn how to better integrate your teams for efficient and profitable outcomes, learn about your own role in a changing workplace and teach you how to be a leader, not only in your workplace but in the larger tech community. We're hoping to publish later this year. You can sign up for updates at CompassionateCoder.com. We're using that to gauge interest in our books so please do sign up. It's a low-volume mailing list and we would greatly appreciate your support. Thank you for real. Thank you. Thanks.


I've been chasing the fall colors all the way up the eastern US and into Canada And I can tell you the seasons have definitely changed now. It's cold out here Hey everybody, it's Robin with creativity RV and I am at Letchworth State Park in New York I've been here for several days and my plan was after this I was going to go up to Niagara Falls But everybody told me that the falls here in Letchworth were not to be missed and that most people preferred them to Niagara Falls So I'm very excited to go take this morning trip and try and see some of the falls It's hazy the colors are just starting to turn But I think it's gonna be beautiful and I'm gonna take you guys with me Look at this place isn't it amazing? It's beautiful here Never would have thought ten years ago. I get to come out to places like this just on my morning walk Fun guy It is absolutely gorgeous out here And I'm glad that I made it to Letchworth State Park and got to come out here and see some of the falls and the fall colors Before I head up to Canada if you guys get to New York and definitely check out Letchworth State Park I would have stayed another week if I have the time But I needed to hightail it up to Canada But on the way I stayed the night at a maple tree farm with Harvest Hosts Which as you guys know is my favorite way to travel Especially up on the east coast where I wasn't camping for long periods of time And I really wanted to stay a couple of days and move on and stay a couple of days Harvest host and boondockers welcome were it for me I stayed at so many along the way and they were amazing But what's more quintessentially fall than a maple tree farm? I saw one in New York right on my route So I went into the Harvest Hosts app and made a reservation and when I got there I found the most idyllic little shop you've ever seen run by a husband and wife team Jim came out and gave me some samples of not only maple syrup But everything you can imagine that was made with maple syrup This is one of the reasons I love traveling with Harvest Hosts in the summer and fall Because I can pick up a whole bunch of my Christmas presents while I'm there I took a haul out of this place of every kind of maple flavored everything that you can imagine Then the owner asked me if I wanted to pull my RV Down to his lake where I could camp by myself and look at the fall colors on the water I saw one of the most beautiful Sunsets of my life woke up right there next to the water It was so peaceful and they got to go on my way over the Canadian border to visit a friend Now I'm back down in the States and the weather has definitely changed last week It was 82 where I am now and now it's 52, but I've got some chili going on the stove in the RV And I've got full propane and an electric blanket So I am good to go and I'll tell you guys I got text messages from two different friends at the exact same time a few days ago Who are already down camping in Arizona and they both said it was hell on earth One of them who works in an RV park said that she spent an hour sitting on the floor in the dark Underneath the fins of the air conditioner just to get through the day So yeah, it's a little crisp here, but I'll take that over burning in Arizona in October any day I'm hoping to see even more great fall colors when I get to Colorado for the holidays But then after that I'm headed Southwest and I have some big changes coming So if you guys haven't subscribed yet, please do and then hit the little bell Which gives you some notifications when new videos come out I'm gonna finish my hike now go back to my RV and have some chili and get out of this cold I'll see you guys next week with an all-new video until then Everybody out there have happy travels and be free


Tarzan of the Eighths, from the novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, with Mr. James H. Pierce's Tarzan and Mr. Ann Burroughs as Jane Porter. This is an American gold-sealed production, directed by James Knight Cardin, coming to you over the world broadcasting system and its associated stations. Tarzan and Jane Porter have rescued Jane's father, Philander, Clayton, and Lieutenant Darno from the Temple Caves, sacred to the cannibals. The party is attacked by the cannibals, and after a fight in which all but one of Darno's sailors are killed, they start off to the hut under Tarzan's guidance. They are camped for the night when Professor Porter collapses. Now, are you ready? Hold your breath. Oh, Daddy. Daddy, say, look at me. Daddy, please. Please, speak to me. Daddy. Oh, Daddy, don't leave me. Don't leave me. No, Memoiselle Jane, calm yourself. Your father is in no immediate danger. But, Lieutenant, I know. I know. I've had that feeling. Fever, Memoiselle Fever. Bad. Bad, I know. But not necessarily fatal. Come, my friends, we must press on, even if it is barely daylight. Tarzan, will you carry the Professor? Clayton has enough to do just to hold himself together. Yes. Darno, we'll put out the fire and get things together. I'll carry Jane's father. Now wait, Tarzan. You, Francois, go ahead and clear the way. We won't, Lieutenant. Monsieur Philander will bring up the rail with me. I'm afraid, Darno, that this train has been too much for Archimedes. Very much afraid. No, no. You are wrong, Monsieur Philander. That is typical of this fever. In a few moments, he will be himself again. Then, however, the attacks will become more frequent and more severe, that is, unless we can stop them. Yes, well, let's hope we can stop them. I say, where is Francois? He is ahead there, clearing the way. Oh, have you any idea how far we have to go? Not so far now, Monsieur Clayton. Do not you feel the difference already in the air, the tang of the sea? Now that you mention it. Yes. Why, bless my soul. Is that the professor ahead, walking? Come on. How do you feel, Professor? Better, Philander. So foolish of me. I don't understand. Now, don't you try to talk, Daddy. You say that to your will. Only a little way to that. Only a little time today now. Yes, I never was so glad to see the first signs of dawn. You know, I hate to say it, but I'm just rather nervous. It doesn't seem as though I've eaten anything for weeks. Soon we get to open place. I will get food. That sounds good. I don't blame you, Jane. I'm plain starving. Well, I can go ahead and shoot something and have it ready for you. No need. I can get food easily, without noise. Yes, Monsieur Clayton. We need not waste a shot. Do we have to do everything that Tarzan suggests? I'm getting sick and tired of Tarzan this and Tarzan that. I'm found it. I'm able to use my own judgment, isn't it, Clayton? It's time somebody spoke to you straight from the shoulder. You can go your own sweet way, as long as it doesn't interfere with the safety of others. But when it does affect others, then you must toe the line. Look, we must see all of those at the heart. Yes, Jane. A little more. My, but the sight of the clearing takes a load off my mind. The jungle is, the jungle is so depressing. Dono. Yes, Monsieur Filandier. This attitude of Clayton's is getting unbearable. And besides, I don't think it's safe for Clayton to have a rifle. He's not in any fit mood to be allowed to shoot the lawn there. To try to deprive him of that rifle now, well, it would only lead to more unpleasantness and perhaps precipitate the very thing that you fear. Yeah, well, I suppose you're right. Now, may we, I guess, defend them all. Come, Monsieur Filandier, we are almost there. Don't you think we are so close now that Tarzan might leave us and get something to eat? I think so, Professor. Yes, I know we are. Amazing the way we have come to depend upon him. Yes, it certainly is, Daddy. While you know we all owe him our lives. Tarzan, go now. You go to hut. Tarzan brings food. You'll come back before long, Tarzan? Yes, Jane. As soon as I have made a kill. And once more, our hairless ape friend takes to the trees. Really, Cecil? I cannot understand or appreciate your dislike of Tarzan. Had he ever done anything harmful to you, there would be some excuse for your sarcasm and your ill-feeling. But to my knowledge, he has done nothing but good toward every one of us and toward you, especially... Right, right, right, my dear. You appear to have forgotten, Clayton, that he has saved your life. Not once, but several times. Which fact I appreciate. Though it was probably only done to stand well in Jane's eyes. However, that's merely a matter of opinion. Frankly, the fellow is getting on my nerves a bit. That's not fair, Clayton, nor is it sporting of you. I am tragically agree with Jane and Professor Porter. Had it not been for Tarzan, on several occasions, there would be no Lord Greystone. You long since have gone the way of your uncle. Well, apparently I stand alone in my dislike for the fellow. But I can't help it. His very presence annoys me frightfully. His proprietary air with Jane. His animal health and fruit strengthens. Oh, everything about him sets my teeth on it. But you are distraught, Monsieur. The fever is in your veins.  How did he treat you, Jane? During the time you were alone in the jungle with him. Oh, Cecil, your impossible attitude is becoming more than annoying. He was very much of a gentleman. And there wasn't a day with five that he didn't put himself in danger to protect me. Tarzan is absolutely fearless. He has the natural instincts of a gentleman. An exceptionally fine character. And you're wrong. Wrong. From what I have seen of Tarzan, I heartily agree with you, Mamoiselle Jane. I should feel honored to call him friend. It's very apparent that you're all prejudiced in his favor. He certainly gained an invaluable place in your esteem through his constant vain glorious pretension. No, my friend, that isn't fair. You must realize that Tarzan's actions are anything but opposed. He doesn't know the meaning of the word. Exactly, Philander. The young man is far too naive for any such... If you were not ill, Cecil, you would be the first to realize your mistake. Ill? Ill? I'm not ill, not in the least. I merely see the boundary from an unbiased viewpoint. You, Philander, and you, Professor Forthack, believe it was an ape who abducted Jane in the first place. I am still and shall always remain of the opinion that it was none other than Tarzan himself who was Jane's abduct- I beg your pardon, Clayton. I saw the ape clearly. You hear? I saw the ape. Both Jane and her father are well able to corroborate that statement. Well, who should know better than I? But, Mr. Philander, what's the use of all this ridiculous argument? Cecil is perfectly welcome to his opinion as far as I am concerned. He cannot change my high opinion of Tarzan. Oh, mine, Jane. Listen to it. Why, the fellow's nothing less than a savage, a cannibal himself. If your ideas weren't so terribly biased, you'd all see it for yourself. But, Monsieur Clayton, that's that, Clayton. You are not... Oh, never mind, Father. Cecil, I could only remind you again of everything that Tarzan has done for us. And whatever you think, he has shown himself a gentleman, more of a gentleman in fact than Cecil Clayton of Greast Oak and far, far better company. Bravo, Mamoiselle Jane. Bravo. Clayton, furious at Jane Porter's remarks, blinded by hate and jealousy, walks rapidly ahead of the party. He disappears behind the screen of bamboo. Jane, Darno, and the rest of the party stand still for a moment. Oh, I shouldn't have said that. Don't feel badly, Jane. Cecil needed something like that to bring him to his senses. Clayton! Oh, I was afraid of that. The shot passes within an inch of Tarzan's head. The eight man springs. He smashes the rifle from Clayton's grasp, his muscular hand grips, stock and barrel. He raises his knee, brings the rifle down across it. With a loud snap, the stock is broken from the barrel, and Tarzan forces the useless rifle into the underbrush. Clayton lunges toward him, a smile of fury on his lips. Tarzan's left hand soots out in the Englishman's throat, pulls him away from him with one hand, squeezing, squeezing slowly. Clayton's eyes protrude, his struggles lessen. He gasps wildly for breath. Oh, Tarzan!  But I think, don't! Don't, don't! Don't swap! Make sure! Help, help me to stop this! The man is mad! Mad! Tarzan! Tarzan! Stop! You wish me to let this man go? He tried to kill me! Oh, yes, yes! Please, let him go! Tarzan hurls Clayton at James' feet. There he is. I give him to you, James. Oh, Tarzan, please understand. I only ask that you don't kill him for your own sake. I do understand. You want him? Take him. Tarzan of the Apes goes back to his own to the feast which do not kill for hate. You're wrong, Tarzan. You do not understand. Tarzan! You understand. He is just an apeman. He belongs to the jungle. He proudly turns his back on the little party of silent men and the white girl. He walks to the nearest tree and without a single backward glance swings into the lower branches. Will Tarzan be able to stay away from Jane Porter? And what will happen to...


Therefore, it's time for a member of statements, the member from Haliburton, Corthill Lake Squawker. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I'm proud to rise today to mark 50 years since the founding of Sir Sanford Fleming College. Established as a result of the Government of Ontario's passage of Bill 153 in 1965 under then Education Minister and later Premier Bill Davis, Fleming College has become a vital educational institution in our province. While the first cohort of students numbered at only 235, Fleming College has since grown to host 6,000 full-time and 10,000 part-time students enrolled at four campuses in four different communities, two of them in my writing of Haliburton, Corthill Lake Squawker. The Haliburton campus is renowned for its school of fine art and design, the Sustainable Building Design and Construction Certificate Program, and is home to a remarkable outdoor sculpture gallery, often referred to as the Banff of the North. The Frost Campus in Lindsay is known for its pioneering school of environment and natural resource sciences, the Centre for Alternative Wastewater Treatment, and state-of-the-art programs like GIS training. What an amazing story of growth and innovation of post-secondary education in rural Ontario. This Friday, September 29th, I will be at the Frost Campus to celebrate Fleming's 50th anniversary with the administration, faculty, staff, and alumni who have helped to build the college into the amazing institution it is today. So once again, congratulations to everyone at Fleming College on this important milestone and best wishes for the future. Thank you for your members' statements. The member from London, Fanshawe. Speaker, I'm sharing today a personal story about my constituent, Roger, in hopes of highlighting the need for better patient-guided programs in our healthcare system. Roger was born with a neurodegenerative disease and used to receive home care through the Support's Daily Living Program. For a time, he received suitable care, but the agency's interference resulted in a decreased quality of care, and Roger experienced severe mental health trauma. As a result, he was admitted to a mental health wing of London Hospital, where he has resided for 19 and a half months. While in hospital, Roger took his care into his own hands and began an application for direct funding. He soon found out that the Southwest Linn does not manage direct funding applications and was forced to apply through the Toronto Centre Linn and the Centre for Independent Living. Roger went through a scrutinizing application process and was ultimately denied. His appeal of this decision was supposed to take two months. It has now been six months, and he has not heard back. In 2016, the Minister of Health and Long-Term Care responded to an inquiry my office sent on behalf of Roger, indicating he had every confidence these organizations would come together to help him reach a conclusion. And I quote, a resolution that will provide him with appropriate, safe care that reflects his preferences. Minister, when will you intervene to finally enable your patient's first legislation to provide straightforward access to self-direct funding options for those who need it like Roger, so they can finally return home? Thank you. Member Stevens, the Member for Mississauga Brampton South. Mr. Speaker, this past Thursday, Canada Post and India Post unveiled Canada's and India's joint stamp issue to celebrate Diwali and Canada 150. This joint stamp issue signifies the growing social, cultural, and economic relationship between Canada and India, and the importance of recognizing and celebrating our diversity, inclusiveness, and democratic values. The joint postal stamp issue is really an excellent way of demonstrating and appreciating our mutually shared, political, and social experience as nations. It is in this context that I see the issuance of Diwali stamp by Canada Post and India Post. Diwali, the Festival of Lights, is celebrated by Hindus and Sikhs and many other communities all over the world. This year, Diwali will be celebrated on October 19th. The unveiling of Diwali stamp issue at this time is a fitting tribute to the growing bilateral cooperation between Canada and India, and the significance of our diverse and inclusive democracies in the global village. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you. Thank you. Further Member Stevens, the Member from Chatham, Kent, Essex. Call it Carnage Alley for a reason. The stretch of 401 Highway between London and Tilbury is one of the most dangerous roads in Ontario. About a month ago, on August 29, a pickup truck crossed the center median of the 401 near Dutton and smashed into a van on the other side. The two people in the van were a mother and her five-year-old daughter. They died of their injuries, and the driver of the pickup has been charged. Sadly, there was yet another tragedy before that one. On July 31, this summer, two people were killed and two more were seriously injured in a collision involving a tractor trailer and six cars. Those cars were stopped because of another collision further ahead. A median barrier would do a lot to prevent needless deaths and accidents like these. In 2009, the Ministry of Transport received environmental clearance to expand the strip of highway known as Carnage Alley to six lanes and install a median barrier. But when I last checked, the MTO claimed that it wasn't worthwhile to make Carnage Alley safer because of a lack of traffic on that stretch of the 401. The government's position, Speaker, is appalling. There may be little less traffic on Carnage Alley than before, but there's no shortage of accidents and death as it occurred to the MTO that a lot of drivers might be avoiding Carnage Alley precisely because it's so dangerous of a very simple message for the government. If you want to expand the 401 to six lanes, then pave the grass and build the barrier. Thank you. For the Member of State and the Member of Commission, we'll talk about it. Recently, the federal government announced income tax changes for private corporations. These are companies who do not publicly trade shares. These changes impact thousands of family farms in Ontario. Many farms have incorporated in order to facilitate succession planning and intergenerational transfer of the family farm. These farm families and many others caught up in these changes are not tax evaders. Farm businesses are built up over many years and succession planning also takes many years. A successful plan needs to take many factors into account, including the income tax system. Sudden changes like the ones proposed by the federal government could have a domino effect and cause many unintended tragic consequences. It is within the government's mandate to make changes to the tax system, but it is also their duty to truly consult and work with the stakeholders involved to develop a policy that will make sure that everyone pays their fair share for public services but does not destroy small business across the country. In this case, the federal government did not fulfill that duty. I urge the wind government to contact their federal colleagues and request that these changes be put on hold until their full impact can be assessed with real consultation. Farm families want to work with all levels of government to ensure that together they continue to grow quality food and provide employment and, yes, pay their fair share of taxes. It is extremely frustrating that government continues to take that we have all the answers attitude at the expense of the people who actually are the long-term stewards of the land. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I rise today to speak of a Davenport success story. Last year, Canada opened its doors to families escaping war-torn Syria. Families flooded into Toronto, leading behind their homes, their possessions, and their families for a new and uncertain life. They often came without strong language skills but a desire to come and contribute to their new home. In this time of turmoil and as people across our country looked for a way to help our new friends, Len Senator and Cara Benjamin-Pace had a wonderful idea. Len's Davenport restaurant, The Dipenner, opened its doors to a small group of women to come and use its kitchen to prepare a home-cooked meal to break up the tedium of hotels and pre-packaged food. The event was an immediate success and soon these women were preparing extra meals to cover the cost to the restaurant. Operating out of The Dipenner, Newcomer Kitchen is a not-for-profit social enterprise that invites newly arrived Syrian refugee women to cook a weekly meal in their kitchen. The meals are sold online for pickup or delivery and the proceeds shared among the cooks. This model works as it allows for the money to get into the hands of the refugees that need it and who aren't ready for part-time or full-time work. It also helps newly arrived Syrians with the new sets of skills to help them bridge the gap between the life and career they left behind and as they try to rebuild their lives here in Canada. Over the past year and a half, Newcomer Kitchen has been able to sell over 2,500 Syrian suppers to supporters across the city and they proudly claim they are just getting started. This organization has been a force for good in our community and I was proud to nominate them this summer for a big on-blur awards and bring the story of the good they do to this house. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you. For the member's status, the member from Huron, Bruce. Thank you very much, Speaker. I stand today to recognize some farmers from Bruce County who I've spoke about before in this house but they've done it again and therefore this repeat achievement needs recognition. Mark and Josh Ireland, owners of Albedon farms and their families just outside of Teaswater have been once again given top recognition by Ken West DHI for their dairy cattle's milk production. Ken West DHI is an organization responsible for monitoring milk production and output of individual cows. In the category of milk value per cow, Albedon farms for the cream of the crop again. This year, the Ireland's 186 cows produced a whopping 14,294 kilograms of milk, the highest in both Bruce County and the province. Murray Wilkes heard in Ripley was second for Bruce County while Ernest Goebbelman was top honours in Huron County followed by Glen and Curtis McNeill near Godridge. Adam Hodgins outside of Concarton also received recognition for the utter health of this herd and dairy production is such an important industry in Turin, Bruce. It's great to see so many cattlemen being recognized for their efforts and care of their livestock. Congratulations to all who are recognized by Ken West DHI. Don't stop what you're doing. We need good quality local food close to home. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise today to recognize the Armenian Independence Day. Celebrate on Thursday, September the 21st in the Republic of Armenia and by the Armenian community in Ontario. 26 years ago, Armenians voted in favour of independence. Shortly thereafter, the Republic of Armenia was proclaimed a sovereign state by the parliament. This occasion commemorates Armenians' rich culture and heritage and also allows Ontarians to reflect on the country's journey to independence. Since 1950, Canada has seen a wave of Armenian immigration. Many bear the burden of the Armenian Genocide and have chosen to call Ontario home to preserve and enhance the ethnic heritage. Armenians' Independence Day represented an opportunity for Ontarians to commemorate the courage and perseverance Armenian fighting for freedom and the right to democratic self-government. Mr. Speaker, almost half of Canada's 55,000 Armenians live in Ontario. We need to recognize the contribution made by the vibrant, dynamic Armenian community in building a diverse and strong Ontario. In just last month, Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Research, Innovation and Science visited the Republic of Armenia to further strengthen the relationship between Ontario and the Republic of Armenia. In my writing of Scarborough Agent Court, I have a thriving Armenian community and I'm proud to represent them here at Queen's Park. On behalf of the residents of Scarborough Agent Court, Mr. Speaker, I'd like to send my best wishes to all Armenians celebrating this landmark occasion. Thank you. Thank you. Good stuff. Another member is going to stand. Member from Leonard, from Atlantic and Agton. Thank you, Speaker. Speaker, we ought to always be cautious when debating business and passing legislation in this House. We must take the utmost care to avoid hasty reasoning and ensure our words and intentions are unambiguous. It is of paramount importance to each member of this House that we all understand the words we choose and their potential to be misapplied, misused and even abused. Recently, I shared correspondence with the elected members of K Valley Township over the disproportionate amount of complaints regarding their building and planning officials. My constituents were concerned that if they spoke up themselves, they would be subject to retribution by these officials. So they came to me instead. At a meeting on the matter, the Reeve and the CAO suggested I make a representation to council on behalf of my constituents to air their concerns. Both my confidential correspondence and my public presentation to that council on behalf of the people I represent are now subject to a vexatious allegation of workplace harassment. I am confident that nobody in this legislature expected the Occupational Health and Safety Act would be misused and as a tool to prevent public participation, but that is an unfortunate and troubling reality. It's shameful, and I find it abhorrent, and a direct attack on representative democracy flies in the face of this very institution and the expectations that all citizens in a free and just society have. Thank you. Thank you. I thank all members for their statements. It's there for time for reports by committees.


Hey guys, what's up? My name is Sonali and today I'm going to be showing you guys how to maintain an Instagram feed and a theme. So first off, I wanted to share the importance of having a feed and choosing your theme. It's especially important when you're trying to create a brand for yourself.  And honestly, your personal feed says a lot about you, whether it's the kind of theme you choose or what kind of pictures you post. Another reason for having a theme is just to be creative and have fun with it. Not everyone is trying to create a personal brand and that's totally fine. I think it's so fun to edit pictures and just step up your Instagram game a little bit. So I wrote down a few things that I wanted to share with you guys and then we will get into a Q&A. I posted on my stories, just ask me any questions about anything related to Instagram. So we will get into that a little bit later. The first thing you should do is to decide what your vibe is.  It doesn't always have to be trendy. In fact, I tried an Instagram feed just because it was trendy, like the whole warm tones thing is super on trend right now. But I feel like everyone was doing it and I was just kind of getting sick of it. I wasn't really excited to post anything because it kind of like took away a lot of the color out of my picture. So I went back to my more cool tones and contrasted feed and I definitely feel more comfortable and confident posting content with that kind of a theme. If your personality is more bubbly, then maybe try a colorful Instagram theme. There's honestly so many options. Just try looking up like Instagram themes on Pinterest and maybe that will give you kind of like an idea of what you want to create. Next step is to pick a filter or a preset. And honestly, this is probably the most important part of maintaining an Instagram feed because using the same preset or filter will make all these different pictures taken in different lighting, taken in different areas look all the same because you don't always take pictures in the same lighting or location.  If you guys are interested, I am selling my presets on my blog right now and there are some individuals and then I also have some preset packs.  I know a lot of people don't really put out individuals, but mine are really affordable. So definitely go look at that and if you need any help installing them, then I will have another video that I will link you guys to in the description box of this video. And in that video is a discount code for my presets so you can get them a little bit cheaper even though they are already affordable. So right now I'm currently using my preset Sapphire on my Instagram feed as we speak. But while I was in Italy, I was using Venetia and Pomodoro and then a little after that I was using Quartz. So I kind of have a bit of a mix going on on my feed right now just because I was kind of feeling out my vibe. And now I know that cool tones are kind of my thing so I'm probably going to stick with that for a while. So I do want to show you guys how I edit my own Instagram pictures and it's a really fast process especially with these presets. I don't really have to like think twice just because I know what filter is going on my pictures all the time. So I'll do a little bit of like tweaking just like the exposure and maybe the skin tone.  And that's it. That's all I have to do for right now. I'm going to share my screen with you guys so you can follow along on how exactly I edit my Instagram. So even though you might pick a preset, the lighting will be a little bit different. You can't just slap it on a picture and then upload it just because everything's going to look a little bit different from lighting and locations like I said. So you might have to mix with the colors just a little bit because the skin tone is probably the most important part. So that color has to be very consistent. So for my Instagram, I like to make my skin tone like a bronzy look. So I have to make sure that the skin tones match the same in every single picture. The most helpful tool to maintaining an Instagram feed is definitely a planner app. I personally use better. Basically it looks like an Instagram feed and you can pre upload your pictures and you can kind of like organize your pictures to see where it will look best on your feed. And aside from my presets, this has definitely changed my Instagram game because it allows me to see everything as a whole. And that's definitely what you want, especially when you are trying to plan out your feed. So I've actually started to plan out three pictures at a time just because the rows are kind of built like that. It's like three, three, three. So I like to have it all kind of laid out just like that. Another thing to think about when planning out your feed is kind of how close up and far away the pictures are. So for example, I want to post a close up selfie on the edge of my three rows Instagram. And then in the middle, it needs to be like a farther away picture, maybe a whole body picture, maybe not even me, you can do it up anything else. And then the last one over here needs to be just like a close up again. So it can kind of be like symmetrical if that makes sense. So sometimes when I know I'm going to events, I will take pictures with people and then spread them out. So maybe I'll have a picture with someone right here and then a selfie of me right here and then another picture with someone else right here. So as you can see, it's kind of like a symmetrical game. You just kind of have to think that way and plan out that way, even if it is at events or just like taking them for memories, just try to plan it out because it just looks so much better as a whole. On the topic of symmetry, you want to think about what ways your pictures are turning. So for example, if I have a selfie turning this way on this side, I shouldn't post another selfie turning this way on this side. So a solution for that is just flipping your picture and you can do this in the Lightroom app. So on this side, my selfie will be going this way and on this side, my selfie will be going this way. Trust me, it looks so much better because sometimes I look at my feed and my pictures just all look the same and that's just not something that you want to have on your feed, just like every picture looking the same. So just kind of like make every picture a little bit different. Maybe you even want to turn a picture because you think all your pictures are just like straight on. So you can turn the picture a little bit this way and put it on this side and then remember to do the same on this way, turn it the opposite way. So that's all the tips I have for maintaining an Instagram feed. But now I'm just going to read off some questions that I received on my Instagram. First question is how do you make a picture work in your feed if the colors slash content doesn't really match? Sometimes my colors really don't match. So when I put it into center and I see that it doesn't match, I have to go back to the drawing board aka Lightroom and just kind of mess with the colors so that they'll match a little bit more. Sometimes I find just desaturating a lot of the colors just like is a lot easier. So maybe try that. Next, how do you choose an Instagram theme? So I would say like based off your personality first and then maybe what's trendy, maybe what you like to see on Pinterest, just like what's your aesthetic? What do you usually save on Pinterest? Maybe what do you save on your Instagram boards? Just kind of maybe create like a mood board of like what you like and then go from there. How do you maintain a feed with all different colors at the same time? Honestly, a feed can have a theme and not have to have the same exact preset on the picture. Like I said, you can always do a colorful theme and obviously not all the colors are going to be the same. But in that case, I would just make sure you're kind of thinking in a symmetrical thought. Like I said, if you want to post a close up selfie here, do it here and then post a far away picture right here.  How do you come up with Instagram captions? I am so freaking bad about this. I'm going to be so honest with you guys right now. And this is like highly embarrassing of me. But I sometimes will just look up like Pinterest quotes like for example, if I have a banana in my hand in the picture, I will literally put banana quotes or banana puns.  Sometimes I really don't even like captions and I just wish I didn't have to put a caption. But like I kind of do and an emoji is not going to cut it. So yeah, that's what I do. I just like copy some stuff from Pinterest. How do you take such good pictures all the time? Do you get glam every day? Thank you so much for thinking that. Well honestly, when I'm filming these videos and taking my Instagram pictures, I will literally plan a whole day of just getting content and pushing it out so that I won't have to wear makeup every single day. Like you should see me every other day of the week. I look like a crazy person just because I really don't brush my hair ever and don't really put on makeup if I don't have to. So yeah, I'll try to get as much content as I can while I have makeup on. Honestly, sometimes I'll just like put on a cute outfit and go somewhere and take a cute picture just because I have makeup on. How do you find filters that work with your skin tone? That's a really great question. And you can honestly kind of just mess with the skin tone in Lightroom itself. And so you can kind of customize it to your own skin tone. Do you take all your Instagram photos with your professional camera or your phone? I honestly use a mix of all of it. I will try my hardest to take them with my Sony A5100. So it's not my DSLR. It's just a point and shoot mirrorless camera that I am obsessed with. It takes such great pictures and it is so portable that I can just stick it in my purse and carry it wherever I go. I definitely take a majority of my pictures with that camera. But sometimes I do pull out my big DSLR, which is the Canon 70D. And then on the off chance that I don't have my cameras around, I will reach for my phone. And usually a lot of my selfies come from my phone. For some reason, like they turn out a little bit better on my phone than my cameras. But a lot of like my outfit posts and all of that do come from my cameras. What's the best way to build a bigger following? I'm honestly struggling so hard with this right now. I feel like my following has been plateauing for like the past year or so. It's definitely discouraging, especially when you are putting out so much content and actually like working towards that. But I think a really big thing that people underestimate is hashtags, especially now that people can follow hashtags. I think that if you post a couple hashtags on your picture, then it can definitely reach a wider audience and also tagging your pictures. So even if you're not a fashion blogger, you can always tag the brands that you're wearing. And then it will show up on their tagged feed. So that's kind of like getting featured without actually getting featured. But that's also another way to get a larger following is to get featured on bigger accounts. How do I maintain an Instagram feed where people like everything? So I'd advise you to kind of just see what your analytics are and what your most popular pictures are. So personally, I get the most likes on my selfies and not of other things. So if I'm not in the picture, I will literally get half the likes I do on a picture that I am in. But going back to thinking symmetrical, it's hard because sometimes you do need to post the pictures that you're not in just to make your feed look more aesthetically pleasing. So you kind of just have to take that hit. And sometimes it won't be a consistent number of people liking your pictures. And you're just going to have to deal with it. But I would definitely say look for your most popular pictures. I definitely think that there's apps or even websites that can even do this for you automatically. The last question is do you have any tips on taking aesthetic pictures? So just a couple that I can think of at the top of my head is to always straighten your pictures. Like if you have like a door frame, try to straighten it with any of those lines in the picture. It will honestly look so much better. And sometimes even cropping in your picture makes it look a little bit better just so you can see more details. So I know I've been preaching the whole symmetry thing. But another thing I can think of is just think about your rule of thirds. You don't always have to photograph your subject in the dead center of the picture. Sometimes the pictures look a lot better when the subject isn't in the center. Sometimes it's just better to get a different perspective. So maybe photograph your subject on this side of the picture or even this side of the picture or a little bit lower and close up just take a lot of different pictures with different perspectives. So that's all of my tips for maintaining my Instagram feed. I hope you guys enjoyed this video. Go ahead and follow me on my Instagram so you can keep up with my feed. It is just so underscore gnarly without the G. And I'll see y'all in my next video. Bye guys.


As part of newly instituted measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the Government of St. Lucia has announced the scale-down of commercial activity for 10 days. Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Commerce, International Trade, Investment, Enterprise Development and Consumer Affairs, Sophia Henry, advises of several implications with respect to commercial activity on Ireland. Commercial activity will be scaled down over a 10-day period from Friday, January 22nd, 2021 at 6 p.m. until Monday, February 1st, 2021. During this period, the services which can be rendered or businesses which are allowed to remain open and engage in activity include the following, supermarkets, minimats, small shops, bakeries, doctors' offices, diagnostic and lab services, pharmacies and other related health support services, farming, fishing and other agricultural activities, food supply and preparation services, example restaurants, take-out services only, approved COVID-19 hotels, utility companies, gas stations, petroleum services, financial including banking services, law offices, accounting firms, sanitation, solid waste management services, standalone hardware retail, call centers, broadcasting and media services, manufacturing and export-related services, customs brokerage, courier services, vendors, public transportation, garages, critical public sector projects and other ongoing private sector construction projects. A more comprehensive listing of services allowed will be available on the website www.covid19response.lc and the various government online platforms. The services and businesses listed are to operate under established protocols and are further urged to adopt a blended approach that is a combined physical and virtual component where practicable so as to limit the person-to-person contact. This suggests that where possible staff are allowed to work from home while meetings and other conferences are to be held virtually. Any sector or business not listed should remain closed for the 10-day period. For businesses seeking additional clarification on these matters, kindly contact your commercial membership organizations or the Ministry of Commerce at email mincommerce at govt.lc or contact number 468-4218. You are further reminded that business operations and commercial activities must cease no later than 9 p.m. The Government of St. Lucia fully appreciates the adverse impact that these measures may have on commercial activity on island and on the livelihoods of our citizenry. We do not take this decision lightly, but rather we move forward in the best interests of the health and safety of all our citizens. The objective of these new measures is to limit the movement of people in order to prevent further transmission of COVID-19.