Okay. Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Burns, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly online event. Yes, it's a webinar, where we cover anything that may be an interest to librarians across Nebraska sometimes and across the whole country, depending on what our topic of the week is. We do these sessions live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time and so you can join us on Wednesday mornings, but they are all recorded, so if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. You can always go and watch all of the recordings that we have available out there for you. We have commission staff that do presentations here, so we present our own things, and we sometimes bring in guest speakers as we have this morning. This morning we actually have part two of a series that we're doing. Karen Kier is from the Nebraska State Historical Society, and two weeks ago, we did part one of the digital preservation session, and we're on to part two this week, and then two weeks from now, the first week in March will be part three of the wrap-up of going through all this. Yes. So I will just hand over to Karen to go ahead and take it away for this section. As Chris just said, my name is Karen Kier, and I am the photograph curator at the Nebraska State Historical Society, and part of my job duties is I'm also in charge of the digital imaging lab there. So this is a topic that's near and dear to my heart, because as we make all these amazing digital images, I want to make sure that they are available to the public and preserved for a number of years to go ahead. So first off, if I break into a coughing pit, I'd like to apologize ahead of time. It seemed to have caught a bit of a cold, so we'll muddle through this. But I want to thank the Nebraska Library Commission for giving us this opportunity to present these webinars on the importance of digital preservation and how to create and manage a plan to protect your digital content. Okay, let's turn the mouse. There we go. So today we're just going to go over a little bit of introductions. I'm not going to spend too much time going over what we talked about last week about digital content and stuff. The recording for that one is already available for the whole session that we did the first part online on the Encompass Live website, so you can always go back and watch that to catch up. Yes. So mostly we're going to concentrate on our store models and the protect model as part of the depot training method. I was encouraged to go to this training through the Haskell Heritage Network, the Neurosis Historical Society recently received a grant to help set up this network. We're in the planning stages right now, so keep an eye out for more training opportunities for collection caretakers, which include emergency preparedness, which we'll talk a little bit about today, and paper materials as well. So if you'd like more information, please visit our website, the Nebraska State Historical Society's website, which is NebraskaHistory.org, or the Saving Treasures website, which also has some great information on it to do about that. So what depot is a training session through the Library of Congress is Digital Preservation, Outreach, and Education. I attended a train-the-trainer workshop in August, and the idea from the Library of Congress is they came up with this great model to preserve digital content, and in order to get it out, they couldn't figure out a way to get it to as many institutions as possible. So their idea was is that they'll train trainers in every state, and then these trainers will then be responsible for presenting these models to everybody. We had a wonderful training session in Indianapolis where I learned lots and lots of information, so hopefully I've retained everything and trained to present it to you today, at least on the two models we're talking about. So the depot's mission is to defoster national outreach and encourage individuals and organizations to actively preserve their digital content and doing this through a collaborative network of instructors, contributors, and institutional partners. And today, when we're talking about STOR, you'll see why that collaboration is going to be so important. So what is digital preservation? It is the active management of digital content over time to ensure it's ongoing access. Once a physical item has been digitized or a digital item has been created, you can't just put it on a shelf and expect that in 50 years from now you're going to be able to open it. We know that media goes obsolete, files go obsolete, files become corrupt. So this is, we need to come up with a plan in order to be able to access that information in the future. So we put in a lot of time and effort. So what the Library of Congress has developed is these models, these six modules that help break down this planning session into six easy to follow steps. We talked about how to identify your digital content through an inventory and how to select what the most important content will be to preserve and manage over time. So today we're going to talk about long-term storage and how to protect that from both minor and major disasters. And then on March 6, we'll be the last in the three-part digital preservation series and we'll be covering how to create provisions for long-term management and then the types of considerations that will be for long-term access. So this is one of the slides that I used last time as well. And I think it's a really nice thing. It shows how all six of these models build together and work together in order to help maintain, manage, and protect and provide access to your digital content. Did I just go backwards? I skipped a slide. There we go. That's why. Okay, so let's move on and start talking about the store module of the digital preservation. Storage is not digital preservation, but it's also not digital preservation. So I know that's a little confusing, but I think as we go through this, we'll understand what I mean. So what is storage in the context of digital preservation? It's important to understand that backup and storage is not synonymous. Digital content that has been selected for preservation needs to be stored in ways that align with good practices. While system backups may be part of the preservation strategy, a backup is primarily intended to restore an entire system if it crashes and that includes all of the resident files. Preservation, on the other hand, treats a file individually and seeks to care for the content of those individual files forever or however long that is. Common practice is to store content in a format that is ideal, that ideally is not software dependent, uncompressed and unencrypted. This content or the file may be in a variety of forms, whether it be text, video, or images. And it has been identified and described, which is where the metadata piece fits into the preservation puzzle. The file plus its corresponding description is often referred to as the digital object. So when I'm talking about the digital object throughout this presentation, that's what I'm talking about, not only the file, whether it be TIF or video, but also the metadata that goes together. And for preservation storage purposes, you will need at least two copies stored in two different locations. It's important to start with the basics. No software or system is going to make up for digital content that hasn't been prepared well enough for preservation. It should matter what the object contains, but it does. It shouldn't matter what the object contains, but it does. We have strategies that work well for specific types of data, for specific types of file formats, for example. Each institution will define the baseline for the metadata base on the needs and their resources. But you must have enough metadata to be able to identify the characteristics of the provenance and the provenance of the digital object in order for it to ensure its viability. When possible, use common file formats and keep track of where your content is stored and who has access to it. You want to store multiple copies in at least two locations, and I'm going to say that over and over to the hang. Simply managing well-formatted files in association with metadata to manage it and use it is a big step towards good practice. So I don't know about you, but every time I say the word metadata, I actually cringe a little bit inside. I'm not a librarian, so metadata is not a natural thing for me. I'm a historian and a curator, so sometimes I'm a little out of my element talking about metadata. But all metadata really is data about data. Because, after all, a digital file is really, in its essence, just a string of numbers, zeros, and ones. And then it's translated from a computer to provide the computer in a software program. Metadata is what makes that digital file understandable to humans. It tells us what the object is, how it can be used, how we can use that object in the future, and it allows us to trace that object over time. So when I say that storage is not digital preservation, that's because storage doesn't always take into account the importance of metadata, which is what really enables long-term preservation. Metadata is essential for preservation. The community has identified no single, very specific definition of preservation metadata. It does, however, include all the information needed to manage, find, and use digital content over time, and what that exactly means is open to discussion. There is some basic steps to gain control of digital content using metadata. For example, how do you document exactly what an object is, and what is the content for that use, or the context for that use, and what will the future generations need to know to be able to both access and efficiently make use of that item? In the digital world, versions and copies are easy to make. How do you know, how do you verify that this object is authentic and unchanged over time? All those questions and more are answered by Metadata. Do you have a question? Yes. Not about metadata. About the two copies thing. Yes. We'll talk about that a little bit more later on. Yes. Just two copies in two locations mean two copies in one place and two copies in another, so four in total or just one in each place and two. What they're saying is a minimum of two copies. One in one location, probably your server on site, and then another copy in another location. This can be where the collaboration comes in. If you're working with the Library Commission, you would keep a copy of our digital content and we would keep a copy of your digital content. It's two separate locations. Here in Nebraska, we are in tornado land. Think of what would happen if your building was wiped out by a tornado and your servers were taken out by a tornado. Somewhere separate from there that you still have that digital object. Exactly. We'll talk more about the possibility of collaborations and cloud storage later on in the program. Just thanks. Great. A great example of metadata is from iTunes. I think most of us have an iTunes account or some sort of music account. Your iTunes library doesn't really contain MP3 as those files are stored elsewhere on your computer. Your iTunes library contains the metadata about each of those MP3 files and a link to that file. That metadata tells you what that file is so in this example, my MP3 file is a podcast. The information attached to the file tells me the name of the show, the artist, the album, and the year that it was produced. Depending on what that file is, it may also have a composer and a track number or two. That's the basic idea of metadata. It's easier to relate to. Metadata gets added to all kinds of files and you probably are not even aware of it. On the left is metadata for a Word document and then the other one is for a JPEG just downloaded from the internet. It shows how metadata is often generated without even realizing it and how it's a file attached to another file, basically. It's that package of information that's important to present. Okay. It's important to remember that in order to preserve a digital object, you're going to need more than a descriptive aspect of the metadata. That information is very important in the library role so it is what we're most familiar with. We catalyze things and add subject terms to it and we write finding aids. But there are other types of metadata that we need to be aware of when thinking about preservation. Where does that object come from? How can I use it? How does it relate to other digital items in our collection? What kind of file is it and is this file unchanged from when it was received? Consider briefly what administrative metadata you may need. For example, you'll probably want to track what formats your content is in so that we can find that content that needs to be migrated to formats before it becomes obsolete. Administrative metadata usually includes technical information about that format, also so migration to newer formats can be as effective as possible. Structural metadata is primarily for digital objects which have multiple parts such as a 50-page pamphlet. Future users will need to be able to determine what the order is for delivery, how the files relate to each other, and what is described by metadata. Descripted metadata is what we're most familiar with. It is the information that describes the item, provides context, and enables us to use the item efficiently. Above and beyond these three preservation metadata usually includes verification that the original is unchanged, that a document trail of everything done to this object over time, a unique identification for the item within your system, and any necessary contextual information beyond that is already in the description. Over time it's necessary to know what the primary substance of your context is. Knowing if it's a tip doesn't tell you if the content is primary textual or image. Yet when it comes time to migrate it to newer formats you may have to choose the new format based on whether it's important to preserve the text or the image displayed. To preserve the substance of the object you need to know its context. Fixivity is a term used to verify the object is unchanged. MD5 checksums taken at the time of the deposit and checked on a regular basis serve to ensure the fixivity of the content. Reference is how you refer to an item within your repository. Each object needs to have its unique identifier. In the museum world we use object identification numbers for each object so we use that as our object item. That's something you can just make up your own system. Yes. And the context is necessary so that others in the future can make sense of this object and how it's going to be used. Remember, what you will get out of storage is only as good as what you put in. Objects need to be prepared for preservation. How many copies is enough? In a minimum you need two copies in two locations. Optimum is six copies. In addition to metadata, digital preservation requires multiple copies. Has anyone ever heard of the acronym LOX? Yes. And that's L-O-C-K-S-S which I should have put on the screen and forgot. It means lots of copies keep stuff safe. And it's the name of the open source library-led digital preservation system built on the principle that lots of copies keep stuff safe. In the digital preservation world, the most often cited number of copies to be managed for your preservation is six.  As long as there's at least two, optimally in different locations, storage is cheap. Storage is cheap and getting cheaper by the day, but it's still not free. So as you are storing large video files, for example, it might not be worth it to have six copies. A lot of people are storing files in the cloud. All that means is that you're taking advantage of that shared network infrastructure so that you are not managing every server where your content resides. Anytime that you email a file to yourself, as well as saving copy to your hard drive or a server, you're creating an extra copy that is stored in another location. So like this preservation, this presentation, I have stored on probably six different locations because I was a little paranoid about the weather this today, and I want to be able to answer that. It's in at least two places right here. I can tell you that. All right. So many organizations have a set of high-resolution images stored on gold CDs as an artifact from when offline storage was good practice, because that's what the possible technology was, and it was affordable. However, the community has moved away from offline storage like CDs and DVDs as a good option for preservation. For us, it became there's just so many CDs that we were taking up shelf space that should have been for artifacts. So there are now hosted services and collaborative groups, such as MetaArchives, that organizations can join to meet their preservation obligations. It's also necessary to make comparisons to make good decisions. Most important for you to know is what you have. Understand the resources and options available to you and make the best decisions you can, knowing that technology will continue to change and with it, your possible options and requirements. Storage partners are trusted institutions that agree to work together by storing content for each other. A service agreement is usually defined so that each partner knows what to expect and to avoid liability concerns and other aspects. One example is the APN Net and another is the MetaArchive, which I'm sure you guys can find more information about or maybe already know more information about. Should you decide to use a service that relies on cloud computing, here's a brief definition. Cloud computing relies on shared computing resources, whether having local server servers or personal devices that can handle applications. Cloud computing now applies to large-scale computing, such as supercomputing or grid computing, to deliver personalized information and services to organizations and individuals. To do this, cloud computing networks, large-scale groups of servers and others with low-cost computer PC technology with specialized connections through high-speed data processing tours across them. So it's like you have your information stored on an endless number of servers that all work together to link together. Just be careful to read the fine prints for these services. Most preservation services ensure that they have no liability should your content become compromised, damaged, or lost. And if they don't get a payment on time, you may lose your content. So read the small print. Many larger institutions use repositories to handle their storage and preservation. There are multiple repository formats out there from open source to proprietary, but no one system will be able to do everything. It's important to remember that you're choosing a repository system that even the free open-source ones come with cost, and at some point you're going to want to move your content to somewhere else. So what you want to make sure is that it's easy to take content out as it is to put in. If you decide to implement repository software to manage your digital content, be intentional about what you do. Figure out your requirements and determine whether the option you're considering will work for 60 to 80% of what you want to archive. Here are some aspects you might want to consider when choosing your repository. Will it manage all of your content or only certain formats? Is it easy to use? How well supported is it? Is it unlikely to be over the years to come? Many repository systems claim to be compliant to standards. Usually that means that it can map its functionality to basic modules of OASIS or the guidelines for open archival information systems. Most systems can take content as well enough and get it back out. They may try to cover a full range of policies and procedures, but usually fail. Another area that systems oversimplify our preservation planning. There's often not significant support for managing content over time. For example, managing content before or after a migration from one file format to another. Choose the best option for the present and be sure that you can retrieve it in your content in full because over time it is likely that better options will emerge. There are a growing number of available solutions, some for specific types of material like locks and portico. And then there are ones for specific locations. Some of these are examples of open source software and some of them are black box vendor solutions for varying degrees of openness about how they will work. Some are library community hosted solutions and some have full fledgling collaborative solutions. But again, it's up to you to find what is going to work best for your institution. Just know that there are a lot of things out there for you to choose from. So do what we do best, which is research. There are now hosted Conservations and Collaborative Groups that organizations can enjoy to meet their preservation obligations. It's necessary for organizations to compare to make a good decision. Community has moved away from offline storage. I think I have a similar device. I did miss this one. Okay. We can fix that. Sorry. Okay, slide in there twice. That's what I get for moving things around. Okay. So in this module we've discussed the difference between backup and preservation. That digital content is comprised of files with their associated metadata. And that these elements were taken together to taken, that these elements taken together are referred to as digital content. We noted that the importance of making at least two copies in two different locations and the need to utilize common file formats whenever possible. We have learned the importance of metadata and how it uniquely identifies the object and establishes their authenticity. It is the metadata that tells us the life story of the digital content. We've explored storage options, whether online, nearline, or offline, and things to consider when choosing the appropriate solution for your institution. However, there is no one perfect solution for all content or for every institution. It is important to remain flexible and keep in mind that those constructs upon which you base your identification and selection of your collections for preservation in the first place. You may need to employ more than one solution. For the State Historical Society, our video files, our video preservation files are very, very large and they are treated separately from our digital images collection. The result of addressing these storage issues is that your institution will develop a storage management policy and how many copies will you store and where? How will you verify that the files do not change over time? You will need to identify the storage services or partner agreements and ensure that you have a system in place to monitor those copies for errors and change. You also need to plan for media replacement as media is rapidly changing. Whatever we store content, wherever we store content, it is now going to change over time. So be aware that your choices, decisions need to be reviewed periodically and to ensure that they are meeting your needs. Does anybody have questions about the store module? We are going to move on to protect. If you have any questions, use the questions section of your GoToWebInternet interface. I have that right here on the laptop. I can pass on any questions you have about what Karen just talked about with the store module. We are covering a lot of information very quickly. Think of anything, type it in whenever you do. Even during it like we had earlier, I will interrupt as needed. Let's talk about protect. Most of the time digital preservation stories aren't all that interesting, especially as the physical ones. The truth is, emergencies happen in the digital world just like the physical one. If you can't open a file that you need, there is a serious problem. When we talk about digital preservation, what exactly are we protecting content from? We don't want our files to change. We don't want them to become obsolete and we don't want them to get into the long hands. We may be mandated to keep certain information for a period of time, and then disasters do happen. The building housing your servers burn down and there's no offsite backup, then that's a serious problem. Once the content needs to be protected, this includes everyday concerns such as who has access and whether that file has changed, as well as emergency contingencies such as a business such as disaster planning. We need to address roles and responsibilities for physical and virtual access to digital content throughout its life cycle. Have you ever lost content?  I'm sure all of you can probably tell some sort of horror stories. I know that I can. Whether it work or personal. Yes, I'm sure. Everybody's had a computer crash. It's scarier when it's the server. We just recently had one of our servers just die. I couldn't get access to it at all. I was freaking out because I was sure that it was something, but it ended up being just the motherboard. They replaced the motherboard. The content was fine and not damaged, but there was that few days when they were testing it. I had a few sleepless nights. This common and often is sensitive to do more about preservation, disaster planning, and business continuity through preservation. We do have one question. Yes. I want to clarify. The main difference between backup and preservation is the inclusion of metadata? Yes. A lot of times, when you do backup your files or your IT person backs up your files, what they do is they compress it. We know that we don't ever want to compress our data for preservation reasons, because when you compress it, you lose little bits of that information. Of the actual visual object itself. Absolutely. That's the main difference. I hope that makes sense. Yes. Thank you. Day-to-day threats to digital content exist. Continual caution and awareness are necessary. What are your policies and procedures for access to your online and offline content? Who has access to it? How is authorization managed? Staffing changes. It's important to document your policies and procedures. Then review current practices, access methods on a regular basis. The gist of this model is that you need to be ready in case of a disaster. You need to know where your content is, who has access to it, what risks might exist to your digital content, and then you really need to incorporate digital content into your disaster planning. I'm sure a lot of us have disaster manuals. Hopefully. Hopefully. Definitely should. This should become part of your disaster manual. Another chapter in the disaster manual. You can't wait until a disaster happens you need to be ready. Many organizations only realize gaps in their readiness when something actually happens. I'm sure nobody was prepared for Hurricane Katrina, for example. Being prepared is good practice. It saves time and money. Readiness protects investments in digital content. We want to be able to preserve problems and to do so, it helps that we can predict that what is the most likely risks and threats to us. We also need to be able to detect errors or damage, and we need to have policies and procedures for response and repair of those when damage and loss occurs. Don't get so carried away in identifying risks that you fail to identify appropriate responses to that. Disaster preparedness needs to focus on the response. It may be helpful to think of the levels of damage and what the appropriate responses to each level. For example, you may have one set of policies and procedures for a loss or damage of a few files, and you may set up a different procedures in the event that your server crashes or your storage media is lost. Scaling up or down, what scaling up again, what if a hurricane or tornado wipes out much of your infrastructure? These are the things that keep us up at night. Planning needs to be made that addresses different levels of scope so that you can respond appropriately and prevent loss. We do have a question that's more of a practical one, and it's related to what you were just mentioning there about figuring out what you're going to do, and the question is, is there a way to fix a damaged file? That's why you have more than one copy. Well, yeah, exactly. I think it kind of depends on what type of file it is. It's going to vary. It is going to vary. But again, that's where we go back to the multiple copies in multiple places. Yeah, say something that I did one time, I personally did one time, was I accidentally overwrote a master TIF file. Here I am, the person who's supposed to be in charge of the digital imaging lab, and I overwrote a master TIF file and converted it to a low resolution JPEG. And had we not had that... A copy of that somewhere else, there was no repairing that. Right, even if you've changed it, it's a done deal. There is no undo button for once you hit save. So it kind of depends. It's going to depend. You might need to get a techie person, someone who's got more of that kind of knowledge than either of us can do that, recover previous versions, if that's something you've done. But really what you really want to do is just have extra copies no matter what, so in case something does happen to one either by accident, by destruction, by nature, or by human. There's something else you can just say, go back and get the original from somewhere else and replace it and now you're good. And I know that that six copy sounds excessive, but there are instances where that does become very important. And at least two copies is always good. In physically different locations. In physically different locations. So when a tornado hits here, we still have it somewhere else. And it doesn't have to be all six copies don't have to be in different locations. Like for us, we have the dueling, I'm sorry, I'm not an IT person, but the, what do you call it, where the one server backs up the other server automatically, mirrors it. There we go. Yes, mirrors. Yeah, mirror servers. And those are in the same room, but then I have another copy in a different location as well. So then, so I have at least three copies. Okay, so I hope that answers your question, but most of the time I get the answer from the IT person. Nope, you're gonna find a new cotton. Where's your other copies? Yeah. Okay, so on to emergency protection. Often digital content is left out of disaster planning. So find out what the status is for maintaining and restoring digital content in your, at your institution. It can be challenging to get people to focus on emergency planning when there isn't an emergency, but if they don't, when the emergency happens, it'll be too late. Make sure information about emergency response isn't only available online or in a digital form. Make sure that the key people can have access to it, even if the internet access is down or computers are unavailable. Run through this practice scenario annually to make sure people know what to do. Our disaster manuals not only are on our desk, but several of us have them in our homes as well with the key numbers and things, and it's also available online and accessible. Remember that we're storing all preservation copies within some days after an emergency, maybe sufficient. Users will want to access, restore, restored right away, but preservation happens over time and doesn't have to move as quickly as access does. The focus should be on ongoing updating planning rather than on a, producing a static disaster plan. The thing that sits, the disaster plan is the thing that sits on a shelf in a red binder. You need to a comprehensive program tailored to your institution, one that is reviewed at least annually by management and staff who, management and staff who are involved. Think through what should be restored first. If I go backwards, I need to go backwards again. Think through what should be restored first. It's not possible to do everything at once. What is an acceptable timeframe for restoring core functions if possible, minutes, days, weeks? Sometimes restoring means rebooting computers or servers that may have shut down abruptly. Sometimes it means fixing equipment and facilities before they can be used again. Planning should identify who's, who determines priorities in the event of an emergency, and restoring data content should be on that list. The National Institute for Standards and Technology Guides provides us a useful framework for disaster planning, and I believe that should be on the resources page that you have links to on your site. Yeah, that will be added. Yeah. Business continuity may involve such things as getting your primary website up as soon as possible. A business recovery program may be needed to specify the order in which servers or services are restored, how and by whom. The cyber incident reports plan may include your procedures for when your servers are swamped by such things as a denial of service attack. Continuity of operations is planning for how to keep your services going when your infrastructure has been compromised. Do you have an arrangement with a partner to mirror your site and bring it up, and bring up the mirror if yours goes down? Disaster recovery is how you respond to disasters, and I do mean disasters, whether it be fire flood or tornadoes. An IT contingency plan may include identifying services who could host your Web's access should your local server room be destroyed. And an occupant emergency plan takes into account for your staff. Do you have backup people trained to take over in an event that you lose key personnel? This diagram distinguishes between the things that may be effective, facilities, IT, and business. And the arrow map that planning documents to phases in an emergency protects, sustain, recover, and resume. Training for emergencies that include what to do about digital content should be provided to all staff and emphasize with regular reminders. There are lots of resources out there that can help. No one needs to start from scratch. Check out some of these disaster planning resources, and select one for use as a model for your own disaster planning. The Jail R4 Conservation Center does have links to disaster, a great disaster manual, and how to set up disaster manuals. But at this time, we don't have anything for digital content, but it is a good place to start for your institution, and you can build from that. So the outcomes of the protection model is that you are prepared should something happen to your digital content. You know who to contact. You know how to put things right. And if there's anything you can do to migrate for a disaster, then you've already done it. All right, so that is the end of the store and protect. On March 6th, we will talk about manage and provide. So is there any questions? If you have any questions, type them into the questions section of your GoToWeb on our interface. We have at least another 10 minutes or so. We can do those any questions, comments, thoughts, anything you want to say. We'll wait to see if any of you does come up with anything. As we said at the beginning of this, I know some people came in in the light of the presentation and documents with links to a lot more resources will be available when the recording goes up. The first session of this three-part series that was done two weeks ago is the recording and all of its links and documentations are already available on our Encompass Live website. That was the inventory and select module. And then as you said, in two weeks on March 6th, you can come for the manager. Oh, okay. Can you flip back to the Disaster Plan resources a couple of slides back? Yes, there you go. Some of the main ones that are the Library of Congress Prevention website has some great information. And since they're the ones who created these modules, I'm sure they have some great funds for digital content. The Northeast Document Center has a wonderful one for physical items as well as digital images. And another one that's not on here that I find very helpful is the National Park Service has a great website as well with lots of information. Their Conservatory Grounds are amazing. They're doing a lot of things out in nature, so I'm sure they've got to deal with all the water, fire, flood. And they've had to deal with a lot of their sites being hit. They've got sites all over the country, so they were there for Katrina. They were out in New York for the big storm out there. Sandy. Sandy, yeah, as well as here in the Midwest dealing with storms and tornadoes. And the Beatrice one had flooding. The Homestead National Monument had flooding, I think it was four or five years ago. But they had a disaster plan, and they had minimum damage. But you cannot project damage, and it might be as simple as a busted pipe. Right, yeah. You're going to surprise you get an email before you come into work. Oh, yeah, down in the basement, the pipes burst, and all those things we kept safe down there archived manuscripts are now soaked. What do we do? Yes, exactly. Sometimes it's not nature. Yes, yeah. Any other questions for Karen while she's here today? And part of the, part of the Haskell Heritage Network is going to focus on digital planning, disaster planning. So if you don't have a disaster manual in place and are now in a panic about getting one, please stay tuned for our upcoming workshops and things. Be able to help you get one together to write one up. Yes, yes. And you can always contact the Ford Center. They'd be happy to help you plan for one too. All right, well it doesn't look like anyone's typing any urgent messages at the moment, so I think we'll wrap it up for today. Thank you very much, Karen, for coming by again. You know you're sick. We've got lucky and beat the, beating the disasters or possible snow, lizard, apocalypse, whatever they want to call it. Yes. We'll see what we end up with here. Yes, everybody go check your backup servers before it comes. So thank you everyone for attending this morning's session. And I said, Karen, I'll be back in two weeks, March 6th, 4th, Part 3, the final part of the preservation sessions that we're doing. But I hope, so thank you for coming today. And there we go. Next week on Encompass Live, it is the last Wednesday of the month, which is traditionally our tech talk with Michael Sowers, who is the Technology Innovation Librarian here at the Library Commission. And he has, he does tech news of the month, anything interesting, things that have come up. And this week he, and he also brings in guest speakers, interviews, and this month he's got Matt Hamilton from the Anything Libraries in Colorado talking about their studio initiative, which is new things they're doing with digital learning and programming at the libraries in Colorado. So hopefully sign up and join us for that session next Wednesday morning. Also Encompass Live is on Facebook. So if you are a big Facebook user, Facebook is where we go. I took a little time. You can follow us on Facebook where I announce any, whenever new sessions are coming up, when the recordings are ready, and any maybe news items might be related to any sessions that we have done. So follow us, like us on Facebook, and you can get some information from us there. Other than that, we are wrapped up for today, and I hope you'll join us next week. Thank you very much. I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.


As the storm events are here it is okay to ask for help. Please reach out if you need to talk to someone. Our Cal Hope line is available. Peer counselors listen with compassion, provide non-judgment support and will help you connect to additional resources. Please call 1-833-317-HOPE or<PHONE_NUMBER> or visit our website at calhope.org. Additionally isolation can be difficult for our older adults and loved ones and neighbors. We have established a friendship line for older adults. It is a free crisis intervention hotline and a warm line for non-emergency emotional support calls for older adults. It is available by calling<PHONE_NUMBER>. Thank you.


Hey guys and welcome back. In this video you're actually going to get to see me in action on the tennis court where I play a set against Cameron. Now if you've seen the last couple of videos that I've posted with warm up drills and games that you can do with a partner, you will have met Cameron already. I've worked with him for a number of years, I was one of his coaches when he was around six years old and I've been a part of his tennis ever since. More recently he's joined our coaching program as one of our team's coaches and this year he's actually gone off to university to study medicine at Exeter Uni. We're lucky to have him back over the Christmas break as he visits his family, so I thought we'd make the most of it and film a few videos and get him playing some more tennis again. You'll see when we get into the set that both of us are a little bit rusty. We haven't been playing much tennis recently with lockdown in the UK prohibiting lots of tennis activity, but we were lucky that we could get on court during the Christmas break and have a good battle. We filmed the whole set and I'm not going to edit out any points, all I'll do is crop out the time period in between change events and in between points so that you can enjoy the whole set without having lots of breaks in between. I'm thinking of doing another edit of this set in a few weeks time and potentially editing down two games to do some technical and tactical analysis over. If you think that would be a good idea and if you think that would be of interest to you, then leave a comment below and let me know which two of the games that you'd like me to analyze. And at the end of this video I'm going to summarise the set from my point of view. Let me know what you think of the set in the comments below. Let's take a look. So there you go. Cam and I had lots of fun playing in the set. It was tough conditions today. It was pretty damp, pretty wet and a little bit windy as well. And as I said at the start of the video neither of us have played much tennis in the lead-up to this. So go easy on us in the comments. But hopefully you got to see a little bit of how I like to play and a little bit of how Cam likes to play. From my perspective I was quite happy with the way that I played and after speaking to Cameron after the match he was fairly happy with the match as a whole. However he knew that there were various parts of his game that he could have played better and there were other parts of my game that he could have exploited a little bit more. You will have seen pretty much all the way through the set that I like to dominate with my forehand. So quite often if I get the opportunity to I will run around my backhand to hit forehand. You'll notice that Cameron was trying to get it into my backhand size but quite often his balls would float slightly too slowly and slightly too centrally in the middle of the court allowing me to run around it. Although my forehand is my strength or my weapon my backhand is pretty reliable because it has been my weaker side for a number of years now people do hit it to that side quite a lot which in turn has allowed me to develop some real good consistency and actually effectiveness with that slice. I use it to move my opponent around the court to keep the ball low after it's bounced so that my opponent has to pick it up with a little bit of height giving me time to run around and hit my forehand. I know that Cameron usually has a pretty big serve and I think today with the weather conditions being wet and windy the balls were slightly heavier than they normally would be meaning that they traveled slightly slower. This gave me a bit more of an opportunity to see Cameron serve coming at me and to have a little bit of extra time to make a better return and today I did return pretty well. I managed to keep Cameron back behind the baseline which neutralized the points straight away and sometimes even gave me the upper hand. On a dry and sunny day I think Cameron serve would have been a lot more effective and actually he would have won a lot more of his serving games made the match much closer. In my serving games to be honest I didn't serve as well as I can. I was hitting quite a lot of slice serves where I haven't played a match in quite a number of months. I didn't want to go big and flat with my serves not only for a timing issue but I didn't want to get any injuries so my slice serve can be effective and I think my aim in my serving games was just to get myself into a neutral position so that I could use my forehand again. I didn't serve to Cameron's backhand as much as I had liked to but I think because I was winning my returning games actually I didn't feel as though I needed to as much. So in summary overall if we were playing on a warmer sunny day Cameron serve would have been a bit more effective. He was hitting his serve quite flat which actually sat into my comfort zone so I think if he'd hit his serve with a bit more variety maybe hitting a few slices and a few kick serves in that would have taken me out of my rhythm and I probably wouldn't have returned as well as I did. I also think if Cameron could have hit more balls into my backhand a bit more deeper with a bit more pace actually I would have felt a bit more pressure. I think I had too many opportunities to hit forehands in this set. Anyway I could go on for longer talking about tactical and technical analysis but like I said at the start of the video I'm thinking of editing down two of the games from the set to do a proper technical and tactical analysis for you. If you like the idea of this then let me know in the comments below and let me know which two games you'd like me to analyse. Let me know what you think of my tennis and Cameron's tennis and if there's anything that you saw in this set that resonates with you and the way that you play as well. I hope you liked the video if you did consider subscribing to the channel and hit that notification bell so that you get alerted when I put another video out. Take care and I hope to see you soon.


So anyway, my name is Paige.  This channel is really about luxury black travel and experiences and just sharing my day-to-day life with you guys. I feel like I've had the pleasure of having so many amazing things happen and I've experienced so many amazing things. So I felt like it was finally time to share the world and it's also been just a pleasure to escape a little bit from the realities of COVID-19 and the impacts that it's had on our day-to-day lives. So being able to travel back in time and look at all these amazing trips that I've been on with my family and basically get to relive it has been really fun for me and it, like I said, forms a bit of escapism so it's been really fun. So today I thought I might try something a little bit different because I am still getting the hang of this and I thought it might be kind of cool to do a love story to France because I've had the pleasure of traveling to this amazing country so many different times and it's time, okay? It's time to do a love story to France. Over the past 17 years I've had the pleasure of traveling to Paris and several different cities within France about 10 times. I know. Okay, I know. I'm pretty lucky. I'm blessed and I'm grateful that I've been able to have these experiences so I've had the pleasure of traveling and seeing more French cities and towns than I think I have in my own hometown state of Georgia. So what are the few cities that I've been to? Paris, of course, is where I'm flying into and I've probably been to Paris like seven or eight times. I've also had the pleasure of traveling to the south of France like cities like Nice and Marseille, Monaco, which is its own little municipality and I've also had the pleasure of traveling to several different wine cities like Bordeaux, Ronde, Bonne and of course I've had the pleasure of traveling to the French Alps and being in the city of Mejeu. My parents have always said that the French know what they're doing and when I was 12 when we first went to Paris I was like, all I'm trying to understand is why the French love eggs so much. Like does a pizza really need an egg? I don't think so but like you know so when I was 12 that's that was all I was trying to understand and now that I'm older I finally get it you know my parents were on to something they knew what they were talking about trust me that's going to keep happening with time so anyway the French know how to do it I mean they know how to do wine, food, fashion, elupin, le crusin, mandoux, j'adore, j'adore, fabulously the bulk of my French adventures had been through wine trips exploring different chateaux and having different wine tastings of the creme de la creme when it comes to wine. So all of this amazing footage that you guys are seeing really comes from one region and that's Bordeaux. Now I'm not exactly a Bordeaux girl I prefer Burgundy but ultimately nothing can compare to French wine like I'm sorry. So why do I love France so much? I think it boils down to this sense of like refined sexiness that's really embedded into their culture and I think that that comes from just constantly being around beauty and I think the language is really beautiful the architecture the art the food the wine Oh my god I am so heartbroken I just did such a good edit and of course all of it got like unsaved because my card was full so like all right take three golly all right take three I've got this you guys I'm I think I'm nice and organized I'm wearing an Alta Zura top for today's video my name is Paige if you're new here I think I have at this point 50 subscribers so thank you I appreciate you if you found this channel please like and subscribe give me some motivation to continue this love project of mine pretty much the whole world is on lockdown it's COVID-19 is still raging right now especially in America so you know I will get dressed up and record these videos and live vicariously through my past life so here we go French know exactly what they're doing when it comes to wine when it comes to fashion and when it comes to food elupa le croissant mondu jado jado so why do I love France so much I feel like ultimately it boils down to this sense of refined sexiness that's embedded into the culture and I think it stems from having beauty in everything whether it be the language and how people speak or the architecture of walking around and seeing these beautiful buildings the art I mean have you been to the Louvre the fashion all of my favorite you know designers come from France and right now I really love Jacob the food and the people so I think that France is truly like surrounded by beauty and that beauty is what makes the culture so special so now that I have really embraced the French way I am now trying to after several years learn how to speak French so je m'appelle page je suis une femme américain j'adore France et enchanté et navillade though I'll see you guys next time please like and subscribe


Okay, we've got time for just a little bit of open season here for the panelists themselves So there's four of them They've got us started with their positions and now I'm going to let them actually kind of tear into each other a little bit Sharpen each other up. Okay. We are driving here toward Application so just bear that in mind as you sharpen each other's ideas also deal with the implications as well So I'm gonna leave this time to you as there's somebody who'd lead us off with a question for one of the other panelists I have a question Kevin for you. You just told us to make technology inconvenient Doesn't that fly in the face of technology itself? That depends a lot on what your aim is in Utilizing these technologies in the first place so My wife would look at me really weird if I brought the garage tools into the kitchen and I think that's the way we should think about the way that these other technologies are pervading our lives and keeping them in The right places for their appropriate uses So why not just leave it alone? Why don't have why have technology at all if you want to be inconvenient sure, okay? So technology is a way that we are subduing the earth We're creating tools by which we can harness creation and and and we can we're opening up all sorts of capabilities and and that's a good thing I see that as a as a very connected thing to God's commandment to subdue the earth but let's make sure that we are doing that in a way that's consistent with the principles that Jesus himself has given us Chris I have a question for you and Related a little bit to what? Kevin brought up and something that is important to me and that is the purpose and context of life is relationship It's a statement. I Say a lot when I speak on it Relationship being the purpose and context of life and in my my wife works in a early childhood education in Secular firm and they are always saying that education Should be in the context of a relationship. This is a secular organization They say the best education that happens relationship based and you alluded to using the Internet show or maybe a YouTube To look at woodworking Okay, and so my assumption is that you are willing to develop or going to enter into a relationship With someone it's a parasocial relationship with a woodworking expert as opposed to a relationship with the real person Who knows woodworking is that? What are your thoughts I? Think that's a great question. I think that what you're asking about is Sort of a subversion of the traditional hierarchy parents children and so on and so forth But to be frank you mentioned Socrates and reading reading already does that you go to a library You have the ability to engage with the minds of philosophers past present dead gone so If we've accepted books and we all have I Think that It's far too late, you know, it's already here that that subversion is already here There's already a way to subvert I do think there is something to be said about the different ways of learning and the different types of learning so I'm sure we all know can aesthetic learners visual or oral learners and in fact for some people visually seeing a Sculpture a Carpentry sculpture may be more conducive to their learning than simply step one step two step three so I think that The subversion of these power structures are already here and subversion is perhaps a too strong of a word. I think that You mentioned relationships relationships are more than just a hierarchical family unit And so if you're not necessarily able to handle any sort of relationship outside of that family unit Maybe there's a deeper problem there Okay, what I'm aiming at though something that happened in my own happened to me my own life is my Deciding to I Guess the first course of action when trying to get help Going to the internet as opposed to going to a human being and in your woodworking Business or your desires to learn woodworking It just seems to me that a first step ought to be who's a real human being that can teach me In which I can develop a relationship with as opposed to working on the internet in which I'm Developing a relationship with someone that does that's not there. You're developing the relationship With someone you don't know Parasocial relationship and so that's my anyways my Point I push back at I think it's more profitable for the human being rather than a device Yeah, I agree ultimately Human interaction is how God made us and nothing beats human face-to-face interaction. I just don't necessarily think it's it's an inherent evil You know generally if I were to pick something up like that it would be it could be any other hobby playing the guitar There could be a teacher, but it may be after a long day of work I've got maybe 30 minutes, you know, just can't necessarily call someone over. I think that's the same as reading a book Is it possible that we could approach this question from the standpoint of good better best? So if if it's necessary to acquire a new skill and there really is no one accessible to me that can teach me that skill then You know, it's still good for me to find this information Somewhere but it's not good if I am circumventing or avoiding these natural opportunities for these opportunities for natural relationships one of the really interesting things about technology and One of the Realizations experts especially secular experts are making is that technology itself and our use of it Has a formative effect apart from the content So content is important what you're looking at is significant and media is obviously part of that However, the use of the medium itself has a formative effect too So we've got to be aware of that we've got to learn how to see that effect and how to decode it and respond to it So let's move on if there's any other questions or things you want to direct at each other Kevin Sure, so I have a question for you Gary you talked a lot about accountability and I would just say that the general feel I got from your suggestion sounded like something that should be thought about and Incorporated by a church leader a church leadership at least generally with how our communities function and so what would you say to somebody out here who's who may be from a church that? Really isn't prepared or isn't inclined to handle things the way you're describing and is saying I need support I need accountability. I need someone to walk with me. What should I do? It's a great question and also a difficult one I do think the first plan of action should be going face-to-face and talking to that leader Do it umbly and give time even for change I don't think change has to happen overnight sometimes in our youth We assume that that because it's so clear what needs to happen needs to happen now There needs to be respect in that process But I don't think we should back off from doing that going ahead and laying down Our request how we're seeing this thing One of the burdens. I think that young people put on on leaders is this is the leaders aren't sure how committed the youth is To their group to their congregation And I think a young man should commit himself, so he should he should be able to say that I'm here with you I'm not running off if you answer this question wrong. I'm with you, but this is my burden It's much easier for a leader then to give good advice if he first senses there's commitment here Instead of I've got one foot over here and one foot over here and you tell me the wrong answer And I'm out of here. That's that's difficult for a leader I'd like to just touch on again the the question of accountability with this pretty pervasive problem of pornography even within the Christian community and that is the the fear that men have of exposing themselves And the fact that there can be repercussions You know we're in this sort of an aside we're in this upside-down paradigm now where Media technology has made what was completely private now possible of being completely public worldwide At the same time where what used to be hard to do like look at a magazine is so easy on my iPhones We have this upside-down situation But again that I'd like you to address what do we do about the fear that men have of it admitting and owning up to Such a danger to themselves and to to the families and to the church I Push on this some in the book church matters I Think it's essential and I understand that part of what I'm asking for here is a change in how we do church and That's scary But I really think that that leaders have to be vulnerable They have to be willing themselves to go to hard places They have to be willing themselves to be vulnerable about their own lives about their own shortcomings If a leader isn't willing to do that It's me very difficult for someone to feel comfortable coming to them So they can alleviate a lot of fear simply by being open about their own struggles their own difficulties I understand that can be overdone, but I think there has to be an element of that involved Thanks, Kerry. We have time for one more question, and then we need to engage the great questions that we have from you all There's nothing on the tip of your minds Let's move into the questions So we've tried to pull these questions together There's a good many of them So we've tried to pull them together into some lumps or categories so that at least if we don't answer your question directly We might hit on it by addressing some other questions as our hope Probably don't have time to get through them all, but we'll do our very best. So first I'll just start you off with softball Mac or IBM No, I'm kidding Let's start off with this question instead. So the question is What is considered social media? WhatsApp Voxer and then the broader question. How is this affecting us? I think a good definition that we can use can be We can think about a family So you have your nuclear family your mom and your dad then you have your children Then you have your extended family your cousins and so on and so forth I think a definition of social media that we can use that might be appropriate is a Family that is another layer outside of the extended family It's more superficial It's pretty much entirely superficial and The social aspect is you feel like you're a family when you're not really Yeah, I would say it's a mediatization of friendships and actually the medium That's used similar to what you mentioned earlier There are the effects the medium has on us Formative effects biases With logics they call media logic which infiltrate us, but they also shape the relationships they get shaped and The social media I think starts to again change relationships into a mediated form of relationship But it the relationships themselves Maybe on face value look good like many friends He calls me so call himself a friend, but it's interesting in the scholarly realm of those studies that are out there that they're pretty much a conclusion that your social media friends aren't social media if they aren't friends when they Do all sorts of Experiments when someone gets in trouble who's there to help them and it's almost never a social media friend It's always the person who's proximal So something to look at in that Maybe a follow-up question on that is How do you relate to peers who are you could say addicted to social media? Not through social media I would say first and foremost relate to them in real life and as naturally as possible and you know, some of us are more comfortable being forceful than others but Perhaps you can say to that friend who you're struggling to Make meaningful connections with hey, I'd like to take you out for coffee and by the way leave your cell phone behind I want to have a face-to-face deep conversation with you and think about what you want that conversation to look like I Think one of our challenges with an issue like social media is We like an issue to be black and white and many times we try to push every issue into black and white So social media for example there are strong feelings about this issue But there are legitimate reasons for social media I Work with people in restricted countries. They use it simply because it's encrypted. I can communicate with them back and forth But the problem with that is as soon as we say it's not wrong then we have people using it for wrong reasons and and to me if I Personally do not use social media for anything other than business. I'm not interested in finding out the details of everyone's life I furthermore think it's extremely unhealthy to a congregation For someone to be constantly transmitting what they're doing all the time There's something very egocentric about that it might feel good to the person But if they would simply consider from a kingdom perspective the amount of time they're taking in other people's lives in all the details of the daily life that they're transmitting on I For reports and I did interviews with people and every time some and in particular women are worse at this But every time they turn around they want to tell somebody about it and if they have 50 people on their on their list Someone's getting ding ding ding all the time Imagine that the the the wall that's putting up what it's stopping in that community with regard to reaching out and blessing other people So just because it's good in some situations does not mean the thing is is right There's a wrong perspective of this as well, and I think it's extremely powerful I think we need to be very warned about it. I think social media can be very deadly in our communities We need to be communicating face-to-face and and not as much on social media Let's move on Sorry, there's a lot to say there I'm gonna throw a hand grenade in and here's the question Can the internet be safely used or is complete abstinence the best option? I think as I mentioned before It's here.  I Don't recall who said it. Maybe it was Brian. Someone said something that was very interesting He said the Anabaptist people are very good at abstinence, but we're not so good at moderation And I think that that's an important thing that we need to consider I think it's too late, you know, we're on the train. Someone also said the train's taken off I think it's a bit too late to say can we abstain because it's Insidious pervasive everywhere whatever words you want to use it's almost inescapable I believe the internet can be safely used in many of the same ways that the library can be Very useful. However, let's just be honest about the fact that very few of us struggle with overuse of our local library Yeah, I think it can safely be used I think it has to do with the attitude of the user and that is to absolutely minimize Wasteful wasteful use Minimize detrimental use and be aware of it be cognizant that I have a possibility of just wasting my time wasting other people's time Atrophying myself aware of that and I then seek to Optimize my own development Constantly are always developing and to make sure that the internet is not a hindrance to that It can be a help. I mean, I have you saw my list of reasons. Yes, please Yeah, thank you I'll tag another question along with that One of the ways that technology is really Changed the way we live is in families Okay, and it's changed how children are raised. It's changed how young people spend their time It's changed the level of interaction that parents can give or what they feel like they can give their parents or to their children So the question here is how do we as parents lead out with the revolving door of technology? Especially with our youth who are normally adapting faster than we are I think the best way to lead out in The area of technology is to lead out period So be the kind of person who is living an inspirational life Who has a value-centered life who is living with all the gusto that you can for the Lord Jesus and for his kingdom and his Causes and and I think that you know as you're doing that That many of these questions many of these problems and dilemmas will fall into their proper places and perspective Kevin What do you do when as a parent you have no idea what's out there and so You're leading you have your children's heart But you don't have a discerning metric for what's good bad right or wrong with respect to anything technological So how do you you know again? Do you abstain or how do you moderate? So I think one of the most significant effects of technology is the relationships and attachments that it creates between people and devices But there's also other kinds of vices. There's also other kinds of vices related to relationships and we all know That you know peer relationships can be very damaging whether or not technology is in the picture And so I would say the best thing to do as a parent is to approach this like you would any other kind of relationship problem and Seek to capture the heart of your children seek to know your children to understand them to communicate love to them to get to the place where they can trust you and if This is a difficulty for you, then it should probably be your number one focus in your life I'm not a parent so answer your question to some extent. I guess more practically speaking What is what does that mean? But how do you how do you show that? What are some steps that you do? I think you mentioned you have a cell phone area where cell phones are There and only there what other sort of things? Sure, so one of the biggest things I think you can do is Be the kind of person who's putting intentional practices into your life to make connections with your children There's a lot. There's a lot else that's required behind this But there's something very beautiful about sitting down for a meal To gather as often as possible as a family and engaging each other in positive ways around that meal There's also there's also a whole host of other things that you can do To make meaningful connections with your children take time for your children read to them if they're young you know, maybe take them out to eat if they're older and And really pursue their hearts. Don't let the the precious years Waste away without Actually making them a priority. I'm sorry. I'm not talking about I apologize I'm not talking about technology because I just really don't think that it's an essential for a parent to be in the know How about technology in order to effectively combat the pressures that their children are facing through the technology because You will engage with them as you actually engage with the hearts of your children Here's a challenging question. Okay, one more one more thought on that Because of the two parts to this to this issue and the first is I think children should be grounded in reality and the internet is an alternate reality There's so much false fake fabricated Information out there and those children can't tell between real and false at those ages. It's immaturity That's what immaturity is and then misunderstanding of reality And so they're now basing their world views their interpretation of true reality Based on the internet if they're on the internet, it's it's input the same with entertainment when children and entertainment they then are interpreting reality their future interpretations based on their memory of of entertainment even the American Psychological Association says no screen time before two years old No screen time. It's too damaging for the child Okay, because it's that's the second issue that it the screen time the technological screen time formats the mind Aside from what nature does in forming or natural reality forms the mind And the problem is at those ages their mind is changing so fast That the little entertainment the little internet interaction they have has a long-term impact One more quick thing if I could say this about this. I would like my father to stand up please So unless you misunderstand me, I'm not trying to sit here and give advice as if I'm an expert parent I'm just repeating what my father did for me. Okay, so if you need a face to talk to there's a lot of good fathers here But if you need to face to talk to about how the parent your children That would be a good one. I think sometimes we underestimate also the fact that many of our youth are creating leadership There's a home in our community where they invited Young people and I think it was every Tuesday night just children youth from the community to come in and They wanted just to have time with them build relationships with them reach out to them They had a basket right inside the door and had a sign-on that said this we like social More than media put your phones here These were young people that were not coming from Christian homes But they all obediently shut off their phones and put in the basket and enjoyed an evening without it So sometimes we think that that leadership won't work, but I think sometimes we have youth that are actually craving real relationships We have time for just one final question here. I'm going to make this as practical specific as I can now that you know, there's There's concern anymore about the the really addictive nature of smart phones just as a platform With studies saying that you know the the average Power user of a smartphone is touching their phone something like 5,000 times a day So something about the platform there that really wants to get your attention. It wants to suck you in I Just make this as practical as I can I guess where have you seen? smartphone use Done well and what are some of the practices that you've observed? Creative ideas like when you come to our house. We're going to have supper put your phone in the basket. It stays out there Things like that anything that you can you can roll out of your memory here that say that that seems to have worked I would say this roll roll briefly When I was doing interviews That's one thing I observed was that that youth who are doing well typically have older people who have built Relationships with them and there's leadership there. It's not it's not older people just turning them loose Neither is it older people just saying no, but they're working with them through this process I think that's very important Gary a lot of the time People that are my age there's this disconnect in terms of age and then there's this disconnect in terms of technology and often we hear Know all the time and so what ends up happening is There's something that's very jarring here's this person that I'm supposed to look up to and respect and yet They seem to be keeping me at a distance so to speak so I think that the formation of those relationships are very important and I think also to Speak to the question I think we can use a practical example of how us four panelists kind of engage this panel We did use technology Joel presented us with an initial email all introducing each other We exchanged ideas and thoughts back and forth via email Then we had a conference call. We tried to have a conference. We tried to have a conference call. I Guess it was successful because we're all here so and During that we used it as a medium. It was something that we Could have you know talked endlessly for hours about idle things, but we used it for a purpose and We had a purpose in mind when we were using it And I think that as I mentioned before are we going to just be consuming content with these mediums? Or are we going to is there some end to this technology that that's fulfilling my purpose That's fulfilling the call that Jesus has put on my life a Couple things on that, you know, there's interesting studies coming out now that Social media use is related to lowering IQ very interesting to find that because of the shallow levels and That was another point. Sorry What I what I want to say is sub doing this media Subdoing it through Ordering your life and what has worked for me. I don't always do it But for great periods of time, I will do this I have my at the end of my devotion time in the morning I have my to-do list and I have my to-don't list My to-don't list sometimes that includes you know what? today No, and I will say I will I will do this sometimes some and it makes some people mad unless I have something urgent coming ringer off No internet to from 8 in the morning till 8 at night. I have too many Too many important things to do too many things. I can't let this thing distract me So let's be focused deep and that's what they're finding. That's what I brought that up now I remember why is that we're in this scattered mindset now by the Internet technology pinging us and it's Creating people that cannot focus and go deep and think thoroughly Okay, that's the IQ issue and so I've decided no I'm not gonna let this Turn me into a shallow person. I subdue it. I have times when I look at it Sometimes I don't look at it. I'll pick a time now for this hour at lunch time I need to do some shopping for a certain things. I'll do that then stop it But I'm not letting it rule me That's all we have time for Roll the medium Don't allow the medium to roll you Thanks, Harry. I Think that's all we have time for here Kurt We will conclude and then I'll invite you back up. You have the floor


Right. Hey. Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to listen to our talk about Unvoy Compression Subsystem Evolution. In our talk, we give the story of a long but very successful project to design the new Unvoy Compression subsystem with some great community collaboration and then discuss some of its features and future plans. But before getting started, let us introduce ourselves first. My name is Mikko Ylinen. I'm a software engineer at Intel's open source cloud software engineering team, working on device enabling for Kubernetes and cloud native applications. In this project, I've mostly been coaching Dimitri who did all the heavy lifting, but I've also hear Unvoy contributions myself, mostly on the open SSL side of things. My name is Jose Nino and I am an engineer at Lyft, where I have worked on networking related technologies for the past four years. I was part of the initial open source team with Unvoy and worked on server side technologies for the first two and a half years that I was at Lyft. And then, for the last year and a half, I've been working on a related project called Unvoy Mobile, which we'll discuss a little bit today. Next, I want to introduce Dimitri. He's not in the presentation with us today, but his contribution to the work that we are discussing today deserves a special recognition. Moving on to the story, how the Unvoy compression rework got started and what we learned from the process. But let's get started with some common terminology. And there are lots of variations used across different code bases. So we wanted to explain the ones used in this presentation and in the Unvoy code base. Within the compression subsystem, overall, we have both compressors and decompressors and they compress and decompress data, of course, naturally. And then next, let's take a look what the HTTP GZIP filter in Unvoy does. And on the request path on the left hand side the client sends a request. The filter on Unvoy looks for matching a GZIP except encoding header. And the filter deletes it and forwards the request to the upstream service. And when the filter receives the response data, it compresses the data using the GZIP algorithm. And finally then Unvoy proxies the GZIP response back to the client. So this is how it works. And basically it is limited to only response compression. This all works well if you are interested in providing compression based on just like one existing one implementation of GZIP. But then you might ask what if you want to modify that implementation, say using hardware accelerated GZIP for instance. Or what if you want to use different compression algorithm altogether like broadly compression algorithm. Or finally what if you may also want to decompress the data at the proxy layer. These were all the questions that remained and which we kind of asked ourselves. And that's another reason why we got started with the work that we did here. Well, let's look at some of the existing advantages in Unvoy. And these were kind of the things that allowed us to start thinking the redesign a more comprehensive way and design the comprehensive compression subsystem for Unvoy. First of all Unvoy is open source and in our team basically our motto is upstream forest. We wanted to propose changes to the upstream and get them accepted and with open source this is easily they should be easily doable. Second thing is Unvoy has a very clear abstract interfaces for instance for compression. We had these very basic interfaces for compressing and decompressing data and that is just provided through the data buffers. And then third and perhaps the most important point Unvoy has a very mature extension system that allows people to implement their own logic for very well defined extension points and we thought that perhaps compression libraries could be the first class extension points for Unvoy. So with that we just took the time to prepare the initial pull request to generalize the existing GC filter into a compression algorithm agnostic filter. Originally we were expecting very smooth process in upstreaming maybe with just a few comments review comments that we needed to address and then we should be done and complete with this with this contribution. But it did not go like that. Everything did not go as we expected and at some point as you can see a long time since we originally started the pull request to work simply got the stalls and we did not see a path getting the contribution accepted. And myself and Dimitri we were like pretty puzzled so why is it so hard to get this accepted especially because the contribution the implementation was meeting all the needs that many others also had asked in the past and at this point we were even like considering going with the plan B and implementing what we wanted for the hardware accelerator just using custom external filters that meets our needs. But then luckily the work was spotted by Michael and Jose from Lyft somewhere I think in February time frame this year and they had seen the work and they also had the need for Envoy decompression in Envoy mobile to keep their public APIs with compressed responses and then do decompression on the client side. So it's not always just open source that makes these contributions possible but especially for bigger features like this contribution that we had it's really about the community and how the community collaborates together to kind of complete the last mile and getting things accepted upstream. And what we learned from all this during the way to while getting this accepted and merged in upstream so one observation is that sometimes it's best if you just share the big picture the kind of the the design idea in a shared document to make the conversation possible and then eventually create the kind of consensus about the changes and the way forward. Before investing a lot of time in working on POCs and then scratching the work and starting all over. But this document it also helps to build the community behind the work which is super important as we just discussed previously. And one other thing we also learned that sometimes all these open source contributions they need a lot of patience and that don't give up too easily if there's some delay in getting your changes reviewed and accepted. Good. So next I think we have Jose going to talk about generalizing the ANVOI on more compression. All right thank you Miko. So now that we have that background context of what existed in the ANVOI compression space with the specific G-SIP filter. Second what were some of the use cases that were not possible with that previous implementation. And then what advantages existed that could make a general compression system possible in ANVOI and how all that work was possible thanks to not only a cross-company collaboration between us at Lyft and the folks at Intel but really a cross-continent collaboration with people in the United States and Finland. So let's dive into what we actually did in generalizing this compression system. So the first obvious thing when looking at the G-SIP filter is that while this is what it looks from the outside if you look under the hood what you have is a filter in two parts the HTTP filter part and then the compressor part. So the if we zoom in here the HTTP filter part deals with the HTTP level concerns like looking for the accepting coding header like Miko was saying or replacing the data frames with the compressed data and then the filter itself uses the G-SIP compressor which it itself is the one that is compressing the data buffers using the G-SIP algorithm. So going back to the existing advantages what became evident when looking at the filter this way is that there was nothing specific in the filter that required the compressor to behave in a certain way to use G-SIP to compress because it used this very simple interface that we had seen before a compressor only has one function it compresses. So there was a very clear delineation of where we could divide the filter and then plug in a compressor library regardless of the compression algorithm that it used. So now that we had this generic compressor working within the generic HTTP compressor filter we could raise the compressor itself to be a first class extension in Anboid and so this is done using the classes that we see here where we have a class that derives from the config type factory class and then every particular implementation of a compressor library derives from that in turn. So now our G-SIP compressor or perhaps our broadly compressor in the future derived from the name compressor library config class and then the compressor filter uses this compressor factory class the generic compressor factory class to create compressors with which to actually compress the data. In other words we achieved the first of our goals we are now able to have any number of different compressor schemes in Anboid without each having to implement an HTTP filter themselves. We can just plug in any of them into the generic compressor filter so whether it is a G-SIP compressor or a broadly compressor or like our friends at Intel hardware accelerated G-SIP. All right so on to our second goal what about a full compression system one that can both compress and decompress data. Well that was easier now that we had a generic implementation of a compressor filter. We used the same principle of abstraction using the generic decompressor class and created a generic decompressor filter that used a possible generic decompressor thus creating a fully pluggable HTTP decompressor filter. So parallel to the compressors as first class extension points in Anboid we created decompressors as first class extension points in Anboid thus we paved the way for having not only a G-SIP decompressor but also having any number of decompressors to parallel the compressors that we were adding. So now we have a complete generic end-to-end compression solution powered by Anboid where service B can send a response and then the HTTP compressor filter can compress that response which arrives to service A and in turn its HTTP decompressor filter can decompress the response before proxying it to the service itself. So as you can see compression is completely done in the network layer without having to involve any product engineers, owners of service A or service B. All right so this is what the Anboid compression extension tree looks like. The common directory implements the generic compressor and decompressor factory base classes that all compressors and decompressors strive from and then each particular compression scheme has its own tree where they have a compressor and a decompressor and potentially a common base class that derive from some scheme specific functionality. So in Anboid currently we have the G-SIP compressor and decompressor but as we have been saying the beauty of this first class extension is that any number of compression schemes can be added whether added upstream to the main Anboid repo or in your private build of Anboid. All right so that's a whirlwind tour of how we generalize decompression but most exciting we want to present some of the case studies that were enabled thanks to the to this generalized compression scheme. And the first one, oh sorry Mikko, go ahead. Yeah so I just, thanks Jose. So I was about to say that our first case study talks about implementing hardware accelerated compression for Anboid. So some are a little bit about the rationale for why doing hardware accelerated compression. Typically hardware acceleration can bring several benefits to your application for instance as you know being very time consuming process it might make sense to offload all this compression processing to a dedicated co-processor. Sometimes even like hardware that is completely optimized for this particular task. And then the added benefit with that is that then you can pre CPU cycles for something more important that runs on the main CPU and then the co-processor, the accelerated co-processor doing all the work. In our case we have implemented a reference implementation using this Anboid compression subsystem for an Intel Quick Assist technology card. It's gonna dedicate card optimized for crypto and compression processing. This implementation adds QAT co-compressor. We have it implemented in an external repository as Jose mentioned. It is also with the Anboid extension mechanism possible to add your custom implementations easily living in your own external repositories. The QAT compressor we have implemented uses a framework what we have called QAT zip and then the QAT zip then directly uses the QAT hardware abstraction layer and the driver and sending out all the compression requests to the dedicated co-processor. We have it right now we have it only for compressors. Basically we are able to compress the data and what we are working on right now is that we're just adding looking to add almost there adding the decompressor piece for the hardware acceleration as well. Based on our experiments this piece of compression in addition to the fact that we are also able to free CPU circles for something else. All right so thank you for that case study. There are some published results and we will share the link with the presentation slides. So now let's talk about the Anboid Mobile use case. I want to first give a quick overview of the goal of the Anboid Mobile project and what it is as a baseline context for this case study. This diagram shows an increasingly common topology in network distributed systems these days. I'm sure many of you at your companies have set up similar to this where Anboid is deployed as a universal network primitive where it deals with the majority if not all the network traffic in a company's architecture. However my team at Lyft recognized that we had left an important hop outside the ecosystem because traditionally we've treated mobile clients as independent from the backend infrastructure and we have built unique solutions to what was assumed to be a unique space. So we identified a technology gap because in spite of all the work that we had done server side we saw that three nines of reliability at the server side is meaningless if the user of a mobile client is only able to complete the desired product flows a fraction of the time. So what we want client side are the same guarantees that we had server side. So that is what we created Anboid Mobile. We propose that we don't need to treat the mobile clients any different at least from the network perspective as we do with the server side infrastructure. So this is what my this is why my team built this over the last year. We have built bindings into Anboid that allow us to run the code base as a native library in a mobile client application and so we have great documentation and a ton of material about the project so if you're interested in the project in itself please feel free to take a look. It's also all open source but today we are here to talk about compression and in particular show you with how with Anboid Mobile in the client and with Anboid at the edge of our infrastructure and with this new generic compression subsystem we were able to do some things that would have been too resource intensive in the past. So compression at the edge is particularly important because payload sizes can lead to performance degradation under adverse network conditions which are usually experienced by mobile phones making public API requests to your infrastructure. So as I mentioned before lift compresses all responses at the edge and we wanted to have at least the same behavior when we migrated off our old client stacks to Anboid Mobile. So in the past before Anboid Mobile implementing compression at the edge required three different code bases one for the edge proxy one for the android client and one for the iOS client. So this might be okay if we just wanted to put you know one compression algorithm in place and just leave it be. But my team started asking questions very similar to our colleagues at Intel what if we wanted to squeeze better compression and and does better performance with different compression schemes what about bi-directional compression where we not only compress responses but also requests. And this questions quickly become intractable if for every variation that we want to test we need to implement the same code three times server android and iOS. And that is really one of the main reasons we embarked on the Anboid Mobile project to begin with because by using the same code base everywhere with Anboid Mobile in the client and Anboid at the edge we are able to have only one implementation for every new technology we want to experiment with affording us on parallel consistency and extensibility at a fraction of the engineering hours required in the past. So in other words now we do have truly a true universal network primitive that we can experiment with. And why we became so interested in collaborating with our colleagues at Intel in this compression subsystem. All right so let's see how we brought compression back to the edge with only one implementation and without involving either our client or server engineers. So before we go into compression let's look at the request flow using Anboid Mobile. Very similar to Anboid on the server Anboid Mobile proxies request from the client to the edge proxy upstream and then the edge proxies that received that request further proxy that to the upstream service. Similarly on the response path the edge receives a response sent to the client using Anboid Mobile which in turn surfaces that to the application via callbacks in the library. All right so the first step in enabling compression is installing the new compressor filter with a particular compressor library on the edge nodes. At this point nothing changes in the client. The client sends a request which Anboid Mobile proxies to the edge but now the edges compressor filter searches for the accepting coding header which allows the filter to know if it should compress the response for this request. But the header is missing so it simply forwards the request and then when the response comes back it does nothing with it and passes it back to Anboid Mobile. But now we can install the decompressor filter in Anboid Mobile and here I want to highlight how easy that was. We didn't have a filter before and then boom we installed the filter so easy. Well jokes aside this is easy because Anboid Mobile is Anboid so we can install the same filters that we use in Anboid on the server including the decompressor filter. All right so now that we have the decompressor the client sends a request and the decompressor adds the accepting coding header. So when the compressor at the edge searches for that header it finds it so then the decompressor strips the header and lets the Anboid proxy the request. But thanks to the accepting coding header the compressor is now primed to compress the response because it knows that the client is going to be able to handle this compressed response. So when the response comes back the compressor compresses the response and in turn the decompressor filter decompresses it before sending it back to the application. All without the client or the server engineer being involved at all. Nice so we were really excited with this first zero touch implementation and we started thinking what else could we do at the edge with Anboid Mobile in the client and with Anboid in the server. So potentially we could have bi-directional compression so instead of this setup where only the response gets compressed to be sent across the edge we could have a more complicated setup but it is a setup where both the client and the server have both a compressor and a decompressor filter allowing both requests and responses to be sent compressed across the wire. But we could you know do more than that not only are we allowed to do bi-directional compression now but we could also run experiments with different compression schemes and fine tune our compression settings to achieve less degradation at the edge and ultimately higher success with our public APIs. So this is the Anboid Mobile case study and this very very flexible compression system has really enabled us to pursue a lot of avenues that would have been intractable due to the engineering hours required beforehand. So those two were the big use cases that drove compression forward with a cross-company cross-continent collaboration to thank for. However we have many things planned for the compression space in Anboid. First even though the new compressor filter has been around since the 1.15 release the old g-sip filter is still there we plan to remove it from Anboid by the next release 1.17. Second is broadly support which is currently being worked on by Dimitri at Intel. Third is having bi-directional compressor bi-directional decompressor has already been implemented by myself but to have a fully bi-directional end-to-end compression system we're missing request compression this is very easy to add in the compressor filter in case anyone in the audience is interested. Having this pluggable compression libraries enables us to apply compression to other parts of Anboid your ideas are welcome on which parts exactly can benefit from it. Lastly it is worth mentioning that the performance of g-sip compression in Anboid still has room for improvement for example g-sip compression in NGNX works about 25 percent faster than in Anboid when configured similarly. These are just some of the items we have planned in the compression roadmap but we can't wait for seeing what other interests the community has for this new subsystem. That's all we had for today. Thanks for listening and watching us and looking forward to see you in the community.