Hey everyone, welcome back to figure fantasy. So today we're here at the official figure fantasy Facebook page of the game. So I was actually surprised to see an update announcement or the patch notes for the update on Friday. This is actually unexpected because it's still a Wednesday today here in my area. I was expecting this tomorrow but nevertheless we're going to discuss this new update right now and I think it is a lot and a few surprises for you guys. So update announcement here. One step into the dream limited series time event. So unlock again clearing the main story should be 2-24 minimum. Next is your all-new Super Rare Figurines Limited Rate Up. Ayane Okada. Of course, I was able to discuss her coming in this Friday. So this is unexpected. Event schedule would be Ferrari 25 6 in the morning up to March 10 then event portal tap onto fully blind box limited rate up on top right corner of your home screens. Okay. Event info you can order blind boxes using diamonds or limited blind box cards when obtaining an all-ultra figure in there will be a higher chance for you to be for it to be Ayane Okada. So for those who are going with Galatea, so this is your chance to get her. She's an ultra defender brand Galatea single target lockdown and squad guardian. So please be sure to get her on Friday starting on Friday. So we have a long time to get her I think that's going to be two weeks. So next this is actually unexpected. So Kau Kau is also dropping limited rate up event schedules. All is going to be for Friday 25 up to March 17. So this is going to be three weeks event portal tap on fully blind box brand exclusives on top of the right corner of the home screen. So this guy actually came out of nowhere. So he's going to be also specialist figurine brand 999 AOE damage dealer and grievous wounds. Okay. Number two is limited special pack Ayane Okada Vitality Rhythm. So we're going to be getting a skin for Ayane Okada. This is going to be dropping as well on February 25. Okay. So event purchase of Ayane Okada limited edition special pack to obtain in limited special edition Ayane Okada Vitality Rhythm. This will not be available through any other means once the pack is no longer available. So please be sure to get this one if you are interested. Number three guys we have an exclusive special edition permanent in stock Crusoe's Beast in tank top version. I've seen this one. He's in a tank top. So I forgot the other details of the skin. So in stock store special version store. And the other one is Vazaruin Stardust Charm version. So Vazaruin will be getting her own skin. So it's been a long time. So stock is going to arrive on March 4 not on the February 25. So please look for that and in stock Sani store. Okay. Number four event limited story sister adventure coming soon. This will also be on February 25th guys up until March 11. And you can unlock the corresponding achievements in Ayane's picture book. So we will have an event, a new event, and I will be discussing these tomorrow. Aquino's Magic Cards. Okay. So Koi Fish, Oma Mori, and Aquino's Magic Cards. So these are I think the items the exclusive items that you're going to be getting. Event introduction under the clear blue sky. The ice blue girl stood by the chair blossom tree of Violet Academy. The corners of the girl's mouth green in a dissipation blah blah blah. This is just a description. Number five is event limited challenge dungeon infinite gaming dream coming soon. This will also drop on the 25th event portal splendid connection infinite gaming dream. So a lot of events, new events. This is I'm liking this update so far. So we're going to be obtaining magic controllers and daily sign in event limited idle drops as well. Number six is event limited idle drop magic controller. So I mentioned this earlier. So this is going to start also on February 25th up to March 10. And move on to number seven free jigsaw puzzle bingo event coming soon. So another jigsaw puzzle event bingo dropping also on February 25th. Ways to obtain Koi Fish, Oma Mori, daily sign in participate in limited story sister adventure redemption in adachi store event store purchasing event packs. Okay. Number eight is one step into the dream daily sign and a lot of daily signings now guys. So take advantage of these events because when these events are out, we are actually looking for resources anyway. Limited time event also adachi store coming as well on February 25th. I'm not going to go into the details of this. New packs on stock, daily selection, new event pack on the fifth spring holiday bingo pack. And we have here into the dream card pack as well. Cross server arena dungeon final show then coming soon also on the 25th. A lot of things are coming the 25th guys. So it's going to be a good day and a lot of things to discuss. Okay. New game mode collection commemoration. Okay. After February 24th after the maintenance. So the new game mode collection commemoration is coming soon after masters five. Manager figures have reached level 20. The second stage will be unlocked for the tackle level and idle idling will drop new display shelf upgrade material. So this is going to open only for 220. Sad to say, but I'll preview this for you guys and see what you are going to see even if you're not at level 220. Okay. Before we leave this patch notes, a general reminder for the events. Mention above based on regional time. You will have different times for the update to reach your time zone. So North America, Europe, Southeast Asia, please check the times here. Please don't worry that the update hasn't dropped in your area. So please check out the times here so that you will be able to be aware of the update time. But before that, before we leave, I'm going to show you guys how Kau Kau looks. So this is how he looks guys. So for those of you who have been wondering who Kau Kau is, this is him. I was actually quite a bit surprised that it's not Aihino Haru who dropped, but it's him. But anyway, he's here, so let's welcome him. So anyway guys, that is it for the patch notes. A big update coming our way on February 25th. So please be sure to wake up early for the patch update in your area. And please make sure that you take advantage of all the events and all the freebies in this update. Anyway guys, thank you very much for staying this far. Hopefully I have discussed with you a little bit of the patch notes. And I'll see you on the update on February 25th. Take care guys, stay safe, this is The Ward and I'm out of here.


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one and welcome my podcast Friday PM the podcast. My name is Luigi Scarcelli. I'm here with Lee Kellis, the founder and creator of Holy Donuts. Welcome, Lee. How are you? Hello, Luigi. I am wonderful. Thank you so much. Happy to be here. Thank you. Lee is calling in from Florida. The weather's a little better there than it is here. We're still in the muddy season. And Lee has a few things coming up that we want to talk about as well as you're not only the founder of Holy Donuts, you're also an author. You have the women who need donuts as well as the love diet. That is true. I had a lot of thoughts and a lot of things to share that I learned from starting a donut business and about myself. So I put them into a couple short and sweet little books. Perfect. Perfect. I think one of them was about three or four years ago and the other was last year. Yeah, something like that. I sort of lose track of time, but I think that's about right. Sure. So let's start right out. Can you tell me a little bit about your kind of early biography? You were born in Portland. I know that. Yeah, definitely. Portland and went to school on Steven's Ave. Like the very few people I think go kindergarten to senior year right in that row on Steven's Ave. But I did that. And then I went to the University of Maine, but definitely a Mainer for sure. And then I tried to get out of there as soon as I could to see the rest of the country when I moved to San Francisco. But definitely a Portland native, yes. How long were you in San Francisco for? I went for six years and I was a concierge and I got to know the city really well. And I did lots of whining and dining and theater.  So that kind of gets us up to 2009. Had you met your husband? Because we're going to talk a little bit about that briefly in San Francisco. Was that back in Maine or? Yeah, I met him in San Francisco and our daughter, she was born in San Francisco. And then we moved back to the east coast because San Francisco is a little too expensive at that point. Back then, still is. I think it still is, exactly. Yeah, it hasn't got any less expensive. Yeah. And so you guys moved back. You had a young daughter at the time, probably nine or 10 or something? No, she was very little when we moved back, four. And that's kind of when I started my new life. I started working in restaurants. So I really, I hadn't been in Maine for several years, or Portland for several years. And I got right into the restaurant scene. And that was just really kind of how I started to get to know everybody and get to experience the food scene in Maine, which I guess we could kind of make sense as to why I got into the food business because I saw the potential. Right, right. It was the niche that was really growing a lot. So you'd been in the food business, you kind of got to know, you know, the Old Port is, it's a very familial, I mean, it's they fight like families, but a lot of people know each other. So it's kind of a, it's a great structure to start in. Yeah, I actually worked at Evangeline. So that was Eric Deserles restaurant when I first moved back to Maine after many years. And I met so many people who I'm still really close with. And a lot of those people sort of helped form the rest of my career and my life. And I started the doughnut business kind of born out of that inspiration and seeing how receptive Portland is to local businesses and to food and to unusual creations. So that's kind of, you know, where the doughnut was born out of the, the potential that I saw Portland had to receive it. And we'll get to that, I'm sure. Right, right. But in 2009, you and your husband split up? Yeah, we moved, we bought property in Wiskast at Maine and built, he built a solar powered house on a 40 acre plot. And I was driving back and forth to work at Evangeline as the manager. And that was kind of the beginning of the end, sadly. It was very stressful. And I sometimes people don't survive big life projects like that. And that, that was the beginning of challenges. He was living his dream to build this off the grid project. And I was still trying to maintain normalcy in society. And we kind of, it kind of created a little bit of a risk. So yes, the divorce ensued, which was very, very nobody, nobody likes divorce. It was, it was not fun. And but yeah, something good came out of it. That's, that's the silver lining. Right, right. And so, you know, you kind of grew apart. You were back living with your mom at the time? Yeah. So then I, then the next phase was separation. And I'm moving to my mom's unheated attic in Portland. And it was cold. And it was January. And I had my small four-year-old or actually six, six year old daughter. And I was kind of set adrift. And I cried a lot. And I didn't know what I was doing with my life. And I got a job at a pizza place in Portland and just kind of decided to take it day by day and just figure out what, what was going to happen next in life. Things happened out of desperation. And then I guess a little bit of inspiration, but the need for a career and a life and an income forced me to figure it to think about something creative. And that's, that's where the doughnut came from. Right. And so was this, had you thought of, was it kind of an idea that it was a big picture idea? Like I want to do something food related because you're, that was the natural inclination. I mean, was it, was it, was it like, Oh, I could start an insurance company or I could create a perfect doughnut place? Was it already kind of a tabulation a little bit? So it was a necessity for heart comfort. So I was very emotionally scarred from going through a divorce and I just wanted comfort food. And I sort of became obsessed with doughnuts and I was finding myself looking for good doughnuts everywhere I would go. I went back to San Francisco a couple of times. I'd go to Boston, New York City, and I would just find myself searching for doughnuts, which indicated that there was some sort of deep need that was, that was needing to be met in my soul and in my life and in my taste buds, I guess. And at that pizza place I was working in Portland, the owner knew that I was obsessed with doughnuts and out of the blue one day, he just said, you need to open a doughnut shop. And I, it hit me like a ton of bricks as if it were like a message from God. And I just, the next morning I went to the bookstore, I was a mother, a single mother with no, like hardly an income. And I started writing down every doughnut recipe I could find for free in the books. And I just went home and started making doughnuts like every single day of my life for months until I perfected a recipe. And I think that a lot of people think of the, the potato doughnut as kind of your signature. Is that actually accurate that that's, or is that one of the types of doughnuts you do or? No, every single doughnut pretty much has mashed potato in it. So it's not potato flour, it's mashed potato. And that was an idea from the same pizza guy. He said, use potato. And I said, that sounds weird, but it's like the gnocchi concept or potato bread. It just makes everything more rich and delicious. So I found a recipe in the joy of cooking cookbook and I went with it and then I tweaked it and I changed it into the different variations that we have at the Holy doughnut. And I just thought they were the most delicious thing I'd ever had. And so I said, if I love this, it's sellable. I think I have a business on my hand. And is that also that there are they gluten free or is potato not necessarily gluten free? It's just a different type of ingredient for a doughnut. So it's one third potato, two thirds regular flour. So they're definitely not gluten free, but they little left.  That's something I think that a lot of people are wondering. Yeah. So I thought it was funny. It's the same. I will give the third bit of credit to the same pizza guy. He said, use potatoes and call it the Holy doughnut. And every single thing he said within that 90 second stretch, I ran with it and I said, yeah, I said, I'm not even going to consider another name. I love it. I thought it was cute. The potato is the holy crop of mains basically. And I considered doughnuts holy. It's not because of any religion or anything. I just thought it was cute in a great pun. It's actually what I had looked at myself was that it's very interesting because we'll talk a little bit later in the podcast about kind of your bigger search and your kind of overall spiritual search, not in a religious way per say, but in a holistic way. And the first thing that I thought of was the doughnut and the circle is very representative in many spiritual ways as the infinite, the eternity, original perfection, totality. It could have been a cosmic coincidence. It's hard to know. Ah, I would say given my my propensity for looking at synchronicities and deep meaning, I think you're absolutely right because I don't think that there's any coincidences. Right, exactly. Things happen for a reason. So at that time, I mean, I read the book, the first book, the women who need doughnuts. And it talks about you started out on a very small kitchen.   Could you tell me a little bit about when? Oh, yeah, totally mad scientist, totally like out of the movie. I just I had an apartment on Montjoy Hill. And I just started making doughnuts for at a time in a pot on my stove with a thermometer. So the temperature was all over the place. I didn't know what I was doing, but they just tasted so darn good. I just couldn't really screw them up. And I invited people over. I said, you got to try these. They're so delicious, cinnamon and sugar. But yeah, it was started very, very organically, just in a pot on my stove for a time. So from there, you kind of start expanding. You're going to smaller kind of bakeries, I think, or coffee shops. What was the what was the original group of people other than your family, which we'll get to in a second, that your first kind of reach out from that? Yeah, I walked down the street because I lived right on the top of the hill down to the Indian Street, the Washington Ave, coffee by design. And Marnie, the manager, I had I knew her and I just said, hey, I've got a plate of doughnuts here. I said, you want to start selling some tomorrow? And she said, sure. And I felt like I had hit the jackpot. I was so excited. I thought I can't believe someone's going to sell something I made. And I soon thereafter went and rented a commercial kitchen, a small restaurant space. But it was very small scale to begin. I think she sold six or 12 the first day and it went well. So I was very encouraged. Yeah, and it seems interesting because it does seem like at that time, because this was again, 2012, 13, is that where those days were? 2011 is when I kind of really started the wholesale business. And so it seemed like there was this whole burgeoning coffee by design, a lot of very cool coffee shops. And I don't know if they were really too interested in having, you know, doughnuts from country kitchen or wherever the types of places are, they probably said, well, doughnuts are great. And was there were there people making doughnuts in a way that you were even just in a local sense? No, and I think I was I sort of pride myself with having business intuitions. I sort of kind of know what's going to come next. I just have these senses about things and nobody was really doing doughnuts, which is exactly why I jumped on it back in 2011. I said, I'm looking for this product and I can't find it. Therefore, it's needed. And I can fill a niche and nobody I have no competition. So it was great. At that point, I just said, Oh, I've got a product that I think is going to fly. So I just I was really inspired. Yeah, and I know that I was living in Chicago at the time and there was people doing the cupcake craze and they were selling out with cupcakes. So I mean, it's it's an interesting way that you realize that I mean that I think you talked about in the book that, you know, it's a comfort food. It is kind of an old fashion type of thing. It has that New England vibe to it. But you're just also putting a new spin on it. Totally. Exactly. That was exactly my business philosophy is that it's something that's been around forever, but yet nobody's doing it. But yet I can put a new spin on it and make it a little quirky and, you know, updated. Yeah, yeah, cool. So in those days, your family was really helpful. Your dad jumped right in. This is when you first were really just doing the cooking before you opened the first holy doughnuts. Is that correct? It was about seven months. So I was doing the wholesale myself for several months. And then he jumped in, I think it was like six or seven months in. And he was very, very, very beyond helpful. He said, you have a business on your hands. You can't afford to help to pay anybody. And I'm going to be here at 6am every single day and help you. And from that moment forward, he never faltered. He was there for years at 6am to help me deliver my wholesale, and then help me open the first shop on park out. And we'll talk more about your dad because I, you know, I know that he's very inspirational to you, but I just wanted to talk about, you know, your family was Jeff also helped out with some of the business, your brother-in-law. So he jumped in about a year and a half in. He quit his job, which was a big risk with a family of three kids and a wife. And he said, I see the potential in this donut thing and I'm going to help. And we're going to basically blow it up. And that was the whole other thing that you probably read in the book that I was really reluctant because I just wanted it to be one cute little donut shop and leave it at that and keep it simple. And he said, no, I don't think you see the potential here. And so we're now opening our fifth shop because of him. And yeah, that's that's how Jeff has contributed. And he's he's not stopping anytime soon. And so at that time, you had the first shop. So that kind of gets us to where we were at that period was the first shop I think that I ever saw was around that time. And it was by the the Expo Center, whatever that's called now, kind of in that part of Portland. Is that was that the first shop? Yeah, that was the first shop. It used to be the old Taroni sandwich shop for 45 years. And my dad and I went in and the two of us just cleaned it and painted it and made it extremely, you know, low budget little donut operation with really I had no business experience. I just I was winging it and it went pretty well. Right, right. Was there did you need to have any type of marketing? I mean, how did how did was it just that people just found it by word of mouth? Like how does how does a place become overnight success? So there's two things. I had established the wholesale presence by with the coffee by design. And then actually Whole Foods said yes, right away, which also blew my mind to selling my product. And then pretty much every single coffee shop in Portland was selling them. So they had already gained a reputation of oh, there's a delicious homemade doughnut around town. So when we opened on March 16th of 2012, people already knew about the product. But the biggest exciting thing was on 16 days later, on the 28th Meredith Gold wrote an article in the Portland Press Herald about this new this new donut shop with a, you know, a twist, basically. And from that moment on, I remember I was sitting there making donuts by myself, which I did most of the at the beginning. And the line was out the door and down the street. And I was panicking and shaking because it just went haywire overnight to like a trickle of customers to literally a line out the door and people almost reaching into the fryer for donuts. I mean, we couldn't make them fast enough. I sold a thousand donuts that day. And I just couldn't keep up. And I, I mean, it's a wonderful problem to have, but it just blew my mind. And you still remember that date of when that was? March 28th. Yep, it was March 28th of 2012. And it was, she wrote the article that morning and the paper came out and the line never stopped. Thank God. And it was expansion ever since, which is really, you know, the interesting part as well. And I think you, didn't it help that you got the shop that was on route one just for visibility? Or was that something that added some people would, it was almost a, you drive by, I mean, they imagine the millions of people that drive by on, on their way to Old Orchard. And they just Google, well, what is this holy donuts? Or let's stop by and try it. I mean, it's something different than over and over at Dunkin Donuts or at Tim Hortons. And you took over at Tim Hortons actually at that location. Exactly. Which is, I'm very, very proud of that. Our second store was the Exchange Street Shop, which you probably recall. And that, that was a crazy, crazy busy location right in the heart of the Old Port. And that was, we did that for five years until we just moved locations. But the Scarborough route one location you just mentioned, that was a big deal. We took over a big Tim Hortons and it's got a drive through and a huge location. And that was kind of a turning point for our little local homegrown business to how all of a sudden have more of a corporate presence. So, and that, yeah, that was a pretty good business move. So what was a, like, what was the staff like early on? This is something that I find interesting. I mean, did you find people that you knew other than your family? And then how did, how did you go about expanding that for a lot of the other young entrepreneurs out there to keep their, you know, expanding in a way that works? Is there any advice that you would have to people? Oh, that's actually hilarious because it was, it was kind of just so chaotic at the beginning. And it took so many years to get systems. And that's really where Jeff came in. He really tightened the ship and created systems because I'm a, a creative butterfly.  All I could think about was donut flavors and creating. But here I was with a very busy business and I had to figure out how to staff it and run it and be an HR manager and a donut creator. And I was not that great at it. So at the beginning, the staff was basically just like a hodgepodge of local 20-somethings who are all wonderful human beings, but it was the place was so busy. We just really tried to keep it together every single day. And it does take a village. And so that does lead me to another question about being the creator of the donuts. I mean, how do you get inspiration for different flavors? What, what for the viewer who might be listening to this from far away, and maybe they're going to come to Maine? Like what are some of the different flavors? What's the palate? What's the, what, what, what would be from the chef side of things? Cause we've been talking a lot about the business side, but tell me about that side too. Cause I know you really do drive a lot from the pleasure of taste and things of that nature. Oh yeah.  Like it needs to be something you will never forget full of flavor, extremely different, not necessarily different, but just really good. So at the very beginning, the first kind of 12 flavors, I just started creating things that I really wanted to eat. So I thought, ooh, a sweet potato donut. Nobody's making that. Never heard of it. So I, I created the recipe with a ginger glaze, so spicy, but different. And the chocolate sea salt was really, nobody was doing chocolate and salt 11 years ago. I, and that sounds a little cocky, but I think in my own brain, I think I created it for the donut world. And then the cannoli, I went on a food network donut competition and I had to create a donut in like 30 minutes on TV under the gun sweating bullets. And I created the cannoli donut with the ricotta and mascarpone filling. And it's so good. So we still have that. And then just all the various flavors, the Allen's coffee brandy, I thought was funny because that's just a cheap booze in Maine that everybody's known for, the soccer games and their coffee cups. And I thought, oh, that'd be funny on a donut and delicious. So it's just basically things that I would find incredibly delicious. I just, you know, let's throw it in the donut. And a lot of them just worked. We made a lot that were awful. We made zucchini donuts and matcha green tea donuts and red velvet donuts, but with beet juice because I never want to use anything artificial. Everything has to be organic and natural because I'm neurotic. So I made a lot of, there's been hits and misses, but I don't think there's any donut stone unturned in my 11 years. And was there ever a time that you tried to do like a moxie donut or a lobster? I did a moxie donut. It's actually really hard to get a full moxie flavor, but I tried it. I tried every single thing pertaining to Maine. We did a lobster donut that was really, really, really good, but just cost of products is way too high. And so I just wanted to talk to you about briefly from the business side of things, like where do you see holy donuts in the next five years? Is there a game plan? What you want to do? Yeah. So we're opening up three building commissary kitchen kind of massive donut presence in Arundel, Maine, which is right next to Penny bunk. And that's going to be opening soon. And that is the next phase. So that will be a commissary kitchen that could potentially feed other surrounding locations. And Jeff has pretty big visions about multiple locations. So once we get the Arundel location up and running, I think he'll set his sights in a couple of years on several more locations going more south, maybe into New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Duncan Donuts has their competition on the way, right into Boston. So I definitely wanted to talk to you a little bit about your relationship with your dad. I know that was important to you. He was kind of an inspiration to you. Was there any things that you wanted to mention about your dad and how important he was for you? Yes.  And it's hard to even put into word just for someone to say, I'm going to show up at six a.m. every single day indefinitely. That's kind of unheard of nowadays and to say I'll pretty much do it unpaid. And like I wrote in the book, I was always stressed out and probably not that nice to him because he's my dad because kids can be that way. But he always took it in stride. He was always laughing. He was like, I called him my donut Buddha and my donut angel. And it would be absolutely impossible to have started this whole enterprise without his help for the first probably five years.  And he continued to help and didn't tell he didn't want anyone to know that he had cancer because he didn't want people to have any pity or weirdness. And he would just show up and put a hat on because he lost all his hair and the Timo was so brutal. And he still smiled and threw on an apron and greeted every guest with a huge smile. And it was quite phenomenal. He loved the donut business actually kept him alive for a few years beyond his diagnosis because he just was so enamored with the whole growth and the success and the excitement and the positive vibes and the whole donut business is so fun and hopeful and inspiring and everyone who walks in smiles and they leave smiling bigger than they left. And that's good for anybody's health is, you know, giving hope through donuts and giving hope through family business that works and giving hope through a sweet experience. And that's exactly why I started the business is I just wanted to contribute some sweetness to the world. And I do think that it's also just hopeful for a lot of people. Maine is such a state right now where it's kind of if you aren't wanted to be or trying or attempting to be an entrepreneur. It's a difficult state. I mean, I grew up here as well. And the jobs are not really unless you're maybe in the medical field or something. So there is that hope for a lot of people kind of what you succeeded at, which is like that American dream of making it work. I mean, is that something that, you know, a lot of younger people you think should really keep their hope for that? Is there any words of inspiration about stick with it, you know, tenacity pays off? Good ideas? God, I could really get into this topic. First of all, yes, you're right. Maine is a weird state when it comes to just taking a ready made job hand in your lap. That's not going to happen. So it's like resourcefulness is something that I think us Mayners have and or really need to have and creativity and thinking outside the box, which is exactly what this is an example of. It's like I started with four donuts a day for and a dozen for five bucks out of just there was no guarantee that this is going to create an income for me. But I really believed in it and I and I was craving the product and I just was relentless. I was I was really committed to bringing this product to Portland because I felt like everybody needs a little bit of sweet comfort, basically. And in terms of what you just asked about younger people and inspiration, my theory and motto is your heart and sometimes your hardship is your success. So food and pleasure and enjoyment and and the sweet things in life, that's my heart. And that is what I translated into success, but also the hardship of a divorce. I had to make something happen and I had to turn lemons into lemonade and I had to support my daughter and I had to make my life feel better. And I had to believe in myself. So it was like all of these things pointed into the direction of do something that makes me feel good that will also make others feel good. And I think that is the recipe for success. I want to thank you very much, Lee, for your time. Enjoy the rest of your time in Florida. It sounds like it's short and you'll be back here in Maine suffering with the rest of us through the spring that always seems to be muddy. Thanks again and thanks again to everybody for listening. Take care. Good night. Thank you.


computing power that we wouldn't think was possible like I think half a decade ago. I think everybody knows about that and these sophisticated self-learning algorithms coupled with these two things gives us machine learning. Okay, so I want to narrow down our subject from machine learning to machine learning on mobile because that's what we are interested in right now. Typically, machine learning on mobile uses pre-trained models. Yes, on board level three, it is possible to train a model on device but you still need some sort of pre-trained model in there. And along with machine learning on mobile you get security and speed. This is because your data never leaves the device.  So when you do machine learning on mobile your data will never leave the device. It's more secure and it is fast because no API calls, right? So it is more seamless experience. Alright, let's just get this out of the way. You do not need to be a machine learning expert to understand artificial neural networks, all the complicated algorithms to develop apps using Core ML today. Of course, if you're interested, you can dive deeper, understand more, teach me a little bit about it. And you can definitely add some value but the point of this is it is optional. You do not need to understand all these complex algorithms to use Core ML on iOS today. Alright, so machine learning is easy. How do I use it in my app? Another point I want to make is you do not need to come up with a new idea of an app to use machine learning. You can already do in your existing apps. How do you ask? Let's take the inspiration from Apple's default apps. First app I'm showing here is Photos. So obviously the main feature of Photos is to show the photos that you previously taken using the camera. But it doesn't stop there. What the Photos app does is it uses classification technique and it will categorize all your photos into different categories. It doesn't work like only docs, stats and people. It will also differentiate your photos according to the setting, like photos taken at the beach or photos taken at a restaurant. So I think that's a very classic example of how Photos app is using machine learning. Next one is my favorite, it's the Keyboard app. So what it does is it will optimize the touchy area based on how you type each letter. This is the reason why when you type on your friend's phone, you can't really get it right. Because every phone optimizes the keyboard for its user. I think this is a very perfect example of how little enhancements can significantly impact users using machine learning. Alright, so I want to introduce a new app to you guys. Let's say we are building an app for Singapore Zoo. So I thought that we will have a new feature where if people take pictures in the zoo, we can classify the image and find the species of that animal species and type basically. So let's look at the steps on how we can achieve that. So I've got four steps for you. First one is finding a core ML model. So let's go into each of the steps later. Next one is importing the model into your app. Executing, taking the input from the user and executing it in the request and handling the result. How do you find the model? You can use transfer open source models available online. But basically you have two things to keep in mind. First one is the required model should be in dot ML model format. That's the one that core ML needs. Another one is you should, you need to understand the inputs and outputs of the model. For example, if your input is going to be an image, does the word format, does the model take? Is it very easy to change that format from a UI image to this one? You also need to consider the outputs like what format is it? How can you use it in your use case and stuff like that? Okay. Quick mention for core ML tools. So of course there are tons of rich models available by other platforms. You must have heard about TensorFlow by Google. So you can take advantage of these models and convert it into core ML. There are Python utilities which are called core ML tools. And Apple is the one who invested in them. So basically Apple is themselves giving this utility for you to use other models on iOS platforms. All right. So once you have the model, you want to initialize it. This code is pretty standard. It's basically copy and paste. Most of the times two things are happening here. We're creating a request with the model that we want to use. And we are supplying it a completion handler. This completion handler is called when the request is done processing. So notice that here we are still not executing the request. This is just the initialization part. This is how you run the request. Again, very standard piece of code. You need to provide the orientation because if you mess that orientation, it's not going to be able to detect what it is if the image is flipped out or something like that. So in this case, I'm providing an array of requests. Of course, we just have one request that we created in the previous steps. So we're sending that. Notice that the input type is CI image. It is from the core image framework of Apple. So it's very easy to convert your image to CI image. So we're good. Next one is handling the output. So after this request is successful, it will call the handler that we passed it in the first step. This is the completion handler. It can be called on success and failure both. First thing is checking if it was able to classify the image. So basically, if that's the case, then we have results in the request. And it gives you an array of classification observation object. This is a very generic response on any classification. It basically just tells you what it has found in the image. And it will give you some sort of confidence on how confident the model is on that classification. All right. So now that we have this, let's try to build out our zoo app. Bring up my Xcode. So I've already done the basic things. Let me run this app and show it to you. Okay. So when you have this zoo app, you basically need to need some sort of an uploader. You pick an image and then it's going to classify it. So I've already added the upload functionality. So I'm going to choose something and it just says processing. Is it cutting off? Yes. Okay. So right now it just says processing because there's no machine learning yet. So what did we learn? So the step one was finding a model, right? So let's go and find a model. So for us, it was pretty easy. We just went to Apple's website and they have featured some of the models. And I decided to use this one. It says the architecture is trained to classify dominant objects in a camera frame or an image. And I've been told that it is trained with lots of images of animals. So I think this should suit our purpose. I've already downloaded it. I'm just going to drag and drop it here. On this super time, can you guys see? It's hard for me to see. Okay. So importing is easy using drag and drop. All right. So when you click on the model, what do you see? It shows you the inputs, outputs, and it automatically creates a class. The class is the same name as the file. So it will create a class with the name of that model. You basically do not need anything else than this name, mostly. It tells you the inputs and outputs. The input is image and the output is class label. So it's perfect. We just need the label of what it has identified and we should be done. All right. So let me show you a little bit about how the app is working. I'm using SwiftUI because why not? We have multiple views. The first one which says processing is detection result, the text box. And we have the image where we display the image. I should show this first, yeah. And there's the upload button and the image picker, of course. So the one that we need to focus on right now is the image process, the image picker. So whenever you click an image, what it does is it will call image processor or process image. Let's go to this method. So, of course, this one is empty because there's no machine learning yet. Let me try, let's try and try to do those steps we discussed earlier. So if you remember, step one was about initializing the model. This is what it is. Again, we're going to, oh, I forgot to import stuff. So import vision and code ML. Okay. So what this does is it is creating a code ML model. And sorry, it is creating a code ML request and sending your model in. So this is the model that we just imported, MobileNet v2. This is the only place where you need to specify the model. This is particularly easy when you're switching models. It will work flawlessly. You just need to switch this file that you're using. And this request has a completion handler. And that's all for now. Let's move on to step two, where we perform the request. So we don't need this anymore. So step one is where the user will upload the image and you need to process it. In the step two, we are converting our UI image to ACI image from core image framework, creating a request and just performing it. Pretty standard code, nothing else going on. All right. Next step, what happens once this request is not successful is complete. One, two, step three. Yeah. So let's focus here. I have two word statements to handle two different errors. So two problems can happen. Either it is not able to classify, there is some error in the classification, or it was able to classify, but it did not detect anything. This is the reason I have two guard statements. First one is checking if the results are present. And the next one is taking if the results are empty. Okay. Once we go through the guard statements, the next step is for us to look at the output. As I discussed before, it is going to be the end classification observation. This guy has an identifier. So it says this is the label or identifier of the classification request. So this is exactly what we need. Let's just print this out for now and run the app and see what happens. So this is going to, okay, let's just print the confidence as well along with this so that we can see both the things. So the confidence is a first object or confidence. Ignore the force and drag. This is just a print statement. Let's try the cheetah. So it printed. You can see. So it printed. Did it print anything? Oh, because I have commented the completion. All right. Let's try again. So it prints cheetah and the confidence is 0.86, which means 86%. So when it works, next thing I'm going to do is process the results by that.  So what exactly is this model is giving us? It's giving us a list of predictions and it is all sorted based on how much confidence it has on each of the prediction. So the first one is obviously the most confident one. You can do many things here. So typically what you can do is you can have a threshold level of confidence. I only want to show the output to the user with more than 50% of confidence so that you don't see any junk to the user and if the model is not confident enough. I'm not worried about that. So I'm just going to print out first two detections here and see what happens. So this is pretty straightforward. It is taking first and second elements and it's creating a string out of the detections. Pretty straightforward implementation. I'm formatting the identifier and the confidence in percentages. Let's try this guy. This image was actually taken in the Singapore Zoo. So it says it's an iceberg polar bear, 97%. So that is pretty cool. It also says it could be a brown bear and it has 0.4% of confidence. So you see what I mean. Usually you want to only show values to the user where the model is more confident. I'm going to try it out with different animals now. Golden retriever seems about right. This is the rabbit, yes. So interesting fact, head and rabbit. So heads generally have longer ears than rabbits. So you can see this guy has long ears and the other one is a rabbit. So it has smaller ones. Here's another one. This looks like a hare as well. So this is actually not a real dog and it is able to identify that it is indeed a teddy bear. So that is quite impressive, my opinion. This guy, comic book. This model was not trained to identify comic book characters. So let's try this. I don't really know a lot about cats. Come tell. So it's very tricky to make up the difference between dogs and fox for a model. So let's try with this guy. Red fox seems about right as well. So I'm pretty happy with how the model works. I just want to look at a few things and correct a few things in our processor. So what exactly is happening here is we are running everything on mean thread. As you guys know, machine learning models might take long time to process. So it is not advised to work on mean thread. One of the other apps I was working on, when you pick an image, it stays on the image speaker for seconds. That is exactly not a good experience. So because the model is pretty fast, it is going down quickly. So for that, what you can do is go to the processed image and run this on background. So let's use the initiated. Let's ignore the indentation. So this is wrong because there is a UI update happening right here. So this object detection result guy is interesting. This is the one that I'm publishing on the UI. So that needs to happen on mean thread. And yes, we still have the problem in SwiftUI. So let's fix that. Okay, let's see if it works. Okay, that's okay. It's a dog. It looks weird. It's in the car. Cool. Okay, now that the app is working, let's get back to our presentation. So I want to talk a little bit about vision frameworks. So of course we used core ML, but why did we use vision framework? As you can see, it sits right on top of core ML. So how I think about it is it's like a pipeline for us from your app to core ML. It does all the heavy lifting sorts of things like it converts your image to image buffer. So image buffer, by the way, is the ideal type which core ML consumes and expects for you to send if you want to operate on images. But you don't have to think about it anymore. You just send in an image and vision will take care of everything. As you guys saw, it also sent us like a very genetic response type. It was called VM classification observation. This is a pretty generic class where it tells you about the results of its classification models. It also has similar ones for feature detection and stuff like that. So even getting outputs from model was hard before this. But vision makes everything easier. It also performs phase and line-up detection, mark-hold recognition, etc. All of this is out of the box. You don't even need a machine learning model for this stuff. All right. So to end this talk, I want to leave you guys with this. Machine learning has become so easy on Mughal nowadays that soon it's going to be normal and people are going to expect all of these things from your apps by default. And I think we should just solve interesting problems, have fun, and who knows, you might just find a huge gap and disturb the industry. Thank you. Thank you, Prana, for the talk. Does anyone have any questions? If you have any questions about how you can find her later at the end of this session. Yeah, you can contact me on Twitter. Okay. Thank you so much.


So, thank you for coming. You've made it to the last session of the whole conference. I'm sure everyone's very tired. But I want to talk about why a culture of open source contribution is good for your business. If you're an agency owner, if you work within an organisation that uses Drupal, this is a good way for you to be able to come up with a plan to increase your contribution and drive your business as well. I've lost my speaker notes here, so I'm just going to freestyle. I'm Owen Lansbury. I co-founded a company called Previous Next in Australia. So I flew 32 hours from my house to Paris to come here to do a 20-minute talk. And I'm also a member of the Drupal Association Board. And a lot of these things that we've been talking about in terms of driving innovation is completely tied to the contribution that we can make to Drupal. So what I want to do in today's talk is very quickly talk about keeping Drupal competitive, why we would contribute to Drupal in the first place, and approaches that you can apply to your own organisation tomorrow after you've heard this talk. If you're not doing that already, we might have a little bit of time for Q&A, but I know there's a talk at 5.45, straight after this one. So I think importantly, with keeping Drupal competitive, we've now moved into a world where we're competing against the companies like Adobe. Adobe has their experienced manager platform. They spend $2.4 billion on research, development and marketing for Adobe Experience Manager. And the Drupal Association, we spend, well, we have $3.5 million as our budget for everything that we do. So 600 times smaller than Adobe, and yet we're competing head to head with them. So you might hear this talk that Drupal is declining, it's not being used so much anymore. But the good message I want to give you is that in the top 10,000 websites, Drupal is powering about 10% of those websites. And that's more than Adobe, KendiCo, Sitecore, Joomla, you name it, all of the other competitive CMSs combined. So Drupal is still in a very, very strong place in that enterprise place. And as we've heard in the Dries note and other talks, we're really making sure that Drupal maintains its relevance in that market. So I just talked about the competitive space there. I think importantly, what's happened in the last 10 years or so, so when we moved from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8, a lot of the contribution that was being made to Drupal went from individuals just doing it as a bit of a hobby to people working within organisations and their companies sponsoring them to work on Drupal. So this has been a big change, and it's meant that we've just had to focus on how we can help organisations understand how they can support their staff contributing. So why does previous and next Drupal contribute to Drupal? We do it because it drives our business success. So we have nice reasons for contributing. We're doing good in the world. We're keeping the open web viable. But at the end of the day, if that doesn't make sense that I can keep my business running and pay my staff, then it's not a sustainable thing to do. So what we've spent a lot of time at previous next doing is really looking at what business value is Drupal contribution driving for us. And it's this notion that it's not just altruism, it's commercial reality of doing Drupal contributions. So importantly, when someone joins previous next, the first thing that they do is they have a handbook that we give them, and it says to them that contribution is a key part of your role with our company. And it's a key part of your professional development. So if someone's joined the company who hasn't been exposed to Drupal too much in the past, the thing that we do with them is that we use contribution as the way to show them Drupal coding standards, to interact with the community and to understand the deeper aspects of the software. So we don't have our own kind of onboarding process to help people understand Drupal, we use the contribution process to do that. For us, we're a very small company, 20 people in Australia, a long way from everywhere. And importantly, we can connect our staff with the Drupal world through Drupal contributions. So while we might just be working away on small projects in Australia, our staff have this connection into this amazing network of mentors and very experienced developers who they're learning on. And of course, that's driving their ongoing interest in using Drupal. The other part of working with a small agency is that you're generally doing a lot of the same work a lot of the time. So for us as previous, next, we work with a lot of government, a lot of universities, a lot of the work is quite repetitive. We're doing very similar things a lot of the time. But contribution gives our team an opportunity to scratch different itches that they're interested in. So I think a great example of that is we've had one of our developers build a module that's now used on 123,000 websites around the world, which is this incredible impact beyond what we could ever do as a company ourselves. And of course, that's allowing people to use free software for all of their projects too. So that's serving two purposes there. I think another thing that we've done as a company over the years is we've experimented with traditional forms of marketing. We've done Google AdWords. We've had expensive booths that's not Drupal conferences. And what we found is that the best leads that we have for projects is through personal connections and personal references. And that comes from people considering us to be Drupal experts. And so what we've really done with our marketing spend is direct that to coming to conferences like this, giving talks. A lot of our developers are talking about very complex Drupal contribution that they've done. And so now we have quite an established process where our team will work on something that's related to contribution. They'll write blog posts about that. Many of you might have read previous next blog posts to help you do something yourself, hopefully. And then we'll come and talk at conferences about what we've done. And this builds a reputation for us as a small company that is way beyond what we are in terms of size and also in terms of our impact on the Drupal project. And we found that's been a very big driver of our success is to have that reputation. The Certified Partner Program that's been established in the last couple of years has also been important for us. So full disclosure as a member of the Drupal Association Board, it's something that I helped develop out of DrupalCon Amsterdam about four years ago, just before COVID hit. And the intention there was to ensure that companies who are contributing are given the exposure that they deserve in the community, but also with commercial vendors. And so we've had quite a slow start with that. We had a lot of different priorities through COVID. But now the focus is shifting back to that program. And there's been a couple of talks through the conference here about what we're going to be doing with that program in the future. But importantly for us as a company, being a certified partner is very important when we're going into a big client pitch. And we can say that we are Australia's only Platinum certified Drupal partner. And that gives us a lot of credence with potential clients. And it is the type of thing that clients do pay a lot of attention to if you say, yeah, we're one of the top certified partners in the world. And we do all of this contribution for the Drupal project that makes us experts in the product as well. So if your organization is not part of the certified partner program, I'd encourage you to check that out. And there will be some developments around that in the next few months in terms of putting even more focus on the contribution side of things, not just the fee that you pay to be part of that program. And we're also making it fairer in terms of smaller companies are paying proportional fees in terms of their company size as opposed to these flat fees where a company of 20 people is paying the same fee as a pantheon or an aquaero or someone like that. So really importantly for us is employee retention. So the biggest cost that you'll often have as a small agency is hiring new people. Someone might have been with you for three years or so. They quit. You have a three month gap where you're not doing work because you don't have a staff member and then maybe you're spending $25,000, $30,000 to a recruitment firm to get a new person. So there's a big cost in that. There's a big cost in lost IP when people are leaving a company. And so what we've really focused on is what can we be doing to retain our staff as long as possible because a long term team that's worked together for a long time has a lot of value for the business in terms of the efficiency and the productivity and all of those things. So we've got to a point now where our average tenure for a staff member is seven years across a team of 20. And that's about triple the average for a big tech firm. So I think a couple of companies like Metta and Apple, the average length of 10 years, about 12 months. And this has been largely due to the contribution program that we do have and making people feel that they're doing something that's much bigger than what we just do as a company. So in terms of what we actually do for our open source contribution approach, these are the things that you could maybe adopt yourself. And the first thing that we adopted a long time ago, when we first formed the company back in 2009, we'd heard that Google have this concept of 20% of your time can be towards professional development and personal development and working on ideas that you wouldn't otherwise be working on in your normal role. And of course, there's stories of a lot of Google's best products came from that. There's also a funny quote from Marisa Mayer, who was a senior Google employee who said, our 20% secret is that it's actually more like 120%. And so what we've tried to do is ensure that we don't have people just moving into overtime and working on weekends to do their contribution that's built into how we schedule them on projects. So everyone on the team, they're only scheduled on projects 80% of their time and that ensures that there is that 20% there if they need to use it. Of course, we are pragmatic as well. So if there's a big project that has priority, then that work will be done first. And what we've found is that the contribution time, it balances out over the years. So there might be a gap between projects and people have a whole week to work on things or just bits and pieces of spare time. And then we've also done things like we have a quarterly hack day where the whole team is all working remotely from each other. But we have this dedicated day once per quarter where they're all working on contribution in some form or another. And a lot of those things then feed back into our company as tools that we can use or take to clients as well. Direct sponsorship is an interesting thing as well. So while we're paying people for their employment with that 20% time, we've also adopted a model of sponsoring core contributors as well. So there's a woman in New Zealand that we pay 40 hours a month. And you might have seen her on www.dripple.org as quiet one. She's one of the core committers now. And that just guarantees that we have a steady flow of contribution happening. And that ensures for our certified partner program that we're getting those contribution credits to keep our status high. The cost of that, hey, it's about the same as sponsoring a Drupalcon each year. So it's again a great way of us directing marketing spend into contribution rather than just spending on normal types of marketing. And then project-based contribution is important for us as well. So in all the projects that we're working on, our clients understand that they're paying for us to push code back into www.drupalcon.org. If we're patching modules or creating new modules, there's an understanding there from the start. Importantly for those end users and our clients, they get credited for that as well. So a great example is one of our big government clients. They have quite a big internal Drupal team now. And one of the key things they use in their recruitment is that they're a good Drupal citizen and helping the project through their sponsorship of contribution. And that then helps them hire good Drupal developers because, hey, you want to work for someone that's part of the community. Events and volunteering, like I said, having our team come to conferences is really important both to drive our expert marketing, but also to connect with the community as well. And we also use our local event in Australia, Drupal South, as an opportunity to get the whole team together once a year. We started off as being quite remote from each other before COVID, and now since COVID, we're totally remote from each other. So having those events to come together and see each other is really key. And also just the notion of getting involved in the community has been very important for a lot of our team members. So we have team members who are track chairs for our local conferences who just come and help do the badges and people that aren't coders are playing those roles as well. And again, it makes them feel that they're part of something bigger. And then community leadership. So for myself, I don't come from a coding background. I have some business experience that might be helpful to the Drupal community. And so I've been able to come into roles like on the Drupal Association Board or conference organising. And those types of things where we're helping drive the project forward by spreading the word about Drupal and hopefully bettering the project overall. And where are we? And then cold hard cash. So we still sponsor events and that plays a part in the mix in terms of our overall contribution. So what I want us to do at the end here is just to look at the total cost of contribution to us as a business. So this is something that a business owner would ask first is how much is this going to cost us. And it's not something that I really pay too much attention to. I've got a general idea of how much we spend each year. But it's not something I'm monitoring each month. We have it in our budget at the beginning of each year as well. And so looking at it recently, I broke it down as that 20% contribution time is around $100,000 in wages that we're paying for that time. Obviously at the cost, not the opportunity cost if we had them working on client projects. Our direct sponsorship and donations to the Drupal Association is about 50,000. Sending all of our team to conferences is another 50,000. And I'm sure there's another 50,000 that I have encountered there. But the point that I want to make is that's about 5% of our gross revenue as a company. And that's what well below what a normal company would spend on traditional forms of marketing. It's all tax deductible as a business expense. And we're not dealing with a separate marketing budget on top of that. And I think importantly for your own organisation that's the case of just sitting down and saying, okay, what makes sense? What can we start with? Where might we see the best results early on? Is it around marketing? Is it around employee retention? Is it about building the professional development skills of our team? And so I'll just finish in terms of how you can get started. The first thing is to define the policies at a business leadership level.   Are you directing budget towards having people attend conferences, et cetera, et cetera? Set some budgets, like I said. We do that at the beginning of each year. What we think it will cost us. And that then helps us not worry too much. As long as the business is doing well, we know we can spend that money. And then the final thing is connect with your community. So really importantly, if you're reliant on Drupal, then you will get the best value out of using Drupal by connecting with the community and contributing. And we've seen a lot of companies kind of come into the Drupal world in our local market. They might build one or two websites. They haven't connected into the community. And they just disappear within a couple of years because they haven't built that deep expertise in the platform and they move on to the next shiny thing. But for us we've had 15 years of fantastic business using Drupal. And what I've talked through today is the reason that we've been successful, I think, to a large extent. So I think we're just on time. I don't know who's keeping track of time. Is the next speaker here? Yep. Does anyone have any quick questions up back there? I'll repeat the question too for the mic. Yeah, so we just consider everything that we're doing around this as marketing to a certain extent. Yeah. Yeah, so we did do quite a lot of booths at general tech conferences and spending a lot of money around that. And then realised, okay, the $10,000 we just spent, maybe that could be directed to sending people to a conference to talk and building our reputation that way. So I'll maybe be around. If you want to find me, just Google Owen Lansbury, you'll find a way to contact me. I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you.


We just had a Democratic primary in New York State the other day. Well, I share those sentiments, but here's the point. I don't mind losing, but 3 million people in New York State, 3 million people who registered as independents did not have the right to participate in the Democratic or Republican Party. That really is not democracy. So what we need to do is create a vibrant democracy, and that means one person, one vote, overturning Citizens United, and making sure that anybody in America, 18 years of age or older, has the right to vote end of discussion.


Armored combat vehicles have been taken to the streets in Russia's Rostov city, according to Ukrainian Telegram Channel's reports. Roadblocks have been set up in the city and movement has been stopped in the streets. Roads have been blocked by tanks. In addition, Rostov region's border with Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region has been closed. Roadblocks have also been set up on the Don Road between Moscow Voronezh Rostov. According to the report, Russian soldiers have been ordered to open fire in case of any signs of a threat. Military equipment has been brought to a state of combat readiness. It should be noted that Yevgeny Prigazin, the head of the Wagner Private Military Unit, earlier announced that he set out with 25,000 troops to punish Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu whom he accused of ordering to strike Wagner's base on Friday that resulted in the death of a large number of group members. Wagner Group has reportedly arrived in Russia's Rostov region already. Prigazin said in an address today that he would punish Shoigu and chief of the general staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerazimov tonight.