Hi, this is your host and we are here at Open Source Summit in Vancouver and today we have with us Christophe Plumer, executive vice-president of SovaFail Linux. Christophe, it's great to have you on the show. Thank you. Thank you. I would love to know a bit about the company.  SovaFail Linux is a Montreal-based company with an office in France and for almost 25 years we do Open Source software engineering. And so we help our customers, a lot of different kind of organizations to build a very secure and cutting-edge software. How old is the company? The company has almost 25 years and we opened an office in Europe almost 10 years ago and we always have been very much involved in Open Source. It's really part of the DNA. Since the beginning of the company, we decided that if we want to work in Open Source, you need to contribute. So contribution is core of our business and that's why we are a member of the Linux Foundation for years, a member of the LFNNG for a couple of three years now, a member of the Yoctop project, but we contribute to all that project. And we also have our own project called New Jami, which actually just received a social benefit award from the Free Software Foundation in Boston in March at LibraPlanet. What are the Open Source community or what are the projects you folks are involved with? So we are involved in a couple of projects. First of all, the projects that are linked to our core business, like the Yoctop project, and we contribute to a lot of projects linked to the embedded part, like G-Streamer and Video, FFNPEG. We also contribute and have contribution to the Linux kernel and also to some bigger application. And one of it, which is actually one of our major investment, the past years on the business perspective is the CPAS project, which is a project under the behalf of the LFNNG. Talk a bit about your involvement with the LFNNG Foundation. We joined the LFNNG three years ago and actually there was two motivations on that. There was like a natural one and a business one. And the natural reason was all the executives at our felonics were very much concerned about the global change, about sustainability. And it was natural for us to get involved in that community to give our part. And also we see that it's a gap changer for the young developer and young engineer that we recruit to join the company for them, especially the one in Europe, I would say, probably more than in North America. But being able to work in such a project, it's a key decision for them to join us. And the business decision was actually at the ELC, the Linux conference in Lyon in 2019 when we met RT, which is the TSO of France, which is a strategic member of the Linux Foundation Energy. And we began to work with them on some project. And so we decided naturally to join and to contribute because we need to be part of the community to be very part of it. When we look at LFNNG, they are like looking at solving a specific problem. What role do you feel because we are talking about LFNNG, we are talking about carbon footprint. First of all, for your company, how critical or how important is this problem for you folks? And what role do you see LFNNG is playing? I think there are a lot of challenges to meet the goal of energy transition, the carbonization. There are a lot of projects covered by the LFNNG. There are a lot of different actors, utilities, government, vendors, tech company like us. And I think everybody needs to fill the gap and to play their part. And our part is as an open source professional to help the project in their industrialization and to make sure that how a project begin really open source and we'll get improved and we'll get a community and at the end we'll work in the real life. So that's what we do, especially in the CPAS project. Now can we just go a bit deeper into the CPAS path? What is this project all about? This project, first of all, we see that in the substitution automation, we move towards to virtualization. A bit like years ago, Telco has moved to virtualization because of the grid and the flexibility of the grid that we'll need because you will bring wind and solar energy, the grid needs flexibility. So there were these needs and there was a real wheel carried by RT and a need of building a platform, an open source platform, an open source real time platform that will allow virtualization and to run application for control and protection into the substation. So that's the goal of CPAS and I will describe CPAS like a best of grid solution. We do not reinvent the wheel. We took the best tools to build a platform that will allow the virtualization. And when we look at some of this electric project, when you look at some of the players or RT at the end and all the folks, some of these projects were created internally. Though these are not projected for the sake of project, they were actually solving it and then it were released in the communities to be used. So some of these projects are already in production in some cases. Can you talk about some of the use cases of CPAS? CPAS just actually passed the early adoption stage at the LF Energy. So that means that there is some production and it's being used by RT. Actually, I'm in this conference. They made a conference yesterday and they announced that they will be in production with CPAS soon. We know that they are vendor like General Electric, but also others that are testing the platform very deeply. And actually the use case is very simple. And one use case, which not a use case, but an asset of CPAS and a wheel from the utilities like RTE that's thought about the conception of this project was also to have a multi-vendor ecosystem. So really having a reference design platform standard that will allow different vendor to be able to use and to propose their virtual machine or application to the utilities. So it's a way for them also to maybe to change like an old bare metal black box solution to move to a visualization where the end user will be able to run application from different vendors. So this is really a major use case for allowing the flexibility for the end users. What do you see the scope of LF Energy beyond North America, beyond Europe? Because when we look at Asia, India, Africa, you know, energy crisis is everywhere. Everybody has to play a role. Do you see the scope of this foundation beyond Europe and the US as well? Yeah, it needs. Actually, we need it. For sure you need pioneers and pioneers come from Europe on that topics. But then what we see in North America from our Montreal based headquarters, it's moving faster than we expected. For sure it was a sector that is was very slowed, you know, from the utilities, which is usually very regulation, you know, organization, which are in every states and the vendor. But now, as you said, there are new vendors coming on the market. There are new actors. And that means that's what brings LF Energy is a framework of collaboration of all that actors. And I mean, there is no way to go back. And if you need, if you want to innovate in that part, I mean, LF Energy will be a very safe place to, you know, work together for new actors to come. And for this traditional industry to see that they are not alone and other of their brother and sister of kind of company, you know, they are also faced the same challenges. So I think, you know, as we said, we will be stronger together. Right. One more thing is that the whole energy sector, you folks have been around for hundreds of years, you know, it's going through its own digital transformation journey. And the challenge is that they're the first of all so much code to be written, too much refactoring to be done. There are a lot of, you know, players in some of those in they either they don't have incentive, they don't have resources or they so it can play very good role because the solution is already ready made, which has already been deployed in some of the most developed markets. So that can also accelerate and help them. Exactly. And I think it's it's a good place also for tech company that's, you know, develop new business, because there will be a solution. What we see there are utilities or committee that outsource some project, but this project needs people to develop them, people to enter industry of the project, people to offer support. So there is, you know, like an ecosystem around the vendors and the end user of the utilities. So they are a place for for new business. And to be a because at the end what we need its open source project in production that's speed up the decarbonization. Right. This may be off of topic question, but I want to just throw at you and we'll see how it goes. Because when we look at, you know, economical sustainability, we have started talking about cutting on footprint, carbon footprint data centers have to be more efficient, even Linux foundation, they have a lot of projects where you know, this technology uses less energy, this language consumes less compute compute resource, which means you are creating less heat, you're consuming less electrons. So I mean, we are talking at that level. Do you also see it, of course, right now, a left energies focus is very, very specific. But do you feel that it needs to be brought in? Or you say, no, we have to be very, very laser focused on solving these problems. I think there are so many problems to solve that you can be a laser on one. So that's why we need more actors, because, you know, we can do everything we can solve every problem. So that's why we need that the community grow for being able that everybody in their niche sector, you know, bring their, their specification, their specialty to help such a project.  Sometimes, you know, you develop a technology and there are side effects that are unexpected. So we need, we just need some more reform or investments and more people to join. Khrasov, thank you so much for taking time out today to talk about, of course, the company, but also LF energy, your involvement with the CPAP project and the broader vision that we should have. Thanks for all those insights. And I would love to talk to you again soon. Thank you. I thank you very much.


Welcome to Digital Asset News, take a top story in crypto and bring it on to bite-sized pieces. So today, just like the thumbnail and the title suggests, there is one crypto asset that I'm pretty sure is going to outperform everything that I currently own. So first, we're going to take a look at some market data on-chain analysis, and this is kind of new-ish. We started this yesterday. We're going to take a look at that one crypto asset class. We're going to take a look at how Bitcoin Cash is doing good, and we're going to wrap it all up with the opposite end of the spectrum called Masterworks. And then I'm just going to give you a little snippet about the world mobile token at the very end. So let's just dive right in, shall we? So today is a pretty nice day, Thursday, beautiful day out here. And look at that, total market cap, let me bring this down a little bit, 2.3 trillion, and we're down 0.2%. That's okay. The market has to breathe a little bit. But the Bitcoin daily sentiment is still 65 or 100, and of course we're using trade the chain. If you want to use sentiment analysis, there's a link in the description that does all the different crawling and data analysis for you. But here's what we got. So the last 24 hours, we're looking at a decline of Bitcoin of 1%. But who cares? Because in seven days, check this out, in seven days, 24% for Bitcoin. Pretty good. I mean, as compared to traditional finance, Ethereum was up 20% in a week, 0.49%. And the last, I don't know, 24 hours, Cardinals up at 2.30, Solanas down, Polkadots up, all over the board, but really just kind of stagnant. A little bit of a pullback, Avalanche negative 5%. But if we take a look at the seven day, it looks pretty gosh darn good. And I will take that because we can't just keep going on forever. I'll take a little bit of a pullback. I'm good with that. If you're big into trading and want to take a look at a little sentiment, let's take a look at these coins. Skycoin, Beam, Troy, Voyager, credit towing, and BTU protocol. I sure hope that one goes up. And next hour or so, you can expect these are the price fluctuations. So go ahead and give that a whirl. What I really want to do is just get into, first of all, a little market data. Because this was went over pretty well actually yesterday when we started everything else. So we always start with the market. But now we're just going to go over just a couple of pieces to see, give us a broader view of what's going on in our marketplace. So right now, total liquidation is not too bad. We've got the largest single liquidation order happened on OKX. It's only 1.3 million, not a big deal, not like 100 million or billions like before. In the last 24 hours, people have lost around 195 million, either going too short or too long. And here's the long and the short, nothing really fantastic right there. However, this was interesting to me. So we're taking a look at on-chain analysis. I've got three that I like to look at. All miners outflow, meaning how much of the miners are actually selling, the exchange reserves as far as Bitcoin and Ethereum. And if you notice down here, let me blow this up so you can see it. We're seeing that there is an uptick of miners selling their Bitcoin, which makes a lot of sense. So when you see miners sell Bitcoin, just know the price is going to go down because sometimes they do hold quite a bit. The exchange reserves, since these miners are selling, I think other people took profits. Look at this. Over here, of course, people were starting to accumulate. So the reserves and the exchanges went down, price goes up. Over here, the exact opposite is kind of happening. Well, actually it's not true. They accumulated, but we're going down and up, down and up. And now we're kind of going on an uptick as far as price and a little bit as far as the reserve. So people keep selling, hey, it can only sell so much. Then as far as like Ethereum, this was also interesting. Same type of thing. We're going down, then we hit a floor as far as the price. And then we just kind of skyrocket it up a little bit for price. But just be aware that the exchanges are having more Ethereum and Bitcoin on them because people are selling and taking profits. And then also, this was also interesting, is that as we move forward, I'm interested to see the correlations between our crypto market and the traditional market. So just so you know, you can find this on TradingView, S&P 500. It took a dip yesterday and everybody's like, oh, I have things uncorrelated. This is fantastic. Well, it's up today. So whatever. NASDAQ's up, Dow's up, Brussels 200's up. US dollar index down, not surprising. And Bitcoin index is down. So not so much of a little bit of a correlation, but perhaps. But it looks like the traditional market is doing pretty well. And this, the PyCycleTop indicator, which is something I really should be looking at every single day, because this is when the 111-day moving average goes over 350-day and it's only happened four times. So the four times it's happened is right here. That was in 2013 when Bitcoin was a whopping 130 bucks and they crossed over. And then we took a big dip and then happened again in 2013. So people say, oh, it can't happen twice in a year. Well, it did. So it happened twice there. The next time it happened when it crossed over was right around 2017. Took a big dump. And then of course we were in crypto winter. And then over here, it happened again in April. And people were freaking out because they think, oh, that's it, but it's not. It happened twice in 2013. I think it might happen twice in 2021, but only time will tell. So that is the state of the market in a nutshell. Let's jump into today's top story, which is the one crypto asset. Here it is, this thing, the Doge Pound. And these are all NFTs.  Sorry to tell you, but it is true. And it's already probably done that. NFTs are a big mystery to most, mystery to me. I'm still trying to figure it out, but I can kind of see where things are going. So you're like, well, why would anybody own digital art? Well, why would anybody own digital currency? Well, here we are owning Bitcoin and Ethereum and XRP and Cardano. So is it really a stretched imagination that people are going to get into a digital art piece that they can actually prove? Anyhow, so with the Doge Pound and what is going on here, let's just open this up and buy on OpenSea. That's gonna bring us up to the page of where we can buy these goofy little pictures. And guess how much they are? That's right, they are four ETH or they are 3.58 ETH and that is how much they're going for most of them, 3.58, 5.2, blah, blah, blah, what the heck? 45 ETH, sweet Mary Joseph. That's a lot. So the thing is why? Before I get into the why, let's click on the Doge Pound and see a little bit of data in here. So this is the Doge Pound and what's been happening. And just so you know, I was talking to a friend today and he calls NFTs, ICOs 2.0 and I think he's right. But there is a lot of things going on. Look at this right here. So you take a look at the Doge Pound, the price from this kind of just kind of started rumbling. July 13th, 2021, the average price was 0.06 of Ethereum.  Well, back then, I can tell you it was a lot less than what it is, but let's just say it was 216, whatever, right? It wasn't 216, it was probably like 120 bucks, something like that, or maybe even less. But now what we have is the floor price being about 3.6 somewhere around there, or excuse me, the average price, 3.9, let's just round up, because I like round numbers. So today, that would be worth almost $15,000. And that is in, that's since July. So July, let me do some quick math. August, September, October, yeah, two and a half months. Okay, so you go from 120 bucks to $15,000. That's not too shabby. And that is what is happening around in the NFT area and what is happening. Also, I wanna take a look at this real quick. Let's just go to OpenSea, and I'm gonna click on, where is it? Stats, and I'm gonna look at activity. Oops, stats and rankings, excuse me. And what I wanna take a look at here is all the different NFTs that are being sold and how much they are being sold for and the volume. So crypto punks are gone, okay? And that is, geez, that was the volume was 20,000 Ethereum. Cryptotodes, the volume was 16,000 Ethereum in seven days. This right here is the new place where people are making a ton of cash, but it is a mystery. Why are they doing it? Why do people come in here and which ones are valuable and which ones are trash? The same thing was said for ICOs. And really, in all honesty, I think a lot of the times, you can just throw a dart and things will be okay. However, there are so many things going on, but this would be the place to start if it was me. Investment opinion, not investment advice. If I'm looking at this and going, which ones do I really wanna get into? Well, I would probably take a look here and take a look at the volume. Also, I'll probably take a look at the community and see how active they are. And I'd see actually what they do. Well, there's a doge bound, look at that. Down 16%, probably peaked out, but in that short amount of time in seven days, 640%. And then on and on we go. And the prices, you can take a look at all those things. So that is essentially the piece of why these are going to outperform everything in your portfolio and probably everything in my portfolio, just the truth. And the real question is why do people own these? Well, there's a couple of reasons.  That sounds good. And the next part was, well, let's put it in the hands of many people as we possibly can and just see what happens. And then that happened. And then all of a sudden, now it's kind of getting to the point of, let's see what kind of utility we can have. And that is another big step up.  So great. On other platforms, you can actually launch your own NFTs. And then also on some of these NFTs, they actually come in, come with tokens which you can stake and you can earn yield off of that. Do those tokens do anything? Probably not. They probably don't do anything. And will they be around in the next year or two years? Probably not. But just like the ICOs, 99.7% are gonna be gone. But I think there are some real gems out there. And what I wanna do is I'm gonna start bringing on people on this channel to give us the best information that we can possibly get as to which types of projects to get our hands into, hopefully a little bit early and then go from there, how to buy, how to sell, secondary market, so on and so forth. So if that sounds like something you'd like to be interested in, let me know in the comments section. But that takes care of that. And lastly, I will just say this. If we're taking a look at how things have gone, I mean, we just saw doge pound, right? Which was pretty crazy. If we take a look at that and then just add that up to, this is Charlie Baleo and he always gives the best information as far as data analytics. And he says, look, the returns of the last decade has been this, Bitcoin, pretty good. 1,150, 1 million, excuse me, 150,000%. Tesla, 14,000%. Nvidia, blah, blah, blah. Amazon, pretty good for the last 10 years. You know, what, 10X, 1,000X? No, 1,300, 8%. Apple, 1,000%, Google. Bonds, whopping 34%. That's just more for safety. And then gold plus 1%. You'll never get rich with gold. I'm sorry to tell you, those days are gone. But I hold gold and silver and Bitcoin. I don't understand why people don't. So, that is what is going on. Let me know what you think about that in the comments section. Let's move on to our next piece. And this will go pretty quick. And we're just gonna talk about, oops. Bitcoin Cash does good. So, we talk about one NFT project and all the money you can make. Check this out. This was from Bitcoin News and it says, smart BCH poolside puffers, an NFT collection sells out in three days, but 100% of proceeds goes to the orphanage in Vietnam. Who doesn't like that? So, poolside puffers, they're 2100 unique generative art collectibles. And this is what they garnished. They said each puffer sold for 0.0035 Bitcoin Cash per unit, which is roughly just over two bucks using the exchange rate, which you think about it. They sold $2002, again, quick math, roughly 4,000 bucks. And that's going to, where is that going to? In Vietnam. So, I'm pretty sure that's gonna go a lot farther than, say, New York. Puffer is a friendly art project to introduce Bitcoin Cash and wider cryptos to the new EVM sidechain, smart BCH, BCH, which is enabling Ethereum smart contract capabilities. I'm like, what the heck? So, if you don't know, cause I didn't know, smart BCH is this. Smart BCH is a sidechain for Bitcoin Cash and has an aim to explore possibilities compatible with Ethereum's EVM, Web3 API, and high throughput for DAP. So, look at Bitcoin Cash, make it a move. So, I like these types of stories, especially when things are giving back and when people aren't just making a bowl of the money for no good reason. But yeah, good for these guys who did that. Anyhow, let's move on to our last piece, which kind of goes in the opposite way of what we just did. We talked about digital art. Now, let's talk about real art. And this was from Tech Crunch. They talk about masterworks, raises 110 million to sell physical art, not NFTs. And just so you know, they raise 110 million in series A funding at an evaluation north of 1 billion. Why do I bring this up to you? And it's because of this. I have gotten invested into masterworks. And what they're trying to do, what they're doing is that they are selling fractions, fractionalized artwork. And what the data that I see, and you can go to this website, there's a link in the description, and you can figure it all out. Some people just want to do digital art. Some people say, you know what? I want to get into another asset class which is uncorrelated to everything out there. And they talk about the data points here as far as like when the 2008 crash happened, art really didn't take a hit. When other big things happened, art didn't take a hit because guess what? They're dealing with multi-million pieces of artwork and the ultra rich don't really care about what's going on in the normal day-to-day doldrumm life of us because they got a ton of money. Now, this is all up to them. And you can see exactly how they do these things. And again, links in the description, but there's two different sides of it. It's not how much you make. It's how much you keep. And to me, this is just another asset class to consider investing into, that is what I've done, but this is investment opinion on investment advice. Oh, well before I forget, I almost forgot, world mobile token. So just real quick, we already talked about masterworks, world mobile. There's been a lot of questions about how to stake world mobile. I had a meeting with the team over at world mobile last night and they talked to me about the whole process of how to stake and the things that are going on. I learned some pretty interesting things about their partnership between them and Cardano, Charles Hoskinson and the whole thing. And I can tell you that they let some things slip and I can't tell anybody anything because I don't want to get sued. But I will just tell you this, Cardano is making some pretty big plays. And if they can do what I think they're going to do, it's going to be a pretty exciting time for everybody, at least for Cardano holders. Okay, and that's it. So look, if you made all the end, I want to say thanks so much. I appreciate it. If you like that type of video, go ahead and give it a thumbs up. Also consider subscribing. A lot of things we talk about are time sensitive on this channel and that is it for today. So thanks for hanging out with me. I appreciate it. And I'll see you on the next one. We'll start talking about more NFTs and all those great things.


Well, I'll come back. All right. So what we want to do is get all this stuff exported out I also wanted to talk about the issue that I ran into where we were getting all that discoloring So I basically had to go into the snow layer and in the layer node itself Because I was messing with all the remapping. I had values that were below zero or above one So I just needed to clamp it and that map basically got rid of the issue or it did get rid of the issue Okay, so just keep that in mind if you ever see that particular bug. It's not really a bug. It's just something that I I created All right, so we want to export all this information out So what I want to do is first show you guys how to export out the texture All right, so we've been building a texture inside of this cop network How would I get this off my landscape and into an actual texture? I can use in a in a game engine and so what I want to do is drop down a Rob file And there it was drop file output. All right, and I just want to hook it into that null node so I'm just going to take the result from the null node here and We'll call this export texture. All right, so this is export texture and What I want to do is set up a couple of parameters here First one is the render current frame. I don't need to render a range at all I also want to pick a file location. So what I'm going to do I'm using a unity or Houdini project here I'm going to send it to my texture folder and this is going to be called landscape Base color Think we'll be good for now dot PNG okay, and We don't really need the alpha plane. So I'm just going to get rid of the alpha plane here And let's sit back space. There we go And that's just because I don't really have anything in the alpha. It's just like we don't really need it then So I don't need to export it. All right So with that we're good to go. So what I'm going to do is just hit render and Let it go There we go. So now if I go to the folder where I exported it to we have our texture cool, so Let's go focus on the height map. So I want to get all the height information out All right, so what I'm going to do is utilize a height field output node All right, this is very cool. No that allows us to pull off and export out any of the layers remember all of these little guys if we hit the little info Box here all of these volumes here are considered layers. All right, these are all the layers that we want to export out Okay, and so we just come into that height field output node and I want to set up a couple things here So the first thing is I want to export it out as our height texture All right, so give it a name and a location I want to set the type to a bit fixed a lot of these game engines just want the 8-bit fix And I'm going to get rid of the alpha channel. I don't need it for any of these I just need the RGB because all these guys are basically going to have the same layer in it Right, we just want a grayscale image and because the height map Isn't mapped between 0 and 1 currently the height information goes from 0 to whatever the highest elevation is here So we need to map this between 0 and 1. So if I come in here For all these remapping options, I can just turn on auto remap and it'll remap it for me between 0 and 1 Super cool All right, so with all that stuff set up Just go ahead and hit save the disk There we go We now have our height map beautiful Okay, and it works the same way for All the layers as well.  So there's going to be landscape hills layer Like so and I just should put an underscore there. There we go We'll do 8-bit fixed and this time I want to do the hills layer And I want to make sure that I auto remap this as well All right, so you're just going to do that for all the layers and just make sure you export it all out So if I were to go export this out now and take a look you can see we have the layer Cool. So my goal here is to actually make a course on a little bit more advanced way of making all this stuff Completely automatic So you're not having to do all this manually because that would be a pain especially if you have a lot of landscapes And you really just want to run them through this whole process here and get out all the information And Houdini is great at doing stuff like that. And so I'm going to make a full course That is a paid course that shows you how to set up a full automatic landscape development system Okay, but for now, I just wanted to show you guys the basic concept here So with that I'm going to go ahead off off video and get all the other layers out And then what we'll do is we'll come back and we'll get this set up and unreal And then we'll focus on how to do it in unity because The two are they're different in terms of how they approach it, but the concept is the same All right. Thanks so much


Early data, what is this I'm fixing a tester I got notice from the test prep team that this tester wasn't passing We should be beeping if you look at the test output It says it couldn't find the ht20 even though it finds the iSquared C address or something's wrong with the Code something changed in the chip which happens once in a while, but what's neat is my driver uses Bus IO which means that I have a layer for iSquared C if I want to debug What's going on instead of like going to the driver and adding all these printf's and like I don't know hooking up stuff I don't have to I just recompile and upload I just give it a second beep beep beep beep beep beep beep and then once it uploads It gives me debug output. Let me Scroll it so on the serial port it'll not tell me where it failed to send so there's a new there's a Caldeway command that is If you look to the right here, it doesn't succeed in sending this iSquared C command So this is kind of a secret command something must have changed into it So I'll probably just comment it out for now so you can pass test at the delivery and look at the documentation to see What's different what happens with the sensors that don't have amazing data


Item number SCP-811, Object Class, Euclid. Special Containment Procedures, SCP-811 should be kept in a climate-controlled cylindrical glass enclosure between 10 and 20 inclusive meters in diameter, filled to a depth of no less than 2.5 meters on average, with wetland soil and stagnant fresh water. It is to be furnished with a variety of aquatic plants from its native swamp and as the remaining vegetation there has exhibited the adaptation to regrow quickly from injuries endured during contact with SCP-811, as long as the roots are undamaged. Logs of manageable size and additional humus-rich soil may be provided for good behavior. Water depth is not to exceed half a meter at its lowest point. Height of the enclosure must be no less than five meters above the highest soil point. Temperature is to be kept at 25 degrees Celsius and humidity should be kept above 70%. There is to be a decontamination airlock chamber between the door into the enclosure and the door into the rest of the facility. Air that is ventilated into the enclosure should not be recirculated back into the rest of the facility under any circumstances. The methane resulting from SCP-811's normal interaction with its environment is not anomalous and may be bottled for use as fuel. No heated elements or open flames are permitted inside the enclosure. The enclosure must be tested daily for pH and microbe levels in both the soil and water, as well as for changes in chemical composition. Enclosure should be cleaned bi-weekly, preferably by D-class personnel. All discarded waste should be put in quarantine for analysis, before disposal by standard biohazard protocol. Subject is to be given at least five kilograms of live food 24 hours after its completion of its previous meal. Subject is not averse to preying on humans, and it is recommended that personnel not enter the enclosure, if SCP-811 has not fed in over 16 hours. No invasive medical procedure may be performed on SCP-811 outside of emergency situations, in which such a procedure is required to save the subject's life. Minimally invasive procedures require review and unanimous approval by SCP-811's assigned medical team and the current project head. All requests by the subject are to be reviewed by both an overseeing animal enrichment specialist and at least one level 3 personnel before approval, and the review should not take more than 48 hours, unless exceptional circumstances dictate otherwise. While SCP-811 is not generally aggressive unless it feels hungry or threatened, all handling personnel are to be cautioned that it is still an opportunistic ambush predator, and safety precautions must still be taken to avoid possible injury or infection. All personnel entering the enclosure must wear full-body, non-organic biohazard suits and breath masks, and must be in groups of at least two. No personnel are to enter the enclosure if they have open wounds or sores anywhere on their body. Those suffering from asthma or other respiratory affecting conditions are prohibited from entering the enclosure without a signed note from a physician with level 4 security clearance. As far as research indicates, SCP-811 cannot cause serious injury to anyone properly wearing their biohazard suit. Anyone who removes any part of their biohazard suit while still in the enclosure, for any reason at all, will be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including reassignment to a project that would not be adversely affected by their status as an amputee. Description SCP-811 is shaped similarly to a human female with disproportionately long and thin limbs in a slightly bloated abdominal region. It is 171 cm tall and weighs just under 47 kg due to its strange physiology. See Addendum 811-2 for details. Its skin has slight abrasive properties and is a modelled green color that serves to camouflage it among the reeds in its natural habitat. Its sweat has been observed to act as a mild skin irritant. It has extremely oily black hair that has proven to be resistant to cleaning with conventional shampoos. It shows partial comprehension of human language, consistent with case studies of feral children that have been abandoned at a few years old instead of its infants. The polymer planter surfaces of SCP-811's skin constantly secrete a clear green tinted mucus with minor adhesive properties. This mucus does not appear to have any effect on SCP-811's own tissue, but any other organic matter that it comes into contact with begins to rapidly decompose through processes not fully understood, reducing the matter into a slightly viscous black liquid. Prognosis and procedure for personnel who have come into contact with SCP-811's digestive mucus is the same as for naturally occurring necrosis and gangrene once the mucus has been washed off. SCP-811 can then absorb said liquid through its skin and directly into its circulatory system. Tests have shown that SCP-811's entire circulatory system is filled with liquefied decaying matter. Biopsies taken from SCP-811 have shown the presence of anaerobic bacteria in all examined cells, which, due to the apparent lack of anything resembling functional red blood cells in the subject, are currently presumed to be what SCP-811 uses to metabolize the chemicals in its circulatory system. SCP-811 does not defecate, or otherwise produce feces in the traditional sense, and entirely lacks a small or large intestine. Instead, cellular waste and substances SCP-811 is unable to metabolize, collect in what is, anatomically speaking, its stomach. Within the stomach, bacterial flora cause it to congeal into a grainy tar-like substance that SCP-811 periodically voids by voluntary projectile regurgitation, a mechanism which it uses to hunt. It preferentially aims at the face, or at any perceived open wounds on its target, then waits for the target to die of either immediate asphyxiation by blockage of the mouth and nose, or in a few days of multi-systemic failure, resulting from aggressive bacterial infection. SCP-811's teeth did not seem to have any abnormal resistance to decay resulting from chronic exposure to the compounds and microflora in its waist. Prognosis for personnel who have had contact with SCP-811's waist through a mucus membrane or open wound is good, if broad-spectrum antibiotic therapy is begun in the first three hours, but then rapidly declines. Personnel who are D-class or have gone 12 hours without getting treatment may request termination. Addendum 811-1 To date, SCP-811 has requested regular delivery of bovine prey, denied that crocodilians be removed from its prey animal rotation, approved. The water be stocked with a variety of fish species from its native denied. One hairbrush made of 100% synthetic materials, approved.  It has been noted that standard strength hair shampoos do not adequately clean away the excessive oil in SCP-811's hair, and use of a formula with a higher proportion of stronger surfactants has been authorized. To be addressed by a two-syllable name that has been transliterated as a SCP-811 being illiterate and thus not capable of choosing a spelling for itself, approved. Note, due to SCP-811's difficulty with language, it has been deemed acceptable to use its chosen name when directly speaking to it for the purpose of streamlining meaningful communication. Relief from its chronic tooth pain, approved. Request was initially denied until a safe and effective method of administering general anesthesia to SCP-811 was discovered and a dental surgery plan devised. Tooth number 47, FDI 2-digit notation, removed. To test method and adjust for unpredicted special aftercare requirements, remainder of SCP-811's teeth removed and over-denture implants installed in a second operation. SCP-811 supplied with complete dentures to be repaired as needed. One turtle in a hazmat suit for non-dietary purposes denied. Turtles accordingly removed from prey animal rotation. Possibility of placing a small turtle habitat in the observation area outside SCP-811's enclosure for enrichment, under consideration. Addendum 8-11-2. Due to the fact that SCP-811 has lungs and teeth, despite having no apparent use for either, it was brought to Bioresearch Area 12's Radiology Lab for X-rays to examine its internal structure. Results were inconclusive. Subsequent MRI testing has revealed that SCP-811 has a number of unusual glands and organs attached to its lymphatic system, which may assist in regulation of the viscosity and microbial flora of the material in its circulatory system. One such organ in the abdominal region appears to contain lighter-than-air gas. The possibility that SCP-811 was once raw is being explored. Due to the impossibility of maintaining a sterile operating environment, limited understanding of SCP-811's biology and difficulty in calculating the subject's mass, the risk of major complications or subject death has been deemed too high to authorize exploratory surgery. Interview log, 8-11-16. Interviewers, Dr. Trebyshe, Jr. Lab Assistant Wachtel, Dr. Trebyshe and Jr. Lab Assistant Wachtel enter SCP-811's containment unit. Dr. Trebyshe is carrying a clipboard with a document on it and a shoebox. Dr. Trebyshe, I, SCP-811. Docty. What want? Dr. Trebyshe, questions. SCP-811 points to shoebox. Food. Dr. Trebyshe nods, opens the shoebox. A frog jumps out. SCP-811 brings her foot down on the frog as it lands and begins to digest it. SCP-811 grins. Docty wants kestans? Dr. Trebyshe, yes. Hands the clipboard to Wachtel, points to something on it. Wachtel, reading from the clipboard. What is the earliest thing you can remember? SCP-811, air we is thing? Wachtel, um, Dr. Trebyshe, early things, things before. SCP-811 seems to understand before box. Dr. Trebyshe, before before box. SCP-811 appears thoughtful, most before. Dr. Trebyshe nods vigorously, yes. SCP-811, with sweeping demonstrative arm and hand movements. Big man. Tall. I, small. Very smaller than man. Uses hand to indicate a height of approximately one meter off the ground. Points to her own arm. Was like man. Dr. Trebyshe, what was like him? SCP-811 pinches some of her skin between two fingers. This, not like I, like man, like people. Dr. Trebyshe, your skin? SCP-811, skin. Prod's her arm thoughtfully, then smiles, skin. Wachtel, alarmed.  Dr. Trebyshe, it appears so. I, what after? SCP-811 pointing to the inside of one elbow. Pain stick here, cold. Dr. Trebyshe, needle. I, cure the, they're called needles. SCP-811, needle here, cold. Dr. Trebyshe, and then SCP-811, pain. Pantamoming something coming out of her mouth. Red, red, red, red was very hungry, scared, ate man, skin like this. Wachtel, oh god. At this point, Wachtel begins to vomit in his hazmat suit. SCP-811, misinterpreting this as a sign of hostility, retreats into one of the pools of water in its enclosure and does not resurface until both Wachtel and Dr. Trebyshe have left. Notes. While I understand the appeal of training the new blood on something relatively harmless and as green as they are, could you please throw them at some other humanoid for a while? I'm trying to actually get things done here. Dr. Trebyshe. Okay. Lesson complete. If you missed the previous orientation, go watch SCP-810, the Never Want Lamp, right now. Or for the complete course, watch this playlist.


Welcome to the Unit 8 review for MBA 602 Marketing Management. And I hope that you've enjoyed the reviews of the first seven units. And as you'll see in this current unit, that all of the material builds on the units before. So I would encourage you certainly to review all of the other units and to review them in order, because again, they do build on each other. So today, we are going to talk about the marketing plan. And the objectives for this unit include analyzing the alignment of a marketing plan with the company's mission and vision and their objectives within their organizational strategic plans. We'll talk about how to create specific action plans so that a company can execute on the various objectives that they have set for themselves. And also how to determine the effectiveness of a marketing plan and marketing strategy, given the stated objectives of the plan and how often to conduct that measurement. And in last week's session, I had answered some questions from a student about marketing metrics. And so this is where that's going to come into play, you know, when you're when you're putting a plan together. So again, I each week I like to emphasize why learning objectives are important. And this is because they tie back directly to the course material and the content, they tied directly to the assessments, and they also help you with with test preparation. And as I mentioned last week, the next two weeks will be focused on the exam itself, where I will review some of the some of the questions and some of the concepts that will be in that exam. So I encourage you to, if you can participate live, to please look at the recordings of those as well. And those will be the following two weeks. So if you have any questions, please make sure that you that you pass them along, and I will be sure to get back to you with the answers to those questions going forward. So in unit eight, we will certainly talk about the marketing plan, as I mentioned, we will look at benchmarking, we'll look at some businesses, best practices, what the business climate looks like and how a marketing plan can help a company identify the different factors that are going on in the climate. We'll look at smart marketing, which is an acronym, and we will look at that in detail. We'll talk about brand positioning, which we have covered a bit, promotional mix, which you've also covered and unique selling proposition and how all of these factors work together. So the first thing is we're going to analyze the alignment of a marketing plan with the mission and vision of the company as it relates to their objectives as part of their strategic plan. And we'll look first at the purpose of a marketing plan. And we'll look at the various elements of the marketing plan and how those different factors help the company develop their effective strategies. So the first thing is what is the purpose of a marketing plan? So a marketing plan is basically a roadmap for an organization to say this is where we are right now, this is where we want to be, and the marketing plan is the guideline for how you get from where you are to where you want to be. And it helps a company communicate specifically, what is the purpose of our organization? Why do we exist? What is our reason for being? A marketing plan will help identify customer needs, but also even before that, to identify your customers. A marketing plan is going to identify your target market so that you can then identify what is that target market need. A marketing plan is going to have a mission statement, talk about goals, talk about what's being provided and who the customers are. A marketing plan is also going to have a vision statement and include everything that's going on in the marketplace, competition, what is the overall industry look like? What trends have been going on? And all of those factors will help a company to better identify their marketing goals so that they can then create marketing activities that are going to be specific to helping the company achieve those goals. And if you think about what we discussed in earlier units about pricing and promotion, the marketing plan is going to guide all of those things. You're going to figure out all of those things and once you have all of the information in your marketing plan, it will guide you into setting up those factors. So how does a marketing plan help a company develop these strategies? Again, the first thing I talked about is the corporate mission. What is the purpose of the company? What do you have to offer? Who are you offering to? And again, what is your reason for being? And the next step would be a situation analysis. A situation analysis is going to look at internal factors, external factors, and in the past we've talked about a SWOT analysis, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. And that's going to play a very big part in your marketing plan of really looking at what internal strengths do you have? What are you bringing to the marketplace that's a benefit to your organization that has you stand out from the competition? What makes you better than somebody else? It's also important to discuss weaknesses and to evaluate weaknesses. For companies, this is very hard to do sometimes because companies don't like to acknowledge what they're not doing well, but for a company to improve, it's essential to really look at your weaknesses and see how they can be turned into strengths. External factors include opportunities and threats that exist out there. Are there new target markets that you can take advantage of? Are there new geographic areas that where you can expand? Is there new technology out there that you can leverage for your company and turn those opportunities into strengths for the organization? What threats exist? The first threat that's most prominent for an organization is your competition. Who else is out there? What else are they doing? How are they drawing customers that could potentially be your customers? The economy is certainly a factor. Other things that are going on. And again, it's important to recognize what's internal and what's external. A good way of measuring that or identifying that is as an internal factor is something that's within an organization's control. An external factor is outside of your control, but it doesn't mean that you shouldn't be aware of it because being aware of external factors that are either opportunities or threats enable you to make better decisions and to take advantage of what's going on out there. So once you have all of that information, you're able to develop corporate strategies, your objectives, your tactics. And again, your strategies and objectives from a corporate level, as well as from a marketing level, should be realistic. They should be meaningful. They should be measurable. And they should be factors that a company knows that they're able to achieve. So they all relate directly to your target market that you identify. And again, relate again, everything to the four Ps product price, place and promotion. And put all those factors together, use all of that information that you have to develop your marketing activities. But also once you implement them, very important to make sure that you have factors in place to evaluate them. And that goes back to what we looked at in the earlier unit about marketing metrics. And this is where those metrics would be coming into play. Again, at this point, if you have any questions, please make sure that you pass them along. And I will be sure to answer your questions as soon as possible in future sessions. Okay, so the next learning outcome that we will look at is to explain how to create specific action plans so that we can execute on our given strategic objectives. And we'll look at smart marketing objectives and how they impact strategy. We'll look at what a product strategy is. We'll review the purpose of brand positioning. And again, we have explored this several times, but it's important to look at it in a different context as we look at our marketing plan. And we'll look at how marketers leverage the different elements in the promotional mix to achieve their goals. And again, I remind you about some of the promotional activities that we talked about in the previous unit. So smart marketing objectives, specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time based. When you develop marketing objectives, it's really important to make sure that all of these factors are addressed. It's not enough to say we want to increase sales. Okay, if you get to new sales, have you achieved your goal? Is it sufficient? Can you reach new to new sales? Is that meaningful? And in what time frame? If you get to new sales over a year, have you achieved goals? So, you know, and that's very simplified version. But think about this. You can say we would like to increase sales by 10% within the next six months. You're being very specific. That's measurable. If we looked at, if we talked about, go back to the metrics that we looked at in the last unit, you're able to measure whether or not sales have increased by 10%. Certainly a 10% increase is attainable. It can be relevant to the product or service. And it's time based so that at the end of that time period, you're able to truly look at all of the numbers and say whether or not you have achieved your goals. So it's always good. It's very simple, smart, specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time based. And this really applies to any goals. It doesn't just have to be marketing goals, but any goals that a company is setting for themselves. Or even if you're setting some goals for yourself on a personal level, all of these factors should come into play because then you can put activities into action and then be able to measure whether or not you have achieved your goals. So even something as simple as getting your degree, you're specific, you can measure if you've achieved it. It's certainly relevant and attainable and you can give yourself a timeframe by which you want to earn that degree. So smart objectives can be applied to any aspect in business as well as to us in our personal lives. So let's talk about product strategy. So a product strategy takes into account user needs, it takes into account the marketplace, and it takes into account business goals for a product. And it directly relates to the value proposition, which identifies the company's promise to their customers, which states why customers should buy that product. So we can look at all of those factors. We look at the market, we look at corporate goals, we look at features and innovations, and all of those combined helped a company to develop a product strategy. And again, that vision for success and going back to what we talked about earlier about metrics. So you can look at all of these factors, put your product strategy together, and then determine whether or not you've actually achieved those goals. So let's look at brand positioning, and we've talked about this quite a bit in the past, but brand positioning is what enables your company to stand out from the competition. It provides the consumer with a reason to purchase one brand over another. It can identify how to best meet consumer needs, and it can help identify how consumers position a product of service in their own minds relative to the competition. So when you're looking at brand positioning, first thing that's most important is to identify your target market and determine what they need in your product.  You want to make sure that consumers can find your brand when they're searching for alternatives. And again, as we've mentioned, identify competitors in the marketplace. Where are those competitors positioned? How is your product positioned relative to that competition? And always important to look for gaps in the marketplace. What is the competition not meeting? What is the competition not fulfilling when it comes to consumer demands or consumer needs? And how can your brand fill in that gap? How do you communicate to the customer? What value are you offering that's distinctive? And again, the unique selling proposition. The unique selling proposition is, gives your customer a reason for buying your product. What makes your product different from somebody else so that they should buy yours versus somebody else's? And also for you to be able to answer the question that a customer is going to ask, which is, what's in it for me? When you can answer the question, what's in it for me, you're answering the question that the consumer is saying, why should I buy your product? We all want the benefits. Features are great, but we want to know what benefits are we going to receive as a consumer. And that's when you're putting your unique selling proposition together, helping you with your brand positioning and again, make you stand out from the other brands that are in the marketplace. Okay, so how do you communicate? And we talked about this in the earlier unit, but again, the promotional mix, which can encompass so many different elements and advertising, which could be traditional advertising, such as television, radio, print, web advertising, anything that a company is paying for specifically that identifies you as the entity that's paying for it is advertising. Personal selling is more for things that require face to face. This is when you go into, if you're still buying a car and a dealership, personal selling, if you're going into a clothing store and you're buying clothing, you're dealing with a sales person, personal selling, another very important part of the promotional mix, sales promotion, coupons, discounts, buy one, get one, anything that is designed to encourage immediate sale of a particular product or service. Public relations, getting that message out there, letting the public know what you have to offer in meaningful ways that is definitely under your control. So when you put out public relations, you are in control of that message. And then direct marketing, which is still very popular, still very effective of connecting directly with consumers. And again, we covered quite a few of the promotional mix activities in the earlier, in the earlier unit. But I think at this point, you can see how this is working as part of an important aspect within the marketing plan itself. Again, if anyone has any questions, please feel free to share them. And I will be sure to get your answers to you over the next few sessions. So for the final learning outcome for this unit, we're going to determine how to measure effectiveness of a marketing strategy, given the objectives of the marketing plan, and also how often to conduct that measurement. We're going to look at the purpose of benchmarking and performance measurement. We'll talk about the different performance measures used to evaluate product differentiation strategies. And the metrics of company would measure when conducting a digital marketing campaign. And quite a few of these things we have already covered, but they certainly are important and bear reviewing. So let's talk about benchmarking. So benchmarking is really identifies performance standards for a company that really becomes the guideline for pretty much all other players in a particular industry. So for example, if we use the Ritz Carlton Hotel, which is probably one of the highest standards by which other hotel brands measure the levels of customer service. And that's a great way to kind of look at this in more detail. So if you go to the Ritz Carlton website and you look at the different hotels that they have throughout the world, you can really see how each hotel is specific to the location in which it's located and how they seek to meet the needs of their guests who are coming to those places. And the Ritz Carlton again continues to be like the standard by which other hotels will measure their levels of customer service. It also when you benchmark it, it helps a company identify areas where improvement is needed. And especially highlighting best practices, what are other companies doing to best meet the needs and demands of their customers. So benchmarking kind of gives a guideline of what's the top performers, what areas need to be improved, and also what are the best ways in which companies can make those improvements. So let's talk about product differentiation and different measures are used to evaluate success here. So product differentiation strategy can revolve around innovation. It might focus on the number of new products that a company is putting out there. You can look at levels of customer satisfaction. You might want to look at customer complaints, product quality and defects. And all of these factors can play a very big role in how consumers will view that particular product. And I like to use the example of Heinz ketchup. So Heinz here in the U.S. is pretty much the major manufacturer of ketchup. And there aren't that many new products that you can come up with ketchup, although Heinz does come up with other types of products. But a few years ago, and this is, I think, a great example of how a company introduces new products, but then evaluates how customers will receive them. So ketchup is red. It's got the colors of tomatoes. But several years ago, Heinz came out with two different color ketchups. One of them was green and one of them was purple. And it really all came down to food coloring and other additives that they put into it, but the taste was the same. And not a surprise, customer satisfaction was very low. Customer complaints were very high. While the product quality was the same, people didn't want to eat green ketchup and they didn't want to eat purple ketchup. And so while Heinz was probably seeking to, and I'm not quite even sure why they sought to do this, because there wasn't a whole lot of competition. But I guess they felt that it was, you know, they wanted to shake things up a little bit and have some product differentiation from other other condiments that were in the marketplace. Not a surprise, the products did not last very long. So, you know, when you're looking for product differentiation, it's also important to make sure that you're doing it for the right reasons and that if you're introducing new products that you really understand, you know, and this goes back to understanding your target market and understanding the marketplace and understanding, you know, what is it that you're actually doing and introducing? So while product innovation can be great, it really needs to be the right innovation. And that innovation just for the sake of innovating doesn't always work and isn't always successful. So let's talk about measuring digital marketing campaigns. And again, I did talk about this in the earlier, in the earlier unit, but there's, there's repeating. So, so reach, so reach is coupled with frequency. So reach and frequency have to do with the number of consumers that see your message and frequency is how often they, they are able to see your message. So, you know, when we talked about how campaigns are developed, and we talked about one of the, one of the factors being budget, right? If you have a very large budget, you can reach a lot of people very often. If you have a more limited budget, you have to decide whether reach or frequency is more important. So there have been, you know, and I've brought up the example of the Super Bowl, which again is very expensive to advertise. There are some companies that can, you know, buy three or four 30 second spots during the Super Bowl, you know, when it five or $6 million a pop, that's quite a big amount of money. And there, they'll continue to advertise throughout the year. But there have been situations where companies have a limited budget and decide that they're going to spend all of their marketing dollars on a 30 second commercial during the Super Bowl. And so what they're doing is it, is while they have very low frequency, because it's only running one time, their reach is, is vast. And, and, you know, millions of people, tens of millions of people watch the Super Bowl. So, you know, that would be a great way of saying, you know, if you're a company that does very little marketing, and you're doing something where you're reaching a lot of people, you want to be able to measure the success of that. You know, are people going to your website? Have sales increased?  So, you know, when you measure your digital marketing campaigns, it's important to recognize where, where is your message appearing? You know, and again, talked about engagement, our customers, our visitors to your different sites and platforms, you know, connecting with you. Are they opening up your messages? Are they clicking through the links that you include? Are they clicking through to go to your website? Are they making purchases? Are they clicking like? Are they forwarding your message?  And so it's important to, to look at those metrics. And really it's important, particularly when you're doing these kinds of promotions that, that measurement, you know, we talk about, you know, how often and when should we be measuring these things? It should be a constant activity. There should be constant attention paid to how many people are visiting our site, how many people are clicking through, because when you're looking at those metrics, you can start looking at trends at different periods of time, connect those trends to the different marketing activities that you're doing, so that you can make immediate adjustments to anything that you're doing.  If you're seeing that you have more visits on your website, you're able to track what pages are customers going to, how much time are visitors to your site spending on a particular page, and, and see how you can maximize that to, you know, to be able to increase your activity. So, you know, when we talk about how often, you know, again, it depends on the, on the different activity, but you want to keep track of it on a regular basis have, if possible, dedicated people who are just focusing on, on the metrics for your digital campaigns. And again, to be measuring the, the factors that are relevant to be measuring the activity that's ongoing, and also to measure the activity that's, that's resulting in the great, you know, highest levels of revenue, you know, where you're getting your return on investment. And, you know, there's a thing was John Wanamaker, who was an early retailer, who said, I know that 50% of my marketing is working. I just don't know which 50%. And what that really means, if we go back to, to an earlier comment about your integrated marketing communication strategy, is that sometimes you don't know exactly where everything is coming from, but you can recognize that the combination of everything that you're putting out there is working towards generating awareness, generating greater customer loyalty, generating greater activity, increasing your brand's image, increasing the level of loyal customers and all of those factors together lead to greater company success. And that concludes the review of Unit 8. It concludes the review of all the units in the course. And as I've mentioned before, if you have any questions, feel free to put them to post them. And I will get back to you with the answers to those the following two weeks, as I mentioned, and want to remind you will be reviews for the exam where I will be going over some of the questions and talking about why the answers, you know, give the rationale for the correct answers so that you can think about how all of that, all of the material that we cover can be applied to to the cases in the exam and help you determine the correct answers. So I hope that you've enjoyed these sessions, and I look forward to seeing you on the review.