I just want to read from James chapter 1 and verse 19, some practical instruction that we read here. It says, talking about temptation, talking about God's unfailing nature and goodness and so on. James writes and he says, so then my beloved brethren in verse 19, James 1 verse 19, James chapter 1 and verse 19 says, so then my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to prath, for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God. So he gives instructions, something to avoid, something to do. So first thing is he says, be swift to hear, which means you be quick to listen, quick to hear. Then the next two things he says, be slow to speak or slow to anger or wrath. And the reason is this, that if I respond in wrath, respond in anger, then it does not produce the righteousness or the work of righteousness of God that is not produced.  But if I'm not doing this or if I'm responding in anger, then it does not produce the righteousness of God, the righteous work of God. So that's the instruction that James gives here. So swift to hear means that you hear, but you also make that attempt to understand, understand, hear them out. Slow to speak would mean not just slowly speaking, but you do not release those words or release your opinions or release even judgment before hearing out completely. And the other one is of course slow to anger, slow to wrath. So why don't we just pray and start. Father, we just want to thank you for this instruction, for this exhortation Lord that we just read. Lord enable us to be people who would hear, who would listen, who would seek to understand Lord the other person God or the situation Father God before we actually speak, before we respond. And Lord even as we respond Father God, we know that Lord when there's a sense of justice, injustice of Father God that we are stirred up, provoked to anger. Lord when things hurt our pride, we are provoked to anger and respond in anger God. But even as we see God, then when we do that and say things and do things and it is actually destructive. And so God we ask you Lord, we ask you that our temperaments Lord will be led by your Holy Spirit Lord, that our emotions will be saturated by your Holy Spirit Father God. And Lord we thank you that we have the privilege of being led by you God, each and every moment, each and every day and that is an open invitation for each of us as believers. And so God maybe do that Lord, maybe do that and in doing so Lord establish your kingdom, in doing so establish your reign Lord everywhere we go God. And even as we do that Lord I pray the very environment will change, the very atmosphere will change from Lord of that of hostility to Lord Goodwill and Shalom Father God. That be a release of your kingdom of righteousness, peace and joy, even as we responded this manner. We thank you Lord, we give you all the praise and glory. In Jesus' matchless name we pray. Amen. Okay, so I just want to share the screen. Okay, so I think after another, we were looking at some of these principles, about winning with people, right? So that's the whole section, winning with people. So we looked at relating, preparing to relate to people. And the second thing we looked at was how to bring the focus from ourselves, which is a very natural thing to others, right? So some of us have, temperamentally we are able to do that, you know, our personalities like that. But some of us maybe because of life experience, etc. We need to put in effort in order to do that, right? So learning this would really help us. So in doing so, we looked at five things and the sixth one is the confrontation principle. So why do we need to confront people because of conflict? Okay, so conflict is something that is inevitable. Okay, you have two people, there will be some amount of friction, some amount of conflict, because not everybody sees things the same way, right? So there could be some amount of conflict or, let me say conflict, it could be, you know, misunderstanding, it could be a fight, it could be whatever, you know, a degree it could be. So there, you know, we see that there is, there will be some amount of conflict. Okay, so we should not be afraid of conflict. Okay, so sometimes we think, you know, in any relationship, be it simple friendship or, you know, we take it to marriage and family or, you know, formal work, we should not be afraid of conflict.  You know, we were building things so well and now all is lost. No, it's not, that's not the thing. You know, a conflict is simply an opportunity to build bridges and opportunity to seek understanding of the other person. If you look at it that way, then it's very constructive. Okay, now there could be several responses to conflicts. Okay, we're looking at the confrontation principle. You know, how do I confront a person in order to resolve conflict? But there could be several responses based on, you know, how we are used to handling conflict and so on. So, first thing could be, you know, I just pretend that conflict does not exist. Okay, so I'm just pretending, okay, yeah, you're fine, I'm fine. Yeah, everything is fine. But actually there is a conflict, you know, it's like, how they say, you know, there is an elephant in the room. Like nobody is talking about the elephant, but everybody is talking about, hey, how are you, everything is fine. But actually there's a huge elephant right there in the center in the room, nobody is talking about it. So sometimes we pretend that it doesn't exist. And, you know, it happens in families, it happens in, because we don't want to face it. It could actually lead to some unpleasantness, it could lead to, you know, it's like, okay, I speak now here, evil, here no evil. You know, just like those three monkeys, you know, we've seen that picture, see, speak here, no evil, that's it. And if I pretend long enough, then it won't be there, no. So that's the second thing we could do is complain. Complain not to the person, but everyone around.  And, you know, maybe we say, okay, I'm the victim of conflict, you know, or this person, there's so much of disturbance, there's so much of, you know, damage because of what that person says, you know, that also doesn't help. Then the other thing that we could do is to, you know, make a note of it mentally, okay, like marking a score. Okay, that's the 10th time this person is doing that. Okay, it's like building pressure inside of you. Okay, that's the 10th time this person has done this. That's the 11th time this person has done this. You know, you're not really solved it, but then you're, it's like you're keeping a record. Then also, you know, sometimes we give up saying, I just quit, you know, I don't want to handle it. I don't think, you know, I ever want to go through their unpleasantness. So I'm quitting, you know, I don't want, I don't want to do it. But the thing is, it's simmering below the surface, it's simmering because we've not addressed it, even though, you know, we needed to. So, so we are just one second, sorry.  Sometimes we might use our position and title to say, you know, this is how it will be. You know, you're just bossing, you're saying, this is how it will be, but we've not still addressed the conflict. So we could do all this and that doesn't solve the conflict. So what John C. Maxwell shares is that, you know, we need to really care, do we, we need to confront. Okay, that's the thing. But in confronting, how do we do it honorably? How do we do it respectfully? And what is your heart condition when you want to confront the person?  And I want to put them in their place. So confrontation is, you know, do we care for the people? Is it a very difficult thing?  So do we care enough to confront in the sense, what is the objective of confronting that you want to solve, that you want to restore peace, that you want things to be good. Right, you want that person also, we are talking about winning with people, right. So you want that person also to do well in confronting, you want that person to do well, thrive. So, you know, is that the mindset? So what would help us really goes taking to, taking the whole issue before God, so that he, our heart is aligned to his. Right. Okay, some practical steps here. Okay, confront only if you care about them. That's the first thing we saw. Second one is to meet as soon as possible. Okay, don't delay. Don't avoid. As soon as possible, because it's not going to solve. Of course, we need to be mindful of the fact that, okay, is it a good, you know, time in the sense, you know, is it a good environment? Right. Is a person also in the, in the mood or in the right frame of mind to receive this or talk about this. Right. The third thing is very important, you know, first seek understanding. Okay, understand the issue. You know, we might have dealt with it so many times, or we might have had that same conversation. But even then, even if it's a multiple time, it has happened multiple times and you're meeting for the nth time. Seek understanding. You know, why is it happening? Why is it repeating? Or, you know, why are we having this problem? And why is this happening? Right. Seek understanding. Now we may not necessarily agree with it. Right. The person might say, you know, this is why this is the problem. Now we may not, because we might see it differently. We may not necessarily agree that that is the issue, but seek understanding. Okay. I want to understand what is really happening. I want to understand your perspective or your point of view. Just share it. Okay. Okay. Few other things. Outline the issue. Rephrase it. Okay, this seems to be the issue. You know, when we actually talk about it in that way, we are, we are actually, you know, being very objective. They're not personalizing it. Okay. This is the problem. This is the issue. You know, so we can outline the issue. We can also encourage a response. Now what do you think? Right. Encourage. Okay. What should we do about this? How can we solve it? This is the issue. Right. Encourage a response. The person may not initially, the person might just say, I don't know.  You know, we need to solve it. You know, this is what is happening. You tell me now, how can we go about it? You tell me what I should do, right? Encourage a response and agree on an action plan. Now, can we do this? Okay. You suggest. Okay. I'm suggesting this. You have anything else. Can we do this in order to solve this thing? No, it's, it's creating unpleasantness. It's between us and creating a problem for the entire environment. Right. So can we, can we do this? Right. And seek, you know, seek an agreement saying, can we agree to do this? Right. By this time or these, these steps can we agree to do this? So agree on an action plan. Okay. So, yeah. These things, right? Yes. Aware in the sense. You should agree. Agree to. To these things, right? What, what the heart we are having or what the thoughts we are having to solve the Yeah. So the second person also should have the other person may not necessarily have the same understanding or same perspective, but we need to, but we can facilitate that. Right. So he don't want to. Yeah. So what if they don't want to solve the conflict? They don't want to solve the conflict. They don't want to solve the problem. Okay. The thing is, so in, in different scenarios, it'll, it'll work differently. Right. See, in a, in a, in a situation like, like a common friendship, maybe the person doesn't want to solve the conflict. Well, the Bible says that as much as possible from your side, live peaceably with all people, right? You've done your part. You've said, okay, you've left the open door and you've said, okay, this is my heart. This is my intention. I want to solve it. So if that person is unwilling, then we cannot do anything about it because it involves, involves the decision from their side also, you know, simple friendship kind of thing. In different scenario, like maybe it's a formal work scenario, then, well, there are other, there are consequences. Right. So if it's a formal work scenario, maybe in a team kind of a setting, then there are consequences. Consequences could be, okay, you, you can never, you can no longer be in the team. You cannot, you can no longer hold that position. Maybe if it's a leadership, you cannot no longer function in that role. Right. Suppose you're a leader and this is the conflict and you're there are consequences for not complying or not solving it because it's a formal thing. Right. Same also with the church or spiritual leadership kind of a situation where there are consequences. So and that needs to be communicated, spelled out honorably saying, you know, we cannot continue like this. It is causing damage. It is not helping. Therefore, there has to be, you know, we have to communicate. We have to spell out the consequences. So like, depends upon the situation also, like, see, if a person is from our family, like we can, we can write off all these things. If, if I'm doing some bachelor's, if I'm having a friend to have a conflict with them with my friend. So if you're doing, I'm just doing a bachelor's. So bachelor's degree. Yeah, something. Okay. So I have a friend. So I have a conflict with him. Yeah. So what I think is in the, if one year was like the, I won't see him. Okay. He won't see me. Okay. Better than going and speaking with resolving and all, I can leave it right. Yeah. So the thing is, how far is it affecting you? Yeah. So is it something you can pick and choose?  I will forgive and keep going. But if it's something that is repetitive and it is a problem for you, you know, it's affecting you, it's affecting that person also and maybe it's affecting multiple people who are connected with you. Then we need to, you know, confront and say, so that's the thing. So it depends on that. Yeah. Any, any further questions? Anybody watching online? Any questions? Okay. So, so all these require some skills from our part, you know, carrying enough to confront. Well, what is the skill? Skill of empathy, skill of, you know, being able to not hold any bitterness or offense. So it requires that, right? It requires that ability to be built in us. Okay. So it requires courage, right? Because you are saying that, okay, I need to, I need to meet, I need to go through this unpleasantness, et cetera. So it requires some amount of courage to do that. It requires initiative and all that. So there are some characteristics, some skills that are required here, right? So we're not going into that depth of that, but you say, okay, if you feel that, okay, if one feels that these are areas where I need to build, I need, I'm lacking, then one needs to develop that. Okay. Okay. If there are no questions, we'll move on to the next topic, which is building trust, building mutual trust. Okay. So when we're talking about people, when we're talking about, you know, different relationships, you know, what we need is a very important aspect of a relationship being successful. Okay. Be it friendship, be it, you know, any relationship, like even a business relationship, right? There is a certain amount of trust that is involved. Okay. So if trust is not there, instead of trust, what is the opposite of trust? Distrust or suspicion, right? If you're constantly guessing the other person's motive, if you're constantly suspicious of the other person's, whatever they say, you know, you're thinking, okay, is that correct or not? Did they say sincerely or did they mean it? Right? If there is no trust, then there is a problem. Okay. So we need to actually work at building trust. Now, building trust is, it takes time. Building trust between the team or between, you know, maybe even with the, you know, the church and the pastor and, you know, it takes time, right? And it takes consistent effort, right? One needs to be consistent and it will, and one needs to be transparent. Okay. What does transparent mean? Being open, being open, nothing hidden, right? OPEC is hidden. Transparent is nothing hidden. So it takes transparency in our communication, in our intentions. It takes time in order to build trust. Okay. So let's look at some of these principles. Okay. The first one is the bedrock principle. So, so what we're saying is that, you know, it's the foundation. Okay. You know, it's a foundation for any or the cornerstone for any relationship. Okay. So we need to acknowledge and understand that. Okay. You know, like certain, certain places which are very toxic, you know, in the sense of certain work environments. Just go with, without this whole, the simple thing called trust. There is absolutely no trust. Okay. And, you know, I worked in places where it was like that. It was complete backstabbing, right? There is no trust between the team members. There is no trust between, like, for example, I was in, in a sales, I was in sales, right? My role was, I was as a sales person as a sales executive. And we were selling pages and the, the request for pages would come through to another department, you know, customer service department. So they will get the request and the request would be shared to the salespeople and the salespeople would go and close the sale. Right. This is one, one, one avenue of sales coming in. So we would do that. But then, you know, there was no distrust. There was so much. So there's no trust between the salespeople, right? Because everyone had targets and the manager would not also encourage trust. So everyone was looking out for their own. Everyone would somehow try to get more leads from the customer service folks, you know, saying, okay, because they were supposed to give it as a roster. Okay. One lead, then Nina gets another, then Francis gets another based on the request comes in. But Anand would go and say, you know, just give me Nina's thing also.  You know, I need to finish my targets.  So Nina would not trust also Nina would think, okay, maybe this Anand is getting, you know, all this thing. So I'm not going to trust him. I'm going to find out, you know, so there is the sale between the salespeople. There is absolutely no trust. And also they'll be very, very, you know, protective. Okay. People will ask, okay, so where are you going today? Which company are you going to meet? So they'll give something. They'll say something else. I'm going in this direction. So, so that, because if I tell, yeah, I'm going to electronic city, I'm meeting this company, who knows this guy might just go before me and try and meet the person and close the deal. So they will not share any, so no open communication, no trust at all. And so it was each man for himself. And it was a lot of, you know, back cutting. So, so it reached a place where, you know, the, we would go to the same client and the person will say, you know, I'll give you 10% less, same company, same, same sales team. The other person will say, you know, don't give the order to him. Give it to me. I'll give you 10% less. Right. So it just brought down the image of the company, image of the product, image of everything. I didn't do, actually, you know, it was a high pressure situation and it didn't really last. People would quit. They cannot handle the pressure. They cannot handle the, they didn't enjoy working in that environment and, you know, so on. So trust is the foundation.  If you want, you know, your leadership team to really be healthy, right? Become, it should be a team which has trust, right? It should be a foundation. The best way to do this is you become a person whom others can trust, right? You become a trust. When you want to lead by example, you become a person whom others can trust. And how does one do that? How can you be a trustworthy person? What do you think? Anand, if I, if you were to trust you, okay. So how would you behave or what kind of a person would you be if you were to trust you? It depends upon the character. There should be no double face. Okay. Like speaking something in front of us and speaking different back to us. Yeah. Yeah, character is the most important thing for me to trust a person. All about character. Yeah. So it means you say and you mean the same thing. Like there's no hypocrisy. It is wrong also. It is false also. He should say the truth. Yeah. In the sense. Yeah. Keep your word. Yeah. Yeah. So if you say, I'm going to be there and you need to be there, right? But well, if it's inconvenient, if you, if you say, okay, I will do this, you need to be able to do it. And if you're not going to do it, you know, if you know very well that you're not going to be there, say it when you're speaking, you know, don't just say, okay, yeah, bro, I will be there. And then inside, you know, you will never be there. You'll never going to do it. And then on that day, when you have to be there, you don't show up.  But the thing is, well, there could be times when it's genuinely inconvenient that something happens and you're not able to do it, you're not able to be there, which means that you communicate it, you know, you communicate it in advance. If it's a, if it's a genuine thing, right? Something unavoidable. So, so when we do that, where people, there is, you know, trust built up, okay, people can say, okay, you know, this person, I can, I can actually, he's a dependable person, right? I can go, I can, this person can carry the weight, share the load. I can entrust certain things, right? So if trust is broken, then it's very difficult, right? So, so when we, when we trust someone, which means that I need to see that same quality, you know, in my head, in my, in myself, right? If we want people to trust us, right? So we lead by example. So the one thing to remember is that trust takes time. Like we said, trust takes time. It takes, you know, because we are constantly interacting. People get to know and then it builds, trust is built over a period of time, but it can be broken in an instant, right? That's the thing. It can be broken in an instant, you know? And it depends, you know, people can understand and say, okay, it was a, it was a sincere mistake, right? Or it was an intentional thing that was done to broken the trust. People can, you know, people know because of the situation. But it takes time to rebuild trust, takes time. Just like how it takes time to build trust, to rebuild trust also, it takes time, okay? But it's worth it. You know, let's say if a trust is broken, it's not the end of the world, right? It was an intentional mistake, right? Intentionally, we did the wrongdoing. Maybe it was unintentional. It is worth rebuilding broken trust, okay? Okay. Then the second thing, okay, when it comes to building mutual trust, right? Second thing is what John C. Maxwell says, it's the situation principle, okay? In the sense, you know, just be objective in assessing the situation. In the sense like, okay, here is something that is happening or that has happened. Be objective. Be objective in analyzing. Be objective in coming to a conclusion, okay? Let's say a conflict happened or a mistake happened and it's affecting, you know, two people, it's affecting the team. Don't be biased. Don't read your bias into it. Don't be prejudiced. Well, this person did, you know, the three mistakes and I'm sure that they contributed to this also. Don't be biased. Don't read into it. But, you know, in other words, don't jump to conclusions with bias or prejudice. But, you know, be objective, okay? So, it's kind of, it's difficult to be objective when our emotions are involved, right? You say something and then, you know, you are also involved emotionally in that. In the sense, you're upset. You're upset, right? And you don't, when you're upset or angry, it's difficult to be objective. Yes or no? Yeah, you just want to share. You just want to vent when you're angry. You don't want to understand the other person, right?  You know, how many times it has happened, right? You are going and then this person is, you know, signal is about to turn.  He's not going at all. He's going so slow.   Right. So it's difficult to be objective when you are emotionally stirred up, right? But because we are building trust or rebuilding trust, you know, be objective about it. Okay. While addressing the situation, think of the people who are involved and so on. In extending, you know, especially when it comes to extending grace and God's love. Okay. Extending grace and God's love, you know, everybody deserves a second chance. Everybody deserves grace. So do that. Right. Okay. I think that was kind of self-explanatory. The third one is, okay, it's this, right? Yeah. The Bob principle. The Bob principle is this, that when Bob has a problem with everybody, okay, then, you know, and sorry. Yeah. Bob has a problem with everyone. Then most likely, and Bob has actually got a problem. You know, the Bob is the problem. Right. Right. Because you know that whole thing that the guy goes to the doctor and says, doctor, my whole body is paining everywhere. Everywhere I touch, my body is paining. Right. So the doctor says, what do you mean?  My neck is paining. My ear is paining. My, you know, my shoulders are paining. My, you know, this thing, my stomach is paining. He's pointing everywhere and he's saying, it's paining, it's paining, it's paining. It's unbearable, doctor. Doctor says, okay, come. And then he takes a look at his finger. Okay.  He looks at the finger and then sees that the finger is broken. Okay. Wherever he touches, it's paining. It's not a problem with his shoulder or something, but it's a problem with his finger. Right. So sometimes, if, so that's the thing, you know, like, if Bob has a problem, what Adam? So if, like somebody says, I have a problem with this person. I have a problem with that person. You know, that thing is not fine. I have a problem with the world, which means that he, are you the problem? Right. Are you having, you know, you have a problem with everyone, everything. So it's highly likely that very likely that, that person is the problem. Okay. So that's, that's the principle. So, so rather than applying it to others, we apply it to ourselves.  Am I the problem? Is it the way that I'm looking at things? Is it really the way I'm relating to people? What is the issue here? Am I the problem? Right. So be a problem solver. Well, problems are opportunities for us. You know, it depends on how we look at it. Like when we say difficulties, when we see challenges, you know, these are opportunities for us to really grow. These are opportunities for us to, especially in the workplace, you know, I remember someone talking about it, the workplace and how it's like Nebuchadnezzar's court, right, Daniel in Nebuchadnezzar's court and so hostile and so many things happening. But, you know, these problems, even in such an environment, our problems are opportunities for us to solve things, grow things. These are opportunities for us to be promoted, to grow to a higher level. Right. Okay. Okay. Then any questions here or we can go to the next one. No, no, these are actually, so all this has been adapted. Again, this question is where, you know, who wrote this and all this has been adapted from a book written by John C. Maxwell. So, you know, like at the beginning of the, this section we were talking about John C. Maxwell, who was, you know, who's actually a pastor of a big, huge church and then felt that God called him to the marketplace, to the workplace. And so, so he continued. His ministry is to bring in biblical principles to the marketplace.  It is related to, you know, how one deals with people. And so he's written books like The 21 Steps to, you know, 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. He's written books on teamwork. And this is another book where he's written on winning with people. So, yeah. So he has coined these terms, you know, the Bedrock principle and so on. So approachability. Okay. So what does approachability mean? Approachability means, okay, you know, how approachable a person is or how accessible is the, is another person or how approachable am I or how accessible am I? Can people actually come to me and talk to me and, you know, am I accessible? Do they find it easier to talk, easier to interact or am I like a, you know, a stone wall, celebrity inaccessible or, you know, that is one part of it. You know, busy. I put many barriers between myself. So it's very difficult for to get through or I'm like a stone wall, you know. So over a period of time, people realize that, okay, I'm, I better not talk. So it's difficult. So it means that a lot of humility is required to, to make sure that one is accessible. Okay. Yes. There are, see, there are times when maybe you are busy and you're doing something that is very critical and you don't want to interact with people. Right. There are some things that are time bound and you want to, you need to finish it.  Right. So, and that's fine. So the thing is to communicate that and saying, hey, this time to this time or, you know, or this whole of this day, I will not respond. I will not respond to emails. I will not respond to, you know, texts. I won't be approachable on calls, whatever. I will not be doing that. So to communicate that, but other times, you know, if we are approachable, then it is easy to build trust. Okay. So there needs to be approachability. So some practical things here, you know, is that we need to exhibit personal warmth or, you know, when you meet with people, are you friendly?  And sometimes we see people with very suspiciously, right?   Some people are like that, right? They take time. They take a lot of time in order to warm up, right? Some people at the first meeting itself, you know, okay, they are approachable, they are warm. Okay. So it's something that we need to build, right? Exhibit personal warmth. Second thing would be, you know, if, how, how to be approachable is that you appreciate, you know, everybody is different. Everybody is different, you know, very different, different personality types, different likes, different dislikes. They're all different, right? So, well, we have a tendency, right? If people are very different from us, then we won't relate, right? If they dress differently, if they speak differently, if they are, you know, then we find it difficult to relate to them and for them also to relate to, you know, we kind of keep our distance, we alienate ourselves. We don't realize it, but we keep our distance, right? Oh, that person, I'm not going to be, you know, but what if that person is in your team? And what if that person is in, you know, your church or, you know, are you going to distance yourself, right? So, appreciate that, yeah, people are different. This is how they are going to be. This is how they are. They are some, you know, appreciate that. Okay, so then that will help us to be approachable. Okay. Maintain an even temperament. You know, this is, this is very important, okay?   I think, you know, something like that we'll be talking, we'll be passing comments because they are in a bad mode. Okay. So, one day a good mode, one day in a bad mode. And so, if you as a leader or if you as just a, you know, a person in a team, if you're going to have these mood swings, like one day top of the world, another day down in the ditch, kind of a thing, you know, if it's going to fluctuate every day, then it's difficult for people, right? It's difficult for people to relate. They're going to be very cautious. Now, if the people are going to be very cautious, they're not going to build trust, right? Today, how is this person? I don't know. Today, how is that person going to respond? I don't know. So, I'm going to be careful, right? So, in some time, it's sad, but in some families it's like that, right? People say, okay, I cannot talk to my father. The way to the father is through the mother, right? Or, you know, through the right channels, right?  You know, I need some money, or I need permission. It's through the right channels and so on. So, it's very difficult to build trust in that thing. So, for us also, you know, maintain an even temperament, okay? Yes, you know, we are human and there are things that upset us. There are things that, you know, we are happy about, right?  Now, I'm dealing with people here and, you know, I'm going to leave that. Yes, there are challenges, but I'm not going to let that influence me in my relationship with you, influence me. Or if at all you need to do it, you take a time out and say, okay, today, I don't think I should really have these meetings. You know, today, let me not, because I'm going to influence this. I'm really down.  So, let me take some time out. Let me just rest, be refreshed. And I can do that. Yeah. Is it because of this leaders are not ready to take suggestions? Like, there are some ministers of God, like if you see, you know, ministry point of view, there are people who say these things like we have a biggest congregation. That's why we are not accessible. If you see in APC, if in the Sunday, Pastor Ashish will be there and all the pastor will be there. If someone want to come and talk, they can talk. But if we see in some ministries, they will be telling these as reasons like because we are having a biggest congregation. That's a huge number of congregations. We are not accessible, approachable. See, sometimes accessibility is a practical issue. Like it is a practical thing.  It's practically not possible. And when you have multiple services, let's say, you know, after this, you have another service and you also need to, you know, time to rest and reflect and recharge and all that. So, but the best thing would be to provide avenues. Okay. So not now, but some other time. Not this way, but this is the way to do it.  This is how you can do it. So when we, when we provide avenues and options for people, when you let them know, yes, you know, this person is approachable. I want to meet, but then this is how I do it. This is the place. This, these are the time options where I can do it. So then we, then you're solving the problem. Yes, it is, it's a, it's a reality. Yeah, it is. Okay, so we'll stop here and we'll get back next class. Thank you.


Alright. How's everyone doing? Good. I'm standing between you and coffee, so I understand the urgency that we have in finishing this talk. So what I wanted to do today is I wanted to talk about virtual machines and containers. There's been a lot of talk about why these technologies might be brought together, a lot of technical demos of bringing these technologies together, but I wanted to provide a concrete use case and what we're doing at CoreOS around one of our products to do that. So if you haven't heard of CoreOS, who's heard of CoreOS? Can you raise your hand? Alright. That's good. So why I'm on stage right now is that CoreOS over the last three years has been building a ton of open source projects. Rocket, etc, CoreOS, Linux are some of those things and we've been deeply involved in things like Kubernetes as well. And then we've been building a number of products, enterprise products that help people adopt and essentially get involved in this whole container movement that's happened over the last couple of years. Those things are Tectonic, which is a full container platform that we've built that includes Kubernetes and our Quay registry and build system. So just to get everybody on the same page on how containers are built, the basic life cycle of a container build looks something like this. You have your source code, wherever that comes from, GitHub or wherever, you take that source code and you generate a container image. This is generally done through compilation or inserting a bunch of packages required like your language runtimes. What comes out at the end of that whole process is you get essentially a tarball. And container images really aren't that much magic.  And it looks whatever is required for that particular application.  You tell Kubernetes or whatever orchestration system you're using. I want to have three of these containers running on top of my servers. So that's the life cycle from source code into production of a container. Pretty straightforward. But what I'm going to be talking about here is the build system. So that thing that transforms the source code into that container image that you can eventually pull down. So we run a service called Quay. Quay.io is the hosted service. You're going to have to just bear with me. I know that Quay is not the way you pronounce that word. That's how we pronounce it at CoreOS. So you're just going to have to bucket it with aluminum and vitamins. It's going to be fine. We're going to make it through. So the overview of Quay is it's a software as a service. You can sign up freely. Use your GitHub account.  JPL, hotels.com are some of those folks. You can see others on the list. And then it does a number of interesting things. We try to create a system that people implicitly have trust in. And we do things like audit logs and security scanning so that you can have confidence that the people who should have access to the container do have access and you get an audit log of who pushed and pulled that image. And then finally we're able to dig into the container image and tell you and give you notifications of if maybe there's vulnerabilities in that image and that sort of thing. I won't go into details. I'll touch on that at the end of the talk. But we do our best to create kind of the world's best container registry. But what I'll be talking about in particular is how we've improved the SaaS product, the Quay.io product. So the requirements for these build systems. It needs to be multi-tended. You're going to have lots of people source code coming from all over the internet and you need to ensure that one person is unable to interrupt or get access to somebody else's source code or their container images. It needs to scale. Containers continue to take off. There's a huge growth in the entire market. And so ideally we build a system that is able to horizontally scale so our engineers don't have to rebuild the whole thing again in 12 months. And we ideally are able to build a build system that can be ran behind the firewall as well. So the multi-tenancy concerns around these things are quite daunting.  You're going to be running arbitrary code that the user has provided or maybe some code that you downloaded over the internet in the first step. You're going to store arbitrary files on disk. And then finally you want to give these processes that are doing the build root access to the host. So show of hands, who wants to run the site of service in their environment? So there's a lot of things here that seem a little bit scary and make for a challenging thing to build multi-tended. This root access thing is kind of important because people have this laptop experience with building containers and they want to be able to do the exact same things that work on their laptop, just jumping down to root when they actually go and build on their host in their hosted build system. And so we just want to provide a really seamless experience. So how we did it. On EC2 what we do is every time somebody submits a build, we spin up a new instance. And that instance is used just for that time period, just for that build and then thrown away. And what we do is we provide credentials to that individual instance that say you're able to do these two actions, which is push status, push logs up to us, and then push the final container image and nothing more. So we essentially protect through virtual machines. The overall architecture looks like this. You check in some source code to GitHub. It goes to Quay through some webhook and then ends up in a build queue. And then in that queue we have all these individual EC2 instances that chug through, compile the container image, and then push it to the image store. So this system's worked great. It's the system that if you use Quay, you've experienced for a long time. But we add some motivators for change. So the first is that EC2 instances take a little bit of time to start up. So it's essentially on the order of a couple minutes and this meant that once we get a webhook in, if we're adding capacity, it takes a couple minutes for those machines to start the build. We also had excess expenditure. So we weren't really spending the money on our infrastructure as efficiently as possible because these instances are built on an hour basis, which we'll talk about in a second. And then finally, enterprise customers behind the firewall can't run EC2. So it's a little challenging for them to use the same experience. So this is the timeline of kind of a build. So the first couple of minutes are spent bringing up the EC2 instance. The next couple of minutes are spent actually doing the build or actually even less in a lot of cases. It's just a few seconds. And then we get build all the way through the hour. So not an extremely efficient use of resources. So let's talk about VMs and containers and the motivators here for using VMs and containers together. So these diagrams that I'm going to be showing you are extremely technically simplified. One of the beautiful things about giving a keynote versus a regular session is that there's no Q&A. So if you'd like to discuss the details of this, there's a lot of folks at the Cora's booth, including myself, who'd be happily able to talk through it. But just to get the high-level ideas down on paper, let's talk through it. So a container process interacts with the Linux kernel in a lot of different ways. And there's device nodes, there's syscalls, there's various other IPC mechanisms. And each of these sort of mechanisms has their own way of authenticating and isolating the process. So the reason that we've always said that containers are less secure or there's always this conversation around containers being less secure is because you actually have a really complicated API surface area to lock down. We've done, as an industry, a really good job. And I would argue, in a lot of cases, containers are more secure than the classic way that we've been deploying software where we just kind of line up the various pieces of infrastructure under our NIT systems via some configuration management. We're able to more nicely isolate with containers than we were in the past. But this is the reason that there's like the constant question mark around containers being secure.  Now what VMs have had and the reason we trust them in multi-tenant environments is because there's a smaller surface area. The APIs aren't as big. And some of them, through the KBM side of the kernel, are actually enforced through hardware on most platforms. And so we have an implicit amount of trust in the system. And then we have this constrained IO path through VertIO that kind of constrains the amount of API surface area to write files to disk and interact with the network. So that's why we implicitly trust these things. And then the next thing is we can use kind of containers and VMs together by essentially putting the resource isolation side. I only want this much CPU bandwidth and this much memory bandwidth and this much network bandwidth around the virtual machine. And that's how we kind of use containers and virtual machines together. We use the isolation mechanism of the VMs and the resource isolation of the container. So the tenant isolation, what we're trying to achieve here is we want builds to be isolated from each other. Nobody should be able to interrupt somebody else's build. We don't want users having access to other users' source code or their container images. We need to protect the network so the individual build can't attack back towards Quay. It needs to be isolated, only have access to the resources it should have access to. And then finally Quay protects itself with these one-time use tokens from nefarious users who might actually break out of the build system and get access to the wider VM. So our new approach, instead of using EC2, is we use virtual machines, containers, and Kubernetes. And it's very much the same as our previous approach. Only we've replaced a single EC2 instance with a single KVM instance running inside of a container. And the result is pretty good for users. It's essentially faster builds and we have more efficient use of the capital so we can buy better and bigger and faster machines in order to do the builds instead of spending time just kind of intally at the end of the build. So the new system looks like this. Everything comes in through Quay, gets into the build queue. Quay then talks to a Kubernetes cluster that we have running on bare metal servers on this provider called Packet. Those bare metal servers are members of this Kubernetes cluster.  So if we zoom in a little bit, what happens is we have all these containers that are actually running KVM running underneath Kubernetes on top of these bare metal hosts. And then those bare metal hosts, those KVM instances running in containers pull things off the queue and start to build the container image. And so if you dive down into the actual instance, what we have is the agent that's pulling logs off, giving users status updates on their build. We have the Docker engine that's actually running through and building the Docker file and then we're pushing the container image off of disk into Quay.io. So the result is quite nice. So previously we had these EC2 instances and we had this long startup time. Now we're able to bring that down to just a few seconds, about 15 seconds, which is an 80% improvement on the initial start of the build on top of Kubernetes and boot this VM and get the agent downloading the context for the build. And so the comparison looks really good for the user is they've gone from this three minutes wait time all the way down like cut the build time in half. The cool thing is that it's available today making Quay an even better build system and service for people interested in containers. And I put the asterisks there for a very important reason. So before getting this all launched, we wanted to ensure everything works. So we rolled it out about three days ago silently to our users and people started to notice. So immediately on Twitter we started to get people saying, wow, the builds are really fast on Quay. What do you guys change? And we wanted to hold the news until here today at Linux.com. So we didn't really reply to these and it's always nice that people notice when products just kind of naturally get better. So some considerations while building this entire system. First is why did we choose Kubernetes? Well, we were used to having this API driven system so that we could have internal dashboards and metrics and monitoring in order to see what does the build queue look like today in case we got paged or whatever. So having this API driven system is really important to us in order to operate the system effectively. Containers allow us to kind of splay out these virtual machines and upgrade the processes and everything over time. And it's a really easy way of then resource isolating, perhaps creating limits and things around individual users so they can only consume X amount of CPU time, Y amount of memory to protect ourselves from denial of service. And then scaling is really easy. Kubernetes is easy to plug in and horizontally scale the cluster over time. So we're in a good position as Quay and containers continue to expand to serve our users well. And then packet and bare metal. So we chose bare metal servers because they, one, allow us to run VMs. Two, there's a really good price to performance ratio when we're thinking about expanding this service over time. They have AWS peering, a lot of Quays backed by S3 and AWS services. And so we're able to push all those assets out of our build system back into AWS, which is really important. And then finally, we have API provisioning. So with packet, we're able to in a couple of minutes add additional bare metal capacity without having to rack new servers. So with all this stuff, whether some other use cases for virtual machines and containers. This is a really compelling use case. We're able to make users really happy combining these two technologies. What are a few other use cases? One is that inside of the rocket container engine, we've combined virtual machines along with the help of Intel. So classically, you would execute a container process, and they'd be just isolated by regular Linux namespaces. But we now are able to wrap just kind of transparently with a single flag containers inside of virtual machines. Inside of OpenSack, we have worked on a project that we really cleverly called Stackinetease. This is where you're running OpenSack as a process on top of Kubernetes, and you're able to manage and upgrade OpenSack using those Kubernetes APIs.  So the actual IaaS virtual machines that OpenSack is scheduling run under containers under Kubernetes. And really what this is about is we're trying to bring OpenSack over to Kubernetes with the influence of a lot of Google's infrastructure. So Google's Cloud Platform runs virtual machines to this API that they call Google Cloud Platform, and it runs on their exact same infrastructure, Borg, that schedules all their other applications. And so we have this hashtag that we like to use called Giffy, which is Google's infrastructure for everybody else. And we want to paint this picture of you're able to run your IaaS applications just alongside any other application that you might want to do on top of containers. So some future use cases, you can see virtual machines and containers being used for batch processing of video encoding and that sort of thing. Non-Linux workloads like running under emulation or Windows, or running these VM appliances that are really popular in enterprises, the GitHub and Oracle and own cloud sort of appliances that you can buy and run on your own gear. So some conclusions. Initially, we had these requirements of multi-tenancy auto-scaling and being able to deliver a system for behind-the-firewall use. We were able to do that through the use of virtual machines, containers, Kubernetes, and architectonic Kubernetes solution built on. And then some actions. I want to leave you with some takeaways. First is that Quay is a free hosted service that we let anybody building open-source projects use for free. So please try it out for your next open-source container project. The other thing is that we have this open-source project called Clare that actually builds and scans through these container images finding any known vulnerabilities. So you get this dashboard of, well, perhaps there's some packages that you can update in your container or there's some other things that you can address. It's really great. We've seen open-source projects use this software, find out that the containers have known vulnerabilities, and update them. This is a Kubernetes project that uses Quay. They saw that there were some things in the dashboard that could be addressed. They looked through the actions list that Clare gives them, and they addressed the issue, rolled out a new container image, and had it all fixed up in a few days. I'd like to invite you all to our conference if you want to learn more about all this stuff in December in New York City. And with that, I thank you for your attention and enjoy the rest of the conference.


So we're going to have a conversation here obviously about the subject, and towards the end we'll have a session for some questions, and at that time there's a microphone in the middle there if you want to have a question if you line up behind the microphone. We'll take those. So I want to introduce our renowned panel of writers. First we have Carol Hall, and I'm just going to point out some of their work that is relevant to what we're discussing today. I know Carol recently wrote the lyrics for an adaptation of a children's story called A Christmas Memory, which is based on, it's a Truman Capote short story. It's a classic story. It's not really for children. I mean it's not a children's story. Right, right. It's sort of based on his childhood a little bit. And also I know Bessito-Harris in Texas was actually an adaptation of a Larry... That's not a children's story. But it's an adaptation of a Larry King's book. And he actually wrote the libretto for it as well. Wendy Holesman wrote the book for Wicked, which is an adaptation of Gregory McGuire's The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. Doug Wright, as many of you know, has written several adaptations of actually documentary films. And I don't know where some of these things have come from. Grey Gardens was a documentary film. Hands in a Hard Body Musical was a documentary film as well. He also did the adaptation of A Little Mermaid, the musical version for Broadway, which is adapted from the animated Disney film. And David Ives down there is, many of you might not know this for the last two decades. He has adapted 33 librettos for City Center's Encore series in New York, which includes the revival of Wonderful Town. He also co-wrote the book for the musical adaptation of the film White Christmas. And actually many of David's plays are adaptations of Venus and Furze based on a 19th century German novel. And School for Lies is based on Molière's Missing Throat. So a wide range of different styles of adaptations. And as many of us know, I think probably the most compelling thing about adaptation is the fact that a story exists in some form. And sort of the thrill of that is what we do with that story of how we get to play with that story. So the first question I want to throw out to our panel here is, for you, what excites you about adaptation? And what do you find as sort of the greatest challenge with approaching adaptation or working with adaptation? Any takers? No, I was just going to say Winnie and Stephen Schwartz just finished the most extraordinary hour of talking about wicked. I can't even imagine what else you could say. I'm going to find something. I know me. He's amazing. He was great. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.  I was just going to say that I don't really draw a line very much between playwriting and adaptation. They're sort of the same thing for me. I take my inspiration, as always, from Shakespeare who, if you asked him, probably would have said that his job was an adapter because 35 of his 37 plays were adaptations of somebody else's material. And he didn't do too badly on the other two. But it just seems to me, I love adaptation because it takes, I find story very hard. And I love to have somebody hand me a structure that I can then play with. For example, just to throw this out, when I did The School for Lies, which is a version of The Missing Thrope, I actually did what I call a translation, which is to say that I translated it and adapted it. Partly because I never thought that The Missing Thrope worked very well. And so I was interested in that play because I thought it never pleased me. And so I just thought I would fix it because Moliart wasn't around to tell me any differently. So I reworked it that way. But it's taking some of the load off of you, I would say, adaptation. I think just saying what you just said is really key, at least for me, is when you were talking about writing something that annoys you or upsets you or makes you angry in some way. And I don't mean that when I was reading the novel of Wicked that I was annoyed or angry, exactly. But the idea of the novel was so thrilling to me. And there were ways that he did the idea that I felt combative about. And I do think that there is something about writing where you sort of go, I'm going to show you what I think it should be. This is something very aggressive. And I do think that I can barely be on the panel, I think, because I've only done it once. I've only done one adaptation. I would like to do more. But I do think that there is, for me, it was almost a relief not to read the novel and go, oh my God, I wouldn't change a thing. Because how would then I proceed? Whereas what it was for me is I was flooded with ideas of things I would want to do a little bit differently. And that's, to me, a better place to begin. But I don't know. I have a footnote to what Winnie says, which is that I say this to my own shame and embarrassment. So turn off the cameras. But when Wicked came out, somebody came to me and said, you know, there's this book called Wicked, which might make a good musical. And I read and I said, it will never work. I said, it is absolutely impossible to turn that book into a musical. And so I went off to Molière or something. I don't know. But so bravo, bravo. Because I think it's a brilliant, brilliant adaptation in every way. And I think we were led greatly by, just what I'm saying, our likes and dislikes. It got very personal very quickly. We were in a conversation, obviously, the two of us, Stephen and I. But it was all about, well, what do you just love in the book that you have to keep? And what do you not like that we don't want to have? And I remember those as the very beginnings of the conversation. It was all very personal and a response. And I just don't want to see that. Or I do want to see that on stage. Just regarding when you're talking about the original authors and things like that, when you're doing adaptation, do you feel an ongoing obligation to either the author or the source material or whoever created that first version, whether it was a film or something? And does that affect, are you aware of it at all times while you're writing? Or is it something you have to let go? I curiously felt less of an obligation with two of my adaptations to the original authors and more the potential audiences because both pieces were beloved cultural artifacts. Working on Grey Gardens and working on The Little Mermaid. And Grey Gardens is a celebrated and revered and deeply subversive documentary that is held to almost biblical standard by a vociferous and enthusiastic group of gay gentlemen, usually of a certain generation. And Little Mermaid is a beloved animated film that is cherished by tween girls. And those two demographics have a lot in common.  And so I felt enormously beholden to what were very concrete and loudly expressed audience expectations about both of those works. So the challenge was less honoring the Maisel's brothers or the brilliant Howard Ashman and Alan Menken and their screenwriters and more about trying to use the material that would reinvent it so that it felt fresh and satisfying and like a new journey but at the same time did not rob it of any of those elements that had earned it those ardent fan bases. And that was extraordinarily challenging and honest to God. We had birthday parties of little girls come to Mermaid in tiaras and tales and we had legions of men in snoods at Grey Gardens. So they were shockingly similar but it was playing against expectations already engendered by the pieces themselves. I myself love a dead author. First of all you don't have to share any royalties which is of course our main point as playwrights. Never share points. And you know I've been adapting not only Molière I've done actually four French comedies and I've loved it. I've loved working in that form. Partly because these plays are 350 or 400 years old and they need help for our culture so I feel that it's incumbent upon me to make them speak to today. I did have an experience of being asked to translate a French play by a living author who will remain nameless, Yasmina Reza. And I did not really enjoy the experience and I can't imagine that I'll ever do it again. But you know I should say I did it partly for the wrong reasons which is that I was asked to translate this play and a superb cast of actors including Zoe Caldwell had already been chosen to be in it. And John Turtur was directing and so I wanted to be in the room with those people I didn't want to be as much in the room with that play. And so I found that experience rather grueling because I did feel it incumbent upon myself to honor what she had written because she could sue the living hell out of me and probably would.  So it was quite instructive in many different ways. I think in my case, if I haven't spoken to it yet, in my case it's very, very simple. I had loved the Truman Capote story from the time I'd read it which is when I was a teenager. So it was quite old story and usually when you mention Truman Capote's Christmas memory people sort of gasp they go, I love that. And so I knew how many people loved it because every time you say the title people go, and I wanted to make them alive. I wanted it to be alive in a way I guess you're not sure who's going to be reading it but if you can see it and hear it then you've given them a new kind of life. And in the case of the best little whorehouse in Texas that actually was not a book. It was an article in Playboy Magazine and Larry L. King, he's now deceased, he was a fantastic journalist who kind of came to fame and glory in the 50s and 60s during the time of when magazines had really rich, wonderful, journalistic things happening. And the person who brought me Larry's article was my friend Pete Masterson who is an actor and director whom I've known all my life from Texas. Larry L. King was from Texas. We had all gone to see Vanities which is a Texas play by Jack Hefner. And dinner afterwards after Vanities I said I've always wanted to do something about Texas but not the kind of thing where people have their thumbs and their suspenders. Just really about the craziness of Texas. Doug and I shared not only Texas as a background but at different eras we shared the same high school so I know that Doug knows about craziness in Texas. And it seemed very political. So we set to do this event because it made us laugh at Texas but it also made us laugh affectionately. And it just feels like I wanted to have those two children somehow. The whorehouse and Christmas. Something, Winnie, you had mentioned this before just a little bit. This whole idea of what to keep, what to throw away. That process of taking something and editing it or in Christmas memory. It's a short story so I'm assuming you have to add. And things like Doug Grey Gardens, the documentary is the second act of the musical. And so you created this first act that didn't exist. It's those decisions of how to take this germ and what to do with that. What to take away, what to put in, how to shape it into something that is different from the form that's originally in. Any thoughts? Well actually, I never had a better education as a playwright than the 33 musicals I adapted for Encore's. At the time that I started adapting the musicals, I don't know if you know the program, they do concert versions of forgotten, neglected or underrepresented American musicals all the way back from the 20s to the 70s or 80s. But when I was asked to do my first Encore script, I had seen, I would say, six musicals in my entire life. Two of them were Sweeney Todd. And so I knew nothing whatsoever about what I was doing, which is usually a nice place for me to start. But the reason I say it was a great education was because in adapting these 33 musicals, basically what I had to do to make them concert versions was A, to strip out props because the actors were going to be carrying their scripts in their hands and reduce the scripts to about two-thirds or three-quarters of their size because the accent was on the music, because the band is on stage. And so every one of those 33 adaptations was an exercise in what I call literary ventriloquism because I had to take this book and make people feel that they had seen the whole musical when actually they had seen two-thirds of the musical, of the book of the musical and heard all of the music. And so what I had to do was sometimes collapse scenes or join scenes, cut characters, make scenes move more swiftly. And yet not ever let anybody notice that. And what that meant was that I had to think my way into the way this play was written, how it was written, who wrote it, what the style was, and to basically impersonate Herb Fields or Oscar Hammerstein or George Abbott. And so I learned an immense amount. And I would say that adapting French classic plays was a breeze after adapting, you know, Juno by Mark Blitzstein. And so I highly recommend taking something and trying to just take an old play that, you know, find an old play and take a pencil to it and see what it's made out of. It's a great exercise because actually what you find is that everything gets better. What happened at Encore's is that a lot of people would say, I can't believe that this musical is never done. And the fact is they hadn't seen the musical. They had seen it with the book stripped down. And it's almost always the book that's the problem in musicals. And so that's part of my adaptational and playwriting education, really. This is slightly different because David's talking about adapting plays in musicals. And I would say if you're adapting a documentary film or a novel, you're serving two masters. And those masters are sometimes at odds with one another. One, of course, is the underlying work itself, the novel or the film. And the other are the very particular demands of the theater and the three-dimensional space and what the theater does well and what it doesn't do well. And in the case of Grey Gardens, my dear friend, the composer, Scott Frankel, invited me to his home and said, I want to do a musical based on this film. And I said, it won't work. I said, what's most compelling about the movie is its cinema verite quality. The fact we know it to be true. And if these women become larger-than-life figures in a musical, it's all about artifice. It's not nearly so interesting. And I said it also is completely non-narrative. The film itself, which chronicles the Beale women, a mother and daughter, who lived in a 36-room mansion in Long Island that was overrun by cats and debris and happened to be related to Jacqueline Kennedy. The film, there's no story. It's just raw footage of these two women interacting in an increasingly destructive dance, but it's purely psychologically driven. There's absolutely no narrative and no story tension. And so I said to Scott that musicals kind of thrive on storytelling. You can't do an ambient musical or a character portrait musical. You just can. And I said, without the building blocks of narrative, you don't have anything. And so Scott was resolved to get me to do it. So he went out to dinner with the lyricist Michael Corey, and they were having dinner and they were saying, beginning, middle, end. Beginning, middle, end. How do we find that in this material? And on one dinner napkin, Scott scrawled 1943. And on the other napkin, he scrawled 1977. And they both looked at each other and called me the next day and brought me the napkins. And I said, I have to do this with you. I have to do this with you. And because I think that good adaptation is rarely about, as I think Winnie was suggesting, fidelity to the source. It's about reinventing the source to fit the new medium. And I would go so far as to say, I think a lot of us, all of us have probably had the experience of going to foreign countries and seeing our work adapted and translated. And even as the author of the underlying material, I'm always grateful when the translator or adapter has felt sufficient freedom to do not only translation but cultural adaptation as well, to take those things in my text that may or may not readily translate to the culture in which the play is playing and come up with correlatives that do. So sometimes as a writer when I'm applying license to someone else's work and feeling guilty about it, I remind myself that in my own experience, it's one of the things I'm most grateful for in the adapters and translators who do my work overseas. So a good adaptation isn't only serving the source, it's also serving the form. And that's the constant tension. Carol, do you have any thoughts on... You're one, like I said, that's taking a Christmas memory, which is the shorter story, and having to... How did you build upon that story? Well, it was begun by... It became a full-length musical. Yes. Yes. And the reason I haven't brought it up, frankly, is because it's taken a little respite while we have an amicable divorce from our producers. And now that's all done. But that's why I'm sort of speaking of it as if it's a child's been sent away for a while. But we're back on track. And Paul, what was the question? What did you say? In terms of that's a very... I read the book. It's a very short story. Yes. How do you make that a full-length musical? Well, Truman wrote that story after he was grown up. And that gave Dwayne Poole, the book writer, the feeling that if we see him as a child and a grown-up, that that can fill in a lot of the space. Dwayne had done it without songs for television and then wanted to get the rights to musicalize it. So we were lucky to get that. From that came Larry Grossman, the composer whom Dwayne knew and admired, and he called Larry and asked him to participate. And Larry called me and asked me to do lyrics. I love doing just lyrics because whorehouse was music and lyrics. And my pop songs have mostly been written music and lyrics by me. But it's less lonely and more fun to be in a room where you're writing with someone else. So I was delighted to start with lyrics. And I think that it was that, this view from his adulthood coming back to tell us the story. Because the story is all told, it's the child's life. Yes. It doesn't start with an adult and go back. No, it does. There's no adult. There's memory, but there's no adult. So that's how we did that. And banking off of musical theater, which we keep talking about quite a bit, is the relationship between you and either a lyricist or a composer. I think that one of the challenges is always ending continuity and storytelling when you have multiple people telling the story. You know, when you have, it's one thing to just be the playwright and write the play. But do you have any methods or specific ways of approaching that relationship or any stories in terms of how to have a good relationship and keeping the continuity of the story that you want to tell moving forward when working with more than one person on it? Well, with Stephen and I, it really was such a conversation and so much talking, literally just talking back and forth. And you know, there's that thing, this isn't just about adaptation, obviously. There's that thing where you just go, tell me the story again. What's the story? Because I get story amnesia. And most writers I know get story amnesia. They think they know the story. They've got a story. They can't remember what's the story. What are the elements of the story? I have this little list that I brought today to show Stephen, because I was looking at my old, old Wicked Notes. And I have something that says things we love. And then there's a little list of things we love, meaning like it obviously came out of a conversation of things we don't want to forget that we want to be in the musical that we love. And just in terms of what's the story, so we would just talk, talk back and forth so much about what we felt we had to have, what things we didn't quite even want. And then, of course, he was saying in the previous panel, I had been mentored by Arthur Lawrence at NYU and Arthur would always tell us as a book writer, your job is there to serve the songs and the songwriter or writers. And you provide book, you provide it like you would put wood in a fire. And so Stephen wanted to work that way, too. That was natural to me because Arthur had given us that as his credo. So I would just write a lot, quite a lot more than ever got into the musical. But it would provide a jumping off place for songs. So that's really more about musicals. Any other thoughts, gentlemen? Next, Doug, a question about Hands on a Hard Body. I think it's so much fun for me to think that both you and I wrote a musical about an event in Texas. That seems strange, but interesting to me. Your event became a documentary first and then a musical. My event, as it were, was an article in Playboy Magazine. It seems to me that you probably had more to work with story-wise since you came to the documentary. Did you take things from the true event that then could be added to the documentary part? Or did you musicalize the documentary itself? We took liberties. Essentially, we had eight central stories that were in the documentary that we wanted to tell in the musical and adapt to them accordingly. But we also only had the life rights to eight people. And there were originally 25 people in the competition. So we created two composite characters and used them. And again, we wanted to serve the spirit of the film, but we didn't feel an obligation to the letter of the film because, again, that was a documentary film, and we were creating an artificial theatrical event based on it. So we had to make all kinds of concessions and considerations in that regard. We also met the original contestants who had appeared in the doc and used a lot of raw material that they gave us to flesh out the story in a richer way. And as David was saying, one of the glories of adaptation is you're kind of given a story, and we were given the story in the documentary, but in addition, it's a documentary about a contest. So you have all the rules of a contest. You have people. You have why they're entering. You have what the challenge or the conflict is. You have their ostensible reasons for needing the truck. You have their human or poetic reasons for needing the truck. You have a winner. You have people that fall ill. You have people that betray other people in an effort to win. So not only do you have the raw material of the doc, but you've got all the logic and all the intrigue and all the natural narrative building blocks that constitute a contest. And so that was one thing that for us made it feel really ripe for adaptation in the first place. And I guess I was sitting here thinking about some of the questions we're raising about what do you include and what do you not include. And I kind of think it's the same thing with adaptation as it is with simply writing an original play. And that's that the first thing you have to do is sit down and write all the really good parts. Write the scenes you cannot wait to write that are the reason you wrote the play.  Because it's the connective tissue and it's the earning the next moment that is actually usually drudgery and at the end of the day you don't need. So it's like adaptation and playwriting. It's just just write the good parts. I would build on that by mentioning that when I worked on the misanthrope and as I say it's a play that's always vexed me because it's one of those great plays that never satisfied me. It always seemed to be a comedy that left out the comedy somehow. And never quite worked as a tragedy. And so when I sat down to work on it basically what I did was I kept reading it over and over again in French so that I didn't have any English voice of this play. And then what I did was I took just as you do with the movie I made index cards of all of the scenes in the play. And then what I did was I laid those out on my dining room table and then I wrote all of the scenes that I thought were missing which is sort of what you're saying. And the scenes that I wanted to write. For example, one of the things about the misanthrope I've never, you know, my attitude basically is how would Shakespeare tell this story? And Shakespeare would never begin with the two people in love. And with these two extremely odd, interesting characters in love I want to see how they managed to fall in love. And so I wrote out an index card, they fall in love. And so that was part of it. And so I just started laying out the scenes that I felt were missing and gradually I had my dining room table entirely filled and I actually could start writing.   But that's basically how I did it was by constructing it like a movie and making sure that the story was absolutely airtight and also I could track how every... I could track that every character, which I didn't feel was true in Malia, how every character had a part in this. Because one of the things I firmly believe about a good play is that everybody is implicit in... is implicated in the story so that if one character pulls a strand somebody else twitches somewhere else. And so I wanted to make sure that even the smallest characters in the story were tracked through it so that everybody was affecting everybody else. And so that was the process of adapting. The misanthrope for me was really taking a story that had always fascinated me and just thinking, well, how can I tell this in a way that will satisfy me? I think I'd like to open it up for questions from all of you. We have such a variety of people up here and I'm sure you have different questions. So if anyone has a question, if you'd like to go up to the mic in the center and line up if you'd like or... And if it's to a specific person, please let us know or just to the panel in general and the way we go. Hi. This might be most appropriate for Doug, but when adapting somebody's life or actual events, how do you deal with that and then you talked about life rights. What's the sort of life right situation? What's the statute of limitations? Dealing with the states, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera? Yeah, that's a great question and a complicated one. As far as life rights and what's required, consult a lawyer, don't ask me. But it's a general rule that a public figure or someone who's a pronounced part of the historical record, you can write about private individuals who don't have a public presence. You usually need to get their life rights and they're also above and beyond what the law requires. They're moral questions. Whose story are you telling? Why are you telling it? What is your obligation to them? Are they living? Will they have to deal with repercussions from the work that you've made and what do you owe to them? So those are all necessary questions. And I said this in my last session, so I'll be brief, but I have a kind of sliding scale when it comes to writing about real people. And when I wrote about the Marquis de Sade, I felt enormous freedom to invent aspects of my story because with Sade, there's a long tradition of writers appropriating them to their own purpose, from Yukio Mishima to Peter Weiss. And if you go to the library, there are 12 great biographies on Sade that'll set you straight about the historical record. I'm not a biographer. I'm a dramatist. So it's like you don't go see, you know, the new Disney movie Plains, and then pilot an aircraft. You know it's a story. And I think it's the same thing. It's like you go see a play about a historical subject or a historical figure. You haven't been reading biography. I think most of us are smart enough to know genre. And I'm not a biographer.  When I wrote about Charlotte von Malzdorf, she was a completely unknown figure. There are no biographies to correct errors in my play. Nobody knows who she is. There's no public dialogue about her. I knew that my play was introducing her to an American theater going audience. So in my sliding scale, I had a much higher standard of truth and to invent something about her, to create an event that never happened. That felt dubious to me because there was not any opposing force waiting in the wings to correct me. So with Sade, I took a million liberties and with Charlotte almost none. With hands on a hard body, because many of those people were living, it required an open dialogue with them. You said this racist remark in the movie, your issues with race are important to our storytelling. Can we use that aspect of your experience because it's crucial for the fabric of the play? Some hard questions, but some necessary questions, and when fully educated about our intent, almost all of them said yes. So those are some of the issues, I think, that arise. My question is addressed to Doug, too. It's a question about multiple adaptations. The game of the Drew Barrymore, Jessica Lange, HBO, Grey Gardens, and I don't know the timeline sequence of how your musical fits in with that piece and how successful you thought both of them were. We had a very warm relationship with Michael Sooksy who wrote the screenplay and directed the film. Initially, he went outside the house a lot and into the village of East Hampton and all that, and then after a few visits to the musical, it became a much more contained story. That said, it's a story about public figures and some of the things that happened are documentary facts, so we couldn't claim any infringement by him, and I think both, while the musical came first, I think both projects had a useful conversation while they were in evolution and then I have to confess, and this is perhaps an odd admission, but I had just spent about three years of my life dancing with those two, irrepressible, crazy, Herod and Reckless, wonderful women, and I wasn't quite ready to see them dancing with a new partner, so I didn't watch the movie on HBO and I have not seen it. It's my understanding that it's quite good and was a real triumph for the actresses involved, which gladdens me, but I felt a little territorial about my ladies and I just wasn't ready to give them up, so I'll watch it and appreciate it someday. Thanks. My question is actually for Mr. Ives. When you're doing translations, do you feel that you want your voice to stay out of the translation or do you feel like your voice is an essential part of the translation? I asked this because I recently read David Mamet's adaptation of Chekhov's Three Sisters, and it's very clear that it's Mamet translating as opposed to he uses his modern sort of dialogue. There were some moments where it was like okay here's the Mamet speak, back and forth, back and forth, like okay now it's Chekhov.  They changed. So, yes, what you're asking is the great question about translation. I find it impossible to stand in a corner when writing a play and pretend I'm not there. And so I try to find projects where I can use my voice rather than hide it. It's partly why translating the Yasmina Reza play was not terribly satisfying was because I was just I was limited as to how much I could inject myself into it. It's why I love translating French classic plays, for example, because they happen in everywhere land and so I can make them into plays of mine basically. In fact, my translation of the misanthrope is called the printed copy says by David Ives adapted from Molière because it really there's more of me or 51% of me in there. But what I find, you know, the check off question I think about probably, you know, six times a week because what I really find hard is to contemplate translating check off and translating realistic dialogue today. You know, I'm very happy to create speeches of characters in 1635 in a structure that I have come up with but the challenge of the diction of an author check off, for example, in our time seems to me almost impossible. I've never frankly heard a good check off translation. I always just something always makes me sit up, you know, it's like I saw a translation of check off this year where somebody said cool and you just and you are suddenly taken out of you are taken out of 1895 and the challenge of check off is that check off is as we know we love him because his world is so real but one of the things that makes it real is that he understands in his time the social relations between everybody and that those relations are and marital love relations are written into the play in a way that language is going to bump up against and so I am very happy not to be David Manette facing check off because realistic you know, realism is so hard, you know, plays in English date within a week, you know, the shelf life of a good play is you know, three weeks basically and so it's very hard for example, you know I said this in an article in the dramatist but I think when you're translating the play you have to do the playwriting work first and then the translating work for example, you have to immerse yourself as you would in your own play in these characters and if in in Russian it says da if the character says da does that character say yes or sure or uh-huh or nod or say nothing or write what is the correct translation of da or what is the correct translation of we you know and so you have to understand what the diction of the character is and then you can translate and in realistic plays like check off that is immensely hard and so that's kind of my truncated answer to a wonderful question thank you this I think is towards Winnie Holtzman but it could be to anybody else about translation and adaptation with another person what are what did you think were the advantages and pitfalls because particularly Winnie it sounds as if you and Stephen were really from the very beginning adapting this together I mean even though he was writing the songs you were writing the book yes it was and then truly when Joe Mantello came in and also our producer Mark Platt who was extremely um influenced us very strongly story wise he worked with us on the story very strongly we did not for those who haven't read the novel the brilliant novel that Gregory McWire wrote with the amazing idea that the Wicked Witch of the West should be her own should be a heroine who has a back story that you don't know about and all of this a genius idea but that we did not we did not have a structure actually from that novel we needed to create our own structure stealing things from the novel and stealing most importantly that brilliant idea but um but yeah we you know this has to do with the nature of collaboration and I'm you know I've done a fair amount of that and I certainly collaborate when I'm working in TV which I've done a fair amount of and um I'm excited by it you know obviously if I'm if I'm in a room with Stephen Schwartz first of all who's forgotten more about musicals than any of us will ever learn um you know I'm just happy to be in I am just happy to be in that room I mean to sort of jump on it's like I just need to be in that room because I figure I'm going to learn something major I'm going to get I'm going to get better it's that old saw about if you play tennis with someone who's better than you well I did play tennis with someone who's better than me and I did get a lot better um so you know it's you know I'm not sure I'm answering your question but I was but then I'll be honest I mean there are always moments in any collaboration at least my experience is where you really wish you could just be alone and um uh I am I've definitely experienced that and and I recently wrote my first full-length play by myself and it was a really good feeling I really really needed to do it because I've been collaborating a lot in my life and you know it's nothing against collaboration I guess you just kind of need you were speaking to that earlier you kind of need that balance I think at least I do I feel like I didn't really answer your question but maybe I did well I mean it could have been for Doug Wright too for everybody I mean it's about the nature of translation and adaptation by yourself versus collaboration and what part does collaboration with living colleagues have versus the dead author if you're in a situation working with living colleagues and trying to it is best to work with living colleagues by the way in the room itself I was going to say the dead are less confrontational but in in what respect have they contributed toward the process and has that been a good thing and in what respect are there ways that you things that you need to to do to make sure everybody's vision is the same of what you want this translation adaptation to be this might sound perverse but I don't think it's that different working on say Grey Gardens with Scott Frankel and Michael Corey we were in constant dialogue about what the story required and ways that we could best serve it and I had the great pleasure of adapting not often produced Strinberg play for the La Jolla Playhouse about three years ago and I felt like Strinberg and I were engaged in the same kind of conversation and it was never just about me and my control I felt like there was always attention between me and him and trying to push through to the best idea between us so it felt amazingly similar whereas when I'm simply writing a fresh fictional play of my own design I feel that total godlike freedom you do alone in a room where you're inventing people to punish them in fabulous ways that hopefully leads to some kind of raw human truth and that's the power trip but every adaptation I've done whether it's been with living collaborators or a dead author has felt like a conversation among parties who are trying to serve a third thing I'm afraid we're just about out of time so let's take one more question I was very interested in the construction of Venus Infer and I wondered how you did that because it's not exactly an adaptation but in a sense it's sort of layered where you do it parallels and stuff and I just wonder how you constructed that In two seconds what I will tell you is what I basically did was I basically adapted the book Sakhar Masak's book first as a play for several actors in period just telling the story and I showed it to Walter Bobby who is a great friend and collaborator of mine we've worked on many projects and I said what do you think and he said I think two things first of all it doesn't feel like it has anything to do with the contemporary world although the relationship between these two people is fascinating and and and this kind of erotic relationship shown literally on stage can only be hallowingly hilarious and so he said I don't know what you do with this but I went away with that and I was so fascinated by these characters that I let the play sit for about five months and they just wouldn't let me go and so one day I took my play and I crossed out everything that was not drama and I had basically a bunch of scenes from these two people in 1870 and for some reason I just started writing a play looking for an actress to play this part and nine days later I finished writing it and so that was how that play came that's why it's sort of layered the way it is thank you very much everyone thank you our panel enjoy your evening oh me too


Okay, now let's look at temperature. As you know from basic kinetic theory, as you increase the temperature of a substance, the distribution of molecule speeds changes. This diagram shows the Maxwell-Boltzmann distributions for nitrogen molecules at 0°C, 1000°C and 2000°C. And you can see that as the temperature increases, there are two things that change about the distributions. First, the average speed increases. You can see this from the fact that the peak of each distribution moves further along the x-axis, so the average speed is increasing. And the second thing is that the distribution broadens out, meaning that there's a much greater range of speeds as you go up to higher temperatures. Now imagine a reaction for which the activation energy is here. Remember that each speed on this axis corresponds to a particular kinetic energy. This means that many molecules or rather any molecules with speeds greater than this will have a successful collision, while those slower than this will not. So at 0°C, essentially no molecules have the required energy, and this reaction won't happen at all. Molecules can sit there for as long as they like, and the chances that there will be a successful collision are infinitesimally small. Now if you increase the temperature of the reaction to 1000°C, you can see that the proportion of molecules with the required energy is still fairly small, but it is finite. The reaction will occur, not very fast, but it would be measurable. If you increase the temperature again to 2000°C, the proportion of molecules with sufficient energy is now much higher, and this means that the chances of a successful collision is also much higher. And if there's a greater probability of successful collisions, the reaction will go faster. So this is one of the two reasons temperature affects the rate of reaction. Changing the temperature changes the proportion of molecules that have sufficient energy to overcome the activation energy. But there is another effect of temperature, and that is that increasing the average speed of the molecules means they will also have more frequent collisions overall. So increasing the temperature is really a double whammy. The overall rate of collisions increases, and the proportion of successful collisions increases. So as before, a simple set of numbers to help you visualize what's going on. Imagine as before that you would initially have 100°C with a 30% chance of success, giving you on average 30°C, but if you increase the temperature, you might get to a situation where you had say 150°C, so you've increased the overall rate of collisions, and you now have a 50% chance of success. So your chances of successful collision have also increased. And that would then give you an overall average rate of 75 successful collisions per second. So increasing the temperature definitely increases the rate of reaction.