Good afternoon. I'm Stephanie Young, and I am the Executive Director of the 251 Club of Vermont, and I want to officially call our 66th annual meeting to order. Yeah, 66. Thank you. Thank you for being here with us today, and welcome to those members who are watching the live stream of the meeting via ORCA. We are glad that so many members have an opportunity today to join us either in person or online. This marks my first meeting as Executive Director or my second meeting as Executive Director, but my first in person. As we are aware, last year we could not meet in person due to COVID and we only met online. With the widespread availability of the COVID vaccine, we were able to plan this year's meeting as an in person gathering, but also enhance the annual meeting by adding the live stream option for those who could not join us in person. I heard from so many members that the club was an important part of their getting through the pandemic, with members traveling locally when we could not go out of state to see family and friends or gather at large events. This year, where we continue to grapple with challenges from the pandemic and the Delta variant, I know we are grateful and thankful to be here in person today. During 2021, we continue to hear from many of you about your 251 adventures from the high school senior who joined our club when his school went remote and he finished his quest to remember who walked across the entire state and was also featured in the last newsletter. The friends who completed their quest on motorcycles and made sure to stop for ice cream along the way. And other members who completed their quest with their partners, children, and even dogs as companions. We also heard from members who continue to come up with unique themes of how to explore the state, including visiting historical markers, taking a nature picture in each town that they go to, or visiting town offices or town clerk offices to get the inside scoop of where to go. And I actually just spoke to a member who is doing that at today's meeting. As executive director, I enjoy so much hearing your stories about the unique journeys through our state. At this meeting each year, we also report on the club's accomplishments and important developments. In 2021, the club continued to have a strong membership base with new members joining us. Some of you who are in the room today for your first annual meeting and also members renewing. Thanks to your support through memberships and 251 club merchandise purchases and your attendance here today, either in person or virtual. The club is in a strong financial position to continue to grow and provide value to our members. This year, the 251 club of Vermont also was faced with a challenge related to our website. Earlier this year, we found out that we had to move our website to a new platform because the platform we had been using was no longer supported. I know many of you have grown accustomed to the old website, but we had to take it down and we had to build a new one. The good news is we were able to get our new website up and running with minimum downtime during the transition from the old site. As a small non-profit, updating the website and moving to your new platform has been a significant undertaking for us. We continue to make improvements and appreciate your patience as we continue to work on the website and make it as user-friendly as we can for all of you. As much as we love visiting towns and cities in Vermont, we also love talking about the 251 club and I imagine all of you are having some great conversations at your tables talking about your journey. The 251 club has been featured in several articles and podcasts in 2021, including Happy Vermont and WDEV's Vermont Viewpoints. We've also been featured in seven days earlier this year and we will have a upcoming article in the fall edition of the Vermont Magazine, which has generously donated a copy of their summer publication to all of you today. Members have also been featured in several news outlets in 2021, including the Caledonian Record in the Herald, and their retelling of their 251 stories and through their passion has motivated others to join. With all that being said, we would like to thank all of you again for your support. I would also like to thank our board of directors and appreciate their hard work on behalf of the club. Thank you and if the board of directors don't mind standing to be recognized. Thank you to all of you. Before we move to our keynote speaker for today's meeting, I want to recognize that during 2021, we were saddened to lose one of our board members, Jack Carter, who passed away in June. We are so grateful that Jack's family members, Ted, Jim and Susan, can be with us today. And now we will be hearing from board member John Dunnville about what Jack meant to the 251 club and the community as a whole. I would now like to turn it over to John. This is one of these things I wish I didn't have to do. In June, Jack Carter of Waterbury, a board member of the 251 club passed away peacefully at home. The world need more people like Jack. In Waterbury, he was known as the mayor of Stow Street because of his involvement. When Jack saw something he needed doing, he would say, why not? And would gather people together and do it and do it with perfection. He was a true community builder and he made whatever he did do fun and educational. Jack never did anything halfway. Jack was born in the Connecticut town known as the birthplace of Vermont. And I don't have to say the name because 251 clubs would know what town that was. And after attending St. Michael's College, he moved to the Big Apple to enter the retail business before returning to Vermont's big city on Lake Champlain. Shortly thereafter, he and his lifelong partner Ted moved to Waterbury and founded the Stow Street Emporium and worked tirelessly and successfully to revitalize the town. Jack was chair of the 251 club and as a plus member visited every town in the state. He was a true lover of history, especially Vermont history, and had the talent and ability to bridge the gap to make the past relevant for today. He served on many boards and commissions in Waterbury. He was the ever quiet show man and a popular tour leader at the Vermont State House. At the time of his passing, he was co-chair of the friends of the Vermont State House and worked hard to expand the diversity of the State House collection. He was especially proud to lead the challenge to commission an oil portrait of Alexander Twilight, the first African-American man known to have earned a bachelor degree in a college American university and to serve in Vermont as the first African-American legislator before the Civil War. Jack amplified what it meant to be a community leader and is proud to be a Vermonter and we miss him as chair of the Friends of Vermont State House and the 251 Club. He would do anything to help people. He's a great man. Thank you. Thank you, John, for those kind words about Jack, who is dearly missed by all of us. We are now pleased to introduce our keynote speaker, Molly Vasey, of the Old Stone House Museum in Historic Village. As many of you may have read in the summer 251 Club newsletter, the Old Stone House Museum in Historic Village is located in Brownington, Vermont and helps tell the story of that region and Alexander Twilight. My children and I had a chance to visit the Old Stone House Museum in the summer of 2020 in order to check off Brownington from our 251 list.  My boys at the time were six and ten and so when they overheard me talking about who should be our keynote speaker for today, my oldest immediately piped up with mom you need to go and you need to contact the Old Stone House Museum and I could not agree more. I am so thrilled to have Molly here with us today. So after Molly speaks we'll have time for a little bit of Q&A and with that I'd like to now turn it over to Molly. Thank you so much. Thank you so much Stephanie for that warm welcome. Hello 251 Club of Vermont members. I want to thank you for welcoming me this year to your annual meeting. My name is Molly Vasey, Executive Director of the Old Stone House Museum and Historic Village in Brownington, Vermont. It is my great pleasure to speak to this group especially as your travels through Vermont have surely brought you to unforgettable places in our state and I'm here to tell you the story of a great man in his corner of the Green Mountains in my view one of the most peacefully and humbly magnificent places on earth. The opportunity to speak to you on this day is made all the more special by the fact that as right now as I speak at the Old Stone House Museum and Historic Village we are holding the last of our season's events in celebration of this great man's 226th birthday. The hero of our story at the Old Stone House is African-American Alexandra Lucius Twilight born in Corinth, Vermont in September of 1795. Mr. Twilight was born into a mixed race family.  At an early age Mr. Twilight was indentured to neighboring farm families working his way through his primary and secondary educational years. With determination and sharp intellect he earned his way into Middlebury College as a third-year student. He was matriculated in 1829 and graduated from Middlebury becoming the first person of African-American descent to have ever graduated a United States College. After a few short-term teaching positions in Vermont, New York and meeting his lifelong partner and wife, Mercy Lad Merrill, the Twilight settled for good in the somewhat newly minted town of Brownington in 1829. For Alexander, Brownington would become and I quote the home of my choice, the place and the students to which he dedicated his career, his life and his considerable genius. Over the span of the next 28 years the Twilight's built an educational hub in Brownington along the prominent and historically important Hinman-Setler Road that at the time connect the central part of the state to its northernmost regions and the Canadian border. In the first several years of his tenure as headmaster of the Orleans County Grammar School which was a secondary school and minister of the Brownington Congregational Church the Twilight's built their home now known as the Twilight House and in the years to follow Mr. Twilight built the four story dormitory granite called Athenian Hall specifically to house his growing population of on-site students. It is fabled and I'll just make a quick note this is one of my favorite stories that Twilight built an home at that beautiful structure that four-story granite edifice almost by himself with the help of his little ox. This impressive building was constructed using granite blocks and the first three floors featured a kitchen, a dining room, a parlor, 14 student rooms, six recitation rooms and the fourth floor consisted of two classrooms one of them a 20 by 40 foot assembly room which probably was large enough to accommodate the entirety of the student body. Mr. Twilight was known for the care and attention he gave to his students intellectual and moral growth. The diversity of curricula was a testament to this offering courses per term in a shockingly wide variety of subjects including trigonometry, geometry, vocal music, astronomy, surveying, natural theology, botany, logic, philosophy and more the list literally goes on and an even more surprising twist the Twilight's housed both their male and their female students ages 12 to 18 roughly in Athenian Hall together only separated by one floor between them. While we're not sure how Alexander Twilight portrayed his own identity we know his students often described him as quote bronzed or swarthy they also recounted him as a strict but mirthful teacher always appreciating a good rouse. All these factors made for an extraordinarily progressive model of education for the era. He implemented place-based highly experiential learning where boys and girls minds were honored under the laws of nature. In 1836 the same year Mr. Twilight finished building the massive granite dormitory he also was elected to the Vermont State House of Representatives becoming the first person of African-American descent in the nation to be an elected state official. Mr. Twilight was in many ways a controversial figure he was a man of forceful will and conviction not easily swayed by contrary opinions and found himself in the opposition of his board on numerous occasions and was even fired for a short period starting in 1847. During this hiatus from Brownington he started a new academy in Canada before being invited to return in 1852. He died only a few years after returning to Brownington. Through the omniscient lens of retrospect there is no doubt that Alexander Twilight made an impactful contribution to our history. Across the span of his career he educated almost 3,000 students almost 1,000 of them were girls. His students would go on to achieve their own major contributions both countrywide and locally. The Old Stone House Museum has long celebrated the twilight as the protagonists of our local story. Their focus on academic and spiritual study infused many generations of Vermonters. Not having any children of their own the twilight didn't pass on a familial legacy but they certainly left a physical one. Now it is the historic village a bucolic compilation of eight historic buildings and 60 green acres in the heart of the N.E.K. Twilight's amazing four-story dormitory is now used as our museum where we exhibit and interpret collections from in and around Orleans County. Alexander Twilight and the students who passed through his halls also left behind an undeniable and almost palpable energy that continues to drive our work to this day. On Juneteenth of 2020 as a result of a collaboration between our museum and local representatives a concurrent resolution was passed by the Vermont State Legislature naming Alexander Twilight day on September 23rd his birthday. That day each year is now regarded as a statewide day of recognition of this remarkable Vermonter. Shortly after a letter from Congressman Peter Welch was entered into congressional record recognizing the same. As a result of this statewide proclamation the Friends of the State House as you heard intimated recently commissioned an artist to paint the portrait of Mr. Twilight to grace the halls of our beautiful state house forever. The old stone house is proud to have begun this long overdue acknowledgment of Alexander Twilight one of the state's most admirable leaders. We now use three words to inform our mission preservation inspiration and education. Alexander Twilight inspires us to use these three platforms to explore the diversity of our own local history.  Our educational programs now reach over 700 children and an equal or greater number of adults annually. We try to honor the legacy of his progressive hands on and experiential learning he left to us and in the very same place as he called his home 226 years ago. Today at the old stone house museum historic village we are celebrating his birthday and making a renewed commitment to the stories of diversity like twilight's through our areas history. It is so important now perhaps more than ever to recognize the brave front runners of our society. To see these people as examples to learn from and by whom and by which to create a richer deeper and more complex understanding of ourselves.  We have to look for ways of teaching hope. When you arrive at our historic village in Brownington you'll immediately understand the hope that perennially springs from our local histories. The places we come from and the places we live and the great people like Alexander twilight who paved the way. Often in these commemorative speeches about twilight and the educational village he built in Brownington there's reference to an article that Iris Berg my friend and Iris Berg author Howard Frank Moser wrote for Vermont Life. I've tried and I have tried to think of other ways to describe the force of the quiet wellspring of history that is found there but I have never found a better expression than Moser's words and let me quote him now. I like the way the stone house still looms upon that hilltop where the wind blows all the time. There it sits unshaken and monolithic as I write this sentence and as you read it every bit as astonishing today as the day it was completed. What a tribute to the faith of its creator the Reverend Alexander twilight scholar teacher preacher legislator husband father away from home to nearly 3,000 boys and girls an African-American and a Vermonter of great heart great steadfastness and great vision whose remains today lie buried in the churchyard just up the maple lined dirt road from his granite school. What surely was and still is one of the last best places anywhere it still gets to me sorry I think that it gets to me every time because it is so pointedly true there's not a better expression to describe the place and the person. With that I open up the floor to a Q&A. Is there anything you would all like to know more about twilight or anything about our village? Yes sir. My wife and I visited the your establishment and the stone house and it was amazing that whoever was in charge that they said there's a stone house just go ahead and visit there were no signs don't touch anything every room was more interesting than the last it's a fabulous place that's that's my plug but I did want to ask you mentioned this this vast array of academic courses that were offered what I what I'd like to know in addition to Mr. twilight who was the faculty were there other instructors and where did they come from and what did they teach? Sure so twilight was indeed a genius and could certainly teach an array of especially science technology math so if we're talking about like contemporary education and we've got the STEM and steam related tools that educators use today twilight was doing all those things yet an electromagnetic machine you know he was doing vacuums in a bottle to to do experimentation on on air pressure and so forth he was really cutting edge when it came to science and math but he would hire out certainly for things like vocal music and especially he was at one point pressured by the board to hire a female teacher as well to kind of accommodate and make sure that the female students needs were being met as well so he had on staff anywhere from two to five other people during per term and in the busy ones he may have more other questions yes ma'am that's a great question it's hard to compare so you know it was dollars and cents in that era but it was probably comparative to you know a fairly high-skill private school in in our contemporary times so you know I mean you can look back on the on the syllabus and it will say you know $5 it was per course $5 in some odd sense per term or whatnot and then you could choose your course syllabus as well as a student so you could take vocal music and astronomy one term and then choose from another set subset of of courses the next and you would pay per class yes ma'am the old Stonehouse day yes yes we we did this year again in person which is great we missed it in 2020 and yep we plan on doing it in 2022 as well it's always about the second Sunday of August and just so you're aware too I did leave a bunch of materials out on the tables in the entry way there are there's a 2021 season calendar and schedule that is you know our last event of the season is happening right right now so we have virtual offerings all winter but the the season will open again in May of 2022 Yes ma'am. I'm from Bennington County and originally from Connecticut and I still think of myself as a Connecticut resident and I've been mentoring several underprivileged or students that are learning processing as they say in different ways and I'm just sometimes very appalled and I don't mean to offend any teachers but the subject matter that is created for kids to write reports on and this just affects I mean just what the story you told today I hope some of that mature can be mailed to teachers for lack of I don't know I only know the students that I work with and I see the deficiencies and reading and math and just general knowledge about Vermont the state that they live in and a state that many of them will stay in and when I see the homework assignments pretend you are this and how would you send that message out and what when we have such wonderful facts and stories here so all that to say the more you can shift or send some of that material or even have a grant from our own Vermont state to provide opportunities for you to mail information like this to the schools yeah I was just having this conversation to some degree at our table to the you know the Northeast Kingdom because of its size and population sometimes has stories remarkable in nature that aren't necessarily shared widely through the state of Vermont or even regionally Alexander Twilight starting to make his way into a statewide story which is wonderful but how many others and that's what we're committed to right now how many other stories of diversity or wonderful leadership that's in our own region's history that we can now explore and celebrate as part of our exploration and celebration of Mr. Twilight but yes thank you yeah also you read this the life history of Frederick Douglas I mean when I'm reading his biography obviously that he wrote I need a dictionary to some of the words and just to say that this is a man that you know wasn't in preschool and early school so many of these people that have issues with sound in this man it's Twilight it's Douglas it's Book of T Washington there they've been in different corners of our United States of America and all very gifted people so it's a common thread when there is ambition and intelligence there is no glass in any other questions I can answer yes ma'am yes thank you as a as an alum of Lyndon State College there are two names from that campus I encountered when we visited Brownington of our 251 quest one is Alexander Twilight to be spoke so eloquently the other is Samuel Reed Hall would you say a little bit about that yes so Samuel Reed Hall starts to so Twilight built this educational hub in Brownington and there were other contingent stories that came out of that era and that kind of unbelievable progressive educational facility that that kind of sprung up there Samuel Reed Hall was a contemporary of Twilight's he lived and we now care take after his former home we use it as an Airbnb actually on site Samuel Reed Hall house he lived there and he also started during the same era as Alexander Twilight was teaching in the grammar school he started the first teachers program in a nationally a formalized teachers program so many of the female and male but female students that came out of the Orleans County Grammar School who were bound and destined to be teachers themselves may have gone on to to study under Samuel Reed Hall as further teachers program and so he all another really interesting factoid about Samuel Reed Hall is that he really contemporized or mainstreamed the use of the black board in the American classroom there were other there are other great stories as well that kind of come out from the you know the hub the wheel of the spokes as as from Alexander's core story and he's one of the most amazing ones so yes ma'am great question he drew students from the northern tier of Vermont primarily he also drew a few students from New Hampshire and he drew a number of students actually from lower and middle Canada so that from the Quebec and Ontario regions of Canada so he had quite a draw his magnetism especially you know before the days of social media or really quick communication that's a pretty amazing feat so before I leave you today I wanted to highlight just a few other local attractions you might consider visiting in your travels through Vermont and maybe you have already so you'll have to excuse me if some of this is repetitive for some of you the Old Stonehouse Museum and Historic Village really enjoys a robust partnership program with a lot of other organizations and I would encourage you all if you haven't already to explore some some of these places in our region as well with deep meaningful ties to the Old Stonehouse in Glover of course there's the famous bread and puppet theater in the Museum of Everyday Life which are closely connected places of interest in Craftsbury we have a very interrelated history with Craftsbury that is very directly tied to Twilight just give you a quick snippet about that in 1836 Twilight went to Montpelier as a representative to literally thwart the opening of another Orleans County grammar school in Craftsbury where it was proposed featuring that the or fearing that the competition would split the student the available student body in half and neither institution would thrive later the Craftsbury Academy eventually opened despite Twilight's objections and Mr. George Washington Henderson was hired as the headmaster and minister of that institution Mr. Henderson was a black man he was born a slave in Clark County Virginia in 1850 and mostly illiterate when he had arrived in Vermont in 1865 Henderson received his education at the Underhill Academy followed by college at the Berry Academy and graduated from UVM first in his class in 1877 Henderson then went on to have an outstanding career in Craftsbury and then moved on into academia later in his career so Craftsbury is a very interesting place very interconnected histories we also have partners in Caledonia County in the N.E.K. including the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium and Cataman Arts Center both in St. Johnsbury our friends at Northwood Stewardship Center are well worth visiting and their grounds and programs reflect the rare beauties of the Northeast Kingdom and don't forget the majesty of the Northeast Kingdom's lakes will be in Westmore Crystal Lake in Barton Lake Seymour in Morgan Parker Pond in Glover Caspian Lake in Greensboro Lake Mempher Magog in Newport and we can go into the ponds too but the list does go on there as well there is so much to explore and celebrate in the N.E.K. and the Old Stone House Museum in Historic Village as at the beating heart of it all our season is coming to a close as I mentioned on October 17th but we will have pre-booked tours up until that point so please come and visit us if you can you can book your tour of course online we look forward to seeing you soon hopefully you'll all be able to come visit thank you so much for your attention. Thank you Molly that was amazing and I thank for members who haven't made their way you will be seeing them very soon that was very inspiring and I know my family and I will definitely be back and any information Molly sends our way for the 2022 season I will be sure to send out to members too so that we can come visit thank you so much great so traditionally members at our annual meeting have shared stories of if they have completed their quest during the year and this year we were going to do it if you have completed your quest in 2020 or 2021 since we couldn't meet in person last year so there's anybody that wants to share a story right now I can go ahead and pass the mic to you I can come to you so you don't have to get up anybody want to share any stories from completing their quests the last two years anybody at all does anybody want to share a memory of something they'd like to share from from visiting a town in 2021 either a favorite place that they've been to that they think other members should know about you want to come down to you Brenda thank you Brenda anybody else and I will bring the mic to you if you don't mind just so our live stream can also hear us that would be great thank you I just wanted to add to Molly's list of sites to see in the Northeast Kingdom if you haven't been there everybody should go to the Haskell Opera House and library in Derby Live I'm not sure if they're open right now just because of the border situation but when things are better everybody must go to the Haskell Opera House it's one of my favorite places not just in the kingdom but in the state I know that's on our list my family's list to go visit anybody else would like to share any memory from a 251 trip over the year great I will come back towards you oh oh wait could you mind just because we have the live stream going to you so our members at home can hear us just a word or two of wisdom for those of you who have visited some of the towns where nobody lives and you can't get to them there are a few in the N.E.K. and I was very surprised to find I think it was Arlington I'm not sure in far southwest another town where nobody lives but if you're having trouble getting into places like Warner's Grant Lewis some of those places way up in the N.E.K. contact the Department of Fish and Wildlife they have maps that they can send you and instructions on what what dirt roads to drive up and how far you have to walk before you realize that you're in some of these really obscure places and believe me watch out for the mosquitoes be sure to go in the fall but these places are really worth seeing thank you all right let me head back here if you don't mind just using the I just wanted to share that the Vermont rug hookers guild are also hooking in every trying to hook in all 251 towns this year to kind of modify to do the same as the 251 club so many of the members of the guild have put in a lot of different towns just for sort of a co-251 thing thank you for sharing thank you oh this way and I was handy the mic I wanted to ask who has found Mount Holly so we found a farm that said Mount our task was to take a photograph that had the town's name in it we found a farm outside of the intersection where the Mount Holly Baptist Church was the town center at used to be it burned down in 1993 so the only way we found it was we found this farm that said Mount Holly dairy air and the farm farmer happened to be out on his tractor and we we approached him and he gave us the history of that community the I had two questions one is there are some towns that we pass through that are not on the list and I wondered why for that and then I also wondered why St. White River Junction and bellows Falls are not on the list so first with Mount Holly and I'll just step back here again so all of you will be receiving the fall news letter in a few weeks and the woman that we are highlighting remember she writes the happy Vermont blog and she actually just did a blog post on Mount Holly too so oh with you excellent so you can learn more about Mount Holly by going to her blog and ensure we'll have an article some of the what some of the towns that you would think would be towns are really villages I shouldn't say that their villages within the town and that's why they're not on the list but that's part of the fun too is trying to figure that out and I know I'm always happy if you if you have a question about why is a village isn't on the list reach out to me and yeah I think it's the right right and bellows Falls to I remember when we went to check it off we were surprised as well but right the explanation here and that's for the fun thank you so much you made me get up so Mount Holly the village is Belmont people come to Belmont and say well where's Mount Holly we have Hillville I mean you people know probably cheese Hortonville Tarbleville I mean you know all these places though so next time come to Belmont I'm the mayor my my my father was the mayor it he was postmaster and head the store so we grew up working there so so come to Belmont I'm that on the historic site he for 42 years I'll give you a village tour a town tour a cemetery tour you know you get it and we're now the home of Vermont's terrestrial fossil we're co-fossils with the shallot whale we have the Mount Holly mammot toss I'm permanent loan from the University of Vermont and I'm sorry I have to get up and say something but when you talk about my Holly you were in North Mount Holly a couple churches have burned there but you really need to visit the village of Belmont great thank you so much so I think we are ready for the raffle drawing and I think Brenda's gonna help out here and draw some names we do the raffle drawing I just wanted to thank the businesses who don't donate the raffle items and also the members and businesses who donated for the silent auction as well and give a special thank you to board member Huey Norton who put a lot of effort and time organizing the silent auction and I think he's in the other room but thank you to Huey as well so for the for the raffle we have two passes to Houdine the Lincoln family farm if you haven't been there yet in Manchester it's a wonderful place to go and learn the history of the Lincoln family we have a Martha Stevenson print of Bennington that is a framed limited edition signed in number and Martha Stevenson is also a 251 club member I don't think she could be here today with us but she had she donated the framed limited edition and then the gift basket from the earth and home country store which was donated oh sorry heart and from and that was donated to us as well so thank you to them and then of course thank you to everybody who bought tickets for the raffle donated to the club and our auction and for being here as well you ready Brenda for you okay so first we're gonna draw for the mark or for the two passes to Houdine so Sandy Monty and hopefully oh you go great thank you two passes to Houdine thank you so much and if you go for any raffle winners if you go to the silent auction check out table you can get your pass there thank you so much for buying raffle tickets okay next up is the Martha Stevenson print Rod Durell who I believe is watching us via the live stream so Rod you are the winner of the Martha Stevenson print thank you for buying a raffle ticket and last one the gift basket and Paulette Statz who is also watching online I believe with us so thank you Paulette and you are the winner of the gift basket and thank you again so this so this wraps up our 66 annual meeting please continue to share your stories I love hearing from all of you I love getting the emails of stories you know when I can featuring members in the newsletter to or sharing it on social media it's really it's my favorite part of this job is hearing from all of you about your stories so thank you for that and of course if you have any suggestions for the club also reach out to me that's that's how we can grow and offer more and more to all of you our members and I hope that next year we are able to meet again in person this has been great meeting in person and seeing everybody and we'll have the live stream option next year as well so thank you for being here and I hope everybody has a great fall exploring Vermont


The Cube presents On The Ground. Here's your host, Jeff Rick. Hi, Jeff Rick here with The Cube. We are On The Ground, a really special edition On The Ground in New York City. We usually don't do On The Ground in New York City, but we are out here for a convention. Took advantage, we saw Hillary Mason at the Grace Hopper celebration and computing and said, we've got to come back and do more with Hillary Mason. So really excited to be here in New York with Hillary Mason, Fast Forward Labs. Yeah, thanks for coming by. Absolutely, thanks for having us. So let's jump right into it. Give us a quick update on Fast Forward Labs since we last talked to you, I guess it was October. Yeah, so things are going well. We're having a lot of fun. We're still looking into machine learning capabilities that are emerging and trying to make them useful to people. And our latest project is going to be on summarization algorithms. So taking one article, getting a couple sentences that tell you what it is, or taking many articles, even thousands of articles, and getting a summary that says here a few viewpoints and this is what each one says. Right, so let's back up a step because you said a great thing at Grace Hopper about what you guys do here and it's really helping companies figure out what's possible with machine learning. And you said you have this quarterly cadence where you have a new theme every quarter. So how do you determine what the theme is gonna be? How does that map back to what your clients are doing? And how does that whole process work? Yeah, so our mission is really to help people understand what the capabilities are with data, data science, and machine learning. And we do that by looking into these emerging capabilities, making sure we know what's possible, what's out there in the market, what the applications are, and then we package it and we build prototype applications, so little products that show how it works. We build reports that actually explain in plain language. This is what deep learning is. This is how summarization works. This is what a neural network is. And then we couple that and we act as technical advisors as well. So we spend a lot of time sitting with our clients, helping them sort of think through everything from infrastructure design to algorithm design to who they need on their team to really complete their product. And hopefully in the end of this, they build something that is actually meaningful for their business. And the way we do that is we get a lot of information from our different clients about what they're interested in, what they're working on, and what kinds of data challenges they're seeing. We also read a lot of academic papers, go to conferences and try and see what's interesting. We spend time talking to artists and people who are sort of on the edge of the community. Take all of those ideas, drink a ton of coffee, write them down. And then- You could keep Chinese across the street, right? Oh yeah, the food here is amazing. But then we go through and we have a pretty rigorous process for figuring out which things are actually worth pursuing right now. And we're looking for those things that are more possible today than they were a year ago.  There could be a change in the economics that constrain the use of a technique. So when we wanted to first look into deep learning, we couldn't afford the GPUs. But a year later, it was completely possible and we were able to do that project. So economic constraints are one, is data available, is another. Has there been progress in the open source community and the academic community on a certain application? Or possibly has there been some innovation, someone doing something in one area that we can pick up and bring into this area that actually makes it more possible to build a real product? Just to be clear, we are talking about applied machine learning. Right, right. So real products that actually use data effectively. But it's, you have an interesting model that we talked a little bit before we went on air that you often engage not so much with a product group that's trying to do a real specific thing, but you're really brought in at a higher level, like a CTO level, with kind of a more broad application spaces, what can we do that's kind of explored at a higher level and then that will potentially roll into specific products and specific product groups. Yeah, exactly. Because one of the challenges that people are running into is they know they have data, they know there's a potential product or growth opportunity there, but that's what they know. And they don't know really how does deep learning work, how does classification work. And so what we do is bring our knowledge of the technical side of things, sit down with them and try and find in the middle of those two sets of knowledge, their knowledge of their business and their product and what we know about machine learning and data science, some ideas and opportunities and a strategy to sort of approach that opportunity. It's great. Like every time I talk to you, there's so many things that could go past now, but you just touched on another one. Clearly, you know, the kind of the Moore's Law effect on compute storage, on compute power, on networking keeps changing things, but specifically about open source and how really open source is changing the game to enable things that you couldn't do before or at a different speed than kind of before open source. Yeah, we are huge fans of open source at Fast Forward Labs and try and contribute when we can, certainly to the pieces of open source that we rely on. And it's because you now have a whole community that has come to understand a practice for a technique and they're now all invested in building that piece of software. And the open source can come out of the academic community, it might come out of the applied industry side of things, but it becomes a foundation on which you can build other things. And the canonical example here is Hadoop itself because before Hadoop, you might read the MapReduce paper and say, okay, I could hire a team of engineers and I'd probably need 20 people to build something like this in two years. Once Hadoop came out, you needed two people to install and configure it and Hadoop in the beginning was a very temperamental bit of open source. Today you can sort of go to one of the AWS Elastic MapReduce and in the command line, like I can spin up a cluster by myself, I don't need a sysadmin or someone to manage that project for me. So it's a great example of something that has truly become a commodity thanks to the open source community that we can all now build on top of. Okay, so let's talk about some specific projects. I think you said the latest one you're working on is really tech summarization. Yes. And I think you mentioned there's kind of two different versions of that. There's kind of tech summarization in a single document and then the flip side is when you have a lot of documents which say a ton of tweets, a ton of stories about the big storm that's coming or the election or whatever. So go a little deeper into those projects. What are the challenges and what are some of the kind of unanticipated discoveries that can come out of these types of things? The language is really messy. And this has been a problem that people have been looking into you for 30 years. It's not a new problem. What's new is that there's actually been some progress in using neural networks for language analysis that makes it a little more possible to do this well today than it was last year. And so when we talk about summarization, at least my mind immediately goes to, I have a New York Times article and I wanna summarize it in a shorter article and that's useful. But what's really useful is when you can start to think about I have 1,000 articles or 5,000 articles or a million articles and I wanna summarize that in a way that I can understand in a small amount of time because what's happening there is that instead of going from maybe it's 10 minutes to read an article to two minutes, now I'm going from something that was just not humanly possible to something that is. And so we've actually gained a little new superpower there. And is that like, would you describe that as sentiment analysis? Is the application of that to get the summary view is it possible to kind of dial it up or dial it down based on how much time I have or maybe the kind of degrees of, I don't know what it would be degrees of some statistical word that I'm not coming up with. It's not sentiment analysis, but it might be a little bit related and you certainly could say, I want a summary this long. I have 10 minutes on the subway. Give me something to read. Or you could even think about personalizing summaries. So maybe we know everything you've read on the topic before and we're just gonna show you the updates. Whereas maybe I've read nothing on that topic. It'll show me the whole novel length. Okay, and then what are some of the applications that now clients are using that for that you guys are working with? So just kind of a simple summary. I'm sure there's much more in-depth kind of application. This is a young project that the things we're really excited about are giving people ways to understand their text data. So we have one company where they provide insurance and every person who has a policy is written along health history, description and plain language. And so this gives them a tool for sort of understanding that in a way that they haven't before. One of our demos that we've been playing with also takes thousands of product reviews on a given product on Amazon and then can summarize that very quickly. And so we think there's a lot of opportunity there for sort of better understanding the wisdom of the crowds or some social data as well. Another project you're working on is photographs and being able to analyze photographs. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that because now if we all take so many photos, kids take a kajillion photos. They're all uploaded on Google and I get automated little summaries, look back from a year ago. Here's your day in New York. So it's interesting now kind of the machine learning to take that, especially since there's so many of them now, and give it back in a different type of form factor. No, absolutely. And this is one of those capabilities that is actually a breakthrough in the sense that five years ago we could not write software that would take an image and tell you what's in that picture.  And today we can do that for a fairly trivial amount of processing time and money. Was it processing that was the problem? I mean, why couldn't you say you couldn't write the software? This is a technique where everything was a problem. So accessing a data set of the size and cleanliness necessary to train these kinds of models was a problem. Having access to the computational power, in this case GPUs, was a problem. Having good software foundations to build on. So the open source and the deep learning area has come a long way. You've probably heard about Google releasing TensorFlow, which was a big announcement. But even before that, there are a few projects like Piano and Keras, things that make it possible to sort of pick this stuff up and play with it in a day rather than having to do a lot of mathematical programming on your own. So when I talk about these factors that make something really interesting, this particular technique, which is deep learning for image object recognition, hits all of them. And we did a project on it because everybody saw that Google's doing it, Facebook's doing it. And they started to ask questions, what is this? How does it work? And what could I do with it? And so now we're starting to see people do, it's not just snapshots from your phone. But if you have any sort of image data, or you must have tons of video archive data, you can now make that searchable and processable for fairly low cost. It's pretty cool. I can go through and tag it all myself. Exactly. And then in terms of Fast Forward, and what you guys do and how you interface with your clients, just touch base a little bit on that. So you do the projects. I'll let you talk about kind of what are the outputs of an engagement for a company with Fast Forward? So we work on a subscription basis. And this is a business model that I think gives us the best of both worlds. And our subscription has two pieces. So the first piece is a report and prototype every quarter on one of these new machine learning capabilities. So the one we're working on right now is summarization. We had deep learning for image analysis. We did natural language generation. So that's article writing off of bits of structured data. And each one of these comes with a report that says what it is who's doing it, what's in the market today, conceptually how it works, ethical issues that might come up from building products with this thing, and our prediction for where we think it's going to go. The prototype uses example data to demonstrate that this thing actually works. People can look at the code. They can get a sense of how you might build your own product using this. And then we couple that with technical advising. So I like to say that we're their nerd best friends. We're the people that you can call when you have a question around, is this crazy idea possible? How would we design infrastructure for this thing? Who do I need to hire to manage this project? How do I interview data scientists when I've never hired one before? And so we end up helping with a variety of different kinds of problems. And so we couple the reports and prototypes subscription with the technical advising. And the two are very complementary. Awesome. So last question before we wrap up, I just want to get your take on the state of data science. There's a lot of conversation, especially with big data shows that we go to, about the move to the citizen data science. And I don't think it's so much that everyone's going to learn the complex algorithms and be a PhD qualified person, like a true data scientist today, but really pushing the power of database decision making downstream into people that are actually on the front lines and making either those algorithms or the output of those algorithms or derivatives of those algorithms available for people to make better decisions. What's kind of your perception on, how's that really taking hold in companies? Is this a great promise? Where are we on kind of the path to this? What's your take? So I really, I think that the basic capabilities of data analytics will be a skill that every professional will have some familiarity with no matter what their role or background is, and you'll see it in every department from marketing to tech. And that's because it's still a little bit difficult to ask even simple data analytics questions inside of a lot of companies. And I mean questions like, how many users do we have? How many new users did we get today? And these are really basic, you know, take the data and count a thing type questions. Right now it's still technically messy and that's why you have people in specialized roles doing it, but the tools are progressing so quickly. I think we'll eventually see that get pushed out to everybody. And that's great because you want people to be able to ask and get answers to these questions inside their own tool set rather than having to rely on some data analysts or data scientists. That said, I think the profession of data science is strong and we will really see it shine where we have people building data-oriented product, where people are actually crafting new algorithms to build capabilities into products that just were not possible without the data and the algorithms. And I mean things like recommendation systems, filters, a lot of personalization. There's really a lot of cool stuff happening there. But part of it too isn't just the structure of the data, where the data is, we hear all the time that the complexity of data science, a lot of it, not the actual data science, but it's finding it and organizing it and cleaning it and that's like 70% of the effort. But off camera you were talking about, you still have companies that have hundreds, hundred-year-old data- We do. That they still want to use and leverage. So will it be, I mean is the breakthrough going to be when the majority of the data's on the newer systems, it's just easier to access and do these types of algorithms or we're going to have the migrations and stuff over. We do. We're just using more new data. Yeah, this is why this is still not easy because you might have legacy systems where data lives and not just that, data tends to be siloed by a piece of a company too. So once a company gets large enough, one group might control some data and they don't want to talk to another group that controls other data so you can't do a query across those things. So we do help folks sort of navigate that quagmire of technical problems that are also tied to human relationship problems. Right, people in process are always talking about, it's not just tech, it's people in process too. Exactly, but the tools are getting so much easier to use and deploy that I think will, this will be a lot easier in a few years than it is today. Awesome, well Hillary as always great to catch up with you in front of us. And thanks for visiting us here. Yeah, absolutely, in New York City. So I'm sure we'll see you again. We'll probably see you at Grace Hopper if not sooner. Absolutely. I could go on forever, but the guys won't let me go for an hour. So great, great seeing you again, Hillary. All right, thank you so much. Absolutely, Jeff Rick here at Fast Forward Labs with Hillary Mason, you're watching theCUBE. See you next time.


کمان دھالیوال جی ادھا سینئر لیڈرس who are سیٹنگ on the stage I will see members brothers and sisters I can also see some children so all of you I'd like to welcome all of you and thank you for coming here today I believe there are also some people who have not been able to come because the hall is full so I was asking I was asking where do the Indian weddings happen over here some such a small hall it's an honor for me to come here and speak to you I was actually invited to Cambridge University to give a talk there on Indian politics and global politics which I did and it's quite a nice atmosphere nice talk and I was thinking while I was speaking over there that is quite strange that an Indian political leader can give a talk in Cambridge University Harvard University but he can't give a talk in India in a university in India the reason is that our government simply does not allow any idea of the opposition any concept of the opposition to be discussed same happens in parliament house when there are important things that we need to speak about demonetization GST the fact that the Chinese are sitting inside our territory when we try to raise these questions we're not allowed to raise them in the house it's a fact it's shameful but it's true and this is not the India that all of us are used to our country is an open country where we pride ourselves on our intelligence respect each other's opinions listen to each other and that atmosphere has been destroyed you can see the narrative in the media and the reason we were forced to walk across India because all the institutions that protect the democracy that allow people to speak that allow an expression of voice are captured by the media and so we decided that a good way to think about it a good way to act would be to go directly to the people of India and do what used to be a tradition called the yatra yatra is not just a walk across the country many great people in India have gone on a yatra of course the most famous yatra was the one done by the father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi but there have been others Vivekananda Ji apparently walked across the country my Sikh friends here Guru Pralak Ji walked across the country so there is a list of people who have used this idea of the yatra and the yatra is actually introspection it is an attempt to understand what is going on in the country an attempt to listen to people but also an attempt to understand the voice of the people and express the voice so to the wonderful experience for me I started in Kanyakumari and we went all the way to Kashmir thousands of kilometers in the heat, in rain, in the snow and we got to understand our country in great detail we spoke to thousands and thousands of people, farmers little children like you what's your name سمراٹسن سمراٹسن کھٹس like سمراٹسن we met thousands of them we met youngsters who are unemployed asking the most interesting thing was that the biggest issues in India today are unemployment price rise and the violence that Indian women face that third one is a hidden issue nobody speaks about it but when you walk across India and you talk to people those are the three things that you hear most women complaining about the violence that they are facing the fact that they are worried to walk on the streets of our country huge amount of unemployment and price rise and the concentration of wealth you know one or two business people controlling pretty much every business in principia everybody hears the name he's become specially famous lately you can see a lot of reports about his wealth so you can see that and it's at the expense of the Indian people because when there's no competition in a country and one person is making all the money because of his political connections the strength of the country the energy of the country is wasted and weakened so one of the things that we have been pushing is that we need to allow as many youngsters who want to enter business to enter business we need to support all of them we need to make sure that the banking system doesn't just work for one or two people but works for youngsters for millions of people who want to build a business these are the type of things that we discussed on the yatra and it was a very good experience also I'd like to thank many of you who walked with us you came from different parts of the world you came from England you came from the United States from Canada from Japan from all over the world people came and walked with us so that helped us you helped us with your support and your energy so that I'd like to thank all of you for that so that was the experience of the yatra and the interesting thing to me was that what the people of India were saying unemployment, prices concentration of wealth you know Mr. Adhani it's not in the media at all in the media we see anger, hatred violence then we see Bollywood Ashwaryalai Salman Khan Cricket we see all these things but we don't see the real issues that the people of India are facing so that was quite a learning experience for me the other thing that some of the speakers alluded to we walked for almost 4,000 km it was a huge effort 5 or 6 people died while we were walking one of our members of parliament had a heart attack in Punjab and die so there was also quite a lot of tragedy taking place people getting injured, someone falling breaking an arm or breaking a leg and in the first 5 or 6 days I started to ask myself what is my role in the yatra what do I have to do and after thinking about it for a while I decided that my role was that whoever came into the yatra regardless of whether they were rich or poor young or old, male or female I decided that my role would be to make them feel that when they walked inside the room when they entered the yatra and they came to speak to us that they should feel that they had come back home they should get a feeling that they had come back home and they were not speaking to a politician but they were speaking to their brother their friend that was the idea I had and I told the people who were working with me that we have to respect every single person who comes and he has to feel that he has come home and he leaves he must feel that he has left home that we don't want a political relationship with him we want an emotional family relationship with him or her and that is a very powerful thing because the moment we started to behave like that the moment we started to say look this is we are going to treat people with respect immediately the people who are coming started to treat us like family and you must have seen some of the pictures where it was as if we were meeting our family members people hugging us people telling us very emotional things that was also a very powerful thing in the yatra and the other thing I noticed was that throughout this walk people of all religions came all castes came all languages came but there was no anger no hatred no violence no disrespect and so the yatra was demonstrating to the whole country what the real India is about what Indian values are what our religions tell us what our different languages tell us what our different cultures tell us that we are one country with many many different ideas and we have the capability of living together harmoniously without hatred without anger without disrespect and it's when we do that that we are successful that was the message of the yatra and of course on the other side we have an ideology of hatred and violence disrespectful ideology that attacks people because of their ideas and you must have noticed one thing and this isn't the nature of the BJP and the RSS if you noticed a statement of the foreign minister he said China is much more powerful than us he said China is much more powerful than us how can I pick a fight with them at the heart of the ideology is cowardice if he is weaker than me then I will beat him up with my 5-10 friends but if he is fighting with the RSS then he will run away and he has written in his book if you have read it because he has written in his book that one day he and his 5-6 friends beat a Muslim person and that day he was very happy so look if 5 people beat one person and then one of them is very happy he is coward if he is fighting then one of them will fight alone but no because of the slow because of the coward then this is also in his ideology if someone is stronger and the foreign minister of the country is saying it you imagine he is saying China is stronger than us the British was stronger than us so then we should not have fought with them how would we ever get independence if we had followed the BJP's principle and the RSS principle لہذا یہ کیا سید ہوجاتی ہے۔ یہ کیا سید ہوجاتی ہے اورسید ہوجاتی ہے۔ یہ کیا سید ہوجاتی ہے کے لوہ اور سید ہوکار ہے۔ نفروگ کے بحدہ میں ہم محبت کی دوکان خلنے آئے بھی کیا سکتا ہے۔ میںition کہ I would leave you as a community in this country have made all very proud of you because you've been successful because you've made a lot of money you've developed a lot of businesses but that's not the reason you made us proud the real reason you made us proud is because آپ پیرحیانت خوبصورتے کیا کرتے ہیں ، آپ کے عالمت کی وصوصیتی دوسر کی خوبصورتے میں علمت کے فرمان ہے ، آپ کیوں میں اللہ کے بارے میں فاہوان کیا کرتے ہیں ، آپ ہم آپ کے جنور ہونے کی؟ آپ م اور اگر چی بارے میں اور اگر چی بارے اگر چی آ چاہے جاہے اور دیویہ کے بعد ، اور اسی طرف جو بہت بہت بھی تحویروں میں مجھوڈ کرتے ہیں. ہم جو آپ اس سے فiacal결 آرپھتے ہیں تو آپ grill ناری بھی کہ زیادہ بھی황یituation لے نزالت Torah معاقت29 تہلی bachelor آرپر آنے کے خصوص جوKS پہنہومی کرونے ک Jest معاہد درسپر ۷ 질문 cer exhausted خود بیانن اپنے لئے سیمانت ہوتا ہے اپنے لئے کسی بہتر دیتے ہیں۔ سب سے اپنی لئے ساتھتے ہیں۔ کمل جیت ، کمال جیتی ہے۔ اپنے لئے ساتھ کھنگ سریمانی سکتے ہیں۔ اپنے لوگوں کو بی دیں سکسے ہوں؟