Hey guys Brian here from freestyleneducation.com and I'm coming at you with a brand new video this time It's a full makeover start to finish. I got my friend Sarah who just got married a little while ago So for the past year and a half she's been growing her hair out so that it would be nice and long for the big day Now that the big day is coming gone. It was time for a big change So she was really really awesome and she let me do it all on film for you So we sat her down. We did a really great balayage making sure that we Toned it to give it that great blonde effect. It's very current. It's very hot right now And it's something that a lot of us can use actually in the salon on our guests because it gives them that taste of fun Dimension without necessarily going to a super super light place. That's going to make them uncomfortable After that we went in and did a really cool undercut textured chop of a super PC Bob We wanted to give her something that would be professional enough for work But young and flirty and fun just like she is so I really hope you guys enjoyed the video. Here it is And away we go. I Got her sectioned off here Just so that I could go ahead and take off some of the unnecessary length because I know I'm going to be doing a hand painting So I would rather have the hair generally in a similar length to where we're going to end up just that way I as I paint my sections It's going to be a little bit more realistic. So Went ahead did a fun little dry cut plus she wanted to donate the hair So I had it all in nice rubber bands for and got it ready to go Just a little heads up on this video You'll notice as we get a little bit further into it that I have sped up the speed because when it comes to the balayage I I I Am basically doing the same application technique just on different sections of the head So I have my sections all You know planned out so you can see them It's just going to be sped up a little bit because I am applying it the same way every time You'll also notice in this video that my mouth is moving and sometimes I even reference the camera But you can't hear anything and that's because I was unaware that I didn't turn the microphone on So you're getting a voice-overed video instead so All that's out of the way. Here we go.  That's how she's going to part it That's how she's going to wear it. So I want to make sure that it looks it's best and I think that's going to be a really a Really a successful way to set yourself up is to go off of their actual part So since this is going to be an undercut I'm not starting down at the nape of the neck because I know that all of that hair is going to be removed in the haircut So I started up at what's going to be Actually left after her cut and I know that it's going to be right around this area here so I'm taking sections that are flat on the top and actually dip down a little bit almost like drawing a Triangle and upside-down triangle on the scalp and then pulling that section Straight out from the head because I'm painting these framed pieces at the top of the the triangle section What that's going to do when I let go of the hair and lay it down That hair underneath is going to buckle Which is going to create a nice little cushion so that my sections will not press too hard on the sections underneath it Wanting to give her a little bit more of a lived-in feel here so you can see not all of these sections are going to go straight down to the root because Well, I want to give her lots of dimension and movement throughout this color. I want it to also look very Potentially natural We know it's not her natural color, but I don't want people to look at her and go whoa There's a big color job. I wanted to look like maybe she just spent a lot of time in the Sun and has a little bit more light of a natural base So I'm using the perforated saran wrap that you can buy from Candy Shaw's Sun Lights Company. I absolutely love it because it does help just to make sure that all my hair stays separate So there's no bleeding and it also just helps to create a nice little environment in there So that your lightener doesn't dry out or anything like that It's it's really become a lifesaver because I can't rip saran wrap to save my life So having those nice perforations in there make it much faster much more successful much easier to handle So I definitely recommend picking some of that up Yeah, the Sun Lights Company very easy to find online and they have different lengths. I know that They they made it so that if it's you're actually hold it the other way So that like I hell I put it on there the long ways very vertically. It's meant to use horizontally It's just force a habit. That's what I started doing and so that's for some reason what I continue to do so Here we go. We're working into it. You can see this is where I've started to speed up the sections a little bit Just because like I said, it's still the same application It's just moving around the head and I did want you to be able to see the full application But didn't want you to have to sit here for you know, the whole 40 minutes that it took me to put this color on So to describe the application To go with the visual here as I'm elevating that hair nice and high I get my product on the tip of my brush and I started around the middle of the section and Sweep the color downward as I move up towards the scalp The reason for that is because that's what helps to To push that product down at which you know, I don't know if you know this or not But Bollia is just French for sweeping so think of just doing this in a sweeping motion You're sweeping the lightener down while moving up the hair Which helps to taper off the section a little bit so that You know if you wanted to you could have a much finer section up near the head You know it helps in highlighting and just creating you know, whatever kind of look you're going for I also get a lot of questions people say that these look like very large sections and aren't you worried about Having too chunky of an end result And actually because of the product that I'm using I'm not scared of that at all I'm using Again candy Shaw. I'm using the sunlights Bollia's lightener and I'm a really big fan of it because It's got a consistency that you just can't beat. It's it's a clay base lightener So it just grabbed onto the hair wherever you put it. It's not going to swell. It's not going to get weird And using larger sections like this are actually completely fine because that clay base and that consistency As it clings to the hair it helps to almost diffuse itself so You know, it's it adds a little bit of extra style to what you already do.  It's a really really superior product You definitely got to check it out if you haven't played with it yet Again, make sure that elevation is nice and high There's a technique that I use that I often refer to when I teach About Bollia's and it's called force perspective. If you've watched any of my other videos, you've heard me talk about it before It's uh, it's a technique used in art everything from paintings and drawings to architecture architecture and now we use it in hair and I'm just Calling it out Force perspective is when you create three dimensions on a two-dimensional plane By having you know, your lines come together It's a very crude description of it. I think but if you think of a long hallway And you've got the two lines that are on either side of the floor and the two lines that are on either side of the ceiling If you stare straight down that hallway, eventually those four lines come together That's what force perspective is and that's how we're creating a nice seamless Bollia's in the hair um I have those two lines on the outside that Just seamlessly come together Down at my fingertips. I'm not forcing them together by just painting across the hair I'm letting them naturally come together where that hair is pinched in my fingers So what that does is that helps to create a very nice soft seamless transition from her darker root color into those lighter ends So whether I choose to Just do the outsides or like you see here actually paint a line down the middle of the inside It really is just a matter of how light I want her to be That's one of the great things that I love about Bollia's is you can look and see Exactly, you know, what's going to be lightened. You're looking at the hand painting yourself So you can see, you know, do I Need to cool it on the next section because I just put a lot of blonde in or do I need to pick up the piece You know, it's whatever whatever you want this end result to be As you see I come in one very important area for me Is to always make sure you get that little sideburn area because You know this day and age People pull their hair up constantly whether it's for work or for the gym or to get it out of their face or whatever That's a very common thing is women need to pull their hair up and have their hair still look good What I like about Bollia's is it doesn't Give too harsh of an end result So you can get right in there on the hairline and so long as you get that angle down when she pulls her hair back It's going to still be highlighted without being too harsh.  Thank you sun lanes for making this So easy for me I use the paddle to hold it so that I can make sure that I get those ends perfectly saturated and covered because I really want her to just Be light We're going for that bronze. I got to do it all My favorite pieces to do those pieces right at the part right around the face, whether they've got bangs or Just layers around the face. I love it because that's always In my opinion supposed to be the lightest I always refer to them as the sarah jessica parker pieces Because if you look at her as long as she's been a blonde That's always where the highest concentration of her blonde is even There are times she's got dark hair But still has those pieces right on the part right around the face super light It makes a world a difference Which is also why it's very important again to go off of their part If it's somebody that says, oh, well my part moves around We'll then ask them where it tends to be the most or go with where It it was when they walked in Play it safe play it smart. We know how this works Again creating that center line to really Make sure and see you look there. You see that negative space that dark hair That's going to be the dark to lightened ratio when she's finished The section I really wanted to make sure that it was ultra saturated So I even lifted it up and went underneath Because more than wanting this piece to diffuse out. I wanted that top piece right on the part to be really light So I let it pierce through on both sides Let me lay it down do that front Favorite piece of mine I wanted to use the gopro on this so that you guys got a little bit of a pov I know not everyone loves the gopro angle But it's something I don't see a whole lot of so I wanted to offer it If you don't like it I close your eyes, I guess and so you get to the parts that aren't gopro But I wanted you to see because You know, there's so many angles that are so important in this and now you guys get This angle to see how high I'm lifting the hair and you've got the gopro angle to see at what angle I'm Painting onto the section. So now there's options This I just went ahead and sped way up because Again, I'm not doing anything crazy different than I've done on the entire rest of the head And these are just the last couple of sections Uh, I processed her the other good thing about the cellophane I processed her until it looked done until I knew that it was light enough for me to tone it Um, I I do mention it later I used the palmachial pm shines 9a as her toner Because I didn't want to completely eradicate the warmth, but I wanted to get rid of the unnecessary brassiness like the I wanted to tone down the orange her tones and you know Not really I didn't I didn't want to make it an ashy overall color. I just wanted it to be a nice natural warmth It is fall when we're doing this. So You know, I wanted to leave some behind so that uh, it still looked really pretty and Seasonally appropriate Come winter and spring will probably go even later, but this was the first step So now we've got a nice little package. She's all wrapped up We can see through the cellophane and we're going to move into a very sped up haircut But I wanted to make sure that you guys could see it Um, I just sectioned her off again pretty much the same way that I did for her Her color Her undercut I'm using the donald scott razor the carving comb. It's one of my favorite tools ever for doing razor cuts I Decided what was going to be her undercut based on her density and I'm pulling the sections straight out from the head and Just cutting it right off nice and close Like a layer really so that way it will hug her head nice and tight And it actually grows in very gently very forgiving But it's going to take away so much bulk so that I can give her the appearance Of you know, a closer to one length sort of bob her hair is too thick to pull that off So this is how we cheat See the angle that I'm holding that at Holding into that angle and then cutting with a razor Doubles up on giving you a little bit of a soft graduation I'm not trying to create so much of a stacked look as much I am really just trying to take And shift that weight line up a little bit so that it doesn't sit like a heavy heavy triangle So you can see as we move into the front I sort of I was just eyeballing to continue that that angle going cutting on top of my fingers Just using that razor just to carve that out of the This is really just the foundation of the haircut. I went in and did a lot of dry cutting to really Really create, you know the cool peaceiness of this chopped You know bob so Just checking myself. I blew her out nice and dry.  You see if that section has enough you It's it's like sculpting doing the dry cutting and the tease cutting You see what areas need the attention and you give it to it So try that again All right, so here she is the final product She's now been baliaged all the plaques toned cut undercut blown out And she's pretty happy. She's sitting here checking herself out hard while she was getting ready So as you can see it sort of that color lives in that realm of Do we consider it blonde? Do we consider it brown? Which is the definition of bronze which is very in right now To tone her I just used she lifted to a pretty golden slightly orange in places But probably in that eight anywhere from eight to ten range depending on What uh, whether the color was previously lightened or not So I went in with a sheer actually is palm mitchell's pm shines 9a because I knew that it was going to be sheer and I knew that their ash was a very Stout blue base that was going to take care of the oranges But leave me some of the golds that I wanted to make sure we're left behind So it still looked natural and not too ashy To give it that bronze feel and if you check We've got our nice little undercut under there. It's her little secret So we've gotten this fabulous look. Let's give her a spin so you can see the full thing. Look at that smile And she's happy as can be and the last the final thing that we checked She can still get it into a teeny tiny little ponytail So she's happy as can be So there it is we're going to style her up with a couple more looks for you So you can see it with a little bit of the tousled curl You've seen it straight. So thank you very much. Be sure to subscribe to us Right here on youtube. Check us out at freesaloneducation.com. Check me out on instagram. My name is hairstyle with an e Thank you very much. We'll see you soon


Setting employee goals are at the heart of successful performance management. Goals align the efforts of everyone in the business, helping the company drive success, which then in turn helps everyone. Having clear realistic goals provides direction for employees, helps motivate employees, and improves the overall level of performance. And goals should be used for evaluation as well. I'm taking you through eight actions to help set employee goals that get results. These are. Go through each of these eight actions and you'll have goals that are clear and realistic and drive employee ownership. Make sure your employee goal setting drives results, not more paperwork. My name is Jess Coles and I've had a 25 year management career in corporates and household names through to SMEs. Employee goal setting is such a critical management tool so it absolutely makes sense to do the best job you can setting goals and practically using the goals set to drive performance. And if you're new to this channel enhance.training shares business and people management expertise to help you improve your performance and that of your team and business. And if you like this video, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe. The first action to set employee goals is to align employee goals to the team and company goals. Alignment is very important to get everyone working in a similar direction. The most successful companies work very hard to get everyone aligned so each team member's efforts support and accelerates the company's progress and performance. You want your team to progress and perform. You also want your team to support all the other teams in the company to help drive the company's performance. Goals are best set at the highest level and then work downwards to the individual employee. At every stage the goals from the smaller group should directly align into the goals of the bigger group i.e. employee goals align into the team goals and team goals align into the functional goals and so on. The goals you set will drive behaviour. Choose your goals as carefully as possible so you limit unintended consequences. Make sure you keep each employee's goal carefully aligned to the team and company goals. The second action to set employee goals is to ask employees to set their goals. You are asking your employees to be involved in setting their goals so they have ownership of the goals set. Imposing goals set by you will not drive ownership of those goals. If your employees feel that they have set their goals or substantially inputted into their goals the research has shown that the goals set are much more likely to be reached. Get your employees involved in setting their goals. I found the following steps useful in giving the employees a framework within which to set their goals. Firstly, outline the team goals that need to be reached. Secondly, ask the employee what role specific goals they should set themselves so that we can meet the team goals. Third, then coach them towards setting goals that align with the needs of the team. With the high performance in your team, follow the same steps but give them more space to work out how they're going to support reaching the team goals. Make sure consistent goals are set for employees with similar responsibilities. If the goal alignment is good, this should happen naturally. Keep the level of the goals similar to ensure fairness. Ask the employees to be fully involved in setting their goals within the framework that you set. The third action to set employee goals is to make the goals smart. Smart stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time specific. Making the goals smart makes them fair and clear for the employee and for you and for the business. So let's cover each element very quickly. Specific goals are clearly defined rather than general. For example, increasing gross profit by £50,000 in the next 12 months by winning at least 10 new customers is a specific goal. Measurable, a measurable goal must have numbers assigned to it against which you can measure progress. Achievable, make sure the goal is achievable with the resources sensibly available. Don't make it easy nor too hard. Set the level of the goal while considering the individual's ability and the resources available to deliver against that goal. Relevant, the goals must be largely within the person's control or significant influence and must relate to their areas of responsibility. Time specific, always include a clear timeframe or a date for the goal to be reached. You can also add on extending and rewarding to get smarter goals. Extending, setting levels of achievement like bronze, silver and gold rather than a pass or fail is generally more motivating and can drive over performance. Rewarding, make achieving the goals set valuable to the employee. Just remember not everyone is strongly motivated by money. Ask the employee what would be meaningful to them. So in setting goals for employees make sure they are smart or smarter goals. The fourth action to set employee goals is to plan how to measure progress. I don't believe there is much point in setting smart goals without working out how you're going to measure progress against those goals. If you can't measure progress then how will you know or the employee know how they are doing in reaching the goals set? How will you both know when that goal has actually been reached? Try to make sure the method of measurement is as simple and straightforward as possible. Even better is to have a third party calculating progress, such as the finance team as it reduces arguments and makes the measurement fairer. So define how the goals are going to be measured carefully when you are in the process of setting each employee's goals. The fifth action to set employee goals is to build the plan of how to achieve the goals. Setting employee goals is significantly easier than coming up with realistic plans of how to achieve the employee goals set. Planning the how makes achieving the goals a lot more likely. You can firstly leave the planning to the individual, secondly get involved in coaching the individual to build a plan to achieve their goals, thirdly get the team or others involved in building plans for each employee's goals. In practice how to achieve some goals are fairly straightforward. They may be an extension of what the employee does day in and day out. Other goals might be out of the employee's comfort zone or experience the dates or require a team effort to achieve. Using many minds to solve problems nearly always beats one mind, no matter how individually brilliant. Decide the most appropriate course of action or combination of actions to get plans in place to achieve each of the employee goals set. Getting plans in place massively increases the chance of achieving those goals. Ensure each person or team has a plan to achieve the goals set. A plan takes some of the pressure off the individual and gives everyone a set of milestones to measure progress. Some team members will underperform the plan set out for reasons in or outside of their control. A plan gives you an early warning of underperformance and allows you, others or the full team to help get that plan back on track. Doing your best to make sure each individual smashes the goals is absolutely in your interests. If each individual beats their goals the team will do too and hopefully the company too. Creating plans of how to achieve each goal helps everyone beat their goals. The sixth action to set employee goals is to use carrots and sticks. Carrots work better for some people, sticks with others. Take the time to set out the consequences for the employee of beating the goals set and of significantly missing those goals. Carrots or rewards are of course much nicer to use and are generally more productive to use in my view. Money is only one type of reward. Think of all the other types of rewards that you could offer. Your first year recognition, praise both public and private, prizes, peer recognition and so on. Secondly, development opportunities. You know involvement in high profile projects, different responsibilities, training courses, whatever is available in your business. Third promotion is more powerful than money as you are getting a lot of other benefits as well as a higher salary. Fourth, more holiday. This is more valuable to many than a bonus. Fifth, fun activities or trips. You know the manager cooking a barbecue for the staff or team trips or holidays in the company, etc. One of the best approaches is to actually ask the individual or team what they would view as a significant reward for achieving the goals set. Consider setting different levels rather than using only one level of goal. When individuals or teams are struggling to achieve their goals, work out how you are going to support them best. The quicker you can start to effectively help the struggling employee, the quicker you can get to achieving the goal back on track. And using personal improvement plans or more formal approaches may be necessary with employees with poor attitudes or those that are lazy or difficult. Spell out the consequences for not making the effort to improve. Whether the employees are doing brilliantly or poorly, work out how you are going to support employees and keep as close as you need to to the activities and projects being undertaken. The seventh action to set employee's goals is to keep the main thing the main thing. You know how many people get distracted by the latest project, event or shiny objects. I've seen it happen far too many times and the goals are not achieved as a result. Part of your job as a manager is to keep the team and individual employees focused on their goals and to keep the main thing the main thing. Don't allow them to get sidetracked or allow something urgent but not as important to take up too much of their time. Bring up the employee's goals in your one-to-one meetings and go through them. Put the main goals up on a whiteboard and track progress against them in full view of the team. Do what you need to to keep the team focused on their key goals. A few other points. Don't give your employee a long list of goals. Many goals means they are focused on no goals. Keep the list of goals short save to a max of five significant goals in a year. Another very useful approach is to set a key goal each 90 days. Then work to achieving that one goal before moving on to the next goal. This way each person or team delivers well on four key goals each year. If you try to achieve all four goals at the same time there is less chance that all four be delivered as well. So keep the main thing the main thing. The eighth action to set employee goals is to recognise change is constant so expect to adapt. Change is constant in business because the business environment is constantly changing. Competitors keep adapting and the business priorities will keep changing as a result. Accept that goal set at the beginning of the year may become out of date, superseded or irrelevant. Plan to constantly check in on the goal set and be prepared to adapt or replace goals. How often you do this really depends on the growth rate in your business or the rate of change within your business. The quicker the growth rate the more frequently you should re-evaluate goals set at all levels. For most businesses with modest rates of growth re-evaluating your goals every quarter works pretty well. This balances the work needed to actually reassess the goals against the value gained from changing the goals. Adapt your goals to keep full alignment and relevance across all the goals in the business from business strategy down to individual employee goals. Plan to adapt the goals set as you progress through each year. So there you have eight actions to set employee goals that get results. Do everything you can to help each employee achieve their goals set because this helps you and helps the company. As a quick reminder, the eight actions are firstly align employee goals to the team and company goals second ask employees to set their goals third make the goals smart fourth plan how to measure progress fifth build the plan of how to achieve the goals sixth use carrots and sticks seventh keep the main thing the main thing and eight changes constant so expect to adapt. If you have any questions please leave them in the comment section below and I'll get back to you. Thanks very much for watching and I look forward to seeing you again soon.


What's up Brandman Network, it's Shawn and I'm back with the second video of the music release strategy series and once again these first three are just some basic frequently asked questions that are important though because they can help you guide how you move for a long time. Anybody who does not have an audience right now, a big fan base, do not worry about your album pre-launch series. Don't worry about what you do leading up to your project, everything needs to be focused on after the project. I already just got right into it but obviously the question is what should I do before I drop my project? There are some things you should do but it shouldn't be too focused on marketing and teasing people and getting them excited about it because this is what happens right? You're teasing and oh that teaser sounds good however when it comes out there's likely not going to be a great way that you can get right back out to those same people. My attention is valuable so while you have my attention make sure you convert it into something and that's true for every single potential fan that you have. So if you push out an advertisement I'm like yo that song sounds dope, that sounds cool and I can't find a song once I decide to look for it it's going to be like oh well and I'm going to move on and who knows if you'll be able to get my attention again if you do you'll probably have to pay for it and we don't want to spend as you know that much money do we? Nah because we don't have it yet because we're working on becoming bigger. The alternate is you already have a project out so when you do an ad or when you just drop an interview or whatever you're doing post drop then people can see it and then say you know what I'm interested they check out the project or they check out the song or whatever you have going on and from there now you get that attention they make a decision whether they want to be a fan all of that good stuff so make sure you're not spending too much energy on what you're doing beforehand if you do not have a fan base a decent sized fan base to start to not only tease but to amp up to possibly give you a first big week on your playlist and things of that nature if you don't have anybody to do that for you people who are already checking for you then it's irrelevant. Let's look at it this way like we're independent we're not worried about the music charts necessarily billboard do we even have a chance on getting on billboard or some of these other random charts are we really expecting to get those kind of results or get visibility from those folks probably not so if you aren't then that whole mentality of what happens the first week is really built for those charts it has nothing to do with the actual success of the artists there's been a lot of songs that had a horrible first week but then ended up being one of the best charting songs of the year right long term many people still love the song it doesn't have a great first week because the brain full circle even if you have some sort of fan base it doesn't necessarily matter if you even get those people to give you a nice big bump in the first week unless you're trying to drive up your playlist views because obviously if you get a certain amount of playlist views in a short period of time you get more opportunities to get on other playlists on things like Spotify and Apple music and then of course that has its own trickle effect but if you don't think you'll be able to do that in the first place then it's probably not worth investing a lot in promo beforehand the things that you do put out of course could be you setting out the ground just for the aesthetic for the project or the story that you're forming all that good stuff so when people come back to see it later cool but as far as fitting marketing dollars heavily on it beforehand it's not something you probably need to do at least not at the time when you don't have any fans especially and that's it for the second video of the music release strategy series other than that let's get it


So you can rotate things but you want to control it with the press of a button. Not a problem. Shout out to Xe for sharing the Blueprints schematics for this. Really appreciate it man you're awesome. Now if you followed the last video you should have something like this. First under the class defaults on the right under details under input change auto receive to player zero otherwise none of this is going to work. Once you've done that if you want to save nodes you can actually split up the rotation values and then you don't need this make rotator node. Now in order to change it so it responds to when we hold the e key right click and type e until you find the key node then add a new boolean variable that is controlled by whether the e key is pressed or released drag it out twice with one set to true and one set to false and then drag it out one more time but this time we want the get then add a branch node and connect them together like so you're done if you run the game now every time you hold e your object will now rotate hope that helps and as always I hope you have a fantastic day and I'll see you around.


Throughout our lives, many of us are told that we will be happy if we go to college, get a job, get married, have children and work from 9 to 5 for 40 years until we retire. Leaving your life just for the weekend or leaving your life on the weekend because the other 5 days belong to your boss. Your salary is the bribe they give you to forget your dreams. This is not happiness, but modern slavery. The rat race is an endless, self-defeating or pointless pursuit. It conjures up the image of the futile efforts of a lab rat trying to escape whilst running around a maze or in a wheel. In an analogy to the modern city, many rats in a single maze run around making lots of noise bumping into each other but ultimately achieve nothing meaningful either collectively or individually. Bukowski once said... Life is not a list of checkboxes that we have to tick off sequentially one after another. Got a degree? Tick. Booked a house under my name? Tick. Got married? Tick. Had children? Tick. All these sounds too cliched, too depressing. These are acts which people do under the influence of peer pressure mimicking each other and not willingly as a genuine choice of their own. As Jimmy Reed said... A rat race is for rats. We are not rats, we are human beings.  This is how it starts and before you know where you are, you are fully paid up member of the rat pack. The price is too high. People who are stuck in a rat race are very unhappy in their job and are living in the past. They have given up hope of things getting better and lack purpose in their life. They have low energy and feel powerless to effect change. Ultimately, they have become negative in relationships and their future looks grim. If you are tired of the daily routines and feel yourself steadily losing interest in them, then something has to change. Being a human is hard, but it does not have to be this hard, so start asking yourself important questions. What are the things you deeply value? What inspires you to work hard and achieve your goals in life? What can you offer to humanity and how you can help people? Are you turning your ideas into reality?  Life is too short and it is up to you to make the most of it. You cannot buy time, so don't waste it and start living the life you want now.


Social media has lit up over recent decision made by the LaPorte School Board to eliminate the school's music program at the end of the school year. The curriculum committee cites years of declining participation in the music program to address concerns about the lack of a music curriculum. The district has approved the creation of a rhythm and motion educator for pre-K and kindergarten students. Elementary teachers will then integrate music curriculum into their classroom. There is a push though from pushback from students, parents and alumni who are extremely upset about the music cuts. Two meetings have been scheduled for Thursday, April 19th at 6 30 p.m. and Friday, April 20th at 9 a.m. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


From Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering ServiceNow, Knowledge 17. Brought to you by ServiceNow. We're back, welcome to Orlando everybody. This is ServiceNow, Knowledge 17, hashtag No17. I'm Dave Vellante with my co-host, Jeff Frick. Dave Wright is here, he's the Chief Strategy Officer of ServiceNow and a long time Cube friend. Good to see you again, David. Good to see you again, guys. So, off the keynote, we were just talking about intelligent automation and what's new in your world. New way to work is really kind of the broader theme here. People are changing the way they work, right? I mean, so what is intelligent automation and how does it fit in? So, what we did when we built intelligent automation is we wanted to come at it from a different angle. So, we didn't want to build a product and then look for a solution that it worked with. We wanted to go out and speak to people and see what are the challenges that they faced. So what we did was we came up with kind of four key areas where people wanted to be able to improve or do things differently. We wanted the capabilities to be able to predict when something was going to happen from an event perspective. We wanted to be able to use machine learning to be able to augment tickets. So to be able to perhaps auto-categorize or provide severity or in the case of change provide risk analysis. We wanted to be able to do that at a machine level rather than use a human triage level. Then people were coming back saying, well, we need to, we feel we're doing a good job but we want to understand if we're doing a good job. So that was the concept of expanding out the benchmarks program to include more and more benchmarks for people to see how they compared against their peers. And the final element was people wanted to set themselves performance targets but then they wanted to understand when am I going to get to that target. So what we had to do then was augment the whole performance analytics suite to be able to do predictive analytics. So they're kind of the four core areas that sit in the intelligent automation engine. I mean, we can go into as much detail as you want around them but it's pretty interesting. So help us understand, because I get a little confused about when I hear something like a big announcement coming up, Jakarta platform, but then I see bits and pieces hit the various products. You maybe set that up for us and help us understand. Yes, so what will happen is the benchmarking, the predictive analytics capability and the ability to do predictive service usage, they will appear in Jakarta. And then the actual ML side where we can do the also categorization that will appear in the Kingston release. So by the end of the year, everything that's shown will be available. And it hits the platform and then the modules take advantage of that, is that correct? So what's happening at the moment is the initial use cases have gone through around IT. So it's IT looking at, well, how do we process events so that we can get a precursor to a bigger issue and predict the bigger issue? How do we categorize when someone comes in with an IT request or an IT incidents? How do we make sure it goes to the right people and gets the right categorization? And then what will happen over time is we'll be able to use that for the security module. We'll be able to use it for customer service, for human resources. Because it's all, in the same way we said, it's all a different type of service. It's exactly the same process to be able to categorize, to prioritize, to put a severity on something. And then more long-term we can use this technology to look at all kinds of different files on the system. And when you say IT first, it's ITSM and ITOM, is that right? Yes, ITSM and ITOM. Oh, okay, and so yeah, I like this. This is a very practical example of generally AI because people don't really know what it is. You got to tell us that something's going to break before it breaks is really kind of the use case here, right? What we realized is because we can now start to look at time series data and analyze time series data, there was a few things we could do. So the first thing is we could do correlation. So we could start to link events together so people didn't spend the ages just trying to fix the symptoms. They could go right down to the disease and say, well, this is what's causing everything else. The other thing we could build in because we could understand what normal looked like is we could build in anomaly detection. So normally in events is, hey, this has got a high CPU or this switch has gone down. Now we could say, this just looks weird. We've got like, we've got an activity that never normally happens to this level or it never normally happens at this time of day or we've never seen this before on a Saturday. And we can actually generate an anomaly alerts at that point. Now the anomaly alert might be a precursor to a traditional alert where you might get, I think the example we used in the actual keynote was we get a large number of user threads on a system. That's probably a precursor to high CPU. So once we've started to be able to do that correlation, the more and more examples you get, the more you can start to predict. So you can say, as soon as I get that precursor, I have a level of confidence of when we're going to see the next events. So now you get a brand new type of incident. You'll get an incident for a predicted failure. So the system will say, I've seen this, this and this. I'm 86% confident we've got two hours and we're going to lose this service. So the whole concept of this was how do you work at lightspeed? And my whole challenge was, what happens when you do it before it happens? Is that beyond lightspeed? It was very difficult to try and wrap your mind around it. The speed of light is too damn slow. Yeah, it's too slow and I was going to wait for it.  If a tree falls and nobody's around. And so there's a risk, sort of risk scoring algorithm in there that helps you say, okay, this one is going to fail and you better take advantage of it. So if you imagine seeing a precursor to something, you look how many times that precursor has caused that events that allows you to give a degree of probability as to how likely you think it's going to happen. And it might be you decide to set a threshold and say, look, if it's below 50%, don't bother doing it. But if it's above 70% do it or if it's a specific type of issue, if it's something around security and you're above 90% confidence, I want it flagged as a priority on issue. Yeah, but if it's my picnic wiki, so can you inject the notion of value in there, I guess is the question. Yeah, you can. I want to ask you about this categorization piece, even though it's coming down the road with Kingston, that's been a challenge for organizations in so many different use cases. I mean, the one I could think of, it's like email archiving the federal rules of civil procedure, all that stuff when electronic records became admissible. Right. And everybody sort of scrambled to categorize, but it was manual, they were using tags, it just didn't work, it didn't scale. So the answer was always technology to auto-categorize at the point of creation or use. But even then it was complicated and the math kind of worked, but it couldn't apply it. What's changed now? And what's the secret sauce behind it? Is it was that part of the DX Continuum acquisition and maybe you could point it a little bit. So we acquired DX Continuum, that gave us eight really bright maths PhDs or data scientists who could come in and could look at data in a different way. But I think technology also drove it, so you got the ability to have the compute power to be able to do the number crunching, but you got the volume of data as well. I think the more volume of data you get, the more accurate it is. So we found if we're going to train also categorization, we need between 50 and 100,000 records to be able to get to a degree of accuracy.  But even when we ran this out of the box on our system for the very first time before we'd rewritten it on the platform, first time we ran it through, it was 82% accurate straight off. Now the real interesting thing about when you do something like categorization, it's almost as important what you get right as not guessing when you're going to get it wrong. So we wanted to be very sure that the system would say, I am 100% confident that this is where this is, but if I don't know it, I'm not going to guess. I'm not going to say, well, 75% confidence, so I'm going to say it to this. At that point you want to say, I just don't know. So these 18%, for example, in this case I don't know. And then over time you get to reprocess the things that you don't know and that percentage gradually goes up. So now I think in-house we're running into the 90% region. So the math, though, has been around forever. I mean, things like support vector machines and there are other techniques. What is it about this day and age that has allowed us to effectively apply that math and solve this problem? So I think what you get now, if you look at the DX Continuum technology used about, I think it was five different methodologies for being able to interrogate. And it was neural nets, it was using Bayes. But I think what gives you the big advantage is people have always taken live data and then tried to do this prediction. That's probably the wrong way to do it. If you take historical data and then run it, you just find out which one works. And if this algorithm's working the best for you based on the way you structure your data then that's the algorithm you focus on. And that's exactly the way predictive analytics works. What we do is we were initially looking saying, okay, well, we've got these three different models we can use. We can use projection, we can use seasonal trend loads, we can use Arima with the auto regressive move and average type solution. Which one are we going to use? And then we realized we didn't need to guess. What we could do is we could give the system historical data and say which one of these most accurately maps and then use that algorithm for that data set. Because every data set's different. So you might look at one data set where it's really spiky, so you don't want to use projection because if you choose the wrong points your projection album is effectively out. So it might be in that case you want to use STL and be able to smooth out some of the curves. So you have to, every time you want to do predictive analytics around a specific data set you need to work out what mathematical model you need to use. So the data is then training the models and the models are your models, correct? And then now you tell the customer, and I'm sure you do, that this is your data. Your data's not going to be shared with anybody outside of your instance. But the model, the distance between the gray area between the model and the data, they start to blend together. Is there concern in your customer base about I don't want the model that you train going to my competitors? Or is this a different world where they feel as though, hey, I want to learn, like security. What are you seeing there? So this is the uniqueness that we, you don't get a generic ML where we look at everyone's instance and train across that. We can only train for your instance. And that's because everyone does things differently. You go to some companies, their highest priority issue is a 7.9, whereas another customer would have 7.1. So you've got people doing different implementations like that. But let's say I tried to do everyone's, and I went through and I said, hey, look at this description. This is a networking issue, so I'm going to categorize it as networking. And you haven't got a networking category. You've got networking infrastructure or networking hardware, then it fails. So I have to build a model that's very specific to your instance. So every time we do this, we'll build it for each customer. So it's kind of customized, artificial intelligence, machine learning models that sit within your instance. My data, your model, that you're basically applying for me and only me. Yeah, so we do the training on your data and we inject that model, which is your model back into your instance. And now the benchmarks, you guys have been talking about benchmarks for a while. This is sort of taking it to a new level. So how do you roll that out? How do you charge for it? What's the strategy? So what people do is they effectively subscribe to it. So they're willing to share their data where at that point allowing them. So it's almost a community issue. At this point, everyone's sharing data across the systems. Now, we added another nine benchmarks in the Jakarta release. So now I think there's 16 benchmarks. At the moment, we're focused around IT and ITOM. But as we get more and more customers coming in on CSM and more on HR and more on security, we'll be able to start to introduce the whole concept of benchmarking those as well. But the thing you can do now is you, you don't just see the benchmark and how you perform. We can also use analytics to show how you're trending as well. So you might be, you might be better than people of a similar size or people in the same industry, but it might be that you're trending down and you're actually going to start to get close to being worse than them. So the concept here is you can take corrective measures, but also it gives a lot of power to customers. Not just to be able to say, I think I'm doing a good job, but to be able to go to senior management and say, this is how customers that look like us are currently performing. This is how customers in the finance sector perform. This is how customers with a hundred thousand people are more perform and they can see, look, we're leading in this, this and this area and they can see whether they're not leading and they can actually start to see how they'd address that. Or it might even be that you start to build relationships where they could say to their account manager, who are the people who've got this best in performance type thing? Could we meet with them? Could we exchange with them? The evolution of this will be on the performance analytics side when we start to get to Kingston and beyond, we'll be to be able to do, not just the predictive analytics, but to be able to do modeling and to be able to do what if. And the end goal is, we've gone to the point where we've got to predictive. You want to get to the point where you get to prescriptive where the system says, this is where you are. If you do this, this is where you'll get. That's what I was going to ask you. Is it intuitive to the client what they should do and what role does service now play in advising them? And you're saying in the future, the machine is actually going to advise. Yeah, you could be able to say, hey, well, if you want to, let's say you want to improve your problem closure rates. You could say, well, when you look at other customers an indicator of this is people have got much better first call incident closure. So what you need to do is you need to focus on closing first call incidents because that's going to then have the knock on effect of driving down the way you resolve problems. So we'll be able to get to that, but we'll also be able to allow people to actually model different things. So they could say, well, what happened if I increased this by 10%? What happens if I put another 10 people working on this particular assignment group? What's the effect going to be? And actually start to do those what if models and then decide what you're going to do. To prioritize the investment. Absolutely. To get the numbers down. It's just interesting too, because it's a continuous process, as you mentioned. It's this whole, you know, do the review once a year to your KPIs. You know, that's just not the way it works anymore. You don't have time. And to use the integration of the real-time streaming data, which is interesting, but you said not necessarily always which one of you's first compared to the historical data that's driving the actual business models and the algorithms. And I think the thing about the whole benchmark concept is it's constantly being updated. So it's not like you take a snapshot and you say, okay, we can improve and move here. You see if everyone else is improving at the same time. So there might just be a generic industry trend that everyone's moving in a certain direction. It might be that as we start to see more things coming online from an IoT perspective, I'll be interested to see whether people's CMDB starts to expand because I don't know if people have yet established whether IoT is going to be responsible for IoT because it's using the same protocol for its messaging. How are you going to process those events? How are you going to deal with all that? So I want to, that gets me to man versus machine. Machines have always replaced, you know, humans. But for the first time, it really is happening quickly with cognitive functions. Right. And one of your speakers at the CIO event, Andrew McAfee and his colleague Eric Binyalsen have written a book and in that book, they talked about the middle class getting kind of hollowed out and they theorized that a big part of that is machines replacing them. One of the stats is the median income for US workers has dropped from 55,000 to 50,000 over the last decade. Right.  Yeah.  Should we be alarmed by that? What is your personal opinion here?  What are your thoughts? Share them with us. So people have different views on this. If you look at the view of executives, they see this as potentially creating more jobs. If you look at the workforce, I completely agree with you. There's a massive fear that, yeah, this is going to take my job away. I think what happens over time is jobs will shift. People will start doing different things. You can go back 150 years and find that 90% of America's work in farmland and you can come now and you can find out they're like 2%. Not too many software engineers either back then. Well, not too many. Hard to get that mainframe in the field. What I think you can do is you can not just use AI or machine learning to be able to replace the mundane jobs or the very repetitive jobs. You can actually start to reverse that process. So one of the things we see is initially when people were talking about concepts like chatbots, it was all about how do you externalize it? How do you have people coming in and being able to interface to a machine? But you can flip that and you can actually have a bot become a virtual assistant. Then what you're doing is you're enabling the person who's dealing with the issues to actually be better than they were. An interesting example is if you look at something like the way people analyze sales prospects. So in the past, people that have a lot of different opportunities they were working on. And the good sales guys would be able to isolate what's gonna happen, what's not gonna happen. What I can do is I can run something like a machine learning algorithm across that and predict which deals are most likely to come in. I then can have a sales guy focusing on those. I've actually improved the skills of that sales guy by using ML and AI to actually get in there. I think a lot of times you'll be able to move people from a job that was kind of repetitive and dull and be able to augment their skills and perhaps allow them to do a job that they couldn't have done before. So I'm pretty confident just based on the impact that this is gonna have from a productivity perspective where this is gonna go from a job perspective. There's a really cool McKinsey report and it talks about the impact of the steam engine on what that drove on productivity and that was a 0.3% increase in productivity year on year over 50 years. But the prediction around artificial intelligence is it'll produce a productivity increase of 1.4% for the next 50 years. So you're looking at something that the people are predicting could be five times as impactful as the Industrial Revolution. That's pretty significant. Next Machine Age, this is a huge topic. We're out of time, but I would love for you, Dave, to come back to our Silicon Valley studio and maybe talk about this in more depth because it's a really important discussion. Now I'm always around, having to do it. Thanks very much for coming on theCUBE. It'd be great to see you again. Thanks guys. Right there, everybody. We'll be back with our next guest right after this short break. Right back.


Let's say the sound of ee ee ee Let's say the sound of ee ee Let's hear everyone everywhere in the sound of ee ee


Hello, everyone. I'm Dalai. We're going to talk a little bit about development, but for non-developers. Try to make things interesting, spice up a little bit, some personal tales. I'm not Jama. Sorry about that. Love his work. I'm the first one that was looking for it to see his work. But let's try to make something out of this. I've been using Blender since 2005. It's an archivist in there. It's a Python development, working films, research presented at SIGGRAPH, drones flying, full domes projected to get particles, cosmic particles projected for people dancing, books, and among all of this is connected to Blender. I've been using Blender for so many times. It has been paying my bills for so long. And as a developer, it's been 11 years since my first patch landed into master. And so many things happened since then. At the time I was doing Blender game engine, the little part of Blender which I liked. And from there, I got myself involved with 2.80, Blender as a whole. So I would like to share a little bit about that. So Blender 2.80 was just something that all the old users could just come in, get on board, and do amazing work as they used to do before. But we also really welcome new users, people that have never, ever, ever used Blender before. And I say, oh my God, things are so fast, so easy to learn now. The UI, the UX, everything just clicks, everything just works. And we took Blender that could do already so many things. And out of the sudden, we can keep doing more things. We can do more I.O., a Linux better supported, grease pencil, so many things. And the scope of what we accomplished with 2.80, what we all accomplished with 2.80, it's really beyond the shyest vision I think that don't have years ago. And we got there, we made it. When you do talk about 2.80, we're talking about workspaces, we all know about that. We're talking about collections, how to organize your scene. We all know that. And we kind of know about EV a little bit. But what some people might not know is how did that start? Why to even bother with real-time rendering? And is there only for rendering? Let's take care of it a little bit. We start to bring in technology which were in video games, which were used by the industry as a whole to modernize how artists use their tools within Blender. Which means, of course, real-time rendering, but also means much, much more. Geez, grease pencil. We didn't even see that coming. There's those artists working in Spain really trying to get storyboarding agenda moved forward. These animations, so many things, so many things. I don't need to preach what Blender is about. We all know about it.  It's actually this way. Oh, wow. So many has passed. We actually got so many things crumbled inside this little piece of software, which is still under 200 megabytes. I mentioned briefly that, okay, we had real-time rendering techniques used for video games. That's not only for EV. What does that mean? That means you can have non-photorealistic rendering, helping someone to visualize the whole scene, helping to have an overview of some basic shadows. That's not realistic shadowing, but gives a good read of the scene when you're working on it. You all remember the old way to display normals in Blender. But if you have a whole modern pipeline for rendering, why not just simply have one single path that shows what's wrong with the model? All hair, whoever did grooming in the past must be really praised. And I'm surprised they don't give up. They haven't given up on Blender at the time. Because now we can do grooming in real time. We have seen Daniel talk yesterday and have this level of quality, not only for rendering, but for work. The idea was also always to bring this kind of technology to facilitate what you're doing every single day. Play Blast can be fancy. Grooming can be fancy. One central piece of 2.80 was Eevee. It was something that got us a lot of traction. A lot of people jumped on board. Right from the beginning, we get artists such as Danielle volunteering to send us files. He joked that when he started using 2.80, there were no mode fires. Everything had to be baked and applied. And the moment we had armature mode fires in, he said, okay, I have something I want to play with. And then he gave us the tree creature. And it's a file that anyone can download. But we also collected right in the first year, 2017, two years before the future release, we are going to SIGGRAPH and saying that people are already playing with these. You guys can maybe share a few files. And people are just okay. Probably all of them have to be applied because there's no mode fire. But people were already using it. If you look at the presentations, if you go back to YouTube and watch every single presentation here, there's probably, I haven't seen a single 2.7 screen in the main stage. Everyone's using 2.80. Now, think about that. 2.80 was officially released in August. The calls for people to send their presentation was also August. What happened? How can everyone be using 2.80 before it's out? Because that's the community. People, we are building Blender together and we built, we got that far together. This is one of my favorite pieces. This was the Blender 2.80 splash screen for two years. Two years. Before the release, we just had this as a main screen. This is my work desk. Any similarity with the Eevee name and the Pokemon is pure coincidental. One thing interesting about Eevee, actually let me bring it back here. At first, the main goal was to replace the Blender internal. We wanted to open Cintel files with 2.80 and it would be just automatic. Everyone would be so excited. Oh, my God. I said during those two years, people were just taking it and saying, I don't care about the Blender internal. I don't want to use cycles anymore. They were replacing cycles with the Eevee. They said, wow, okay, let's embrace that. We still don't support the Blender internal versioning. We just remove it. Don't remove it. Very controversial. Not really. I still know people that are using 2.7, but something changed and has been changed for two years. The process has been very, wow, it's quite a ride for everyone. Let's talk about a bit of development of Blender. Something that's very fuzzy throughout the years that changed a lot. But I want to talk about the 2.8 specific. Before the so-called cold quest, we actually had a whole year. It's living in Amsterdam. Clema, it's Clema here. I haven't seen him here. No, he didn't make it. Clema's a great developer. He got on board. He got Mike Irving and we have a core team already working in the dependency graph in library overrides. So for a whole year, we tried to settle the foundation for what was going to be the 2.80. And then, you know what? Why don't you bring everyone on board? Why don't you bring every single of those external contributors to Blender or higher developers that are Australia, United States, in the same place? And that's how we tried to do for the Blender cold quest. So this was for the first year. It was so exciting, the viewport. But the cold quest was going to be so much bigger. So we came from like, I say, like 5-ish developers, 6 developers to a team of 10. Let's tend to 12 developers at a single time. And at that time, I was then in charge to help facilitate the development. I'm no manager. I'm an architect. But if I can help people to talk to each other, the designer, the engineer, with the client, that gives me joy. And I think we put quite a team together here. One thing interesting that at first, we were expecting the industry to really come on board and give us like a lot of money. We understand that 2.80 is going to be fantastic. We did have support from the early days. AMD was sponsoring us. They sponsored the Blender conference for a few years. Tangent animation. They actually were one of the main sponsors of the new viewport of EV, my own salary. Thank you, Tangents. But the response to the kick to the crowdfunding for the cold quest was a bit underwhelming when it came to the industry. But all the users that we knew that we had then, we are always shy. The Blender as a foundation, we're always shy to actually ask for money. No, Tony is like, I don't care about money. But then people were just like, I want to give them money. I want to see it happening. I can see the point of getting everyone together in the same place.  So cute. And it was a huge, huge, huge success. Until then, we still have it in a way, the Blender development, since it started, since it went out of the company and become open source, was really moved, tailored. So we had a project at the Blender Institute. And with this project, we had a very clear use case and guide the lines to where do I want the Blender to be. There's a game on that. This is a very project care. It's the first project I got the credit in the poster, because I got to select the whole process, just helping a little bit of TD, not a lot. And we still use those projects to further Blender, but the industry took Blender over. They came over to us and said, well, I'm also using Blender. We all know tangent animation. We all know what they did with Next 10. So they also have a vision that we can share and work together. And their moves was seen by millions of people in their couch. It's incredible. That's a new TV. That's a new cinema. How many people go to cinema nowadays? So Blender is really walking hands in hands with those partners, with how we're making art nowadays. Next 10 was not the first feature film we had in Blender. That credit goes to Plumifros, production Argentina. Aussie was the first one from Tangent, made in Blender. It's a simple project, small, a very small budget, but they had an amazing distribution. If you went to Paris during the month when Aussie was released, you could get a Macadona in Paris. The main cover was a Blender character for a Blender movie. We're not kids anymore. Maybe we're not I don't know if you can watch the whole thing, but who are getting there was making waves. And I was bringing the agent also, because we have this backbone green that at some point we might want to make our own feature films inside the Blender headquarters, which doesn't fit a film production here. This is the place where development was happening for Blender, well, beside the internet, of course, where the animation movies were made for the Blender Animation Studio, where the foundation as part of the chairman was there, and it was a beautiful place. We could do so many things there, but as you can see, this was a podcast we recorded. We had a mattress on the back. We had a bike that was probably trying to get fixed. And we could do everything as a meeting, as a whiteboard. This is to 2016. We had a usability workshop as part of the kickoff, as part of the kickoff for the for what then be the 2.80. And we're just we didn't have space. You can see we're using every single surface we had to write things. You see here's layer. This is when we're trying to replace layer with what then became the collection system. Trying to get artists and so hard. It's fighting the fight. But it's also a very beautiful location. If you're ever staying here a bit longer, if you go to the Interpol Doc, it's near the zoo. It's a beautiful place. You can wake up if the monk is talking. It's beautiful throughout the whole year, but it was small and it had to move, it had to grow. We went to the north. This is in the, I think everyone knows that tomorrow the studio is open for visitors starting noon. We are off the daylight saving time change. But we had to move and then we moved to this amazing space with the most incredible cleaning staff. Everyone had to help. People had to paint the walls if they wanted the standing desks. People that had time just because we all believed in that. And you all see that we wanted to grow together with Blender. So the car development team. And we could have so many meetings. Have Campbell, Brad, Francisco here. We could receive visitors without disturbing the production. Those are my parents. You could watch TV in the lobby cheering for the World Cup. So it could fit a lot of things and some serious things such as training courses. Now we could finally have a solid training facility that can receive professions from the industry. How was the Blender development team in a way? For years we had this very scattered team throughout the world. People from Europe, America, people working as a contractor for the Blender Foundation, or institutes from home, or from the institute, or here working from Google, coming constantly every now and then. We had Andrea contributing patches, though people that have a day job then they work on the side. Students, companies trying to get crowned funds like the Compostor Work, Munich, and Yeroum. They had their own crown of funding happening on the side, and then Yeroum now is on board with us. So we have all this decentralized structure. But because of the code quest, I believe we try to not only centralize, but to make sure that everyone, doesn't matter where they are, doesn't matter if it's a user or as a developer, can follow the whole process together and can work together as a team. We put a lot of effort in communication. That goes for the blog we have, the code.blender.org. Jesus Christ. And we really had this idea that it doesn't matter if a developer is here, if a developer is at home, it doesn't matter if it's a user, a power user, a technical user, we all should share the main mental models, the main core design. We call this design, it's not a UI design, maybe it's a product, project design. But we really put in effort since the community really took over the project on their own hands to make it work, wanted to give it back in a way that just making sure people could follow closely what we're doing. Probably started such an amazing work with the videos, we had live streams, we had almost daily updates on what was happening with Blender. This is one of the final live streams we had and we now have the Blender today, it's fantastic, it's amazing, millions, thousands of views every single day, every single Monday. But I think the seed that was planted back then was like, okay people are craving communication, they're craving this feeling of being part of the community and we're trying our best. This is also called the jail because this is a very cubical kind of industrial office, we have a few of them, can visit them tomorrow. How do you go about planning, how do we get 10 people together in the same room and make sure we're all working together? Honestly we just used Inkscape.  What you see here in red are things that we cannot do without, more the fantasy graph, infrastructure, I can barely read, all the guys can read, it's beautiful. So many different tasks, but we had a few of the blue ones, which are the ones that, well we need them, however if you have to move them forward it's not a problem because we knew that people would be using since the beginning, we knew that we need to be flexible in allocating our developers. Once something very interesting, you see here this huge black bar, so this is the cold quest planning overall, three months planning. In the middle of it we have this black bar. What is that? What is that? That's spring, that's when the spring team had to switch to Blender 2.80 and we blocked the entire week to make sure we could provide whatever support they needed, because then it's once again the Blender Foundation, the Blender Development Coordination, trying to take use movies as real use case and try to use this to base the direction we go. This is Andy Gorashi, great talking this morning and I would just go, I love art, we are in the digital art world, I'll just go there and just stalk him, and I said Andy just get used to it because I'm going to be doing this every single day, it's like a camera at some point you get used to it and I just start working with it and he got used to it and I love it and that also this is also a way to see how people are using Blender. Every time you get one of those sample files I mentioned I would go over the collections, they're not using collections yet, they're actually using collections in a nested way and it helps to just be with the artist, he's one of also the core principles of Blender and the Blender Development, how tie we are with the art community, with the users we have. It was also summer, which is kind of can get on the way, it's so beautiful, you can go picnicking and eating outside but honestly we still were crumbled together trying to squeeze the most we could out of the days we had, it felt way too short, three months felt way too short. It does help to have summer on the background, I got to see some nice things and again it's the new studio, the new institute, the new headquarter, there was room for everything but still you'd still find new corners to try to have meetings. So this is, was the old kitchen, now became one of the offices we have but whenever we had more than two, three people together there was something you could just discuss in person, so much, so much productive to do this way. As I said three months is short in a way because it just got ambitious. We're awful in project management, we're going to get better but to say since we have more people let's make more stuff, let's make more things in Blender. So this is a compiled list by July 2017 of not finished, we cannot get ready in time, just navigate to manipulator annotation system and try to figure out how long any of those things would take. I'll be honest here, starting July, so the code quest started in April, right, we had 10 developers, we had money, everything was so excited but starting July we'd be a team of four to five people only, coordination, there was no more money for that, there's no more funding, there's no more everything, so really okay we got a taste of what would be to work together in a structure environment with a lot of people collaborating but the the true reality is this was still a bit far from what you could have what you wanted to have, it did help though to have been three months together for everyone, you build this kind of common comradery, we know whenever you have a meeting with someone online over Skype, over chat you remember this person, remember when you're cheers chilling in the couch, it helps to build consensus later on but we still had this crave, we wanted more, we wanted more I'm so glad that then the Blender Foundation, I think Tom, we had Francesco, the whole team, like embraced, I think Pablo was always always pushing for this as well, embraced his idea that people are willing to contribute to Blender and they saw that they get features back, that they get they can see the process, we're still transparent, they trust our judgment in a lot of ways so the Dev Fund was put together this was, took this picture in the past, it doesn't even fit in the slide anymore just keep getting bigger, this was my we had not only overwhelming support from the community but then at some point got epic mega grant, oh my god and we have AMD, we have NVIDIA who else is gonna be on board, who else gonna be on board it's me saying but that means we can go back I think we can revisit what was that experience and maybe we can make it a more continuous continuous part of the flow of development of Blender we now have a more structured administration department or team at least, Tom is really continuous thinking the big picture still guide the direction of Blender but it's also the only person that can be talking to the big guys to get as money, to get as fund to bring Rubysoft on board, to bring time to get on board so it's nice that we're also trying to structure and grow as a more, it's not a vertical structure but a more professionalized structure that can have people that can train each other we can make sure onboarding is done properly so new contributors can feel part of these and really being powered to contribute to Blender to give it back to the community still a challenge we're still not there yet we see we grow too fast and yet we still have those developers scattered around the globe half of the teams in Europe these are a little bit the zest Central Europeans summertime work hours for all the developers for last month green means they're definitely online, yellow they might not they might be sleeping or not so like the first the basics we didn't even know like when do everyone work when can I try to get a meeting with someone because that's so again so big we're trying bi-weekly nowadays so every 15 days we go in one to two so I'm always trying to host and have two developers different developers every time have all the 18 of them like going over the week always have a topic what I would like to hear from them just to guide their direction like 10 minutes, 10 minutes and then 10 minutes to buffer just to chat a little bit this was one of the previous bi-weekly I always wake up at seven o'clock in the morning to attend it the way how so it's noon at Europe so I get some quick breakfast and we are trying to get it to work for us growing and of an open source development drives a lot of us to keep improving to keep working and keep growing professionally but for us a lot of unknown but I believe with what we learn with the code quest and how well received it was our effort and the result we got I do think we have a bright feature ahead thank you very much


The mysteries of Islam fascinate us time and time again This is no different from the life story of the Prophet Who was Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa alihi wasallam? An illiterate doesn't merchant who one day stumbled upon amazing Arabic rhetoric Or was he the creation of Allah's greatest light? Sent down to earth to pull man out of ignorance and bring them to the purest of shoots. I Ali Burji am on a journey to discover the real story behind the Prophet The real story behind our religion, the roots, the beginning, the cradle of civilization Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim Dr. Al-Aziz Ustadi So we're continuing, inshallah, from where we left And the Holy Prophet was in the ma'raj and he gets a commandment from Allah's point that Fatima must marry Amir al-Mu'mineen alaihi salam And from there on I seek refuge with Allah from the evil regime Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim, Alhamdulillah, Lord of the worlds As-salatu wa salamu ala Sayyidina Muhammadin wa alayhi al-Taybeen, al-Taybeen, al-Taybeen I seek refuge with Allah from the evil regime I seek refuge with Allah from the evil regime I seek refuge with Allah from the evil regime We have various hadiths that Fatima Zara'a alaihi salam when she was before her birth or she was in the womb of her mother she used to speak to Sayyid al-Khadija alaihi salam We have various occasions that the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi used to come home and find Sayyid al-Khadija speaking, she says, who are you talking to? She says, Al-Janeen Subhanallah The features of my woman talks to me He keeps me company Have we had narrations from maybe another Prophet? Because we know, for example, the Prophet sallallahu alaihi salam spoke from the cradle to defend a lady But now, while he was At least I don't recall at the moment Again, as part of this Meiraj and the Hadith or the instructions that the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi received, it says Zawuj al-Nur min al-Nur So Allah s.w.t. calls Fatima Zahra al-Nur calls Imam Ali al-Nur light, if you like and Mary, he says, Mary, the light who is the light Which again indicating the purity and the uniqueness of these personalities The light of Fatima Zahra and the light of Imam Ali al-Nur And Allah s.w.t. says I have married them in the heavens So if you like The Nur of Fatima and the Nur of Ali Allah says, I have married them in the heavens And they will have two pure sons who will be the leaders or the masters of the youth of paradise who are Hassan al-Hassan This was the, if you like the sort of instructions that over the news and of course this one is specifically the news that Allah s.w.t. gave to the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi And of course years passed by from these and as she grew older when it comes it was time for her marriage at least she was of marriage age a lot of suitors started coming forward they saw it as it would be a great pride for them a great honor that they would marry the daughter of Fatima Zahra the only daughter of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi Fatima Zahra alaihi sallam Of course they didn't have in mind the asma and the true status of Fatima Zahra in the sight of Allah s.w.t Basically by marrying Fatima Zahra they wanted to gain this status in community that they've married the daughter of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi and various people used to come a lot of people who were wealthy a lot of people who were if you like the ashab the sahabi used to come as we mentioned previously in previous episodes that the sahabi used to come forward on more than one occasion and asking for the hands of Fatima Zahra in marriage and the Prophet used to reject them and until they started if you like making complaints, complaining about why you're doing this to us especially those who were rich they said we are very rich we can have all this wealth and the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi said very important thing which is the issue of the marriage of Fatima Zahra is not in my hand that's very important it is in the hands of Allah s.w.t it's not usual usually we have the willyya of the father of the children in case of marriage for example when the girl wants to marry the father should give the permission for marriage so except in the case of Fatima Zahra it is Allah who should give the permission for marriage even the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi according to this hadith says I don't have the willyya for that it's not in my hand and it's in the hands of Allah s.w.t and look at this divine instructions in this respect of course when he was saying this years before he had heard what Allah has said to him he had of the good tidings of the information of the news that I have destined that Fatima Zahra but he was saying that I am awaiting instructions so basically he is waiting instructions from Allah to send on him and instruct him to carry out the marriage which of course he hadn't received at that time so from what we have shared with us now basically we have a number of people approaching the holy prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi we are not saying that every single one of them had an agenda or something in mind to marry the holy prophet's daughter sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi some of them may came with pure intentions anyone naturally would be interested to marry the daughter of the most important person of that time which was the holy prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi of all time apologies of all time so indication that this marriage was so important that the holy prophet was unable to choose a spouse for his daughter this came direct from Allah now what's next well he was able to choose but Allah has said that he wants that there was a command that he is to marry which means that they were created for one another yes as I said there were people who used to come and boast about their wealth and this ultimately the prophet wasn't very pleased that they showing off with their wealth and so on these are not the values that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi was looking for of course he as I said apart from the fact that he saw the merits and virtues of the mama alaihi salam and he considered him to be the best candidate for marriage for Fatma al-Zara alaihi salam but specifically he's awaiting instructions from Allah anyway when one of the people who came forward and sort of boast about his wealth he grabbed hold of some pebbles and stones from the ground and and then he throw them and they turned into jewels diamonds and what have you he said if we want to if you talk about wealth like this but we're not after that so he basically made him you know to go quiet about stop boasting about his wealth and then the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi said have I not said time and again so it goes to show that this was happening repeatedly and the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi was replying repeatedly that the issue of marriage of Fatma al-Zara is not in my hand it's in the hand of Allah but I'd like to concentrate on this put the light on this when he says have I not said to you time and again so that I'm awaiting instructions so they gave up after as I said this went on for days or even probably months coming forward making proposal to the prophet or asking for the hands of Fatma al-Zara for marriage and the prophet was rejecting them when they all gave up so there was no chance we'd be rejected by the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi and and they started saying we know who the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi keeping Fatma al-Zara for the only person who hasn't gone forward is Ali ibn Abi Talib and we think that he is keeping Fatma al-Zara for Ali ibn Abi Talib alaihi sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi so they did have they had pretty well good idea that you know whom the prophet wish to give his daughter in marriage to and it was Ali ibn Abi Talib they were sure about that but before I continue with the case of Imam alaihi sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi wa alaihi when reports used to come to Fatma al-Zara alaihi sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi so and so has approached your father and he wants your hand in marriage and then the news was coming in on he says I pray to Allah who chose my father as his messenger he says how come these people want to become my husband whereas they have spent years they have spent many years being infidels or being polytheists worshipping idols and whereas my husband should be one who is maasum so Fatma al-Zara sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi wa alaihi she had values for and the value she was is that she didn't she couldn't accept people who were spend some part or significant part of their lives being worshipping idols this was something which was unacceptable to her and she made that clear in this statement so so coming back to the case of Imam Ali and the other suitors they said they came to Imam Ali and said why don't you go forward we all tried we all tried many times we've all been rejected and he's been so, the prophet has been so categorical about the fact that the marriage of Fatma al-Zara is not in his hands and in the hands of Allah swt so they said to him you should go forward so Imam Ali said that Imam Ali went he did wudu or he did ghusl and then he prayed to Allah swt and he wore something he said some appropriate garment and he went forward to the house of Um Salama where the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi was staying and he said that when he went and knocked on the door the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi knew where he was he said to Um Salama please go and open the door someone who has come which I'm looking forward to see and of course Um Salama didn't know who he was and he was very eager the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi was very eager that he opened the door quickly and so she went and while she hadn't had hijab she unlocked the door but kept the door closed so that she had time to go to the other room which according to this and Imam Ali kept the door if like closed to give Um Salama time to leave and go to the other room and then he was instructed to come in so Imam Ali came and sat in front of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi but he was too shy to say anything and he said that after a while he couldn't say he couldn't utter a word he got up and left and he said goodbye to the prophet and he left and the prophet knew he split the kuffar in half could not and then he left so he came the next day and he sat in front of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi and of course he probably knew what he was but he couldn't utter a word and this time also he got up and left and if he said that for the third the third day he came and sat in front of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi for a while and couldn't utter a word and the prophet this time probably he knew that if he didn't say anything if the prophet didn't take any initiative he he said do you have a request what if you come here for Imam Ali continued to be silent he was too shy to even answer what his request was and then Imam the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi said I suspect that you have come to ask for the hand of Fatima for marriage if you think about it they were the closest they had the best of relations they were like brothers so you would think that for him to go and ask the holy prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi would be an easy task because the connection between them is unique but still you see Amirul mu'mineen so shy so pure like always a child as you said the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi had made bond of brotherhood between the Muslims the Ansaran muhajireen various people and of course and he made a bond of brotherhood with Imam Ali between himself and Imam Ali so as you said they were like brothers the prophet used to refer to Imam Ali he is my brother and my cousin and Imam Ali also used to refer to the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi he is my brother and he is my cousin so yes even though he is like brothers but he was too shy to utter a word in this respect and he couldn't do anything until the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi initiated this and he said do you have a request even then he didn't only when he said that I suspect that you have come here to ask for the hand of Amirul mu'mineen is then that he said yes so this was and he started saying that talking about his devotion to the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi and that you took me from my parents and you gave me food and you fed me and you educated me the upbringing was in your hands of course if you remember the expert from Najil Balagha said that the prophet gave me the upbringing everyday he used to raise one of his ethical teachings and I used to follow it precisely and exactly the way he instructed me to so he is recalling this basically he is trying to build it up to justify and he said he welcomed him and the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi said to him yes I agree to the marriage because Allah swt has instructed me the prophet Imam alaihi sallam said I have come to request the hand of Fatima al-Zahra again and the prophet replied whenever other suitors used to come for Fatima al-Zahra I could see that Fatima al-Zahra was displeased was not happy in her face but I need to go and see go inform her about you and see what she has to say so that's another thing which we need to highlight in the sense that even then when other suitors used to come he used to report it to the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi to his daughter Fatima al-Zahra which is her right Islamic as well and she used to turn away or frown or she used to show without saying anything but she used to reveal her displeasure to the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi particular suitors so he said I need to go and inform Fatima about you and he went and informed her he went to the next room if you like he informed her and he says that I do not know anyone better than Ali he said to her and Ali has come asking for your hand in marriage and of course you know the merits and qualities of Ali Ali sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi and when I said that to her Fatima al-Zahra Ali sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi didn't say anything but she didn't also she didn't show any displeasure and the front that she used to show when others used to go and the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi says her silence shows her acceptance of this and this also this action that took place that her silence was a sign of approval I don't think we have it anywhere else when the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi said that it was then Fatima al-Zahra sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi said that all praise and glory is to Allah SWT and I am content with whatever Allah and his messenger are content with so if you like in this case Fatima al-Zahra she remained silent she didn't show any displeasure she showed her content but she wanted if you like a declaration from the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi and when the prophet said her silence is her confirmation, her approval of shows her approval for this marriage it is then that she said whatever Allah and his messenger are content with the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi always encouraged that the maher be a small amount or at least stick to this maher sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi and it's true that these days people ask for a certain amount it's been recommended the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi recommended that they use this as a sunnah of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi maher sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi this Maher which is 500 silver coins this will be equivalent if I remember correctly 1.25 kilograms of silver and that will be roughly about 4-500 dollars that's a sort of money