We're the voice for the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce here in Hawaii. We work hard to be a resource for the Latino community by offering bi-weekly podcasts, our show, Hola, Aloha, Welcome. And we also have bi-monthly Buenos Dias Breakfast Networking events, so please join us at those. And we also offer a weekly newsletter, also named Hola, Yaloja. So my name is Barbara Salazar Deluca, President, and my lovely co-host is Marisol Ruiz. Hola, my name is Marisol, and I am the Vice President, and as she said, co-host of our fabulous talk show, podcast. We're really excited about today, and one of the things that we offer, she was mentioning, is our Buenos Dias Breakfast, and it's an opportunity for us to network, and we're so excited because from the event that we had last time, we had an awesome opportunity to meet our current guest. His name is Eric Madden. He's the Education and Training Program Manager at Ho'Olaonapua. And for those of you that don't know Ho'Olaonapua, it actually means New Life for Our Children, and it's an organization that was founded to shine light on the dark criminal enterprise of sex trafficking.  We are so excited to have Eric Madden here with us, and if you can please share with us a little bit about yourself, Eric, we'd love to hear from you. Yeah, so thank you so much. You know, I kind of just fell into coming to that breakfast, and I loved every moment of it. It was great. I enjoyed the presentation by the gentleman that was teaching self-defense. And yeah, so thank you all so much for having me here today, having me be able to speak on behalf of Ho'Olaonapua in regards to trafficking and what that looks like here in Hawaii. A little bit about my background. I've been in Hawaii now for roughly about, or just over five years now, and I moved here working with developmental disabilities. That's where I've been in the last 12 years, but I really felt a pull towards this organization and their work that they do here. And that's kind of what I really enjoy doing over the last couple of years. What I get to do is I really get to go out and spread awareness and spread truth behind what sex trafficking is and what CSEC really is. When I say CSEC, I'm referring to commercial sexual exploitation of children. And that's what we focus on highly as an organization. So that's what we're going to talk about today. I'm super excited to share up with it, share about it, share what it looks like here in Hawaii and how we can be protected as a community, as well as identify some of those risk factors or vulnerabilities that maybe we can start to identify so that we're not going down these paths of being vulnerable and being exploited in different pathways. Eric, that's so interesting that you said you have experience working with the developmental disabilities department. I have a daughter who just turned 19 over the weekend and she does have an intellectual disability.  So anyhow, you know, I have a major concern with CSEC, the exploitation of children, especially since she, you know, has issues with communication. The school last week I dropped her off at school. She was running late and they call me well as in my gym class and let me know that she wasn't in her classroom. And right away I just, I panic because I thought maybe she tried walking home on her own because she's 19 now and she wants to be independent. So by the time I got in the car, they called me and said they found her. She was just hiding in the girl's bathroom. She didn't feel like going to class. But all these things raised through my mind right away, you know. So, yeah, let's talk about some of the protective factors. Yeah, absolutely. So the protective factors are really going to be knowledge. We truly believe that just understanding and knowledge is key. If we can get out there, what trafficking looks like and what it truly is versus some of these myths or some of these ideas that we, when we think of trafficking, we think of, you know, maybe we think of kidnapping or stranger danger and things like that. But if we can look at it from a statistic standpoint of what we truly know of a sex trafficking and CSEC, then that protection and that knowledge is key. And that's going to be the number one most protective factor that anybody out there can have is just understanding the law, understanding their rights and understanding what it looks like. Also, you know, just understanding those vulnerabilities, what they are, knowing that when you're out, when you're putting yourself out there, there's people with bad intentions that can exploit later. So, we're understanding what those vulnerabilities are, recognizing them, you know, recognizing in yourself so you know I'm protected. I'm not vulnerable in that situation. I have protection. I know I can call somebody. I know I can talk to somebody. Also, one of the most important things for our youth, 19 year olds, 16 year olds, whatever this case may be, is understanding what healthy relationships are. A lot of our kids these days don't know what a healthy relationship looks like. So, maybe they've grown up in like a broken home where they only see unhealthy relationships. So, that's what they associate is as okay. It's okay to be in this situation because you're protected, you're loved or you have a place to go home, you have things like that. So, a lot of our youth that are seeking those relationships, they need to understand what protective factors are and what healthy relationships are. Also, one of the biggest things that we can do as parents is talking about it. Talking and sharing and just asking questions. You know, I have a 2 year old and a 16 year old that lives in the house and always on gaming systems, always online. So, we really need to just have conversations, have an open conversation at dinner. Has anyone ever asked where you go to school or has anyone ever like just fished for information that you really don't know this person? Having open conversation is a big protective factor. We're going to talk a little bit later about online safety and being safe online is a big one. Everybody is online.  So, we really need to practice being safe online. And then I think what we all can do, whether it's trafficking or any situation is just practicing self care, self regulation and just practicing loving yourself. So that you're not at risk for seeking that inappropriate or that other relationship out, that's feeding your self regulation. And then, you know, we have programs such as having a mentor. If you're at risk for, you know, if you're at risk or you have vulnerabilities. You can set up a mentor where somebody, a trusted adult that has gone through a well vetted training situation will be that mentor for you.  I think it's interesting how you mentioned the healthy relationship and the fact that a lot of our children are online. I mean, when I get my notices on my phone, it says I've been online for eight hours. You know, that's my average for one week. Wow. And I'm trying to cut back as far as knowing what a healthy relationship is and those boundaries. I feel like since our children are online so much, they don't have those communication skills in person. They're used to texting and sending instant messages and not necessarily being engaging and having just the, you know, organic conversation with with their peers. Because it's just it's a different era. Yeah, it's a different world. That's for sure. Absolutely.  That's where most of it all happened. But we really need to start to identify if. If they ask for photos and, you know, you feel like maybe you sent one and then they're starting to ask for more and more and more than we need to have those conversations. That's getting to unhealthy or controlling. Don't go here. Don't go do that.  Things like that are, you know, are good factors or good emblems of the unhealthy relationship. And now isn't that exactly, I think, I mean, I don't know, but the reason why, I mean, it starts real small, right? Just, oh, one little picture here or, you know, maybe a discussion goes one way.  Right. So I don't know if we really see it right away, right? Until it's like we've kind of gone down that rabbit hole.  But one of the, one of the things, it starts with education and communication and I wholeheartedly believe that I have two young children myself and my biggest fear in life is that something like that would ever happen to them because you cannot undo something. That once it's done, I mean, it's done and I fiercely try and protect them from anything like that. So dialogue is important. So it starts at home, right? But is there anything that may be allowed to pull out or any other organizations because our children spend most of the time at school, right? They're there six to eight hours. And is there anything that we're maybe trying to do or implement at the school level that has these little classes maybe? I mean, I remember I had sex education, like, I think it was like third grade or something. I don't know. But something like that that's talking about relationships and friendships and what's healthy, what isn't? Can you maybe talk a little bit about that? Absolutely. So that's kind of right in my wheelhouse is the education training. So we are in schools quite a bit. Unfortunately, we are not at that age that at that young age where maybe third, fourth, fifth grade really needs to hit it. We do have a curriculum that is fifth grade based, which is called C or CEL for CEL, SEL stands for social emotional learning. And it is a 12 week educational based program that the teacher takes on and teaches the youth about all those things about healthy relationships, about engagement, about communication, about just that social emotional learning, how to learn from your own emotions. And how to take all that all that information in. So that is a great program that starts at fifth grade. And then other than that, we do, we do school based programs all the way from middle school all the way up to high school. More, more typically partnered with the health class when they start talking about reproductive systems and health and things like that. And then we kind of come in on whenever the timing fits to where we can educate the youth on what trafficking really looks like. So we have, we tailor those to the audience, we tailor those to the students. Obviously, we teach the seniors very much different than we teach the seventh graders, but it really is getting into the schools and getting into those classrooms to be able to teach the kids. And what, what we need to do to stay protected and what we need to do to have those healthy connections, healthy relationships. Absolutely. Oh, sorry, were you going to say something Barbara? Well, I'm curious, what are the majority of cases that we see in Hawaii? Is our state different in any way than the mainland or. Yes, so our state is pretty unique in itself. We do have some studies that were done over the last four years with Arizona State University alongside the Hawaii State Commission on status women to be able to give us some of those numbers. And some of those numbers that makes our state unique is one, the average age in Hawaii is 11.3 years old for the first time with exploitation. The national average is 14. Also, one of the numbers that is really hard to swallow is 84% of cases. The relationship to the trafficker was a family member of friend or romantic interests. So that is also unique to Hawaii as well. So we see a younger age in Hawaii, as well as we see more cases that are by family members or close friends or romantic interest. Can I ask something else? Sorry. So, yeah, I can't even wrap my head around that. It's really difficult to even, like, it's pretty heartbreaking actually. But let me kind of take it a little bit more basic. So can you, for like you said earlier, a lot of us, we have a certain image or vision of what sex trafficking is or isn't. Can you just share with us, just by sex, sex trafficking and CISA? Yeah, absolutely. So it's important that we do understand the definitions of sex trafficking. One, because sex trafficking is a federal definition and Hawaii is adopted that federal law. So even in Hawaii, the age of consent, we know the age of consent here is 16. Whereas federally, the age of consent is 18. However, under this federal definition, 18 is the cutoff. So what it is, is it's a broad definition. It involves 7 factors, which is harboring, recruitment, solicitation, transportation, provision, obtaining and patronizing.   So we think about maybe adults that are in pornography or strip clubs and things like that. Even if they're over the age of 18 and they can consent to that, but they're being lied to or they're being forced into doing that, that person that is doing that sexual act is protected under this federal law. If you're under the age of 18, you also have rights under this definition as well, because if you're under the age of 18, there is no questions asked. You don't need to show forced fraud or coercion, which a lot of our youth don't understand. So maybe it's that they sent a photo and they're 16 years old. They feel like they're the victim. However, if they're not the victim because it was the person that used that photo against them. So they need to understand that, but they're protected under this federal law. Even if they could consent to that of being 14, 15, 16 years old, they're protected under that law. And then the other factors, the harboring, transportation, all that, those just show how broad it is. So if you're being held in a room or if you're being driven from place to place or you're being asked or requested, you're not at fault for that as well.  And under CSEC, we don't get to determine that thing of value. Unfortunately here in Hawaii, with our age being so young, oftentimes it's not that 10, 11, 12 year old that's getting that value. It's maybe the family member, it's the friend, it's a romantic interest that is getting whatever that value is, whether that's drugs or alcohol or money or whatever it is, the child might not be getting that. But they're protected under this law because there's something of value being received or any sexual act.  Kind of getting into the weeds about like online, a lot of our youth really are seeking that influence or status, right? So someone can come along and say, hey, you know, if you send me these photos or you do this or that, I'll get you that blue check mark by your Instagram page, you know, I promise I'll get you that. And that holds value, even though it's not money or something tangible, you know, they're striving for that. And if you don't have to get there, it can just be a promise of getting that piece of value as well. So understanding the definition is key, understanding what they look like, understanding that it's federal and then understanding what your rights are really helps our youth be protected. And what does that look like here in Hawaii?  And we were with the, in the hotel, how you you'd given an example how I'd like if you could maybe touch a little bit on that. And because I myself personally have been in situations where I've seen something and it didn't feel right, but I didn't say anything. And then after the conversation I had with you, now I'm like all over it because and so if you could touch on that a little bit for those of you curious. Yeah, absolutely. So what it looks like here in Hawaii and kind of going back real quick, you know, we talked about our research. So we did research, a four part study research. The four part study looked at buyers. It looked at the stories from the survivors. It looked at the experiences across Hawaii. And then the fourth study, which was just completed in 2022, looked at the the exploitation amongst the homeless population on Hawaii Island. So here in Hawaii, we had, we had more buyers than than you can imagine. We had 407 buyers for our one ad that we posted on a website and within 24 hours. So the amount of buyers that we have here in Hawaii is insane. We did the same study in a few other cities and one of them was Phoenix and they compared to us by only 45 buyers. So Hawaii had 407 Phoenix only had 45 and it was kind of it was conducted the exact same way. So we can see that there's a large amount of buyers. Unfortunately, in Hawaii, we also see that we have that large that low number of 11. And then so when we did the research and we talked to the experiences across Hawaii, we surveyed 363 individuals. It is important to note that these individuals were at risk youth. They were part of child training services. So they already had, they already had some risk factors going against them. And the ages range from 5 to I want to say 55. And so we surveyed them. We asked them, we talked to them. The average age came out to about 11.3. And then the amount was about 1 in 3. So 1 in 3 of those 363 individuals had experienced trafficking. So the number is extremely high as far as percentages here in Hawaii. Also, when we in and kind of going back to what you mentioned, when we talked to them, nobody offered any of those individuals support. So they just maybe they had that gut feeling, but they never went up and talked to them. I had the opportunity to speak with a guy at one of our events and he was a he was a pilot.  I feel like it's I feel like they're in a situation, but I don't feel comfortable doing it. And that's it's a tough thing to go down. It's a tough road to cross. It's a tough conversation to bring up. But what I encourage him and I encourage anybody listening to do is just have something that they can offer them or just ask them if they're okay or just ask them if they need something or if they if they need anything. We have a whole bunch of stickers at our organization that have our logo and our name on it. And to somebody it might just be a sticker, but to somebody that truly needs it. They'll look at that sticker and look up our name. Google hold and I'll pull and be able to be able to realize that someone noticed them and someone cared about them. We did a presentation at a hotel and the hotel management. They were like, oh, yeah, we've seen that but we didn't know we could ask or we didn't know we could talk to them. And a lot of times these women and boys that have been exploited. They get overlooked and they get passed by and that's going to be the one of the hardest things because if they got passed by by so many people. The chances of them kind of reaching out to anybody is just lessening and lessening as time goes on because they feel like they're not seen. They feel like they're not going to be heard. So we can definitely make that make that choice to offer support when we see it. Is there a code or a sign that you can use if you're in, you need help and you're in danger. There's numbers. There's not necessarily a code or a sign. Like sign language would be great if you could just. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't really have that one. I mean, we have numbers, but as far as like a code or sign language, I would, it's really just it's really just that gut feeling and that look on that person. There's obviously some red flags that we can look at some of the flags could be such things as. You know, the situation that they're in or the clothes that they're wearing or. You know, if we see a youth that looks 12 years old and they're done up like they're 25 and they're with somebody that is way older than them. You know, that's something that we can look at a second cell phones are often a red flag because the trappers given them a second cell phone to communicate through. Signs of physical or sexual abuse are a big one that we can look at, you know, we can kind of see those from the outside looking in. And yeah, and then just really just kind of like engaging it taking that gut feeling is going to be one of your main protected one of your main sources to figure that figure it out. I know. Go ahead. I was just going to say I think I think I think a lot of people, I mean, because once you go back or in retrospect, I think we do we instinctively like we know when something is off. Yeah, and I think it's really great that right now, even like you said if there's a stick or something because I wouldn't even know what to say to somebody like I, I mean, I was in Minnesota and there was these little I knew something was funny. But they were, you know, happy shopping very little older than I looked a lot older than than what they were with this gentleman that looked way out of. I mean, it just it was like textbook. Yeah, but I didn't know, like, do I even say anything? Do I not? What questions do I ask? But what if, you know, I get looked at crazy. I just didn't know what to do. Right. So even here in Hawaii, something like that, like the stripper here's a number or, you know, is everything okay? Because what did you say out of all those people that 3 out of 363 out of the out of like the 26.7% that experience trafficking, nobody said that they were offered support. Not one person. I mean, that's outrageous. But probably there were people that in their mind wanted to say, but they didn't know what to say or ask, right? Well, you do and it could be something as simple as. Do you need help? Yeah. Is everything okay, right? Yeah. Yeah. I'm really excited. That's all I wanted to say about that. But I feel a little bit more courageous now, right? Like, okay, there's I might not be able to physically help you, but I can maybe point you somewhere else or just even give that, you know, we all want to feel seen, right? Yeah. We don't want to be in the shadows. And I think that, you know, over time, if that continues, you just get completely discouraged and deflated. And then, and then yeah, you then you don't seek the help because why would you nobody even knows you're there? Right. Exactly. Exactly. Real quick, when you say trafficking, I just didn't realize it was so prevalent in Hawaii because being from Arizona, you see a lot of missing children and I assume, you know, trafficking means they've taken them to across the border to Mexico or something. But in Hawaii, we're on an island and it's kind of hard to traffic somebody and take them off the island. But I mean, unless like the pilot said, you know, I travel with my children and they don't require ID if you're under 18. So I think it might be easy to get them off. But sounds like there's a lot of it just going on here without even having to leave. I don't know. Yeah. And, you know, I know, and that is one of the big myths is that that crossing borders things. Most cases, like 75% of cases are domestic, meaning they stay within the state they don't cross borders. So most of the cases that are here in Hawaii happen here in Hawaii started here in Hawaii continue to happen here in Hawaii. Yeah. Is there a like a social media or public page that you can post it, you know, like, I my dog is I posted and I'm still in stuff Hawaii and there's like 100,000 followers on then I got all kinds of people that you know I found my dog. So I'm not comparing the dog to a child ever but I'm just saying there somewhere we can, you know, we do have those missing and endangered children's pictures that you see up at stores. We do have those, but as far as that's a great point, there should be something like that. I mean, would it be hard to get a social media page where people could go you can post their pictures so if you see them anywhere like I see them randomly but if it was one place where I could go I think it'd be great or is it just harder to do because they're underage. A lot of it might be the underage factor as well. Okay. So we have we're going to wrap up this show goes by still fast. We only have half an hour or so. Anything else you wanted to cover. The only thing else that I would love to cover. You know, really reach out to me if you guys, if anyone wants trainings or once presentation, this is just, this is just scratching the surface there's so much more so you have my contact information. Look up our organization. We do free presentations, free customized presentations to anybody. Anybody anywhere not just here in Hawaii, but any island in any place. Yeah. Eric, you had also mentioned at our breakfast. You have like a training program though, right. If somebody wanted to. Within how long before. A mentor, like a mentor. Yes, can you touch a little bit on that? Absolutely. So we have, we have a mentorship program that is a one on one mentorship program that does a very much in depth at a training. So anyone that's over the 21 that would like to be a mentor for anybody that is age range from. 9 to 24. They're welcome to join us and become a mentor. We need mentors. No questions about it. We need. We need mail mentors. We need female mentors. We let the mentee choose. The mentor that they want. So we need. We need a large pool to pick from to be able to meet those needs. Absolutely. So thank you, Eric. So, we, you know, thank you for your time and we have an upcoming show. Our next one is June 8. And it's going to with Ruben Fortes. He's a board member and he's also, you know, the heads out this. Organization called H is easy. Hi Steve, I'm restoring health, but in Hawaii. So that's our next show. But I do want to thank you for your time today. Yeah, thank you very much.  I mean, we just like. That surface. I'm yeah, we can get down. Yeah, we'd love to have you back. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. We'll do a breakfast with you guys. That'd be great. Awesome. All right. And thank you, Marty stole for joining us. Thank you for joining us here and think tech Hawaii and we'll be back two weeks. Make sure you tell your friends. I'm Barbara DeLuca and Adios and hello, everybody. Thank you. Thank you so much for watching think tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and donate to us at think tech Hawaii.com. Mahalo.


Thanks a lot for your patience. So I'm Florian Haftmann. I'm working for the IT department of the city of Munich. And what I'm actually talking about is we'll hopefully become clear to you in the introduction. So just the background, the municipality of Munich is running on an Ubuntu-based Linux system on 18,000 machines with 33,000 users actually. And our leading office platform is LibreOffice 4.1. We also have all the instances flying around. These are still based on OpenOffice 3.2.1, but these are decreasing in numbers. So the planning is that in half a year, everybody will be moved to LibreOffice 4.1. Let's see how this will turn out in practice. So how did we actually get there? In 2004, there was a fundamental decision of the city council of Munich that over the whole administration, a consolidation and transition has done from proprietary desktop environments to a consolidated desktop environment based on free software. And this was set to life using a strategy based on a soft migration. So how did this look like, actually? So this house is now some simple <IP_ADDRESS> infrastructure. And this is your ultimate goal on the baseline. You want to set a consolidated operating system. But before you can really achieve this, it's better first to consolidate your office platform for two reasons. One is more of an organizational issue. If you want to have a consolidated operating system platform, you need some kind of infrastructure. Software distribution, etc., etc. And if you first start with the office migration, you gain some time to build up that infrastructure, actually. And the second one is a social psychological one. Still nowadays, the office platform is the user's main window to the system. So if you first consolidate the office platform, the user is still working on its previous operating system. And if you later on exchange the operating system, the transition is not that hard, it's smoother. And on the transition to a consolidated operating system, the users are already acquainted with the new office platform, and so on, and so on, and so on. But the office platform is not standing on its own. It stands in relation to various pre-existing office applications, which are connected to certain administrative or business processes. And so if you want to consolidate the office platform, you have also to consolidate the applications. And that's a good opportunity to create, actually, added value for your customer to promote acceptance of your office platform. To go a little bit into detail here. Before the migration started, the situation was more or less this. On the baseline, there were various versions of a popular, proprietary office suite flying around. I don't think I have to be more insensitive here. And on top of this, there was really a rich zoo, and I really mean this literally, a rich zoo of various office-based business solutions. Some were small, ranging from simple templates, but not consolidated templates. Each department in the city with its own sets of templates, forms, and also macros. Any kind of stuff you can imagine. After the migration, at the baseline, there was now a free software office suite with a managed lifecycle, a centrally managed lifecycle. Using this as a baseline, an extension application for OpenOffice LibreOffice has been developed. There's so-called hallmarks, which is often advertised as a letterhead system. It augments your base office functionality by a more accessible main merge, for example. And it supports also typical processes in a public administration. For example, most of you maybe know this. You have to fill out the sheet, and then first head into that department. And then from there, it goes to that office, which puts a stamp on it. And then the third office ends on. In Germany, called Sachleit mit Verfügung. This is especially supported by Walmux, for example. And so this was really turned out to be a strategic key component in the whole story. And on top of this, there was now the opportunity to provide consolidated templates all across the city. And which might be not very surprising, there were some office-based artifacts flying around, some macros or whatever, which just turned out that office was not the platform of choice to implement this. So this could be migrated, for example, to web-based applications. And mostly, this has just been database applications. There has already been infrastructure in the city. So this could be easily get rid of. But now we're in the rightmost corner. So we started with 21,000 artifacts. And now we still had 100 artifacts which could not be absorbed by Walmux, so it could not be absorbed by templates, but could not be migrated to web-based applications. Very specific things, actually.  Just to give you some examples, mostly spreadsheets with some macros supporting parking lot management, letters to parents or dog tags, just to give you some example. For those who knew a little bit administrative German, put the original words also inside there. And now this is actually the explanation of the title of this presentation. I used the term macros enormously for a lightweight office-based business application. Why this definition? First, it's a lightweight thing. I don't want to implement heavy-weight things as a macros based on office, just that doesn't make sense. It's also office-based because otherwise I wouldn't have to take care about office at all. And it's also a business application, so it's not a simple thing to think. You need to understand what the business process behind it actually is to really implement it. And in the course of the migration, for this hundred specific things, there was really the decision, okay, we will stick to macros actually here because we have no difference taking this emotional attempt. Yes, and actually this tiny obstinate core of macros is what we still have until today within the IT department. And this is actually what the whole story is about. A small piece in this whole migration scenario, but a piece which is really a little bit obstinate because it makes a lot of work. So, if you ask people who are just working in the IT sector or on, and tell them that you're engaging with office macros, these are a couple of possible answers you might get if you just ask them for casual advice. Well, why do we care about that stuff at all? If people start to implement macros, it's there only as a policy, constantly and keep away from that mess and so on and so on. So, why do we care about macros at all? The issue, it's an acceptance issue. It's again a social issue. If you come with a consolidated LibreOffice platform, there are a lot of customers which have, let me paraphrase it that way, quite selective expectations towards a particular office platform, yes. But, if you are able to solve your customers' business requirements in an office service, he doesn't complain about the office platform at all because he just want to get his work done. If you can't fulfill his expectations, he will maybe blame the office platform, but if you can fulfill his or her expectations, but then the platform does not matter so much. And this is why we actually care about macros. And this was more or less the technical state after this initial transition, after this initial consolidation, which was done by an external service provider. So, we have about 100 macros, actually. How do I distribute it? Well, I actually downloaded from an internal wiki and a city internal wiki. We had no integration with the automated software distribution, so I did notice some kind of click and safe deployment to have a page downloaded and then you can work with it. Of course, most times, the administrator is actually doing that. Why don't we have an integration with the automated software distribution? Well, you might remember when the office consolidation started, there was yet no central software distribution, so it was just a pragmatic choice in the first instance. And technically, we have both extensions, office extensions and macros embedded into documents. Implementation language is mostly star-basic with two exceptions, which are actually implemented in Java. User admin and developer documentation is at hand. And the macros are rather different in what they actually model, but the technical design is quite uniform. There's a uniform interface to make them configurable in a certain band, to access, for example, the databases and so on and so on and so on. Okay, so this was the state after the initial immigration, but then the real life starts, the life cycle. So you have to maintain it. Why do we have to maintain it? Because the office platform is also evolving. And this will inevitably create incompatibilities and you have to take care about this matter. And there's an image, so the errors are really a little bit thin here, but it doesn't matter. Have a look at the deployment change. So the three stations actually, architecture is everything relating to design and so on. Development is the work where you get it really running, get it tested and also accept it by the customer and deployment is how you really ship it to a customer in production. And if you have a look at it, there are major pitfalls working inside here. So I will start in a minute because in my view, that's the most critical one. Especially in embedded makers, they always have this intermeeting of logic and data. So you have a document and the maker is some insight, and it's not clearly technically separated, which is very annoying. For example, if you have to provide your own test data and then you have to copy and paste it somehow and so on and so on and so on. And also it's not entirely key, but they really well define user interface for macros in the first instance. And also you can save deployment is not very fruitful in an environment where you have an automated software distribution. Actually, you might think, well, if the admin has to download it, it's okay, but the problem is that then we are losing essentially control, but then the macros are somehow floating around, maybe with some arbitrary changes and sometimes later this will give back at a certain moment. So what can we do about this, actually? Yes, I already told this. So starting with the architectural design. So here we agreed with upon ourselves that the well-defined user interface of a Macro may consist of a dedicated menu, a dedicated button bar, or a dedicated set of document templates, which are presented to the user if it just allocates a new document from an existing template. And concerning implementation, they need this key preference for standalone extensions, but we still have to tolerate the existing embedded macros because we don't want to internet them. So with the screenshots, I think it becomes quite obvious, think about the Macro, it might actually add its own dedicated menu, a fire-peach out, it has something to do with a fire police, yes, fire police action. And this is later to parents, you just installs its own button bar where you can click on it, they get the dialogue or whatever. And Macros also provide just a set of templates, which is available using the file in new dialogue. And these are well-defined user interfaces, which might have some piece of dedicated software actually. So concerning the intermining of application logic and data, we really had to develop some weapons for this. So the solution is plainly that we store extensions and documents containing Macro in extracted form. We all know of the document, it's just a zip file, you can answer it, but we want a little bit more actually for this reason, we have developed our own small tool, which is available on the net also. What does this tool do beside unzipping and zipping? It does some consistency, it checks like is the manifest well-formed and does the content conform to the manifest and so on. But the really benefits are that StarBasic creates a stored as real plain text. Natively, StarBasic is embedded into XML again, which is not very convenient if you just want to use your favorite editor on it. So it's embedded as real plain text. You might ask why we didn't use a flat open document format which just stores everything into a big unzipped XML. The problem is that you still have an intermining there. So you may have some binary data in there which is just encoded at base 64, I think. And then if just some metadata in the document changes, this somehow shows up in the diff and you just don't want this. And another benefit is if you have special technical situations, for example, Microsoft with additional Java sources, you can just needlessly embed them there. So the issue is you have one build tool and then this is able to build all your Microsoft actually with one, it's a clear repeatable description of how actually to get from the sources to the running extension, to the running micro, to the running document, whatever. And with this plain text, okay, no, this is just for illustration. So these are maybe the typical example sources in an extension and you see here, all the star-basic stuff is really saved in dedicated files in the plain text with a dedicated extension. No XML, at least not for the source code. Well, and this is just the source code and it's really literally there also in the files. And if you have it really literally in the files, you can use all your defaults who you use for development versioning, for example, Git, you don't want to live without it nowadays. You can also easily do full text analysis. If you know, well, the next LibreOffice version will have an incompatibility in that, this or that, you know, interface. You can just grab for it, among 100 micro actually. And also if you have to provide a different test data, you can just plug in alternative content which you don't deliver later on. So you have a rich set of possibilities to apply here during development to get your work done. As it would also be used for more other programming environments. So concerning the deployment, but the answer is quite simple. Our Linux system is Debian based, so we're using just the Debian packaging system. And there is a canonical way scripted from a macro, out of a macro Debian package is produced which installs the extension, and if it's an extension macro, it just installs the templates into the appropriate locations of templates are present. And it also includes the user documentation as a PDF, so it's self-contained if the macro is installed and the system that of user documentation is also attend without any interactions. There is something which we also do with myDepisteRange in the first instance for embedded macros, we actually encrypt the source itself. So the macro is operative, but you can't inspect the code and you can't change it. Why are we doing this? It seems strange, especially in a free software environment, but it's not about freedom, it's about control over software. So at least in theory, it's the recommendation that through all your organization, there's one authoritative point, but actually a software, it's one authoritative repository. For office extension, that's not a big problem, they're just installed in the system space and the arbitrary user is not able to change it somehow, but for embedded macros, they're just floating around in the user space and we want to prevent anything that unconstrained changes happen. There are unnoticed changes because later on, if there's a platform problem, we just get some tickets with an attached file, oh, there's a problem with the macro and you did it, prepare it and then you open it and you have first busy analyzing what's actually the relation of that, what you get, what you got, to what is in your repository. That's the plain reason about this. And it's automated, so this encryption only happens during deployment, you don't do development, you don't have to care about that. It's just a small tool, you can encrypt macros using Uno actually, works out quite well. And of course, everything is automated, so there's a dedicated automated way to get from your sources to a package. So the sources are the ultimate authority, it does not depend on your daily math, how actually the macro looks like afterwards. So just a short stop taking. What are the really vital elements in our deployment chain? The architectural decision that we avoid in that macros and that the macro has a well-defined user interface. Concerning deployment, the source storage with the corresponding tools and the automated deviant package for deployment, this is a quite essential, which we have developed and which, as we hope will help us really to maintain those macros in life cycle. Of course, there are always missing cases, always. You might remember most macros are actually implemented in StarBasic, you could ask the question, well, mostly it has historic reasons. Of course, there are a lot of different technologies, but if you want to explore alternatives, it's not only implementation language, it's also possibilities to debug. So in StarBasic, you have at least a very simple embedded integrated development environment where you can set breakpoints and watch something. How good to do this if you implement the macros and Python Java is not that clear in the first instance. So you would first have to evaluate how really good this turn out in practice, but it's still a question, which I think was the following tree. And concerning the deviant packaging, there's still a missing piece. You might remember I told about configuration interface for macros where you can configure external databases and so on. Currently, we have no support in the software distribution for that. So, of course, the software distribution supports parameters for packages, but there is no connection to the macros packages yet. So currently, the Admin display test is due by hand and you can imagine that somewhere in the future, it might be desirable to fill the gap, actually, that the software distribution really brings the macros to be a machine pre-configured as freedom is set up by the administrator and heads to it. Okay, and what I have presented is by no means a concluded story at the moment. In some sense, we are still in the beginning. The upcoming challenge is to transition to LibreOffice 4.0, which we would, which we plan on hope to be accomplished somewhere in the next year. Let's see how this will look at work out in practice. So you might remember, I talked about 100 macros which were a result of an initial immigration. We don't know yet how big the demand is that maybe further macros have to be edited. We somehow want to avoid this, but maybe we are still in a similar situation which has come to avoid it for reasons of the big picture. And I already mentioned this also, that technology is still some room for exploration. Maybe a student project in the future can shed some light on this also. Okay, just to come to a short conclusion. I can only emphasize this. It's not enough to provide an office platform. We have to provide an office service. You have to think how can I really match the business environment for your customer. These are just the links to the tools, all books, the product tool for the source storage and the utility, which does some other things. If you are in similar situations, maybe there's some turnout useful for you. You can request some ideas from them, maybe. But if you just want to talk to us or to conflict us, here's some good advice. Thanks for your attention. Do you discourage people from wanting macros? Do you help them to write macros and then to consolidate them back into the main system? How does that work? So far we didn't have a proper example of that, but of course we don't promote macros as the primary implementation technique. So the idea is you first have to understand what really the problem of the customer is and it shows you, or she shows you some calc sheets and say, well, I want to relate this column with that column, then you have a rough idea of a stick for making places for that program to write for a platform ever. We still have to explore how this would turn out in practice. We are trying in cooperation with the external service provider was to build up a generic service for like with business applications and how many of them actually turn out to be necessarily office-based, is still done now yet. But of course we want to avoid really that insuptable implementation spectrum. Maybe we can tell one next year, let's see.


From Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering open systems. The future is crystal clear with security and SD-WAN. Brought to you by Open Systems. Okay, welcome back. CUBE Coverage here in Las Vegas. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We are here at the Chandelier Bar, the Cosmopolitan Hotel, also known as Cosmo. We're here as part of Open Systems Exclusive Expert Influencer and Customer Party as part of the overall week going on, Gartner's big event going on. A lot of action, we're here, and our next guest is Morgan's man, the Chief Product Officer, CPO of Open Systems. Welcome to theCUBE. Thanks for coming. Yeah, good evening. So you're the key, they got the keys to the kingdom that the product, Chief Product Officer has to run all the products. Yeah, of course. You're in high demand from the engineering to marketing. And sales, of course. Sales. And the customers. Where's the product? Sales blames product, product blames sales. You know, you got to have that relationship with this harmonious. Of course. It'll work. You guys are successful, so it's working. Yeah, it is. And I actually think the most important part are in the equation of the customers. So I see more of the sales and especially customer success as kind of the gateway towards the customer to actually figure out where can we solve more problems for our customers and create value. So take a step back and explain the value proposition for your product. First describe the product or products. Yeah. The core products and the main value proposition. Yeah, so Open System was founded to actually solve the key issue of a modern enterprise, which is helping enterprises to actually master the digital transformation. And digital transformation is like a big, one of those big words. And in action it means that you have enterprises that are adopting multi-cloud environments, connecting different locations cost-efficiently, but also securing their key business process at that same time. So our solution comes in as a platform approach and will solve these issues by connecting actually the end users, the business processes with the cloud and the applications and the customers. So operations is a big part of your success. Operating, helping operators. Exactly. Despite being just another appliance vendor or a product vendor or infrastructure vendor, we offer our service as a true service solution, which is- Service or server? Service, so it's a managed service that you subscribe as a service. So you consume as a service, you pay per user. You don't have to worry about hardware, appliance costs and actually scaling of those costs and software. So SaaS, classic SaaS model. What problem are you solving for the customer? Where are you guys winning? Why are they using you guys? Why are they buying you? Yeah, I think one of the keys where we bring is a turn a key solution that comes with the operation excellence included and managed operations part. And one of the key differentiators is that we have an external security stack in this SD-WAN platform. So we're not only providing and delivering applications for the end users and the customers. We are also protecting those applications from threats like ransomware attacks, threat actors inside the network and in the cloud environments. And so this explain the security stack piece that's built into the SD-WAN product and the glue software that you guys wrote? Yeah, so we have an OEM, it's like a highly scalable platform that consists of open source components with OEM premium components that do like DPI and application detection and security threat detection. And these security functions can be enabled by use case. So for instance, we have a piece that just is primarily there to detect any lateral movement to prevent another ransomware attack like Mayor Scott had to. So I'm going to ask you a question, I'll put you on the spot. So I'm a customer. And sometimes I don't know, I have a problem. I'm a frog in boiling water, whatever the metaphor is. And I got issues. When do I know when to call you? What's happening around me as a customer to call up open systems to solve my problem? What are some of the symptoms I might see? What's it look like? Is it security sprawl? Are these solutions? Is it just not enough staff? I mean, what are some of the symptoms that make me want to dial you guys up? Great question. So one of the symptoms is that you notice that your end users are complaining. So they have spotting internet, they have slow internet access, or you have SAP application owners, for instance, that are very unsatisfied about the application performance inside the WAN or to the cloud. And you will notice that that's when we got called and we will help you to actually maximize your network so that you can actually focus on your core business and not about where do you have to scale the infrastructure. So performance number one. It's performance. So basic performance stuff. What else? It's all about also visualizing and telling where is actually do the customers have a good or end user have a good performance of the network and where do I have to actually spend and invest in the network and the cloud environment to actually improve customer performance. Okay, so here's another one. So, hey, I already got security covered. Why do I need more secure WAN, SD WAN? What's the, what gives? Yeah, I mean, security can spend endless money in security and yet have another appliance, another product to patch like a tactile problem. But you will end up in a growing stack of complexity. We'll provide you with a very strategic solution that will help you to cover 80% of your problems and in the end, you have a bunch of a solution that prevents the most severe threats to your network and to your applications. Okay, cool. Thanks, thanks for sharing that insight. This is like the customer dynamic. Now I want to get to the innovation piece.  We kind of knew all that's kind of, but as the cloud comes in as cloud operations and IT operations start to see things like automation, AI, machine learning, data and all that stuff plays a new role. They're rethinking their architecture. So what innovations are on the horizon that you see coming that will change the landscape of what SD WAN is and what it will become. What are the innovation areas to watch? Yeah, I mean, we are working already on the next generation for next year, which will enable our customers to identify any application inside the network independent where that application is. So it will be crucial to not think anymore in networks and how many appliances do I have where, but how fast can I get an application up and running in a new cloud? And this is where we are investing a lot in to cloud delivery, cloud integration, especially also with the partnership with Microsoft. We have an API integration to build and actually launch new applications directly from the cloud, but integrated into the SD WAN. And including also all the security parameters that you need to secure in order to actually have not only application running and integrate in a network, which is called intent-based networking on the Gartner terms, but also have that secured in terms of business risk protection. What's the biggest feature request that you get asked for? Because you're managing the product team, you're doing road maps, you're here planning, get your marketing and sales teams, you're listening to customers. What are they asking for? What's your priorities? So priorities foremost is automation and simplification. These are core aspects in order to keep up with actually the new complexity that arises also in the cloud sprawl that's happening. So customers are not launching one cloud, not two, but multiple clouds in parallel, which they ask for actually orchestration through the network and through integrated into the cloud orchestration. And secondly is it's the whole shadow IT. So where do I have SaaS applications I never knew about? How can we protect those applications well and the data that we upload data to? Security surface area is huge. Final question for you, for people that are learning about who you guys are, open systems is expanding in the U.S. You already successfully got great revenue, great success in the product side, so congratulations. But for the people that are learning about you, what's the culture like and what one thing should they know about open systems that they should know about? Yeah, I think one cultural element that we really bring to the table is we are unconventional in the way that how we solve customer problems and how the amount of dedication and passion we put into delivering the solution. So one of our core pillars is the DevOps model. So that means that the engineers that are building that platform are also at the same time your first tier context when it comes to service management and support. That truly makes a difference in the customer experience. Programmable internet, programmable software, programmable DevOps is about infrastructure as code. So you guys are like SD Win as code. Exactly, it's similar to that. It's a new trend, it's like blockchain. Just had blockchain anything, it's popular. You try to be as simple as that, that's true. Moritz, thanks for coming on theCUBE. Late night here, this is theCUBE After Dark. We are here at the Chandelier Lounge at the Cosmo, the Cosmopolitan Hotel for CUBE coverage of open systems events by influencers, executives, experts and customers and of course, influencers at theCUBE. We'll be back with more after this short break.


whole process To fit you better Andy Well, first of all, that's not true about the finance committee Um I said that I wanted to talk with one of the persons who was Recommended just to ask a question and uh Never had the opportunity until afterwards, but the question was satisfactorily answered Eventually anyway and uh, but there was never opposition to any to the appointment um as To the individual and it was really a process question and it sort of got sidestepped because The conversation never took place. So I do take exception to that statement. Um, I do think that it's a Sufficiently open Because ultimately it gives the responsibility to It does not give responsibility The extent of the participation Is all is going to be a decision Uh, excuse me. It's going to be a decision of gl But that At least that there has to be some conversation as I said I would do a friendly amendment consultation with the council members of the finance committee If that addresses part of the question I need a point of clarification when you are saying in consultation Are you saying to be part of the interviews? Are you saying as has been done in the past? It's hard to decide say what's been done in the past because ok has been trying to revise this process and improve its process um, and uh So it's I think that the process Uh Is ultimately the decision is to have this goes forward is left with gl The um amendment is simply to say Talk to the finance talk talk to the council members of the finance committee Okay, so first of all, there's been I'm sorry. There's been an amendment or a suggestion of an amendment of to With the council members of the finance committee Okay um And the person who made the motion do they accept this? And he made the motion and Dorothy do you accept it? Thank you Evan thank you And so first of all, I want to thank sarah for correcting the record on Finance committee's involvement and I want to add two things She mentioned that members of finance were consulted that two members of finance sat in on one of our meetings And were treated almost as if they were members of the committee giving us full feedback We also finance developed the committee handout. They wrote that that was sent to all interviewees and we allowed finance committee to draft interview questions that we then tried to modify And so finance committee was integrated into the process more than any other committee has been At the time and since So so I thank you sarah for correcting that because that was a gross misrepresentation of the process one thing I want to say with regard to oka and its process So oka if the motion passes will be dissolved at the end of june And appointments authority will go to gol for this to tso for some and for crc to some Oka has spent a really long time working on the process that we just used for planning board And it's my sincere hope that the committees that inherit those appointments will also take on board that process I hope that that they won't try and reinvent the wheel One part of that process that oka has been adopted, which I hope will be adopted is section four b Which says prior to the adoption of selection guidance The oka chair in this case, whatever body chair shall solicit from the chair of the body to be appointed The following and a bunch of things and so part of built into this process Is that the chair of the appointed the body that's charged with us Actually reaches out to the chair and says We're seeking your input on this vacancy. We're seeking your input on what you need what you're looking for And of course the chair could just give their own opinion But the expectation is the chair will also consult the rest of the body And so I'm voting against this motion In part because I find it superfluous It's it's built into the process at play And it keeps being referenced that oka has revised this process But this was actually a carryover for the previous process. This isn't new. This is something we did before It's something we did again. It's something that that's worked and it's already in there And so this this additional language is unnecessary. Um, Evan, I just want to ask something the process that oka Uses as I recall is never adopted by the council You know, it's a committee process. So each each committee will ideally adopt some process But with the dissolution of the committee the process Doesn't continue. So I'm kind of concerned that there's that assumption Which is why I said it's my sincere hope that every committee Will and perhaps they won't and that is their right to not But my hope is and I agree totally with everything you're saying I The purpose here is to just Ensure the consultation. That's all So if I could you wish so would we also add that to the crc charge in consultation with planning board and zba I hear you. Okay. Alyssa and so thank you for Pulling all those pieces together and I appreciate you putting a very fine point on that because I will vote against every recommendation You bring to this council if you don't follow the process we've already set up with some rationale for why you're changing something because We've all worked on this a really long time And so you want to tweak something sure, but you better have a rationale for having done it and Finance committee. It's true. We haven't had to do it again And we're not going to be allowed to so if one of your finance committee members that's a non voting member Resigns good luck with that because nobody's job to do it But When you do it, you know, you might do it the way we just most recently did planning board and then we're about to do zba You might do it the way we did for finance committee But that part about consultation we have to assume that the council thought was a good idea And unless we're going to add it to all the others I don't see why we need to add it just for finance committee I will say that I don't think finance committee really belongs here in gol actually It's just there's no place else to put it honestly. I don't think it's really the right spot for it, but Given that there's sentiment that people are unwilling to let finance committee choose their own members, right? Which would be a way somebody could do it You got to stick it somewhere and it doesn't fit any better any place else which is why it was convenient to have an appointments committee, but You're right that that process is not a town council process. So we just have to trust that that's going to continue Okay So the motion's been made seconded and the amendment to this has been also agreed to among the Parties that made the motion. Is there any further discussion? What we are voting on is the statement In consultation with the council members of the finance committee Kathy I want to say one thing for the record there There was a proposal to let finance select and There was some sentiment for that and different committees voted different ways on it. So This wasn't not thought of earlier on Is there a further discussion on this item? Andy just to one sentence It is different from the planning board and the zoning board of appeals because this is a standing committee of the council any further discussion Shallowney So I do appreciate the OCA process and I'm sure we're going to follow that But like Lynn pointed out I would agree that Processes might change we might come up with something better in the future And this is a charge and so I think this is something we I mean finance committee Think we would I'm not in finance committee anymore But I think that we by putting it in the charge for the committee It just makes that part a part of even if the process is changed This is very clear that this consultation will take place. I would like to keep it The way and you This the statement is not in relationship to this But I also want to recognize the fact that I also consulted with evan about the process of Appointments and vacancies when I was putting together the lengthy set of things so In respect of the OCA process Thank you. The motion on the floor is to add in In consultation with the council members of the finance committee Is there any further discussion? Okay, then I'm going to call the question all those in favor of adding in consultation With the council members of the finance committee. Please raise your hand and say I I Opposed Okay, the motion And abstain It's six to Six to seven. Thank you. The motion fails Now we are back to the original motion Okay, and the motion is very lengthy and basically involves Adopting these various committee charges that for gol OCA and sear note gol Tso and CRC And dissolving And OCA will continue to exist But only for the purposes of the zoning and planning board appointments Until the end of june Okay, is that The summer. Yes, elissa and to clarify we are talking about Because I remember what the report said and i'm a little worried about what the motion says But i'm sure mandy joe will reassure me Which is that we are also planning to deal with planning board and zoning board appointments that expire june 30th That's correct. They're done before the next body has to take them. That is correct. Okay. Good. Just being clear on that Whereas for finance committee, we will not be doing that and that will immediately shift over to gol So that if any vacancies occur in those bodies or the when the Reappointment time comes up that will be in gol. Okay moving forward So i'm i really appreciate the work that gol has done in breaking up these three and Formulating these three committees the way they are and for three specific reasons. I support that one is that CRC will have the time to look at The important issues including economic development, which has not been looked at at all secondly the like george pointed out that there are a lot of residents who bring up issues related to processes and services and The what is it the t Tso committee can then look at now take out time to investigate and look at some of these processes and transparency in town pertaining to the services So i'm happy that there will be time for that and then thirdly in terms of we've I know we haven't yet been successful in getting more engagement of UMass students maybe or other community members and And now it seems like again the tso committee will have that charge and maybe the time to look at ways and Connect with different community members So I am in favor. Are there any other comments? Sarah I feel like I have worked really hard to listen to what people had to say around How we're restructuring things and how it would lessen the load I talked to people about how these things were being restructured um I'm not gonna I was going to vote for this because I I believe what george said is that we all have to pull For the common good and get this done and over with I believe that the rest of the council will do that When the president of this council quickly says That oak a process was just the oak a process and it is not ratified by the council what that says to me is No, and it's fine. It's fine. I am going to say what I have to say and I'm going to leave it here I will not hold a grudge. I will not and I've said that before But what I am hearing is that when people said Restructuring of this has nothing to do with what oak has done in the past and we respect you very much I don't believe that's true I believe that part of this was to take away the responsibility from a group of people That it felt like we were difficult and that people thought that they could do that process better and I'm willing to you know say great Maybe tso is going to be fantastic But we cannot control if somebody's pothole doesn't get filled. There's only so much we can do I still feel very much like that is a committee that was formed to maybe absorb Other people and really all it is going to end up doing is maybe some communications and outreach which I don't really think Exist but we could make them And that it's going to have a place where when residents are upset about something They can go to a committee and they can express their frustration, but that committee really can do Nothing except to make them feel heard and I just have to say that I have to let it be known that that is how I feel But I will drop it here. I will drop it here, but that's how I feel Are there other comments Pat I am concerned about and I've shared this in our meeting. So it's not new This drop in for every resident I have while I have great respect for the issues that residents bring forward I also know that there are times when a resident doesn't get what they think they should get That they become extremely difficult for staff and other people And I don't think that and I'm concerned that that's a potential for this committee That it will be the committee that people holler at that people That people put out their frustration on potholes forgetting that we get potholes every winter because of expansion and contraction You know, and I am concerned about that. I think sarah is bringing up an important issue there Are there other comments at this time? Darcy I agree with a lot of what sarah said and I just want to mention the fact that um It seems like a lot of the reason for doing this restructuring is to increase our efficiency and um if if each one of these three committees that now has Appointments responsibilities and some to some extent outreach and communication if they then need to form subcommittees Then we will actually, you know, that will add work That will add more committee meetings that need to be posted and need minutes and blah blah blah Um So I You know if this is the way we are going That's the way it is, but I hope that it actually doesn't complicate matters You know to to be giving crc The responsibility for planning board and zba That's a big responsibility. We this morning at oka. We talked about Evan counting up the hours that he has put into um all of the Organizing around having interviews and so on that's a big job So we're taking Stuff we're taking responsibility away from crc and giving them The appointments responsibility Which is not a small thing um So i'm just saying That it does really feel to me also Like a lot of this was about dissolving oka Are there other comments at this time? Dorothy we We spent a lot of time just in the very beginning for I guess for the first year figuring out what to do and how to do it And oka had a huge load of work to do because we had a lot of vacancies and I think we're just beginning to come to the end of The batch of vacancies I have been very happy and satisfied with all of the people who have been appointed I think that they show care and thoughtfulness and concern on the part of the committee I guess I saw oka getting some of the flak that crc was getting that we were taking too long to do things But as you know, it's very difficult to do things so I had no idea that some people in oka felt that this was a move to Do away with their committee. I thought it was a move to spread It's it's in some of the papers that a lot of people felt. Oh, gee crc has all the interesting meaty stuff And more people on the council wanted to be involved in that kind of thing Which is one of the reasons why the tso committee was suggested so I Just don't want you to feel sarah that nobody knew respected and and was aware of the work of the committee because we were And we were admiring it and I think you've got a great bunch of appointments I haven't heard a single word of criticism about any of them Are there other comments at this time? Okay, then I'm going to call the question At this point the question is the full set of changes. That's a really good statement pat Um Okay, it's to accept the new charge For crc the new charge for gol It's to add tso with its charge and all the various amendments And then it is to have oka continue With its excellent process and I do mean that Um That in have oka continue with that for the purposes of appointing Zba and planning board and reappointments through the end of june That's in essence where we are Now would you like the motion read in its full wording? No, okay all right all those in favor of This committee restructuring. Please raise your hand and say I I opposed abstain So nine to four to zero And with that I will begin polling in the next 24 to 48 hours Um We're moving on to um The next item on the agenda Which is the statement of project eligibility um There was a request at the last meeting That we develop a letter that would go in the packet of statements with regard to project eligibility For 132 north Hampton road Again in consultation I developed this letter and It's your opportunity to tear it apart George I don't want to tear it apart Actually, I'm grateful that you took this on lin and I think also I think alissa had a hand in this And maybe there were others but I think it was important to do and I appreciate the fact That you did it um I have a suggested amendment that I have Shown to lin and I've given to a few of you all give to all of you in a moment Related to just the last paragraph. Um, I would My thought is let me just speak to the thought before Is that I think we should be very clear I feel that this council has been clear in its support of this project And I would like that to be clear in the the letter and I So should it be the beginning or at the end and it seemed more appropriate at the end To to express that so I've just made or I'm going to propose a couple of small changes But the essence of it is is and again, you may not agree This is something that that you will decide but I think that we should express What I say our strong support for the proposed single occupancy support of housing at 132 northampton road So that's the essence of my Amendment and I can share the copies with people Lin has one but I can give it to the rest of you But I'll let the the president decide how she wants to proceed but um, I appreciate very much that you did this And um, my suggestion is to just make it a bit stronger I hope that you'll agree So the way that george has worded this last paragraph is to say consistent with the previous actions of various governing and advisory bodies of the town of amherst the town council Striking the word through its own actions Continues to to strike that and say express in strong support force expresses its strong support for The proposed single room occupancy sro supportive housing at 132 northampton road amherst mess Submitted by valley Community development corporation valley cdc. We continue to encourage residents to share their views during the DHcd review period As well as at future zoning board of appeals hearings Is there a second to that change? Dorothy I second it Any further discussion? Does the clerk need a copy because I have a you have one. Thank you Any further discussion on that? So that's a motion to Adjust this and then we'll We never we never did a motion for the whole letter. All right Ah, thank you All right first have a motion to suspend the rules Which is suspend rule suspend rule 8.4 Which allows us to act on this without bringing back to a second council meeting So and the reason to do that is because the packet needs to be filed In the next week or so. Okay. Is there a motion to suspend rule 8.4 for this item second Second. Okay. Thank you. Any further discussion on that? All those in favor raise your hand and say aye Opposed Upstain Okay, now is there a motion to um Have this letter go forward as presented As amended I'm sorry as amended Is there a motion? Is there a second? Thank you Any further discussion Mandy job so, um I'm gonna abstain Which I don't do very often Because I don't want to vote no because I actually support this project but For the last five or six months or more We have been telling the neighborhood and the residents in the neighborhood and anyone else that came to us Seeking comment or seeking us to do anything or seeking us to To review changes and seeking help from us that we had no further action to take on this matter And this letter takes further action It uses the power of the office the power of the town council to submit a comment in support of this to the dhcd And while I support the project I think it's wrong for us to tell our constituents that we will not be further involving ourselves in this project And then go ahead and further involve ourselves in the project. So for that reason I will be abstaining Alyssa So I will take some blame for that because I certainly tried to delineate that when we had various public processes But perhaps I was forgetting because of when the select board did it. It is a different way as the executive With the beacon communities north amherst project It was obvious to me That we would write something associated with the Pell letter and it is also obvious to me that we will take a position As a board and we will submit it to the zoning board of appeals So that would also fly in the face of what you are saying. So I appreciate that sentiment, but I Still and I don't want to seem like I'm splitting hairs and I'm sure some people will argue that I am But it's true. We can't take any further action to compel any action as a town council We could we could vote for the funding and that was really the only thing we had a choice about at that point But I never believed that we wouldn't continue to advocate for the project because we do believe in the project And I never believed that we might not or we might choose not to have something to say to the zba about it Depending on what various things are brought up in everybody's comments that we might feel like we can take a position to say Yep, that's right zba. I hope you'll take that into account or nope We're not touching that but I still feel like this is not the same thing as a town council action Evan Oh, i'm sorry kathy. I I just want to build on When we supported taking 500 000 dollars In support of them going for a project that was going to leverage state money. We were in effect saying We supported at the state level. That's all this letter is saying. This is the Next step if they can't get through this, it doesn't happen, you know So we we voted when we voted on that money of much larger state Project So I think this goes with it and it's maybe we didn't word the earlier statements perfectly, but To not support them getting the state money would basically be to return that money to us Because it won't happen without the state money So this was part of that earlier vote any further conversation Dorothy I have a question. I mean right now they have a proposal that they're sending into the state I believe that they can change things that the state can change things that things happen in in the zoning board of appeals If we send a letter of support, we are supporting the proposal That is going to the state. We're not necessarily supporting any changes that valley cdc might make or that the zba might make Is that not correct? That's correct, right? So I could see me not supporting it if certain things changed If for example the level of support which they increased In response to comments from a variety of people if they changed that I could see not supporting it at the moment. I support the proposal as it is written But that's all that we would be supporting in this letter Any further comment Evan I just wanted to say really quickly that while I respectfully disagree with what you said I really appreciate you taking the time to explain your abstention Okay, thank you any further comment Okay, so the motion is to adopt or to approve the council's statement of project eligibility as presented As amended, I'm sorry as amended And it's been made in a seconded any further discussion All those in favor raise your hand and say I Oppose abstain Okay, thank you We are moving on to the proposed wage theft bylaw And I have been told to call on People in the following order Kathy, Mandy and pat Kathy Kathy, Mandy and pat have promised to be delightfully brief on this You you have You have a cover memo from us And what we're bringing before you and it's a team of three that has worked on this But we worked on this with a lot of help From people who are advocates of this and have worked with other towns and we're hoping that we'll have a fuller Uh Discussion with evidence of why this is needed So what the three bylaws that we've drafted and you have before you Would basically do is um add to the fact that there's a state wage and Ours law that's often broken and it would Allow the town to be stronger in its ability to enforce because it knew there was a violation and have some Tools to enforce that enforcement and that this is under a general collection of things called wage theft And there are a series of examples that we put in the cover memo But where people are working and they're not being paid women in wage They're not being paid time and a half for overtime. They're paid cash So they never pay pay low taxes. They don't get full credit. They're not paid tips. They were earned I know of personal stories of people working for restaurants or service things where there was an accident On shift and they were discouraged from filing a workers comp claim And they understood their job was potentially at risk So what I want to turn this now over is to my two co-authors to talk about the three bylaws So all of these would these are not legal practices, but they happen So what we're proposing which would help to strengthen our ability to prevent these practices Okay, we are not voting on this bylaw. In fact, if we vote at all it is to refer Mandy Okay, so I'm going to talk about the first two the first one is a responsible employer bylaw it Our proposal is to essentially rescind the one that is currently in the bylaws and replace it with this one And its purpose is basically to ensure that when the town awards contracts for public construction And all we award it only to people who follow the law and only to Contractors who follow the law certify they're following the law and have And have no history in the last certain number of years of not following the law The tax relief one, which is the second one And is a similar one, but instead of when we're awarding contracts for construction It's when we're granting tax relief to people who are constructing Stuff in town We only grant that tax relief to those who follow the law And have no history in the last part certain number of years of not following the law Those are those two Pat And the third one has to do with service industry particularly restaurant workers and salon workers who Are dependent on tips We are again saying That there will be fines and Possible license loss If people aren't paid correctly and I wanted to bring out a couple of Really short facts 82 employee in 2017 82 employers in the restaurant industry received 136 citations for wage theft And and Had to pay in nearly 1,350,000 In fines and restitution Restaurant workers and salon workers are pretty are Really susceptible to wage theft because particularly restaurant workers Their wage Is usually about two dollars and something an hour and then their tips bring them up to minimum wage Which is 725 for restaurant workers That hasn't been increased since 1991 and What's interesting here is what makes it so easy for them to lose their tips Is that they're being there They're being up to that 725 which the employer it looks legit But they haven't given or returned all of the tips that the employee has returned So that Complication makes it harder and I'm taking up too much time Okay, are there questions again, this is a referral it's not to vote on um Pat I move for that we refer the three wage theft bylaws to the gol Yeah It's automatic gols automatic. It's whether the council would want to also refer to When now we just created tso so tso Okay, um The wish of the council It's an automatic referral to gol the question is does it also go to tso? Yes, yes, it should because it will involve the license commission um the board of license commissioners Pardon me Oh Do that for me Okay, me and joe you're supposed to now make the motion I moved her for the wage theft bylaw You know proposal All three of them to the community to the town services and outreach committee with a report back to the town council on March the april 10th So yeah, there's no committee yet. Is that our maybe april 30th? April 30th, okay All right Is there a second second? Any further discussion? It's also an automatic referral to gol. Thank you Okay, all those in favor, please raise your hand and say I I opposed Upstain, okay um We're through the action items We've done appointments And we're up to committee reports crc. Do you have anything else to add tonight? um We are working on A comprehensive housing policy. We'll start discussing a process for Draft and something like that this coming wednesday. We're also working on a process for How zoning bylaws work their way through the system as it were um when They're at the planning board stage where the planning board's ready to act how we're going to do joint hearings What it's going to look like and all of that and so we're discussing that this wednesday too Okay um finance committee Andy Nothing really additional. I'll see some of you. Maybe tomorrow when we meet with uh the auditor Uh go well Nothing further Oka Oka is currently looking at our community activity forms and ways that we could potentially make them more useful So if you have ideas on that you can feel free to send it to the chair of oka I think this still fits within our current charge of regarding appointments And then the second thing is you will potentially see some movement on filling zba vacancies in the next month fingers crossed Percent for art The percent for art ad hoc committee has submitted a final full report And a revised bylaw and it's currently being reviewed by gol Um, there's also a finance committee report that was done that accompanies The revised bylaw and I think We're talking about uh on the next council meeting that the That we would bring that before the full council at least that it was the last time I heard timing from the president But I don't know whether gol will Finish whatever its review is going to be gol needs to wait on legal review Okay, so has it been sent out for a legal review? I've reached out to the town manager and uh, we'll see where it goes Okay moment. I don't know Thank you Okay, so it Unless we don't have the legal review back um At this point we're planning on march 9th, but we'll see okay And once then gol the review has to go back to gol and then so forth um the We also will be adding to this the jcpc for the future um Because it involves obviously members of the council, okay um Town managers report mr. Buckleman. Thank you first shout out to the students who have made it through the some pretty nuanced conversations. Thank you um Few things. Um, I know you were late on this Early voting started this morning precisely at 8 a.m. That uh anybody can vote If you live in the town of amherst or are registered to vote in the town of amherst You can come into town hall from 8 to 4 30 any day this week And tuesday wednesday and thursday if you are you can anybody can go to Bartlett hall at the university of massachusetts from 4 p.m. To 7 30 p.m To vote and so those are two opportunities for early voting. We encourage you to take advantage of it It's very fast and convenient um And there is really no excuse to not vote in the presidential primary if you So choose and one of the as a member of one of the four parties um second is The events that are we're uh events that are scheduled or We anticipate will happen on march 7th formerly known as an event And uh, and we are um Uh prepared for that and are the public safety from the town and with the university have worked very well together and pretty much Following the same routine that we have in the past Census it's really all hands on deck We have multiple players all working to make sure that We the town of amherst is the ninth hardest to count community are going to make sure that everybody who Is a resident of amherst gets counted We have Great leadership from our state representative midi dom. We have a complete count group that includes our town clerk and clerk to the council and Communications manager working on the town our senior senator director is working very hard on it. So A lot of efforts in Different ways to make sure that everybody gets counted for the census. It's very important for the town and for the state Um The also want to point out that uh, we have excellent work from our public safety and health department In cooperation with our institutions of higher education and coley dickinson on the corona virus high level of communication among all the different groups and all the proper precautions are being taken when there's a Possibility of someone having the corona virus because we are an international community And people travel a lot because of the universities in the college the university and the colleges Um, but people are on top of it. Just want to make sure everybody understands that The corona virus is one thing The regular flu influenza is another thing that's really knocking people out and so Please take care to wash your hands, etc Thank you for the timely cough And last I just want to make sure we were we're very big and we're working very hard on the budget Both the capital and the operating budget in preparation for our delivery to the council in a timely manner Thank you um Any questions of the town manager regarding his report comments All right, then moving on to town council comments. Let me just state as I have said earlier. I will be polling for both the New committees and the newly charged committees And I will also be polling for liaisons. The committee appointments are ones that I may have to come and talk to each of you based on how many people want to be on which committees But also, um On the liaisons, it's a recommendation to the council for you to act on I will bring that forward for our next meeting on the 9th Huh? if referred Um We do on our next agenda item March 9th, we do have the hearing on lincoln avenue at 6 30 and If it is prepared I'm sorry You said the hearing was at 6 30 isn't the hearing at 6 on Athena no, it's been posted at 6 30 Thank you. I would have moved it forward, but we said it would be 6 30. So We're going to leave it there. Um and percent for our bylaw if It is ready for voting any other comments from counselors. Yes Are we thinking of starting that meeting early and then just going to the hearing at 6 30 I was waiting to see what the agenda would look like, which I will know by the end of this friday When we meet to work on the agenda If it's a lengthy agenda, then i'm going to suggest that we actually meet early And then just start the hearing at 6 30 Alyssa I just want to put in a plug for considering starting early Because a hearing might normally have started early and I don't I think I would have predicted a two hour discussion tonight, but I don't think everybody did or they wouldn't have thought We were leaving at 10 o'clock tonight Two hours on our committee reorganization. So just depending on what's coming up. I think if we all can make six I Would love to get some stuff done before the hearing. Okay. Thank you any further Councilor comments at this time Any topics not reasonably anticipated is there a motion to adjourn?  Aye Opposed abstain I'm being funny


Thank you. Yes, so in this brief presentation today, I will briefly discuss the two main questions, actually. First of all, is it possible to imagine that wildlife trafficking and poaching can be qualified as a threat to the peace for the purpose of the application of Article 39 of UN Charter? And on the other hand, is this qualification desirable? What is the added value of this qualification for the repression of this transnational crime that is wildlife trafficking? So of course, I will focus on the transnational dimension of poaching and wildlife trafficking today. So actually, the Security Council already qualified wildlife trafficking and poaching as a threat to the peace. And it did so in two resolutions from 2014. One is resolution 234, and the other one is resolution 236. They respectively concerned the situation in the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But in this context, wildlife trafficking and poaching was qualified as a threat to international peace and security, but from a specific perspective and in a specific meaning. Because these activities were considered threats only so far as they were used by armed groups active in this region of the world as a form of financing. So in this sense, being involved in activities of poaching and wildlife trafficking was included in the listing criteria for targeted sanctions in this context. So we may consider this qualification as part of a broader shift, a broader tendency in the practice of the Security Council to increasingly consider questions of human security. Why? Because wildlife trafficking and poaching are not simply threats to environmental integrity or to biodiversity. They are threats also to human security understood in a broader sense. And it's sufficient for me to recall that last September, the United Nations General Assembly considered that trafficking in wildlife is a serious threat also to the socioeconomic and political stability of affected states and regions, but also to the rule of law. And I should add that last week, the United Nations Office for the United Nations Office on Dress and Crime observed that indeed the illegal trade in Pangolin was probably one of the causes for the transmission of COVID-19 to the man from wildlife to man. So it can also become a health hazard that issue in some cases. So it's really a multifaceted and global risk that states need to address. And with this respect, I would like also to point out that on several occasions the Security Council has indeed focused on various forms of transnational organized crime, qualifying them as a threat to international peace and security. So for our purposes and especially in relation to the question of whether the Security Council could be able and would qualify indeed wildlife trafficking as a threat to international peace and security in itself and not in relation to the activities of armed groups, for instance, or as a source of financial support for these groups, but in itself is the consideration of resolution 2240 2015, because this was one of the rare cases, if not the only case, where indeed the Security Council took into consideration a specific form of transnational crime, which is actually two transnational crimes, human trafficking and the smuggling of migrants and consider it as a threat to international peace and security in itself, not in relation to specific conflicts or the activities of non state groups. However, it's difficult to infer from this resolution some general criteria that could be applied to wildlife trafficking, because the rationale for the qualification of smuggling of migrants and human trafficking as a threat to peace here was the endangerment of lives of victims of trafficking or smuggled individuals. So it was a very specific situation and this of course is a problem that affects all transnational, the analysis of all transnational organized crime, because each of these crimes has specific characteristics that make it difficult to make general points from this point of view. So it's at the same time, if we observe the debates within the UN Security Council, we can also see that the question of wildlife trafficking has increasingly shifted into the background, not only in debates concerning the Central African Republic or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but more generally the framing of wildlife trafficking as a threat to the peace has increasingly shifted into the background of debates within the council. And in any case we can, where we do find a discussion on this, it's always in relation, it's always concerning the framing of wildlife trafficking and transnational poaching as a source of financing for the activity of armed groups. So at the same time, the General Assembly of the United Nations is paying attention to wildlife trafficking, but in a completely different perspective, because on multiple occasions the General Assembly has invited a member state of the United Nations to qualify wildlife trafficking as a serious crime in the sense understood by the United Nations Convention on Transnational Organized Crime. So we can see that the perspective here is completely different because cooperation between states is encouraged in the framing of that specific convention. So at this point we also want to ask, having understood that this qualification of wildlife trafficking and poaching as an independent, as a threat to international peace and security in itself, is unlikely in the near future, what would be the added value actually of this qualification, of this framing, this would be a more effective implementation of the existing international legal framework, not only the Convention on Transnational Organized Crime, but also the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species. And indeed, I believe that a stronger implementation of this legal framework would be a more effective strategy for a more effective and comprehensive strategy for the actual repression of this transnational crime. To make my point, I will just quickly refer to the analysis that some legal scholars have carried out of the South African legal system, because in South Africa the main problem, which is a country that is deeply affected by wildlife trafficking and poaching of course, much of the problems in responding to this phenomenon are precisely connected to the difficulties to establish extraterritorial jurisdiction over such offenses. So I believe that the Convention on Transnational Organized Crime would actually help, if correctly implemented, I mean if implemented so as to include wildlife trafficking within its scope of application, would actually provide states with effective tools of repression, especially just by way of example, I may refer to the fact that Article 16, paragraph 4 of the Convention allows states to use the Convention as grounds for extradition, or Article 18 which establishes a wide duty of cooperation between states in relation not only to search and seizure, but also to cooperation in relation to other aspects of concerning exercise of jurisdiction. So in conclusion, the increased militarization that may come from a qualification of wildlife trafficking as a threat to international peace, or even the adoption of targeted sanctions, is just a limited approach. It suffices to refer to the fact that the main effect that the resolutions I was referring to at the beginning of my presentation in relation, there was indeed the adoption only for the Central African Republic of targeted sanctions towards individuals and entities which among many other offenses had committed wildlife trafficking, but by no means were exclusively devoted to wildlife trafficking. So I will conclude here. Thank you.