One o'clock Rock, here on Think Tech, and the community matters because we're talking about the community today, and it matters, okay, and the big thing about the community is the workforce, and we have two special guests about the workforce. One is a national name, Carleen McKay, and she has written, she has organized people, she has spent time with Apple, and Steve Jobs, I want to talk more about that. Okay, and Rob Kinslow, who is kind of local in the sense that I know you a long time, right? I've been here 17 years now. Aerospace engineer, done a lot of things, been around the entrepreneurial, you know, world community for a long time, and you guys are together, you have something going on. We're working. Big time. About workforce, the new workforce in a way, tell me what that is. Well, the world has changed, the workplace has changed, people are living longer, all the new things, and especially big data, and a few things like that, have changed how we're going to work, when we're going to work, where we're going to work, and even if we're going to work, and that's always been the driver for me. Yeah, that's really important. It's important in the country. It's important now. It's important in all the trouble in this administration, and it's important in Hawaii. It's important to all of us for any number of reasons, and we can explore some of those, if you wish, at some point. But I think the fun of it, for me, has been coming here. Is there's good access to people who are interested in the changes? Yeah, okay. And why Rob? What is it about Rob? I feel so Kinslow. You feel Kinslow? Yeah. I feel Kinslow as well. I met him at Hogan. Hogan Entrepreneurial Program at Shamanad. Yes, at Shamanad. John Webster, as I recall. John Webster and Rob Kay, and a few other people you know. And I think we just shared an intrigue for what was coming. So when some of the speakers would come in and talk about real entrepreneurial adventures, not just the next job, it was exciting. It still is exciting. Yeah, it's a it's a magnitude of sorts. It's an exchange, a gathering on that subject. Exactly. And why did you like Carleen? What was it about her that attracted you, Rob? Well, you know, being a self-employed, kind of consultant, kind of man of all, jack of all trades, I when I first heard her speak at Hogan, I was like, she's talking about the future of work. I need to know about that. And you know, she has such an engaging, lively style that I was like, I need to know her.  And she said, well, why do you want to talk to me? I'm not very interesting. And I said, yes, you are. And I said, I really. And so we had lunch and the rest is in a little bit short history of the workforce. Hawaii. We started working together, developing blog posts and getting a website and doing all the things that you need to do to get a kind of startup off the ground. The website before we forget, what is the name of the website? New workforce, Hawaii.com. Okay. So, you know, so what do you guys do together? I want to explore this in some detail. In New Workforce, Hawaii. Well, we're in our first year of development. So we're mostly doing marketing and outreach and telling other people who we are, why we're here, and where we want to go. And so those three questions are in our blogs on the Hawaii Reporter, as you are, and on our website. And basically, I think the main trend, the main trend that we're kind of writing is that by 2020 or 2025, fully 35, 40, maybe even 45% of the workforce will be employed part-time or full-time or some of the time or for fee or on their own. Because employers are cutting back on full-time employees. The gig economy. The gig economy. Yeah. So are you a nonprofit or are you a profit corporation? You said marketing. What are you marketing? We are absolutely not for profit at this point. Totally not, yeah. We know how that works. Actually, that's why we decided we were a membership, exclusive membership, as we got going, so that we could meet people who could really add value to it, and then we can decide what we want to do with it. But in the meantime, if I can make some money, I do. If he can make some money, he does. And we just let it flow as it's intended to. And when you say make money, consulting or speaking, that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah, those things. All right. So far, they're not paying as a fortune, though. That's what you might imagine. After the show, all of that is going to change. That's what I was told. The calls, the letters, the social media going to roll all over you. I hope you call me and thank me for it, yeah? I promise you I will. We'll be on many stages. We'd like to see you on the show many times. Me too. So let's talk about the workforce as it is. We've identified, I mean, look, Hawaii came off the plantations. And a lot of people came off the plantations without jobs. And then we've been affected by the prospect of an innovation economy. And then an innovation economy that didn't really happen. And still isn't really happening. And then you have a lot of, I mean, I'm just identifying some of the problems. A lot of millennials here, the ones who didn't go to the mainland. There you go. And who are looking for work from their parents' homes. Yeah. And trying to make old sense out of how Hawaii offers so much. And yet it doesn't have the, quote, jobs. And then trying to make their own jobs. Part of being sensitive to what you're talking about. So where are we now, nationally and Hawaii, in terms of the changes, the sea changes around careers and jobs that we must address as a society? Well, thank you. That's really an important question. And of course we have public sector and private sector and different issues for both. Public sector, one of the problems is, we're $14 billion in the whole and underfunded pensions. So what's going to happen there? They're going to hire fewer people full-time and more support help as they need it. They're going to have to adjust their pensions at some point. Just as Social Security has. This means changing government. Because we can't afford to do government the way used it. No, we can't. No, we can't. And a lot of the uproar that you see today, forgetting who's the political person of the day, is because of all these changes that have people completely unnerved as to where to go and what to do. In the private sector, I think there's more opportunities in Hawaii than at any time in their history. And I think it depends in large part. And I want Rob to pop in here. When you look at Alexander and Baldwin leaving and you look at the demise of pineapple, the story behind it is so interesting. Because the pineapple first went to the Philippines because we had imported all the workers. And then it went to Costa Rica. Where's it going next? Not coming to Hawaii. It's not coming here. It is not coming here. But what are we going to have? We are the gateway to the Pacific. And the beauty of that is, and Jay, this is true for me at the age of almost 80, working full-time. Nobody ever meets me. Take a look at my LinkedIn and look at the picture. You'll say, who is that? That was me. But the fact is, you don't have to work here to earn here. So I write for people on the mainland. I write for people who need books, such as the one I showed you. People are going to be able to do that. This is called Playbook for Teens. Yeah. And it's a sort of how to do it book, for teens to engage in. No, it's not how. What is it? It's inspiration. Inspiration. For them to engage in the workforce. Yeah, but I've got to tell you about that because I'm so excited about it. I saw Silver Lining's The Playbook a couple of years ago. Have you seen that movie? And it took me from 10 years of standing on stages and trying to tell people how to do it. And I said, wait a minute. Let's just inspire. So in this particular book, as with five others, I found people who told their stories as to how they did it. People like you who had been very prominent in one field and then said, hey, but life's longer. New chapter, new changes. That's it. So what is the message of this inspiration? The message is that there are ways to do each of these. And the women who told their stories in this book tell how. But the real thing is to get the kids looking at the future with open eyes and eagerness. Yeah. Well, it's not easy if you have two things going on. One is you still believe in the old model, which actually has paid the bills for Americans for a long time and people in Hawaii. It's that work-a-day thing. You know, you start a job. You can continue the job. He's only one chapter in your life, really. And then you rely on your retirement and all that. And the fact that that's one thing, that you're relying on that, you're locked into that kind of thinking. And the second is, well, it doesn't work anymore. You know, the gig economy, it's not because we love the gig economy. It's because it's the alternative that works for us now. And it is different from what was going on before. Absolutely.  You better figure it out. And you can look at it as opportunity or threat. It really can't. When I look at what we can do and what we must do, I can see it both ways. Let me give you an example if I may, please. Babies born by 2025 will have average life expectancies between 90 and 100 years. That's a given. Let's see, average retirement's what, 55 here? Everybody's going to outlive their money. So we need to start by looking at how do we earn in other ways in that old job. And let me ask you a harsh question. Do you think that if I showed up here at the age of almost 80 and said, I want a job full-time with you, that you'd ever even think about hiring me at my age? I'm so happy you asked that question. Absolutely, yes. Well, sure you would, because... I'm going to talk to you afterward. No, but I know why. I know why. But generally speaking, you've got age biases. You've got gender issues. You've got loss. The big loss is that we don't have the current skills. Right. And that's, and that might come into you when you guys came in. And I'd like to dwell on that a little bit. Maybe we have to take a break first, but... Let's not take any breaks. It's not a question of whether there are jobs. We have an unqualified workforce. Our workforce is not keeping up. That's right. And when you want to go higher, you have to look far away to find people who are qualified. And what does that mean? This is backward. And what does that mean? It means that our educational institutions are not teaching kids marketable skills. They're teaching them the same old, same old that you get a BA in... Anything.   Just because you have a degree, that you're going to get a job anymore. But you have to engage in the marketplace. That's it. You have to... You have to... We talk about this in the context of entrepreneurship, right? You have to find out what the market really wants. You have to examine. You have to ask people. You have to have lots of conversations or social media. And that point should start earlier than when you get out of school. High school with the kids. Absolutely. And this all takes us to a question of timing. What's the most important thing? Timing. Okay. That's how we're going to take a break. Thank you. Aloha and happy new year. It's 2017. Please keep up with me on Power Up Hawaii where Hawaii comes together to talk about a clean and just energy future. Please join me on Tuesdays at one o'clock. Mahalo. Aloha. My name is Richard Emery, host of Condo Insider. More than a third of Hawaii's population live in some form of association. And our show is all about educating board members and owners about the responsibilities and obligations and providing solutions for a great association. You can watch me live on Thursdays, 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. each week. Aloha. Start there. Pray thou, Chu Chang.  That means the water will find its way. Okay. Okay, it's an old Mandarin proverb kind of thing. And it has lots of secondary meaning. But if I'm a millennial, if I'm a young woman or a young man and I am faced with these issues about whether I am qualified or how can I be qualified? How can I earn a living by car, by house, you know, make it in this new world, this world that has sea changed around us and we didn't see it, we didn't realize it. The water will find a way. And this person, all of us really, have to find a way in a new dynamic market that has changed and will continue to change. So I need from you guys, you know, in your role as mentors and your role as examining the workforce and trying to encourage people to do well in the workforce as it exists today. I need some points of advice from you. Ready, go. Ready, go. Well, I'll start with the youngest among us. I'm on the board of Star of the Sea and we talk about early learning and these kids are building robots by the second and third grade. These kids are looking at exploring in ways that nobody else is doing except for certain specific schools. So what happened there? The school, leadership in the school. It wasn't government, it was the school. It was the school, is the school. That's a religious organization, so they're free of the Department of Education mostly and they can do this kind of thing. And the kids are getting the kind of education early. And the parents. The parents have a role in these choices, don't you think? And the parents have to be akamai about it. They can't say, oh, the school, take care of it. And along those lines, I speak to the parents of the school, not just the teachers and the students, but we're gathering on the 16th, I think, of this month, all the parents to come talk about where it's the market headed. What are we thinking about with our children this early? What do you say when somebody raises the question is of where raising a generation, another generation that's just going to leave town, the diaspora, the Hawaiian diaspora, what good does it do us to do that? What do you say to them, actually? Well, I think it's the answer that you've discovered and one of the reasons I wanted to meet you. Technology is everywhere. It's not one place or the other. It is here now. And we can use that in any type of work that we want to have. She seems very passionate about this. Oh, I am. So, Rob, how much of what Carlene is saying do you agree with? Well, I am largely discovering everything she says to be true, most dramatically in my own life, where I am a mid-careerist who was an aerospace engineer and then traveled around the world and then came to Hawaii and set up a small business and then had a big financial failure and lost everything and starting again. New chapter, as you said earlier. And dabbling about in the dungeons and dragons of Honolulu society and trying to figure out where I fit in and networking and doing market analysis. Straight out, true. Exactly, trying to find where does the water flow. And when I discovered Carlene, I discovered someone who had the credibility and the history and the knowledge that I was missing in my networking. No one here wanted to pay attention to a mid-career guy who seemed to know more than they did or thought he didn't know as much as they did or was out of his watt league trying to find out do I fit in over there, do I fit in over there and didn't want to see that. But so what I wanted to do was find someone where they had something I didn't. And so Carlene had this knowledge and she has this disposition of just passion and enthusiasm for this. And that is what buoyed me up and got me to get on this path of discovering what is the market need at my age? What are the trends that mid-careerists and now I'm looking into younger people, college students, what are they looking forward to? At Hogan, I'm mentoring college students mostly. Most of them are just looking for a job even though they're in an entrepreneurial program because they want to be an entrepreneur because the entrepreneur is sexy today. Because innovation's all you got. Yeah, and innovation, we are trying to create startup paradise. We are trying to create an innovation economy here and why it's the strongest effort I've ever seen Hawaii try to create. Let me hold you on that, strong effort, passion. How successful to date? How successful to date? I think it's boggling how much interest that we have. Can we convert interest into action? That's always the big test, as you well know. But if you look at just the response to it, I think I have 10 speeches between now and the end of April. Because people are saying I want to hear more. Tell me specifically. So one might be executive women, which is tonight, by the way. And we'll be speaking to most women who are 40, 50 years old who've been a long time in their jobs and they haven't a clue about what networking really means. Networking always in Hawaii and Puerto Rico, where I'm from, by the way. So Puerto Ricania. Cool, really? Yes. Speak Spanish right now today. Guadalajara. How do you say Shredao Chuchu? I have no idea what that means in any language except water or something. But if you look at the women tonight, they've probably been in their positions for 15, 20, 25 years. If they had to leave tomorrow, they're going to send a resume somewhere and somebody's going to look at it and say, oh, this is interesting, but she's been there a long time. She probably makes too much money. A resume to me is a chronological obituary. Wow. It is, especially as you mature. What can you do for me now, today? Isn't that the question? That is the question. And that's not often on a resume. Okay, so what do you do if you're one of these executives you're talking about?  It has not adjusted. This country, this state, am I right? It hasn't adjusted. We have to make it adjust. But it's starting to. What do we do? And I think you have to be seductive. You have to make people- Seduction. Seduction. This is the answer. We learned it here on ThinkTech. Yeah, at any age for different reasons. I think the seduction is you have to make people want to know you. Not you want to know them. And so I like digital technology a lot. And I had mentioned to you another time about LinkedIn. I think it's the replacement for the resume. Explain why? How does it work? Because it's an ad versus a chronology. It's, I want you to know this about me. And so if you say, well, you know, I know that person over there. Do you think they might be interesting coming to work for me? Why don't you find out, first of all, if they're doing what you want done? And if you highlight that correctly on your LinkedIn, now it becomes very evident. Jay, I can't imagine anything better than somebody calling me versus my having to say, please, please talk to me and help me. And the fact is that I have more clients than you'll ever dream of. So you define yourself, you put yourself out there in public. Yep.  Yes. But this is, correct me if I'm wrong now, this is very exciting. It's very powerful. It uses technology. It's the wave of the future. But how good is it right now? How many people, how many employers, how many people actually succeed using social media in the marketplace for work? Well, I would tell you- In Hawaii or- Or in general. You can answer that anywhere you want. Okay, I'm going to answer in general and say that on the mainland, when I worked with the Intel's, the Apple's, all of these firms, you might send them the resume, but before they even look at it, if it's gotten through the software, I might add, they look at your LinkedIn. And that's- Due diligence. Pardon? It's due diligence. Due diligence. It's investigating with the tools that are available. So there's my resume in front of you, Jay, and you just go, well, it made it through the cut on the software, which is rough cuts today, by the way. And then you look at LinkedIn and say, well, she's not talking about any of this on her LinkedIn. So maybe I'll just put this one over here. Yeah. I think digital technology for networking is the answer. May I give you another example? When I look at organizations such as the one that I'm speaking at tonight, why don't they have quick bios of their members on their website? I hope you tell them to do that. I will. Okay, I knew you would. We're listening right now, I hope. Just many bios, a way so you know which ones you want to start a conversation with. And today, just this morning at 5.30, I might add, I had a no, a text or an email. I can't remember. I think it was a text, but I could be wrong.  From someone who's going tonight who said, I'm really looking forward to meeting you and hearing what you have to say. Now, the whole speech is 20 minutes. I don't know how much you're going to get from that. But that's the span of attention now. That's the world we live in. Well, I'm fast. You have you. Yeah, you have to be. Yeah, the 20 minutes to make the pitch. It's just like in the world of entrepreneurship. But you know what I'm getting here is that you need to know social media in order to live in that new marketplace. But you also have to have skills. It's not just promoting yourself. Exactly right. You have to have a package. You have to have the content. You have the goods. You have to have the goods. So how much of the goods? And of course, if you're in social media, that is a statement already that you know about social media. But query and you're into this a lot, Rob.  How much should I focus on at this meeting tonight? What should Carline tell them about technology? Should they focus on that? Is it the be all end all? How important is it? Well, my particular background was in high tech and in engineering stealth aircraft. But you have to be savvy. But you don't have to be immersed completely in technology because you need people skills. And networking and mentorship are two people skills that young people could must learn from networking. By that, I mean, how do you reach out? Who do you find? Who's in your field? And mentoring. Who's your mentor? How do you find a mentor? Well, how do you treat that mentor? How do you invite a person to be your mentor? How do you seek out these people who become then major goalposts in your life? So I am not so much of a technologist anymore as I am more focused on the face-to-face eyeball to eyeball, you know, speaking to people about who I am and what I'm interested in and how we can work together and collaborate. Right. And once you find that, once you find your place in the milieu, right, then you can develop, you know, the skills you need. I mean, it's a yin and a yang, all those Chinese. You have certain skills to start with, then you check the marketplace and you see what else you need and then you get that. But I blog. I'm on Facebook. I'm on LinkedIn.  Yes. Where you can't be involved in too many things or you're spending too much of your time in the ether world, in the digital world, and you're not at dump time in the real world. And many people still, the business mostly, these still these days, especially in Hawaii, belongs in the real world, a lot of it.  I think that's a very important point. So you need to have those. There comes a time when you, you know, that the social media and the networking and all that, all these social skills, you know, it can only help you so far. You need to be a whole-brained actor. In other words, you need to be able to use your left brain for technology and science and you'd be able to read your right brain for communication and empathy and relating to other people. You've got to use both. You've got to have skills in both. So we're about out of time. I'm sorry to tell you this. I am, too.  Instead of being sad, why don't you address camera one and talk to the people and tell them what they should understand that they don't perhaps understand right now in order to mix, you know, and mingle and engage in this new working world? So I can do this in how many minutes now? Just take six hours, whatever. I'm talking 30 seconds here, Crow. Okay, 30 seconds. The key to marketing today is to know what you're looking for, what the market needs, and how you fit in that. And you use the tools that go along with that fit. Not every tool that's ever made and known to us today, but which ones do you need? And the bottom line for me is you need a bio or a resume, not both. The bottom line is you need a LinkedIn. You may need a Facebook or you may not. And so you have to make decisions based on what the market needs.  The really critical thing is if I am selling hospitality, for example, our big business here in Hawaii, I want a Facebook because that's a visual impression. If I'm selling my writing skills, I don't need Facebook. So you have to adapt your use of these tools to what you want and who you are. And who your audience is. Carleen, Rob, your guys are great. Thank you for coming down, and I do feel so kinslow to both of you. Oh, thank you. Thank you. It was a pleasure.


All right, so guys, before starting the session, I would like to, I'm really thankful to the EuroPython team, especially the organizers and even the sponsors who enable this particular conference and definitely provided us a great platform to interact here and to exchange the ideas and to learn more. So really thankful to the whole team who make it happen. Now, before the course topic, we'll just give you a brief introduction about myself. I'm Abhishek and currently I work as a principal data scientist in Microsoft India, where I'm taking care of the ML-based implementations for all Microsoft Enterprise business-related solutions, products and different partners and clients that we cater here. I do have more than 13 years of experience where I have worked across different domains, different technology stacks and even different areas, covering NLP, NLU optimization, computer vision recommendation system and all. And I was fortunate enough to be the part of the foundation team. So I got a chance to develop things from this crash at the same time over the time. I definitely have grown in this area and now trying to deliver things and scale things for enterprises for their ML and EI needs. I have worked in multiple domains like finance, retail logistics and different payment network. I have worked for Musk, Visa, Fidelity, Dell prior to joining Microsoft and also I am recipient of distinguished 40 under 40 data scientists in India in 2021. I also, whenever I have time permits, I definitely try to do some publications and try to contribute in terms in research. So I do have five international publications and have few patents and trade secrets as well. I have done my masters from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, which is one of the PMIN Institute of India and definitely like all of you, I am big believer admirer and I really love working in Python since 2009, my college days. So yeah, that's about me. Now I would like to set up the agenda and definitely this particular topic is really not only very much practical in sense because now with the abundance of data, we can definitely have a lot of avenues open to implement more effective recommendation systems. So I'll definitely try to touch upon why there is a need of recommendation system and how we are evolving, how we are going from the traditional ways to the advanced way of creating these recommendation systems. How I have implemented this particular implementation, which I'm going to talk about, what were the improvements and the findings that I had and definitely the tech stack that I have used for it along with that I would like to conclude this. So without wasting much time and in interest of time, I would like to start with the need part first. So I can set up the context here, like why we are going to this level of customization or what is the need for an advanced or evolved recommendation system. So first of all, it's definitely not a choice, but it's not an optional choice, but it's a definite choice for the companies to provide personalized experience to their customers nowadays. And recommendation system is definitely one of those key aspect that each and every company, be it retail, finance or any other B2B B2C company working in different verticals, they definitely want to cater their customers in their best capacity using the recommendation system. So that's why it not only brings more revenue to their company, but also it provides a great customer centricity and connect with their existing customers or maybe the potential customer they want to target. So definitely it's a good thing, but what are the challenges? The key challenge that lies in the recommendation system is how you are going to make it customized or tailor-made solution for your customer. That's where it ranges from a generalized to a highly customized approach. And when we try to scale that thing and we try to achieve the more customization here, definitely we need to consider different things, be it from the implementation side of the skill side of the things or maybe the data dimensions that is available. So definitely each and every company wants to implement this recommendation system which can cater the customization part of it, but at the same time there are challenges. And that's the exact crux of the stock. I will talk about how we overcome that and how we implement a hybrid kind of recommendation system, which not only utilizes the different data dimensions but also club it well with the algorithm so we can generate and we can create much more personalized recommendation. So I would call it going from personal to hyper personal and definitely right now there are existing traditional ways and even some advanced ways to create these recommendation system which can create some personalized touch. But if you want to go further, how can we utilize different dimensions of the data and how can we use different techniques that is available right now to create more impactful recommendation? That is what I would like to explain the next. So definitely I will talk about the evolution part where I will tell how can we use these diversified data because one thing is the data availability in case if you have additional information and if it is not fitting to your algorithm or the format that which algorithm accepts, how you are going to fine tune it, how you will do the engineering for the features and how you're going to enable that information flow so you can create better recommendation rather than only relying on the purchase history or the interactions that has happened in the past. So I will definitely talk about that and I will reserve last few minutes for the Q&A guys. So in case in between if you have any question you can ask or you can put it on the chat window. I will definitely pick it up at the later stage. Now I will talk about the evolution part of it. So we all understood that recommendation is definitely something which is dealing with the which is dealing with the personalization side of it and we do have existing recommendation systems in place and why is there is a need of this thing? And in case if we are implementing what particular thing or what particular de-marriage it is going to overtake or overcome. So first of all, like if you will compare traditional recommendation systems versus the evolve one which I am suggesting or proposing right now, you can see clear differences which can definitely be leveraged in terms of implementing a more effective mechanism here. So for example, with the current existing systems be it like a priority algorithm or collaborative filtering or even different kind of embedding based methods that are existing right now. If you'll see they all consider the purchase behavior or the interaction behavior you can say if it is not a purchase maybe it will be something bought something reviewed, something seen like movies, Netflix and all. So definitely the current system tries to utilize the historical information like the transactions happened in the system where either a person has purchased something or reviewed something bought something. So that is what they use. They try to match it against the different set of customers who have similar kind of attribute but definitely they want to propose them something which may be of the similar taste. So they try to find the similarity between two customers and then based on the similarity they try to recommend something which has not been utilized by customer A but which may be a useful thing for customer B because customer A and B both have some sort of similarity. So that's how traditional method works but there are challenges in that. First of all, it only considers user item interaction and second thing, max to max it can take the meta information but that is not something which directly it can use. Meta information like item description and all that is also something you can use as a feature but in that case you can't use one particular method maybe you need to create some sort of hybrid recommendation system which will utilize some sort of classification approach and all. So when it uses the historical data, it uses only the transaction that has happened in the past. There may be a case where user is interested but he may not have bought the item at that point of time maybe because of some reason maybe some of the priority change but that doesn't says that user was not interested in that item. So that kind of information will not be captured if you're looking at the purchase history but that kind of information will definitely be captured in the web behavior of a user. So these kind of data points like how many times a person visiting time is spending on particular web page or how many stages in this particular purchase funnel he has or she has come across what are the different cross domain features if I can get some additional data for some other domain let's say I do have that customer information with me I'm operating in multiple businesses I do have retail information and I want to apply it for let's say some other category or some other particular like electronics product catalog kind of scenario then how can I use that cross domain knowledge? So all these things will not be considered in the traditional way of creating the recommendation systems and that's exactly where I try to bring this particular evolved technique and we try to overcome that particular thing where we can include more data dimensions not only depending on the user item interaction means the purchase history but also we are trying to overcome the data sparsity issue that is there in the absence of I mean that can be that can enhance our current system by providing more data points and by providing more richer information which will be helpful to create much more impactful recommendation. So these are the few things which is lacking in the current recommendation scenario and that's exactly where we are trying to bridge it. Now the question comes we do have data available with us and somehow we are doing the feature engineering but how we are going to use it in the current scenario let's say I am doing the metrics factorization method how I am going to use it because that is only taking input in the form of a matrix where it will decompose it and apply some sort of methods and it will try to create some recommendation based on that. So the answer is we need to convert all these intermediate data sources into a vector representation that's exactly where the topic the core part of this recommendation system which is network embeddings comes into the picture. So I'll talk about this architecture more but in nutshell, what we are doing is we are trying to utilize all this information which is definitely in addition to the user item interaction we are converting it back into a representation which can be utilized by the metrics factorization and then utilizing that information we are also trying to overcome the sparsity problem that we normally face in the recommendation scenarios. So that's exactly how we are using this evolved method and that is exactly the word evolution where we are going from the traditional way to the advanced approach. Now talking about the implementation this is the core how we are doing this particular transformation or we are trying to bring much more effective way of recommendations. So typically if you will see the first thing purchase history that is something which all traditional ways of recommendation system tries to use they try to take the user item metrics and sometimes they also try to take the content into the consideration like if you are creating some content based recommendation system they will use item description and all these kind of attributes in place. So purchase history we are also using we are having a metrics formulation the same way we use in the typical user item metrics format we are also using web behavior here where we will be converting the the web presence of a customer how many times a person has played what item has been played we are trying to create a metrics out of it and that uniform metrics something that we are representing in form of nodes. So ultimately at this stage we are creating a particular network a neural network which will be converting this web behavior into a neural network representation and the output of that neural network will be again embedding layer which we will be feeding using the node to back representation as the user embeddings. We are also using item description and metadata here need not to be TFIDF vectorization you can also bypass this phase and you can also create embeddings here. So that is just one disclaimer I want to put. So it can be it can also consider the the embeddings based feature vector rather than the TFIDF. So here we are converting we are taking these two things and finally feeding it through node to back into the user embeddings. So in simple words if I will say I do have a user item interaction based metrics which will be feed it into the metrics vectorization I need another factor which is the factor two which will be coming from my user embeddings. Now these both are metrics representation and obviously before that we will be applying the normalization why because the user item metrics will be having a different scale at the same time the user embeddings and the item and embeddings that we are taking will be having a different scale. So we will be feeding these two here in this metrics vectorization and after that definitely we will be going through the metrics vectorization iterations different sort of fine-tuning parameters their alpha beta gammas and trying to generate the recommendations here. And then you have the feedback loop where definitely you can show these recommendations to the user you can get real-time feedback how many clicks you are getting when you're recommending and how ultimately it is bringing more revenue and more customers of fall on your website. So that's exactly how this whole system works and this is the core architecture of this implementation and that's where we are converting this piece of information which was not used earlier in any of the recommendation systems be it like collaborative filtering or be it a priori algorithm we are trying to augment those systems by using these embeddings which will help to get more information flow into the system and ultimately with this additional information this recommendation system is in a better place and situation to make more effective recommendations here. Now I will also talk about the results and shortly I will come to the tech stack and the pseudo code also which I have used here. So in terms of the results definitely I have compared the similar implementations where this any MMF is network embeddings based multi-factor matrix factorization method. So this last category is what our implementation is. I evaluated it on precision and recall there can be other matrices yes but the reason why I have chosen this matrix because the earlier methods have been tested on this thing in the prior research. So I just try to see how this revised method is reflecting when I'm comparing to the similar kind of previous attempts. So these are the different methods and you can clearly see that across all but be it precision or recall definitely this particular recommendation is not only effective in terms of accuracy but also it is effective in terms of the kind of recommendations you want to make. So n equals to five, 10, 15 these are the three color coded things. So that means top five recommendation top 10 recommendation is top 20. So even when I'm going to increase the coverage in terms of recommendation this particular method is suggesting a great accuracy in terms of the top recommendation that it is making. Talking about the fine-tuning part because this whole implementation if you look at the architecture it goes through two things. One is the matrix factorization. So all those things which is applicable to fine-tune a matrix factorization like your latent factors and other stuff same fine-tuning will be applicable here and because it is using neural network so all those things like activation function, loss function, different layers that you are using will be equally applicable to the fine-tuning of this recommendation. So that's what we have done in order to get the optimal results out of it and doing the fine-tuning of this network. So there are two things and even maybe post this talk I will also put the source code and other things. So in case if you want to implement this kind of architecture if you find a good relevance in your industry or academia or the research that you are doing definitely you can go ahead and you can use it. So, but these are the two key code snippets. I pardon if it is not visible but the one part is the matrix factorization and the other part is node-to-wear combatings where I try to convert the features additional meta features and the cross-domain features into network embedding and feed it along with the core user item metrics to the matrix factorization method. So I'll definitely provide the code snippet as well after this particular talk. In terms of text stack, yes, I have used the favorite scikit-learn without that definitely none of the methods will work. Keras, TensorFlow, matrix factorization library and PyTorch and also a few of the modules of this IP in order to create this particular recommendation system. Now comes the next part which is conclusion how I will evaluate this particular method in terms of existing practice of the recommendation system versus the proposed one. Definitely in terms of accuracy, this is much better. The reason is information loss that we normally face in the regular recommendation system is too high. We never rely on the information which is not being coming to this transactional databases. Like if someone is not purchasing, we are not going to consider that particular information. That is point number one. So we have considered it. And that is equally important because most of the information will come before that stage. Maybe people are not able to complete the transaction because of the various reasons, but what we are trying to do in the recommendation is to know the taste, whether a person would really like something or not and what is the propensity. So that is something which is a good information, useful information that we are using here. Second thing, we are also using the metadata information. So any kind of, yeah, I'll just spend a couple of minutes here and then I'll be open for Q and A. So any kind of meta information be text or something else can be used here. And the third thing is, in case if you want to extend it with any additional data dimension, you can utilize the same network embedding framework and you can implement the same thing so you can get good exposure of those additional dimensions and you can utilize them pretty much in the recommendation systems. So that's where we can definitely use this thing. Now, what is something that can be still improved? Obviously, there can be some features like user acceptance rate, some sort of app or some sort of, you know, different preferences that users are having when they are coming to the website or they are using the web channels or maybe if you are dealing with the retail offline there can be other channels as well. So you can use those marketing channels, sales channels, information and the data. That is something that I haven't explored but that can be added. And also other embedding methods can be used. I have used this node to work but definitely that is just one way to solve the problem. There can be other ways also to deal with this problem. With that, I would like to take a pause here guys and I would like to open for the questions. You can either put it into the chat window or maybe you can come and ask. I would love to answer that. So over to you guys. Thanks Abhishek for that amazing talk. We have an on-site question. Could you please come to the mic? Yeah, please. Yeah, so thanks for the great talk, was interesting. Just a question you have mentioned that you have different implicit and explicit feedback channels that you are considering. Can you just share your thoughts on how you are joining them in one matrix? So how you would, for example, wait if you see a user just clicks or visits a page, a product page or whether the user purchases. So how much stronger is the feedback in a quantitative manner than if a user purchases something compared to just clicking or something like that? So are you training those separately or are you joining them in a sum matrix because you said that you will reduce the sparsity by this and that would be just interesting? Yeah, really interesting question. That's where this particular framework will help. So as I told that there are different scales when you're using user item matrix. So user item matrix is just a representation where you are having the interactions based information available in terms of what is the rating or maybe how much amount you have spent or maybe some other mathematical notation there. Now when you are having other metadata which I'm trying to use along with the user item matrix. First, I am creating the embeddings which is again a numeric representation but I need to apply the batch normalization to it and when I'm applying that batch normalization I'm also using the user item matrix along with that on the similar dimension. So you can just think it like you are getting two different sources of the data. One is your, one is the user item matrix which is on a higher scale dimension. Other one is the network embedding which is on the lower dimension. Once you'll apply again factor this normalization taking both into consideration you can merge both datasets and definitely that's the whole reason why it is generating better recommendation because this embedding representation is also bringing a lot of rich information along with it where it is giving me more useful insight for a particular user in terms of his or her liking or disliking before that particular purchase history has happened. So to answer your question how I'm merging both information implicit and explicit I'm getting these both matrix representation and embedding representation applying a normalization on top of it when I am feeding it to the matrix factorization method. Does that answer your question? Yeah, it does, thanks. Great and thank you for asking this great question. Yeah, we have a couple more questions. Yeah, please. Hi, thank you for your talk, very interesting. If you can elaborate about what type of behavior data you have about web behavior and what type of formulation you did exactly. Great, so if you will think about the web behavior just, I mean this is really easy to connect with just think about your own personal journey if you are using Amazon or any other e-commerce how you typically go. You just go click on the page that will be your first presence. So definitely it will be having one dimension coming from the number of visits. Second, in the whole funnel you will be also dealing with let's say there is a page for checkout but before the checkout and from the time you enter to that particular portal there are a lot more phases you just go check about the product details you go check about the price then again you navigate so there will be a lot of things that will be there before you go and check out that particular product and make your purchase. So all this kind of information time spent, pages that you are clicking or the kind of content you are looking for whether you are really price sensitive how many times you are checking the price page and all. So all this information will be available which will be standard across whatever product you are going to purchase be it electronics, be it apparel or something. So that is what I meant when I am talking about the browsing pattern. So this is what basically goes into a typical e-commerce purchase funnel before the purchase, find a purchase. Does that answer your question? Yes, but what type of formulation you did over this data to make it? So once you are getting that thing what I have done is against every user I do have this kind of metric. So one thing is I'm so sorry we're gonna have to stop here because the time is over but you can hang out in the Liffey boardroom 4 and maybe over the Zoom breakout rooms. Definitely, definitely. Thanks a lot, yeah. All right, let's give a huge round of applause to Abhishek. Thank you.


But with that, I'll turn it over to our next panelist. Thank you. Thank you very much. And thank you, Carl, for the invitation to come and speak to you and give a brief introduction at the Law Library of Congress. And I promise I'll be very brief. The Law Library of Congress was created in 1832 to serve Congress, and it was created by law to serve Congress and the Supreme Court. Today, the Law Library is the de facto national law library and serves, in addition to Congress, the federal judiciary, federal government agencies, and the general public. It is the largest law library with over 2.6 million volumes in its collection. The Law Library, as part of the Library of Congress, strives to provide, as the current law librarian of Congress, Roberta Schaefer likes to say, the four As, access to authoritative, accurate, and authenticated legal information from all jurisdictions, local, national, and international. In addition to making its resources available, a law library mission is to sustain and preserve a universal collection of law for the future. Being the world's largest law library, the Law Library of Congress has a significant and fairly comprehensive paper collection of primary legal materials and information, not just from the United States, but from numerous foreign jurisdictions as well. The Law Library also provides access to a growing amount of these primary materials in electronic and digital format. And it would like to provide greater access to materials that are not currently in its collection, but not currently in digital format. Since 1995, the library has provided access to US federal legislative information through the Thomas.gov site. As many of you know, Thomas provides access to federal legal and legislative information, such as bills, resolutions, the congressional record, schedules and calendars, and other committee information. The Law Library is the content manager for Thomas.gov and continues to improve the site. So for example, recently, the Law Library added a new feature, such as expanding a sharing feature that allows users to save or share a permanent link by bookmarks, email, or even social networking sites. Now, since 1991, the Law Library also has had a hand in the design, development, and maintenance of GLIN, which is the Global Legal Information Network, a public database of the official texts of statutes, regulations, judicial decisions, and other related legal material that originate from countries in the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia. While there are some limitations to accessing that information in the GLIN database, the site provides full-text access to primary legal materials for most participating jurisdictions, published in their original sources and in their original languages. So the Law Library itself is guided by the belief that universal access to and the understanding of law serves as an important role in the society. And these are just some of the examples of what the Law Library is doing currently in trying to create a world digital law library that would allow researchers throughout the world to search for and use local, state, national, and international primary sources and public domain legal and legislative information. Is that brief enough? Thank you.


caught a little cold. Michael's got a cold. Wait, you didn't catch the cold. I gave you the cold. True. Thank you. I apologize. By the way, we took some bird aszithromycin off the internet. It worked great. I know there's probably going to some people scolding me in the comments. I'm well aware. If you travel south, Central America, the stuff's OTC anyway, so it's no big deal if you're responsible. And here we have what is going to be the framing for the rooftop deck. There is something special about this rooftop deck, and we won't say exactly what it is. I know a lot of you guys love the anticipation, but there will be, the only hint is there will be something special. Just the regular part, you know, it's going to be wood and all that stuff. Yeah. It's going to rest today and then probably get back to work tomorrow. It looks like today we're going to mount the solar panels, not install them. I need to check and see how they're going to fit. We're also going to make a plate on the inside to mount to my buddy's steampunk steve and the medic fanatic both lost solar panels. And I just want to make sure that I don't because these ZAMP solar panels are pretty much the highest quality panels you can buy and I really don't want to lose them because that would suck. So this is nice before and we'll be working on it. Just want to share with you how you mount the brackets here.  I'll just take that to the side so it doesn't make any more sense. This part, you just line it up with this track and you bolt it in with the little wrench there and make sure it's tight. And then this wing nut, I can show you on this side, we're just using a little chute. I can't think today because I'm still sick. Well, recovering. We're using a hinge. You'll see why in a minute.  So just make sure these are super tight. Not too tight because some of this might be aluminum and it's not very strong. But just hand tight should be good. Well, if anybody said building a school bus is a pretty straightforward thing to do, they're lying to you. We were going to change our minds on this plan and then there's a rain delay. We'll put the tarp over. Long story short, we changed our mind, but we're changing our mind again. But we're sticking with the original program here. You like that word, don't you? Thanks. It's an inside joke over here. Anyways, what a beautiful day. Dean! Dean's over there being lazy, as usual. Just kidding. He's a huge help. So what we're doing. Dean's not being lazy. Can you help me install the entire tech rack? I know. I said I was just kidding. Dean's great. If you haven't subscribed to the school, you should. So here's what we're doing. These are ZAMP 170 panels. We're using the existing fittings, like I said. On school buses, there's a little slope to the roof. They're all different. What we decided to do was basically use a larger bracket. Now, that's to bring up the tilt a little bit. It's not a huge difference if it's super tilted or not, but we're just going to make it a little bit level just for our preference. So let's put it in place and see what it looks like quickly. So it's going to lift the front up so the thing goes flat. So the reason we're using these hinges is at 90 degrees this angle tilts a little bit to the right if you're looking at it from the rear.  And when you're trying to screw these things in and they're both off like this, you can strip these wing nuts really easily. So that's really why we're doing this. So those two reasons. There are other ways to do it. A navigation nowhere. Did it slightly different? A little bit different. Yeah. Everything works whatever you feel comfortable with. This is the way we're going to do it. Okay, so this is what we're looking like when we're using aftermarket, we'll just call them aftermarket brackets, these hinge things. But as you can see, there's no play to it because this is secure. So this just is bumping up the tilt on this side. And as you can see, it's really secure. By the way, I've said it before, I'm going to say it again. These are made in the USA panels. Very high quality. When it comes to solar panels, you really don't want to go the cheap way.  A lot of times.  It ends up costing you more money by trying to go cheap than when you try and just get good panels. They're not like crazy more money, but if it's one thing you want that you want to, I can't even talk because I'm still sick. But the one thing you don't want to skimp out on is panels and batteries and solar charge controller and the electronics. I mean, you put so much money into the two of bus and if you burn it down because of cheap electronics, well, it's not a good day. Install video coming soon. Now, do you have any other ideas to properly secure these for anybody on the internet? Well, it matters where you're putting them. Where we're putting them, this is a great option because we're working with the slope of the roof. So, Jax is coming up with the hinge idea, which is a great way to kind of not have to fabricate, you know, different types of mounts and stuff. So this is a great option. Also, I mean, Zamp gave us some really good mounts out of the first place, which a lot of times companies won't actually give you really good mounts. So we got lucky with these mounts that are really easy to use. Another option, guys, if you don't mount them on the side and you mount them in the front, you can line it up with the front part. And this is just for school buses. There is a channel here and everywhere that the rivets go, there's an extra piece of metal underneath, which is part of the framing and support. So if you screw into these midpoints here, you have to grind out one of these things. But if you do it sideways and attach it here in the front or the back, whichever lines up with your spot, or if we were to slide these forward to hit the metal parts in the front and the back there, that's going to be more secure than just going into this sheet metal. The reason why we're doing it is because we're doing it a different way. We're welding, and that's a bit more advanced technique. Also, it gives you the ability where if you're just using the rib structures, you're stuck at using 26 inch increments, where we're actually customizing his roof with different shapes and skylights and things. So for us, we want the ability to use the in between the rib space. So the option then is to add plates in or welding to be able to get that kind of variation in your build. Cool. So that I know is a very long explanation and this is geared more towards people who will be installing or maybe did and their solar panel flew off. I know two people that's happened to, Steampunk Steve and Eric Nomadic Fanatic, and if you pick a soft spot in the roof, you run the risk of these things flying off and maybe hitting somebody or losing one of these valuable panels. Alright, rain's coming, so we're going to do a little rain delay. We'll check in a minute. It's coming down quick, so I've got to go. Because of the rain and what time of day it is, we decided to do a little rust convert or rust treatment, as you can see. We've got the fans on. We're going to paint this, I think later today, and this should be all done, really straightforward. We're just using a rust-olium type thing. Nothing fancy. It's really, you know, very plain and simple and forward, so we're going to do a little step-by-step thing on that. Alright, like I said, we're going to paint the inside, and I think when I say we, I mean navigation nowhere, we're going to try and use clean shoes, and he's got the cleanest ones. But, I'll time-lapse that, and I just want to show you if I didn't do a before and after, let's do a quick after, and if you're wondering what it looks like before, just watch some previous videos of the floor. This is what it currently looks like. Obviously I didn't get every single spot, you know, like completely neutral, neutralized, whatever you want to call it, but I believe it coats it with a thin film of zinc, is that right? Yeah, I read the instructions, but I forgot. Basically, it didn't corrode all the way through, it's just surface, so we're just kind of like stopping it from getting worse, but it's, there's going to be no water in here anymore. He's got the, he's going to blow it out in a second.


So welcome back to my YouTube channel. This is Daniel Rosal, always looking for interesting things to talk about and cover in Israel. And I came across an interesting blog called The Finest Dream via a social media group. And I have the two creators of that here today. They're called Fiona and Finn. And for those who haven't heard about fire, it's become financially independent and retire early. Did I get that right? Yes. Yes. Cool. So if you want to pin for us, see, thank you guys for for doing this for maybe telling people who haven't heard about fire, what exactly it is, and also the fact that you guys are doing it here in Israel. So let's start at the very basics. Can you guys explain what fire means? So fire is essentially its financial independence early, retire early, and it gives you the option to stop working whenever you want. But you need enough of that creating an extra pension for yourself to so you have the option is not to worry about a nine to five job or whether you're working from an employer or working for yourself, you have the option to choose to work or not to work. The point is to create enough passive income to live off. Yes. Like, you don't want to get to the age of 67 and say, Okay, I worked 40 years of my life. Now what you want to you want to be able to have when you still have a lot of energy, like when you're like 55. Okay, I want to go travel the world for a year, a year and a half. And I don't need to worry about a job. I have the money. I'm living off a living off a paycheck and I'm paying myself and going. It's essentially like if you're going on maternity leave, when people go on maternity leave, and they get paid from we talk to me like three months in advance, and then you're paying yourself a paycheck, your mortis want to pay yourself a income every month from your savings investments that you have, whether it's from the stock market or it's from real estate or any passive income that you could create. So fire isn't necessarily about, you know, sort of a get rich quick scream and end work as quickly as possible. While you're saying to me, it sounds like it's more about taking control and predictability over the point at which you don't have to work for for income anymore. Exactly. It's becoming work optional. It's becoming work optional. It's more about that. You can choose. I don't want to work anymore. I want to travel, maybe a full time part of all the vitality of my kids' school and beyond being in school in four hours a day, supporting the school without wearing an income because I have an income. A lot of people are not pursuing fire. They're pursuing FI, just the financial independence part. A lot of people continue to work in some capacity after reaching it. It depends on what age you're reaching. No, it depends on the person and what they want. Some people do it, some people don't. We're probably going to continue working in some capacity, but not full time. So I'm just interested. I mean, fire, from what I understand, there is a huge community on Redis and seems quite internet-centric generally. So how did you guys come across this? Because I understand you've been living in Israel for a while. So is this something that you heard about in the US and decided to start after making Aliyah or did you come across this concept and movement here in Israel? Well, we didn't meet when we met Aliyah. I grew up here in high school and everything. So I probably first really heard about it is from Rich Dad Poor Dad, the book by Robert Kanowski. But during COVID 2020, when the first lockdown happened, we were all locked down and I was on paid leave due to everyone else. I had a lot of free time and I was listening to Hope Timit with Aura Ariel and came across. She's a famous Israeli fire person. Like she retired at the age of 30 and she got inspired and whatever. Then during COVID, she got screwed. I'm going to Mexico for half a year. Her and her husband just sat in Mexico with their brand new baby for half a year and just lived off their income. So that was very inspiring. And then it took me like a year and a half to convince you. It did take another year and a half. You were talking about it all COVID. We have a COVID baby. And then I ended up going back to work, getting back to work. And then something happened at work that made me very frustrated. And I ended up leaving that job in my huff of leaving the job and finding a new one. There was this whole, if we did this and I wouldn't have to run towards a new one, I want to be able to make that decision. And then you found, Oh yeah. And then I found this couple, our rich journey, Christina and Amon, and they blog about this. Now they're huge, but back then they were a lot more modest because I think they had just reached fire at that point. So I watched a lot of their videos and I liked them because they were a couple. They were doing it together.  Maybe. Yeah. Do you guys feel, I mean, I think that a lot of people in Israel are just really bogged down in the kind of day-to-day financial survival here. Obviously we all know Israel is super expensive and life here financially is difficult. So did you guys not kind of feel a sense of maybe trepidation whereby most people here thinking about just getting by, getting by, but you guys are actually kind of looking a couple of steps further ahead and looking at retiring. Does the kind of scale of that objective ever kind of scare you guys? Yes. Yes. And it actually, like one conversation that we have often is that not everybody, like we are very privileged that we're not making huge salaries, but we're privileged that we have a high enough salary and that we also have the financial know-how and organization and in-house bookkeeper to swing this and a lot of other people don't. So we have also been affected by inflation and by the cost of everything going up. We now spend a thousand more shekel at least per month than we used to one year ago. When we last year, we set goals for ourselves for X number of thousand to invest every month and in January and February, we're passing it by 1000-2000 and now we're barely scraping that number by and we're still hitting that target every single month. Over the last year's target. But we're not surpassing it and in the beginning of one year ago, we were easily surpassing it. We were surpassing it most of the time. So yeah, it is hard. One thing that I think that makes it easier in Israel and this is what I tell people all the time. I don't know about easier in Israel, but my comparison, even though I never worked in the United States, I never lived there as an adult, I compare everything to there because I'm in American groups and stuff and American employers, they don't know you anything. And in Israel, you have your pension, you have your care, if you have a care in each download, you have a care in each download, which the two of those together is 30% of your gross being invested every month. That's huge. So even if you're doing nothing, the Israeli pension scheme, especially if you have a care in each download on top of it and you never pull from either one of them is pretty good. So that is definitely part of our fight, part of our buy savings. He's the pension and care in each download. And then there's what we put on top of it. That also was very intimidating to me in the beginning until I realized we're already part of the way there because we have this state mandated savings that we've already been doing. Only the pension parts mandate, can you turn what is not or just fortunate that we have. So what you guys are doing is taking the kind of mandatory pension contributions in Israel and for anyone who hasn't heard about Karen, he's still mood. I'm actually not sure what the exact, I think the English translation might be a provident fund, but don't quote me on that free tax free, relatively short-term savings vehicle that one can undertake in Israel in addition to your pension contributions, which are now mandatory, whether you're a employee as you guys are talking about, or as an that's my, but you guys are actually going to go beyond that you're taking the the basic you're taking the recommended in Israel and you're doing even more investment. So what are those additional investments that you guys are making? We're doing because of, as because we're American citizens, anything Israel based, if it's not direct stock, direct stocks or direct bonds, anything that's like a fund is very problematic. So we need to invest into US domestic funds as mostly US ETFs, which we're mostly doing following the S&P or the total stock market. So most English speakers in Israel are probably familiar with Facebook groups like, you know, the Living Financially Smarter Group, which is a course has become very famous. So not everyone as they understand in that group has heard of FIRE. So within the FIRE community in Israel, are there like different Facebook groups, or how do you guys interact with other FIREers? FIRE does exist in Israel, but I'm not quite sure how big it is. There are a few notable FIRE people in Israel and we are in several Hebrew speaking FIRE groups and one English and one English speaking FIRE group for Israel. And that one has about 600 people in it. We're also in several Hebrew speaking FIRE groups, like one of them is more real estate based, one of them is more stock market based. And those have tens of thousands of people in them. There's also Hassel Lidit who tends to be more anonymous, although her name has come out on things. Like a lot of these groups exploded during the first lockdown. That's true probably around the whole world. It's all of a sudden you locked down for like a month or two. And all of a sudden you're seeing the stock market went down 30% and then it went up 16% two weeks, three weeks later. And then everyone's saying, wow, what is this? One perception that people have about living in any way financially responsibly is that it's going to be really, really kind of miserable and involve depriving yourself of fun in all respects. So you guys are doing an awful lot of investing and the high cost of living in Israel. So does that not kind of put a real strain on the discretionary expenditure you guys might otherwise have? So there's a difference. As I wrote, as we wrote in our blog, we used to be pretty low income.  And we were really, really strapped and we were eating, we were trying to find all sorts of different ways to eat legumes. And we were really struggling at that time. And we did feel like we were suffering. But now in our journey to to fi or to fire, first of all, this is a choice. And when it's a choice, instead of a necessity, it feels a lot different. We readopted some of the things that we used to do back then, and not others that we didn't like. Like we don't, we stopped, we stopped making rental workers. Like, no, it didn't work. Oh, yeah. In terms of enjoying life or whatever, we do have things that we like. For example, we love travel. We live for travel. That's something that's super important to us. Like, for example, our six and a half year old daughter has been to America four times. And she has been to Europe. And she's been all the way up to Naharia. She's been all the way down to Elat twice. She's been all over Israel. And our COVID baby has been to America twice. And he's been to Beijing. So it's about, it's not, you can't, you can't cut off all enjoyment because then you're never going to get to your goal. You have to say all the things that you enjoy, you have to find ways to do them anyway. And you have to cut back on all the things that you don't care about. And then you focus on the things that you do. So travel is part of our budget. And then when we do travel, we find ways to do it more cheaply. We'll travel on off season. We'll travel low cost airlines. We'll go to cheaper cities. Like right now we're planning on going to Europe and we're going to end up in Bulgaria or Romania. Our kids aren't, they don't care where they're going. So it's about, no, it's about the quality. I have to say, I have to say, I totally, totally support your alternative travel idea point that I made on this YouTube channel recently is about how dramatically the open skies agreement has really re-architected aviation here in Israel. And I think people are still thinking in terms of the kind of classic destinations that are not, and there's a lot of great destinations in Eastern Europe. They're actually on my travel list as well. You mentioned Bulgaria, a few more of them that they're basically, you know, if you can find the right ticket on Skyscanner or all the Israeli websites that exist, you can actually get some, get some really good bargains and it can really bring down the cost of traveling to less than Israel. Somehow we went to Budapest in 2018. So with our, our daughter at that point was the age of our son now. And we're trying to, we basically want to recreate that except that the costs have gone up an hour or another person. But yeah, we want to create, recreate that vacation. And also another thing, for example, we don't have a car. We got rid of our car four and a half years ago. But now we're incredibly fortunate that we have a city car. We have a car sharing car right outside our house. And yeah, it costs more than the bus and it costs more than walking. But it saves a huge amount of time. He takes the bus to work. I walk to work or I walk from home. So in every month or two, we use the city car. We have car seats that are easy to install and we'll go somewhere rather than slipping on the bus. So we do have access to the car. We do have access to the travel. We do go, we like to last summer we went to a water park and we just found really cheap tickets to a water park through our credit card. Like, but that is one of the things that we do also like the water park, it says at the front, you pay it. If you pay at the front, you're paying $139. But on the website says, if you order on the website before you come, you have already 20 shuck of discount. But if you look through your credit card, you could get even half price or even through Groupon or Guru. About us not giving ourselves our enjoyment or that is, we choose what's for us. We don't try to live according to what our friends are trying to tell us. We're doing this. Why aren't you doing that? Like, we're living our lives. We're also not trying to live them in the moment. Like, yes, it's important to live the moment. But yeah, but you also need to really realize you not only you only you can live on what people call the yellow moment that when you only live once, you need to worry about like in 20 years, like, but also you need to enjoy the journey. We need to join now. So you need to do a combination of both. I want to ask you guys, because we're obviously both living in Israel. I did a video about car for that we were talking about before we started recording. And that created a lot of excitement with people thinking that, you know, this new international grocery store is going to drastically change food costs in Israel. I'm just curious whether you guys have any sort of Israel specific hacks, whether it's shopping in a specific supermarket, avoiding waltz, which I find personally to be the biggest financial one of the biggest financial drains in my life. For those not in Israel, it's basically just a takeaway delivery service. So do you guys have any Israel specific hacks you can offer for other people here? No, the stores. Yeah, I mean, we have we have at least two posts on our blog about how to save money grocery shopping. But you have to, what we do is we we know which supermarkets tend to have the best prices on certain things. And then we rotate among the stores and stock up at each store to last until we get there again. We do, we do a major shop once a month, like we don't go every week. We do like once a month. For example, one of the super self, for instance, their imported cheese is 29 shekala kilo. Then when Picoach today is like 44 shekala kilo, I'm not exactly showing the exact price. But like, there is no they're like, if you avoid the name brands, you're going to find good quality and even the same quality. Like someone shared a week ago, two weeks ago, that Shufa sauce tomato paste that they advertise on their name brand thing. It's our name brand is whatever. If you look in the back and where it's made, it's the same while it's in the same place of one of the main name brands that's made in Israel. It's the same thing. It's just we made it especially for you. Osirat does that. Osirat has their own packaging. Instead of having the normal one kilo packaging, they have a kilo and 1.4 kilos. They do the same thing. They just buy from the same product and throw the label on it. Everything in our house is no name brand, not as much as we can. Most of the things is no name brand. But like, like a lot of people will say is, Oh, I'm so used to buying awesome and awesome. We'll tell them and all that. I cannot think about that. It's than that. But like, we do buy name brands, but like, you also need to only when there isn't either they're either the name brands are on sale. Or there is no alternative such as Kaddish cheese. There is no name Kaddish cheese. There is no name. Actually, there is no name milk, but it costs the same. No, there is no more no name milk. Super shall stop buying. Stop producing it this week or last week. Okay. You guys mentioned on your blog that your end goal is to retire in your 50s. So it's out sort of disclosing too much about where you guys are in life. I understand you're somewhere in your 30s. You guys are working office jobs. So you guys have kind of about probably 10 20 years more to retire. So how did you guys decide upon 50 that that decade is being your sort of endpoint for when you want to stop having to work in order to have to work. So to get to the point where you do not need to work, the simple math is saying is you need 300 salaries of your expected expenses. Then then of that is let's say you expect to need 20,000 shekel a month to live on, you need 6 million shekel of a nest egg. And from that you're first to pull 4%. The that if you when you invest in this stock market, the stock market goes up more than 4%. It goes up between 7 to 10% on average. So that 4% should take in consideration of a normal inflation, not what we have today in most of the world of up to 3% inflation. So if you're putting 4% and your portfolio is getting 7%, your portfolio is never going down. It's always gaining. If you have inflation of 5% and the stock market is going down 10%, you have a problem. We chose Tripsy because that's where we can get to. That's where we can get to when we want. That's when we would hit our goal of the number saying of our end goal is saying is we reached our number we can retire. We project that we can reach that number by 50. We may actually reach it a little before 50. We probably will because when we said 50 is being conservative of the stock market not going up. And also, I tend to be friends with all the Sabas at work who are all talking about retirement. And I am terrified of each of them. And being in the workforce at 50, having to look for a job, let's say at 50, I would rather not be desperate to have that work out. I would like to choose. I would like to be able to choose by that point. Working back maybe just a little bit, you guys mentioned also in your blog that it was when you became parents that you kind of, that was when the, was that sort of when you guys decided that fire was what you wanted to do. What exactly is, is the connection between when you guys became parents? It started, we, that's when we first had to take charge of our, of our spending and of our finances. We were always low level investing. Like, I think you were before we met. We always were investing a few hundred shekels a month, even when we were, because we were, when we were newly married, we were each earning a little bit over a minimum wage. And that's fine when you're just two people. And we were going out to dinner and we were doing all sorts of stuff and we were totally fine. And then we came back from our honeymoon, spent about 20% more than we wanted.  And, but having two slightly over minimum wage incomes while it can serve two people fine. It's harder to serve three people and spending all the things that a baby needs and daycare. And suddenly it's really, really tight. So at that point, we started pulling all these strategies to save. We weren't increasing our, our investing at that point, but that's when we realized we have to be frugal. We have to pay attention to how much stuff costs we have to track our expenses. We have to track our expenses. We have to lower our spending. That kind of led us through to today. And now that we're actively trying to lower our expenses in order to invest more, we are going back to a lot of those strategies that we had originally done a little bit. The ones that we enjoy, the ones that we did not prevent ourselves from enjoying stuff that's like, okay, so we need to take an extra, go an extra 10 minutes of a ride, drive a bus ride to a supermarket instead of going across the street. So like, okay, so that's an extra 10 minutes. So if by that we're able to get a better deal and save a few extra hundred check in a month, so be it. But like, I think a big difference also was that we used to eat out all the time before these kids and we used to order in all the time. And then we stopped doing it. Damn, this was before what? What's an exit? Yeah, this was before that. And then we stopped doing that. And then we started doing that again. And then we had an ordering in budget of, I think 500 check all month, which is like pretty normal, I would say, but we pretty much eliminated that because we realized, oh, this money can be better used. And then we started figuring out how to imitate all the things that we were ordering and just make them at home. And another thing that we stopped doing was when our kids were in school on Friday, we would just go to go into town, walk into the mall or walk into Mac stock and like, you could walk into our Mac stock or equivalent and wanting to buy something for 20 check, you could come out with a 300 check a bill. And it's gone within a few hours or maybe not hours, like shortly. So just by saying it's not going out to the sake of going out, by stop doing that, you're also saving because once you actually step out of your house to a shopping area, it's very easy to be tempted to buy something. I called up all our providers and said, lower my rates, cancel my fees, cancel. Like, I don't want to be paying extra money for stuff that I know I could get for free by just changing to someone else. And then all of a sudden that's 300 check and more that I saved and we saved a month. Well, that kind of thing, something we had spoken about is I think you had mentioned, Daniel, running a tight ship like in our preparation for this. And I was saying something when you have a ship, you need to waterproof your ship and make sure you have no leaks. So that's what we have done with our spending is we call up our service providers every 11 months. Finn does that and makes sure that we get the best deals for everything. And we check our credit card bills and we make sure that there's no expenses that we don't have. Which we had one time. Because other people, they don't know where their money is going. And some people, they don't know where their money is going and they are literally, it's leaking. It's like leaking out of their ship. And then they get to the end of the month and they don't know where it went. So that's, we patched. We patched the leaks. I want to say as well, speaking to that point that I think I did something a few months ago, I called up a credit card issuer, which in Israel we tend to have as you guys know, Cal and Israel card, I believe. And by default, they will charge you something like 15 shackles a month just for the privilege of having a credit card on which you're paying interest on every single transaction. I called up the company and I heard that so many times it can be done. And I just said, can you guys waive the card? It's something that I never would have thought of to do, but it was actually a very kind of fluid conversation and it worked. So I'm sure having just, you know, explored this one point, there are lots and lots of different charges that people are paying. And you know, I just want to say, I don't think it's predatory or cheap at all to be looking for better offers. That's why there's free market competition. And in the case of a credit card company paying you to maintain the privilege of charging you, it's a ridiculous charge. And it can be waived if you ask, you don't even really need to ask politely, but that never hurts. No, we could also like, a lot of these places have a WhatsApp, you could just message them on WhatsApp. And 90% like that's how I get all like, every 11 months, every 11 months when I recontact them, I WhatsApp them. I don't wait online for them. I WhatsApp them, wait for them to respond to me because a very essentially it is someone who's responding to me instead of waiting online. I respond within the five minutes chatting with them on texting the fees cancer for another year. You were saying it's not predatory, it's predatory on their end. Yes. Because we've had service providers where we threaten them, we ask them to lower the price and they don't do it. And then we leave and we switch to someone else. And as soon as we leave, they call us offering a lower price. And I always say, if you had this lower price to offer, you should have offered it when I asked you to lower it. Now it's too late. I want to ask you guys again, returning to the Israel specific context. We talked about budgeting and knowing where your money goes.  Are there any you guys recommend or that are Israel specific or do you just use general tools to keep track of your expenses? We use for ourselves, we use Google Sheets, but a very popular one that came popular during the lockdowns was Rise Up. Let me just ask you one more question for someone looking to get going on this fire journey, especially someone based in Israel. What would you advise someone, perhaps like me, who was running a very leaky ship with money going into Walt and Amazon and generally was bad at financial management? This seems like a very, very big goal at fire, but what would you say to someone like in this situation, probably hundreds of thousands of people in Israel like this in Israel who are just looking for some encouragement to get going with this? I went to breakfast with a friend on Friday, and every time we hang out, she asks me about fire and she keeps saying how we're so inspirational and she wants to do it too. And I said by virtue of the fact that you even want to do this and are looking even to start, you're way ahead of so many other people.  So for someone who wants to start, and this is what I tell her all the time, you're already ahead of the game, you already have your pension, if you have a care needs don't move, you already have your care needs don't move. The next thing to do is just to know how much money you're earning and how much money you're spending and know where all of your money goes. And then from there, like, yeah, budget, like if you're, if you're making 18,000 shekel and you're spending 20, you need to make sure you're under the 18 because essentially your ship, your company of your own household, you need to make sure you always have extra money at the end of the month so that your fridge broke tomorrow, you need to replace it, you're not going to be broke or whatever going overdraft cover it.  And what I keep telling them is that like first know where you're at. That's a step into itself. And that's the most important thing you have to know how much money is coming in, how much money is going out, and to where before you change anything, people get so intimidated that they have to change things that they don't even start. Like I also, we also have friends that say, oh, we finally have enough, we can start investing. And there isn't a time to start investing, even if you have 100 shekels that you can invest like start because with the compound interest, you can start anytime it'll go. So Fiona and Finn, you guys started a blog called the finest dream, which is a play on the Zionist dream for financial matters. Tell me just a little bit about the blog and where people can find out more about your authorship on your fire journey. Our blog is at www.finestdream.com. Finest is like Zionist with an F. We're on Facebook and we're on Twitter. We blog about our journey to fire. It's, we do have some personal updates. A lot of stuff is just how tos. We wanted, our blog is both to be accountable for ourselves. And like for example, we posted on the blog that we are planning a vacation to Europe for the fall for under 8,000 shekels. So now we have to have a vacation to your 10000 shekels. You're working hard on that. I'm working hard on that. But it's one, to keep us accountable. And two, to be a resource for people, not everyone who reads our blog is seeking to achieve fire. There are a lot of things there. I would say most of the things there are just about how to save money. Those are actually, or know how to get the money back. Yeah, those are the post that divided tax return. The ones that are about investing. I feel like people, people read those less, they have, they're not as popular, but all of the ones of this is how you can with one phone call, you can save money and you can save money here and save money there and get money back. Those are the popular ones. And that reaches everyone. Like that touches everyone. That's something that can help anyone whether they're, whether they're aiming for a fire or not. Cool. So Fiona and Finn, thank you guys so much for doing this YouTube interview. I hope for other folks out there who are looking to do fire that this will be of interest. And of course, there is finestream.com. You guys can follow their journey. And there's also living, I have to say a shout out to, I believe it's called living frugally in Israel. Do I have the group name right? It's run by someone outside my called Adara and she is big into tips for frugal Israel. So these are Facebook groups that people should definitely check out if you're on this journey to cut down on your expenditure and really find other people who are doing it. Cause I think a big part of budgeting is not feeling ashamed about it and knowing there are other people out there who have similar objectives and just sharing tips and tricks. So thank you guys so much for coming on this little YouTube channel and good luck with the blog. And thanks for sharing your wisdom with people. Thank you. Thank you so much, Daniel.