Okay, can you hear me? Okay, so welcome back to second day of Academy I hope you had a wonderful evening yesterday and could enjoy some great food and We start the second day with a keynote from Leonardo Favario who is a Government official from the Italian presidency and he will speak to us about developers, italia and the work that they've been doing to bring more open source at the government Thank you. Thank you very well. Yes. No, maybe. Yeah, cool. All right. Welcome everyone In the last couple of days, I was thinking about how to communicate in this short amount of time whatever we have been doing in the past, let's say three years and I wanted to focus mainly on these three Points, let's say three topics community legal framework and catalog now. I know that we We're developers, so we don't speak legally so we don't want I don't want to bore you with too much About the central legal framework, so I will be very very quick about that But I'd like to talk to you about that since I think that Italy it's quite advanced in this sense First and foremost, who are we and what are we doing? I Like and we like to define us as a startup in the government Okay, so we are a bunch of folks like 30 to 35 people Let's say focus and we have a background in different fields from software architecture software development to free and open source software and In we say that we are building the operating system of the country What does it mean? Government the governments in general are complex machines But in order to digitally transform a country We need to have some solid foundations So we need to have the digital infrastructure in place before thinking about how to Build layers on top. So this is exactly what we are focusing on we call them the enabling platforms and For example, those are like the national resident Register they are like the digital identity. They are the digital payments and of course When we started to think about how to implement these Ideas and put them in actions We said, alright, we don't just need technology We need to involve the citizens as much as possible and that's exactly why we built Communities around them. We have a community called designers italia, which is focusing on Writing and developing guidelines for templates for all the public services. We have developers italia And that's the focus of my talk, which is focusing on how to Get people involved. So how to get developers involved how to get citizens Involved give feedback and open issues and so on and now to of course get public administrators First of all understand what we're doing and then contribute. So Let's start with the first topic which is which I like to call community. Oh developers italia is the community of public service developers and I like to say that we're like 3000 developers even if we are not exactly all developers. We like to treat everyone in the same way so What's the particular point I would say the one of the most fundamental one is that Everything the digital digital team and everything we are pushing the public administration to develop is 100% free and open source and we'll see how the legal framework is helping us in in order to accomplish these this target, let's say so I Know and we all know that numbers are not a real indicator of how communities are Exactly performing and now and we heard really good speeches yesterday. However, just to give you a quick Look see of the situation. We have 250 open source repositories More nearly three thousand users in in our chat channels We then they exchange like 35,000 messages last month. It was vacation months. So in Italy So you you may think that this is not a huge peak. However, something is happening. It's in an interaction among these players is happening on our channels and I like also to focus on The hackathon that in October 2017 was run by our team and I think That these was our way to get people to know what we were doing. Okay, so putting hide under developers in 26 cities also San Francisco was connected live On the same weekend in order to develop and work and understand how public services had had to be You know designed and developed and and tested was a great opportunity for us to Understand what people wanted what citizen wanted what public administration or administrators wanted involved also a little small to medium enterprises and then You know grow the overall community. So you may say, okay, you're talking about communities But what are you providing those folks? What what is the objective of your community? And what are you talking about? Okay?  The first one is a platforms catalogue, let's say so I was Mentioning before the the work of the team that is Working on the enabling platforms So as I told before digital identity digital payments and so on but we said, okay, we are developers So we kind of know what we need. Okay, so we don't just need some sort of blog posts and You know rough documentation. We need something more. We need technical rules. We need To have access to a whole set of SDKs written in different languages for different frameworks We need also maybe graphic resources. Okay, so that if we need to implement a web application using some sort of Interfaces has to be a template Sort of standard in order to Let the citizen have the best experience possible and also we need to test Okay, so as you can see, I quickly showed you what the digital Identity page on our web portal as so it all it has all these sort of objects and it allows Developers to quickly access it. This is the first part and then the second part in our developer portal. We are Stressing is the API selection. So of course If we want to interact with public services with some sort of well application somewhere We need to have API's in order also first of all to test and then to understand if the code we're writing is actually Performing the the operation we want. So How do we find API's in Italy is in Italy? Sorry, it's it's not so straightforward So we said, okay, let's prepare a web page where we show a selection of all the rest API's and then we help public administrators to write Open API 3 specs and and we help them write documentation in order to have again standardized way to interact with them Okay, so what are we providing to all the community? We have a Get up account where we are storing as you can see most of our of our code or where people can actually Become maintainers since we want to involve the community So if someone is doing a great job in some private citizen is some freelancer also if Small-medium internet enterprise is doing a great job on a piece of software then it's okay They can become a maintainer and we are Stressing this we want to involve as much as possible people to get connected to the code All right code without documentation is quite Hard to grasp is quite it's not so straightforward to understand so One of the first things that the team decided to do was to implement a documentation platform So this is Docs Italia and is our response to that is based on read the docs with a template Made in a standard in a standardized way using the Designers guidelines and then at some point we said okay, this is cool But let let me think about it. We're just storing documentation Why don't we just try to experiment something new and put also loads on top of this platform If you think about it a low is something or you know technical Document Derived from a low. It's nothing else than a document that evolves over time So we're using to use get every day to use version control to get diff on some piece of code Why don't we just try to do it on the lows as well? Okay on our legislation? So we started Drafting and putting as much information as we could on top of this platform And right now citizens can easily just browse The load they're looking for and see the very front version see who made a modification where and How it did change and so on and on and we're using this platform stressing its use also for When when a low is getting it's in the process of getting published so we want to Involve citizens into the decision so people can comment on this platform. They can You know open Merge or pull requests they can do all sort of things that we are used to do in software development, but Maybe and it can be of course applicable also in the in the field of a Simple text as a low is but it has never been done before Of course other tools that we are providing to our community are Meeting points so and now seeing Kuwait is using a forum this based on discourse and It's incredible how? People are actually appreciating it Private citizens are appreciating this platform and they are not only discussing about our Platforms our software the ones that we are doing at developers Italia at the digital transformation team But they're talking about every kind of service that is available to private citizens and this is something again, maybe it's quite trivial for us because we are all used to Bulletins and in forums and in chat, but it's something that is quite Let's say revolutionary in a government and people are using it as well And then of course we are we have a black channel, but we are also evaluating other possibilities For letting people Communicate in real time and in a chat fashion. Okay, so this is all the the background Let's say what developer Italia was up until a few months ago And then something started to change something started to improve and then I want to ease Again without boring you too much Introduce you to the new legislation framework and in the in Italy. So, okay Italy has an interesting set of lows for what regards digital administration and they are all Grouped inside what it's called the digital administration code and that's that's Italian low and it's interesting because two articles in this code article 68 and 69 are totally in Direction of free and open-source software why well because those two articles say they a public administration in order to in the phase in acquisition phase when they need to acquire a new software and they have to go Free and open source by default. Okay, so the first pick has to be free and open source And just if they cannot find As a free and open-source solution developed by other public administration or developed by third parties like we could be private citizens then they can you know, we will see how they can Sign an analysis where they state that there was nothing provided and then they can start developing their own Code if they develop their own code from scratch then okay that code has to be 100% free and open source okay, so it has to have an free and open-source license has to be published on some sort of code versioning system and It has to be available for the old other citizens. So this law was Already had already been crafted when the digital transformation team came to be however It was hard to interpret it. So it was hard to really understand how Those passages were had to be done. So a normal public administration didn't know exactly how to publish a piece of code how to interact with other administration in order to get a Piece of code and and get it to work So that's why the team in the past three years worked on these new guidelines and the name guidelines looks like yet Another piece of document however right now they are low. So they are mandatory by law and these guidelines I believe are a really good opportunity for a public administrator to understand how these process works so these are practical guidelines and that Tell everything from how to start a project in an open fashion by default how to manage how to maintain a repository how to You know deal with merge or pull requests to upstream from other Contributors and so on and on and the cool stuff. I believe it's that and those these guidelines contains Some technical attachments we call it that way that you can basically copy and paste them inside a Contract you're making to a third-party developer so that even if the developer doesn't know how to do that Well, it's the public administration in the contract itself. It's Specifying what the developer has to do in order to go open by default. Okay, so this is something I believe quite revolutionary because it's again. It's basically a mandatory by law that The public administration has to go open by this by default. So again as I told you before This guideline tell a PA to make a comparative assessment if you don't find a Free and open source software in our catalog and we'll see what the catalog is Then you have to sign a piece of paper where you say, okay, this software doesn't exist I have to develop it but then when developing it I have to go open by default Yes, that's it, but just to clarify two quick example development phase And let's say reuse phase. Let's call it that way. So Let's start in this a little Blue ellipse over here, so we have public administration a that for some reason had made the comparative assessment and decides that there's no Free and open source software available and it has to develop a new one. So what I what it means Okay, PA a starting from here drafts the contract and Commissions the development to the developer in this contract it's written again Taking from some of the attachment of the guidelines and put it in the contract it's written that That piece of software whenever it's done The ownership of that piece of software app has to be assigned to the PA Okay, so the PA Commissions the development of software that software whenever it's finished the the ownership of that software goes back to the PA And then at that point the PA can do basically two things one is Publish that code it by itself or the second one is ask the developer to publish it usually the what happens is that you put it in the contract that one of the Last thing to do is to ensure that that a code is being Published on top of some code public code hosting platform. Okay, and then what happens? Well Automatically and we'll see how these code is being indexed into our developer Stalia catalog so that our other public administration can directly draw from it Okay, and see a And make use of it take advantage of it. Okay, so that was development phase Let's see the reuse phase again. We'll start from public administration be this time. Okay, I'm down here So public administration be first thing is The public administration has to do is to search for that software Search for any kind of software on top of the our platform on top of our catalog if there is a hit Let's say what happens. Okay, public administration be tests it The public administration has to see if that software is really fitting their requirements and their needs Probably and this is happening many times. What happens is that? Probably the administration be needs some customization needs to have some modification and so on so again Public administration be a points a developer to do those and those customization The ownership of those customization goes back to the public administration and then again as we saw before that code develop goes Goes directly on top of a code hosting platform is re-indexed by our Catalog is shown again so that the an imaginary public administration C could see the first Imago software and then also the modifications. Okay, so that it's more Immediate and transparent way of handling public administration code. Okay, so we saw community the community part We saw these short Let's say resume of the legal framework and now we see where this information is actually stored where it is indexed and I mentioned before the catalog the developers Italia platform What is the catalog? What are we talking about when when we are dealing with the catalog? so I told before Developers Italia was a developer portal it had platforms it had API's Right now starting in June. We also have another section and if you browse aside the the side Which is also translated in English you can easily see it and this new section is called Software okay, it's called software catalog So again one of the questions I was asked like I don't know Thons and like thousands of times when I was trying to Talk with public administrators like PA managers like people who you know managers who take decisions and who? actually decide if a Software has to be developed from scratch or as to You know reused in some way one of the first question they make me they made me was where do I find those information? Where do I find that piece of software and it again thinking in a? Developer fashion. It's kind of trivial. So what do we do? We just browse some sort of? Website we query some Search engine we asked some friends. We just asked the community and in a way or other we are able to more or less understand which are The softwares that may fit our needs or which are a set of libraries that we could use okay But this is not so straightforward for example when dealing with public administration So we decided that we had to build a catalog and an actual this catalog is Mandate a mandatory by law right now and the laws I was was telling you before and what this catalog is is basically Again a container of all these Information regarding a software so you can see over here. It's quite light, but Every every software has Dedicated page you can See the information the page information regardless. I don't know features or the roadmap or Of course screenshots of or you can also see the tree of forks Okay, so that you can understand What which is the original fork that originated the other ones or if there's a fork that has been maintained more than another one You can see who are the maintainers okay, which is quite quite important and if there is a contract right now So for example again think about the example before so if public administration a was is right now paying a Contractor in order to maintain the software then public administration B Can't take advantage of that and doesn't have to pay another time to maintain the same piece of software Or maybe they can you know join forces and Let make that software become a little bit more Featureful or you know better maintained and and tested and then there and then there we also inserted a sort of index we call it Vitality index which is a combination. There's an algorithm that is basically Taking into consideration all the activity all the activities that are going on onto a certain Repository and it's showing some sort of vitality in order to help the administrators. Of course the catalog has is indexed we have a recommendation system in order to you know help in the in the search and phase we have a Cloud of tags and so on and you can see over here that in the first I would say Month and a month and a half. Let's say 60 days two months We already collected like 42 45 solutions So and this has been even without us even without the T digital team going there and asking For contributions the public administrations just reading the guidelines reading the laws Understood that this is mandatory. So right now from now on they have to go open by default so what they did they created if they didn't have one a and an organization on top of a code hosting platform and they Inserted all the information on top of that in order to be registered in our Catalog and the indexed you may ask, okay, but how do you get all this data? How do you get information regarding? I don't know where the okay where the Who is maintaining the software which platforms is the software made for? Who is using the software? Okay, which are the public administration using the software? So that's how we crafted and why we crafted a specification. Let's say a metadata specification called public code the YML and in which is sort of You may say, okay, there are a lot of Specification standards over there. However, there's not a real one for what concerns public administration so this standard is exactly targeting public administration software we use and We have been crafting it in a way so that both developers and manager so, you know Decision makers can actually take advantage of this code. Of course, it's YML So it's easy to write easy to read. However, in order to further help our Administration we created an editor, which is basically, you know Which is what you get basically? Forms that you you can You can feel and then what what is the output of this editor? You're creating that public code the YML file you're downloading it And the only thing you have to do in order to be indexed in our catalog is to put that public code the YML file In the root of your repository. Okay, so this is actually the actions that the Public administration did they created a public code they crafted one exactly with the specification of their Software they downloaded it. They put it in on the on the route in the route of the repository that they owned and that every night automatically our crawler crawls all the The public code hosting or the on-premises that you're You're installing for yourself on your own organization and automatically extracts information from this public code YML file and populates your web page and indexes that page into all the Our catalog so, you know, it's it's really straightforward. It's really trivial Okay, I've been talking just about public administration. Maybe a little bit boring. However, I would like to Again, I think this is a clear call to action right now since Public administrations right now with this new legislation are doing anything Anything let's say fantastic or extraordinary. They're just you know Following whatever we are used to do when developing free and open-source software just opening a repo Using free and open source license and then you know continuing to develop and the development in the open So that's why in the catalog Apart from the public administration reuse part. There's also another part that we call third party Open-source software and in that part it's basically That part is basically open to anyone. So any one of you are developing free and open-source software or You know if you find also a piece of software that may be of interest of a public administration Well, you can create a public code YML file put it in that repo with some easy pool of merge request and That's how immediately The night after the the crawler will crawl that information and will publish that software on top of the cattle So we see how if we make this catalog Alive we make it as active as possible. We publish as many information as possible And so this means as many software as possible This means that public administrations when they have to Acquire new software the first thing and this is mandatory by law that they have to do is to go on that catalog To check if that software is already there and the loam and dates that if that information that software is there Then they have to pick it Okay, so I believe this is what I call a promotion Okay, so use the catalog as a showcase for your software in order to let public administration Know that your software is there your software is awesome and your software is actually able to solve their problems and if it's not well, they can take it and Maybe you know getting contact with you and get a contract with you in order to Further develop it and reach the status Did they want it to be so? Okay, of course, this is just a little step you may say where is this revolution, right? So This is just a little step, but I believe it's just I don't know a giant leap forward for public administrations because It's it has been hard for them and for governments to find exactly the software that we're looking for and That has been sort of a scabotage in order to develop software from scratch or you know gets a software maybe proprietary software with Incredible Licenses just because they were not able to find one so the legislation is on our side right now We have the catalog we have the instruments and the tools in order to make the catalog alive and to populate it and It this is a way so that we have to Let public administration understand that these keys has to be the default easy It's right now mandated by law, but it will eventually become the default Of course, this is a little step. We don't want just them to publish the software when it's released. We are In this outreach phase the digital transformation team is telling everyone how to handle a software and be Software development and be open by design. Okay, so from the very first step you have to go open Involve the community listen to the feedback of your citizens Which are actually the users of your software and in this way make it as much interoperable as possible. Thank you any questions Hey, thanks for the presentations. I and I have two small two Questions number one is that are there any security audit conducted by and by and by independent parties on the open source Code and number two is that are there any kind of bug bounty programs for the Open-source course. All right, should we pick out the questions or yeah, maybe I can yeah, thank you for your question very interesting one Yes, so I would say right now the code is out there So what we are telling it public administration is like a watch out. You don't have to just download that Rapal clone the repo and just docker compose out. Okay You in the first phase what you need to do is to probably appoint or contract a Developer or a as you said some auditors That will carry on and you know do some auditing process on top of that piece of software so that You have to understand it also from a security perspective Someone review that code, you know someone actually Tested that code someone did some sass there's that you know some sort of analysis on that code So that's exactly what we're telling the public institution is not exactly self-service Okay, so okay the code is there, but it's also your repositories are there Okay, so but however when we talk to public instruction, we say okay. That's there, but please run a a Security analysis on top of that. However, what we are implementing right now is exactly in this direction So we would like to give public administrations that want to pick or in the acquisition phase Let's say an indication so running From our side on the digital transformation team Some security analysis I don't know also container Testing and so on We want to give them an overview or what's the state of the the security of that of that software Regarding bug bounty programs Okay, we are aware of like the European Union one like the Fossa project and It's we are in the process of defining how to do this It's exactly what we would like to do. I think it's personally. I think it's a it's a good Approach, however, we need to define out to out to go in this direction And I have a question. Yep. Thank you very much for your presentation I've noticed that you have documentation both in English and in Italian So the first question is what is your working language and second question is who writes your documentation? Okay, cool Thank you Yes, good question. So we try to go English by default in since For a lot of many different reasons. I mean also because when when you know dealing with developers, we all kind of know English and So that is not a real, you know obstacle however Since we're Italian government we have to of course provide also Italian documentation So we try to have both for most of the problem Regarding who writes the documentation we have a team of tech writers with which is Quite active and they have a lot of interaction with the developers So yes where we can we use tech writers in order to write a commutation especially for what do I told you? There are the enabling platforms where you know Good documentation really is needed. So we try to Make use of their knowledge in writing documentation as much as possible for those where we cannot we try to you know Follow templates so the designers team made Documentation documentation guidelines. I don't even know the exact name. However, it's a guidelines on how to To write proper documentation and we are following it in or our our Projects and the fact is that we are telling public administrators to use it as well Okay, so it's a it's a cycle and it looks like it's working right now Thank you Yep, so what about code quality as in What kind of measures are we're gonna be put in place to guarantee a certain amount of quality? I work in the sector and I can give an example so soft array doesn't exist yet a procurement will be created and Big company will come by bid the lowest. They'll get the job Make you know write as much as necessary to actually you know past quality tech and not quite that sorry Functional tests. Yep, and you know ship whatever a mess that is then functionality be needs to be done Another procurement another big company show a bit slowest monkey patch it until it works And that goes back in there. Yeah, good question of course, there are a limited amount of things that you can do in this way, but if you sort of Define which are some sort of thresholds in the contract itself then you know people start to work in different fashion So And that's the direction where the guidelines are went so as I told before the guidelines have these attachments that can be copy pasted into a contract and Most of the attachments are in exactly trying to solve this problem So they're asking for for example when you you just don't push the master, right? Or you just try to use code review process you try to Involve as many other people as possible, but you know what we saw that in many occasions These happened in the past where people were used to develop in a closed fashion So they are they had their own SVN or get somewhere and so they said, okay Who cares I just push there and then whenever it's finished. I'll I'll just ship my code when working in the open This is slowly changing So we are for example Helping public administrations to understand maybe also how to I don't know run pre hooks for Before pushing or to check whether you're storing You know past phrases or certificates or any kind of Sensible information into the into the repository. We're trying to help in order to avoid it So all of these I'm telling you it's already inside the guidelines So it will be attached to the contract to the contracts that you are giving your Your developer so, you know when it's a contract. It's it's more Let's say It's hard to to to avoid it and if you do avoid that then There may be consequences, of course So it we are trying to go exactly in that direction in order to avoid whatever we saw up until now Happening every day in order to avoid it seen in the future as well So basically the contractors they do the lowest possible and whatever mess and then ship that but nobody sees it if All those code that is developed Is in the open it by default starts to make it better even with no actions taken exactly Yeah, yeah, I feel the same and that's exactly the last slide right so that's why we're pushing Problem administrators to tell their developers and their contractors to go open by default Okay, so from the very first moment and not just push as a last the last commit and push it in the open Yes, if I also may add a comment in the procurement process You can see it's actually a very good advantage to remain maintainer of the software you have created So there is a good incentive for companies to do the right thing because it's going to be less expensive also for them In the long run and they're able to get many more contracts Leonardo have you ever thought about building up something like Trust pilot for citizen with speed so you know who is going to give a feedback and so maybe the One up public administration choose a software and the citizen is happy Maybe you collect the feedback. So maybe the software is good as what service. I don't know how exactly it's just an idea I got a question. I can say that in some project of the Italian digital transformation team. This is happening so we have we have a way to get direct feedback from Let's say beta testers or let's say early-stage users and However, we are thinking about how to implement it and scale it also for other for other projects like you said the digital identity is one candidate and Yes, we think that again in This is not our software. This has to be as transparent as possible. It's a Public software is for citizens. They they are the users So we have to collect feedback as much as possible in order to iterate over that and and release and ship better code Okay, I have two questions for you. Yeah first of all When did it all start that and second Have you experienced any? resistance from the big IT companies lobby Okay, cool question. Thanks Easy one Okay Okay, so that's the curious thing. So the The digital administration code has been out for quite a while so The new part is these new guidelines which again, they're called guidelines but formally they are and they are low they're mandatory and they have been I mean the team started to draft those guidelines in 2016 2017 and they have been published on May this year in 2019. So this is really fresh. This is new Regarding the second question as a team We we are in contact with a lot of providers with a lot of again small to medium enterprises but also big enterprises and We I think I think We were more afraid of you know of having to deal with situation than what really is happening in reality it's like It looks like people are sort of understanding that this is a low so they cannot really escape it so easily and so they are Re-engineering or rearranging their The development flow in order to comply with the law. So I would say yes, that was the scary part of course and But we have to know and we know the resistance will happen every day. However, we we already put it in place Counter-measurement counter-measures. So we know how to handle with this situation. We know how to reply We know how which you know which document to point or which allow to refer to even if you know, it's It's legal ease. So For developers, it's quite hard to do this work. However, we are For the moment. We are handling situation quite well. So I'll be happy to report you back in a year and hopefully Everything will be open Yeah, I have two questions. Yeah, the first one is you said you had put the laws now on the git as well Have you had any interest from lawmakers to actually use git to help them write laws and secondly, is there or could there be any cooperation with other countries in Europe for the public administration software Not quite sure I got the second one. Oh Say they have IT systems in Germany or Norway. Can you share the same software and cooperate on it? Well, okay You me yeah first question is Yes, the answer is yes first of all, of course, we need to involve a team of tech writers in order to Help low makers Publish it. I know it's just MD or you know markdown or RST It's not so complicated. However, it's you know, you're changing the way they're trying to do their Yeah, exactly. So it's it's not so straightforward. So that's why we basically use this the guidelines we wrote and also Human interfaces so people actually tech writers in order to help this transition to happen But this is really cool. I think it's it's a way to really see the changes and and many new Documents menu lows are gone are doxy tally by default. Okay, so they're already Written in that way in that format and using that technology by default and the second one It's an interesting question Since I would say definitely yes since at the end of the at the end of the previous all of the discussion the software is Nothing else than it any kind of repository with an open source license So the the contract itself between a public an Italian public administration and a German one is just a license So if you're using you know any NGPL license or any license you want that is in the OSI list then Why not right and this is exactly the direction where we're going. So this is not an Italian You know a little way of handling reuse and it has to be just Italian. It's Open source, so it's free and open source. It's just that's of course, which is the way to use it and Probably can be our catalog since our cattle is both in Italian and English That's also a way to You know probably spread it around and we are in in contact with different Governments in also. Yeah, well mostly in the European Union But also let's say outside in order to understand how to you know Work on this specification and the public that way I'm a specification. Sorry for that. There you go and Develop it further and then use the cattle. Why not? It's already there Of course, it's free as an open source if they want you can implement their own But if they want to use ours, that's cool That's it Okay, thank you if anyone has any queries, please ask Leonardo in person Yeah, I'll be here on the day. Yeah, okay. Thank you Leonardo for that amazing talk


From San Francisco, extracting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE, covering Nimble Storage, the power of predictive analytics. Now your host, Jeff Frick and Stu Miniman. Welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We are live in downtown San Francisco at the Nimble Storage Predictive Flash launch event. There's a lot of people here, a couple hundred people, press from all over the world. That's all good and dandy, but what we love to do when we go out to events is talk to customers and practitioners, doers as we like to say, they're actually putting this technology to work that are actually solving real problems in and don't do tech as a day jobs, really supports what they do in their core business. So really excited to have Will Alexander, VP Information Systems from Racetrack Petroleum, welcome. Thank you, thank you for having me. So for the folks that don't know Racetrack, give us a quick overview of what's the company. Yeah, sure, so we are a fuel and convenience retailer located in the Southeast. We have about 700 locations. We've been around for a little over 80 years, third generation privately held company, second largest private company in Georgia, one of the top 50 largest private companies in the United States. And we operate on high volumes and thin margins. So Will, high volume, low margins, what's the role of IT in the business? So we have to keep the business going, we have to be an enabler. We're in a commodity business. So, and again, high volume, so any little advantage that we can give them of, when we talk about what a penny to a gallon of gas does, when you talk about the volumes that we do, it can have a huge impact. So giving them timely data and accurate data so they can make better decisions, that's what it's all about for us. So has that evolved over time? I mean, we hear a lot of times where the classic IT where I keep the lights on and now everybody's got a seat at the table. Is it, has it evolved? Have you always had that seat at the table or has kind of your voice or your impact, your influence direction kind of changed? I'd like to think that we've always had that seat at the table. But yes, over time, the business has really come to acknowledge that they need us at the table. So they're welcoming us. It's not us trying to break down the door. It's them saying, hey, we need you. If we're going to be successful, you've got to be successful. So can you sketch out for a little of us, what's the size of your IT organization? How many sites you manage, things like that? Yeah, so again, we have about 700 locations. Our IT staff is just over 100 people and that includes all the application teams, developers, all the infrastructure teams, all the support teams, tech support, store system support, as well as IT security. So we've, I tell you that we've doubled in the last five years. So, and that's a testament to the company growing as well as the company understanding that, hey, IT has to play a predominant role if we're going to be successful. All right, so growth, that's great to hear, because most companies you talk to, headcounts, you're lucky if it's flat, if not negative on there. Talk a little bit about the role of infrastructure, what let you to nimble. Sure, sure, so security is important to everybody. I mean, that's a given. Retailers in general, very important. And we had the opportunity to obtain a security application that was really complimented our existing security portfolio. And as we were talking to the vendor, they said, hey, here's the specs on what you need to run our application on. And we looked at it and we were like, yeah, okay, we can't do that. But it was so important to us that we said, you know what, let's take this as an opportunity to go upgrade our infrastructure. Was it the size, the speed, what were some of the factors where you know, it's taking you to the IOPS? We couldn't handle the IOPS. And I will tell you that if you talk to a very large company or some kind of hosting provider, the IOPS, they may not would have blinked an eye at, but for a shop our size, it was a definite shift in a step up and we couldn't support it. But we said, this security application was so important to us. Let's go obtain some better infrastructure. And that worked great. We have an in-house application that we wrote that helps us optimize the bulk purchase of fuel and then the delivery of that fuel to our stores. And it was having some performance issues. So we put that on the nimble and cleared it up. And once all the other application teams and developers heard about that, they were demanding that their stuff run on nimble. So I think we made our first nimble purchase about 18 months ago. And then our second nimble purchase like five months after. Just because it really caught fire. And has it changed the attitude of your application? Obviously it did and that they wanted their stuff to run on the Cadillac, as we used to say. I guess we don't say as much anymore, still like Cadillacs. But in terms of having that capacity, having that operational horsepower, has it changed their way they come to work every day and the way they think about developing apps, new apps? Well, it really is cut down on the finger pointing. So when there's a bottleneck, it's one less finger to point. And so that's been helpful. I tell you another thing that will probably lead us to adopting more and more as we really push our developers towards continuous improvement in DevOps. And they say, fine, that's great. But a trade-off is, hey, we want every environment to be identical to production, to cut down on variability. So we have tests, dev, UAT environments, running in the nimble environment, just to again, cut down on variability and make it easier for us to get to production. One of the things we've heard from users is, if performance is a challenge and I have to optimize and I need to tier, that takes a lot of work and the newer generations of solutions, they really just take performance off the table. It's really been your experience. Yes, exactly. Said better than I. Again, it's one less thing to point a finger at if there's a bottleneck. So you not only came to this event, you were up on stage. Can you talk a little bit about how InfoSight plays into your environment and the story of predictive analytics? How much does that resonate with you? Definitely, so we certainly look at the CAPEX when we buy our infrastructure or buy anything. But I can kind of rest assured that, hey, our requirements are growing. So maybe I can spend a little more CAPEX because I know I'll grow into it. But what I can afford is to be wasteful on the OPEX. I can't afford to add additional headcount for every new piece of technology that I bring in to our environment. So, you know, I've got to have something that works that's easy to maintain. That I can, we're a 24 seven business. We don't, you know, our stores don't close for the evening. So we have very small maintenance windows. So I've got to be able to perform maintenance related activities, you know, during any time of the day without degrading service. And this is, Nimble has provided that to us. I, one of our engineers talked about how we re-indexed one of our larger SQL databases midday. And that was something that previously prior to Nimble, we would have done crossing our fingers at, you know, two in the morning on a weekend. And so it's just brought a lot of efficiency to our team. Yeah, I guess some companies are worried about automation. It's, you know, if I have processes, I know I can handle it. The Nimble solution, one of their taglines is, you know, automating the intelligence of the system. Yes.  You know, again, it's the ease of use for us. We just can't afford to carry 20 senior engineers on our staff. That's not feasible for us. So anything that we can automate, feel good about and no predict, really predict the results. And going back to InfoSight, being able to quickly see maybe a potential bottleneck. Cause once the bottleneck happens, it's too late. You need to see it, you know, way down the road before it actually hits. And that's that visibility that InfoSight gives us really brings a lot of value. It keeps us from getting ourselves in trouble. So last word to bring it back full circle. Sure. Your kind of motivation was this security application. Yeah. Was it a success? Was it a good early win? Yes. Did it work out as you anticipated? It was. It was very good. Security has, when you say security to the board or anybody, they say, okay, you're right. We got to do it. And so that was maybe easy for us playing the security card. Although it was a legit play. Right, right. But it proved to be so much more valuable than just helping us with this one security application. And as I say, had you not had that security app, we're, was there another thing coming? Do you think that to be the catalyst? Yeah, this application that we were starting to see some performance issues with, probably would have driven a change. It let us probably make that change sooner to where the business wasn't affected. So it proved to be a very ideal time and very advantageous for us. Timing is everything. Yes. Well, Alexander, thanks for stopping by. Thank you. We really appreciate your insight. We love hearing from customers. I enjoyed it. Absolutely. Thank you and the safe travels home. Thank you. Stu Miniman, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE. We are live at the Nimble Storage Predictive Flash launch event in downtown San Francisco. We'll be back with our next guest after this short break. Thanks for watching.


We went to a sale yard before a live auction. They're selling live animals there. I'm saying that it's the slave trade. How are you bud? Cool. What's your name mate? Modern day slavery. Modern day slavery? Yeah, yeah. Because you're putting animals in transport and selling them all over Europe. Yeah.  I don't mind them selling and buying them. Okay. Providing them, treating them respectfully. So they should ride them there and take them home and walk them here and there with respect. Do you think you can treat animal as a product and also treat them with respect at the same time? No. Okay. No, they're not a product. Yeah. They're a species. Yeah. It's like me. They're considered property. I know they are. Yeah. But then human beings are considered property as well. Really? Yeah, of course. So slavery still exists in the human context? I just got to Canary City Council to sign a modern day slavery charter. Do you feel like we're in the UK, we're slaves as well? Absolutely. Yeah. On the same level as cows, pigs, lambs? No, no, that's even worse. Okay. Yeah. We treat them with disrespect and no respect to them. So we have laws protecting our rights and liberty and our life? I'm not quite sure. We have laws protecting our rights, but animals need more. Do we have laws protecting us from murder and slavery? Supposedly, but not. We don't? I don't think so.  No. I get that. Yeah. Okay, I know where you're going with that. Let's say if someone enslaved you and then... I agree with that. Yeah. So we've got laws protecting our liberty, yeah? And animals have. And we should make the laws for it. Yeah. So how do you think we're going to do that if the public is demanding these animals go to slaughterhouses and be enslaved? Oh, it needs to change the way people think. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm not saying everyone should be like me a vegetarian, but I would say that more people should consider how they eat. Oh, so you don't eat animals yourself? I don't know. Okay, interesting. Because when we're at the... I was just at the live auction inside, and they had a lot of calves there, a lot of bobby calves from the dairy industry. I don't agree with that. Yeah. So dairy cows, they all get slaughtered and sold off. They have a very prolonged and awful life. Yeah. Because they just keep on milking, milking, breeding calves, then the calves are taken away from you. And it's a contraintuation just for human reason. Yeah. So it's all vast amounts of cheese, milk and milk. So would you consider the dairy industry the slave trade as well? Hey, it's all part of it. So it's exploitation, yeah? Absolutely. Yeah. I appreciate your perspective on that. Not many people see it that way. That's fine. Okay. Thanks, brother. Pinky. I've got a pinky punch. Maybe he'll have a chat. You want to have a chat, mate? Do you want to have a chat? Have a chat. That's okay. Don't be afraid, though. It's just an opinion. Yeah. It's just an opinion, mate. What do you think about the statement on the front? I'm asking people to prove me wrong.  Look, I'm 53 years old. I hope I do. Do you know? Yeah, well, it's where they sell off live animals to be slaughtered. Oh, right. I was about to ask you that's my next question. What kind of live auction is she talking about? Yeah. Sheep and lambs, pigs, chickens. Yeah. It's a vegetarian issue. So, you know, obviously, you know, if you've got what? You've got a whole lot. You've got coached in ways of where the animals are dealt with. Not the best. You know, I do think that if an animal is going to be put down, it should be probably what? Most humane. So, if they're suffering or in pain, it would be a moral to take their life from them. So, euthanasia of when it's in their best interest. You can have people arguing this way and that way about this issue. And of course, people have been arguing about this thing. Well, let's talk about the actual statement on the sign. Do you agree or disagree that live auctioning of animals is the slave trade? It doesn't say animals for starters. It should say to make it more clear. So, when I saw live auctions of a slave trade prove me wrong, I would have said, no, live auctions are for like objects, like plates, dishes, that type of thing. So, in that case, no, that's not wrong at all. I had this set up at the front of a live auction for stock, for animals. Yeah. We moved it here because there wasn't as many people to talk to. They didn't want to talk about it. Yeah, yeah. So, in the animal context, do you think using animals as property and selling them off is the slave trade? Well, it depends how you define slave. If you say slave. In the definition of the word? Well, in the definition of the word is, my understanding is someone who works for someone and is made to do it. You know, going back to the ancient times, Egyptians, that type of thing, and mainly humans instead of animals. Okay. You don't think animals can't be victims of slavery? Good question. I think, you know, you've got RSPCA, the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. So, if an animal is overworked, not fed, this type of thing, not given time to rest, that's cruelty to animals. I was about to say inhumane, but inhumane means what? Dealing with humans, right? Yeah, I'm just talking about slavery. Yeah. Like treating someone as a product, as property, without liberty, without rights to life. Yeah.  True. You could twist it whichever way you want. You could turn it, you know, you could argue it this way, that way. You could go into little alleys about it this way. I'm just not talking about high welfare. Yeah. I'm talking about whether someone has the right to their own bodily integrity, their own liberty, the right to their own life, not to be exploited and killed. Well, humans definitely do, by, you know, by the human rights. But applying it to animals, like, sort of a new, would be sort of a new thing. Yeah. I think we can apply it to animals for the same reasons we apply it to humans. Sentience, they want to live, they want to, they desire freedom to be with their families. Yeah.  Of course, it's the cruelty to dolphins. They get caught up in the tuna nets, but it's been going on for years, 20, 30 years. So, yeah, you can argue it one way or the other. It's sort of a grey, controversial area. You think it's a grey area that we like, whether or not cows are slaves? Because let's just have a look at the dairy industry. Yeah, but I don't, yeah, yeah, because they're locked up and on the machines and farmers having, they're free to roam, but then they're brought in and then the machines are put on them to milk cows, which, I mean, I did when I was a kid. That was 47 years ago, 46, I'd go on farms and put milk machines on them, you know, as a kid. They don't, like, cows will be then sent off to slaughter when it's profitable for the farmer, yeah? But it seems to be what's done. I'm feeling I'm being lured into something where I'm just going to fall down. You don't have to lure into it. It's just, is it objectively true or not? Are animals capable? Can animals be enslaved as well as humans? I would say, yeah, yeah. But you know, and that's the bit earlier I said about cruelty to animals. Different animals say it's overworked.  I thought, well, cows don't really pull things. I mean, old oxen used to, or oxen used to do the wildflower fields, that type of thing. Cows don't really do that. But they're on the machines for a certain amount of time. If the amount of time is deemed cruel or inhumane as applied to animals. I'm just talking mainly about the property status of animals. They have no bodily autonomy. They don't have any freedom of life that their life is dictated by their owner. Yeah, yeah. So whether they're working constantly or not. Yeah. Yeah, I haven't really thought about it. Listen, tap, and put us through that statement wrong. It should say animals, live animal auctions. Yeah, I know what you mean. I appreciate your conversation.  Thank you. Yeah, you didn't try to lie about anything or try to justify anything. You're just looking at it objectively so it's good. I could come here and I could just play it simple than that and I could go, no. You know what I mean? And I would say why? Not talking. Okay. I appreciate the chat, mate. Thank you. Brianna, my cousin's name's Brianna. I'm vegan.  Okay. Well, what do you think of this sign here? I agree. Yeah. With you completely. Yeah.  They were selling off carps and... Where was it? I didn't know that was from there. Just Ashford cattle. Oh, just the one down there? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ashford cattle market, I think it is. Yeah, I think so. So do you think this is an objectively true statement? Yeah. Yeah. It's a slave trade selling animals to... Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. And we had some of the public walking past saying the same thing. And I don't think that we're vegan. It just... Yeah, I think it's hard to disagree with. Yeah. I mean, it just is that. Yeah. So it's... I don't have to persuade you in any way. And you're not trying to prove me wrong, so we've already agreed. But what about your friends? Are they vegans? She's vegetarian. Okay. I think she wants to go vegan. Yeah. It's hard for her at the moment because we're both living at home and her parents both eat meat and everything. Yeah, so yeah, it can be a little bit more difficult. Does she... What does she think about the dairy industry? Would she think that's slavery? Oh, yeah. Yeah, she's with me. Yeah, she agrees completely. Her circumstances and allowing her to make her own sort of choices at the moment, though. Yeah, but we're going to uni next year, so she's going to go vegan then. Woo! Party! Yeah, exactly. Do what you want. Thanks for the conversation, Rihanna. It was lovely meeting you. Thank you so much. Hi. Oh, hello. How are you? Nice to meet you too. So, Rihanna's your friend and you just live together in the same... Um, no, so we're just job hunting at the moment. Okay. We're taking a gap year, so... So, what do you think about this statement? Do you think it's objectively true? Yeah. Yeah. It's not great what they're doing and, you know, because animals have feelings and they shouldn't be treated with, like, kind of the disrespect that people, like, treat them with in a way. I just think that, I don't know, there should be more respect and things like that. Do you think you can treat someone as property and also treat them with respect? No. No. If an animal is considered someone else's property... There's no way to treat them with respect in that sense. And then, yeah, so we should be treating them how they're meant to be treated and letting them be free and... Maybe being their guardians instead of treating them like a resource for us. Yeah, exactly, because we shouldn't have control over them and stuff like that. We should be treating them the way that we should, like, should for the whole... Like, if we had a positive intention for them, not just to make money from them, that would be different. We'd be looking after them. Yeah, and I think that's the reason why people treat them badly, is because there's a market for it. It shouldn't be that way. I don't think it's right. So it's the way we view animals, that's the problem. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. They're very set in their ways as well. Yeah. But there needs to be change, really. Yeah. Do you think the dairy industry is also slavery? Yeah, I think it's bad. And being a vegetarian, it sounds weird that I'm saying that, but I try my best to be as vegan as possible, especially with Rihanna being one of my best friends, you know. Kind of, I do as much as I can, but I'm hoping to go vegan when I go to uni. Yeah. I don't know, yeah. What would hold you back in your current circumstance from going vegan? Mostly my family. Yeah. Yeah. So they wouldn't purchase items in the... Yeah, basically that's about it. I wouldn't be able to get the stuff that I needed, but I try as much, I mean I don't drink milk. Yeah. And I try and eat as much vegan stuff when I go out as possible. Yeah. So in the circumstances I'm in, I'm trying.  Yeah. Interesting, but it seems like you agree with the philosophy of non-exploitation of animals. Definitely, definitely. Like I agree with all of it. There's nothing I don't see as correct. I think it's all, it makes a lot of sense. Well it's beautiful talking to you Claire, and I've got these little cards here, and they're just, it's a little free vegan challenge if you wanted to do it on Facebook. Thank you. So really nice meeting you. Nice meeting you. Bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Very sweet girls. So a live auction to me sounds pretty self-explanatory, like it wouldn't be a live auction, it would just be an option if it was just objects. Yeah. Not if you agree with the statement. You agree? What type of animal are you? A bear. It's a mute bear. Bears generally can't speak, they don't. They can make sounds. They can make sounds. How's your day today? Good? That's good. And have you had success trying to persuade people to eat at the diner? Oh, let me see the menu. I don't know. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Are these made of real animals? She agrees with us. She's already agreed with us. Are these made with real animals? Or are these?  Animals are my friends. Yeah, animals are my friends, not food. Yeah, you don't like eating animals either? Okay. You don't like slaughterhouses? Yeah, me neither. You don't like when we just come from a sale yard where they were auctioning off scared animals, calves and bobby calves, sheep lambs. Yeah, that was terrified. And they're going to be put in a burger. So hopefully they put on an option that's made of plants, a plant-based option, vegan option. That'll be good. Anyway, it's nice talking to you. We'll have someone else that can speak human.


Today I want to talk about faith and I want to address Fear my subject of my message today is a simple faith over fear and I want to take couple stories from the Bible Couple people in a Bible that faced fear in their life and how it affected them and How they overcame and how some of them they fell prey to fear and God destroyed and so But before before we dive into it well While I'm talking you can open to second chronicles chapter 20 and just keep your finger there We're gonna skip around the chapter and take some examples from the story But we as a church we believe that every believer is A witness Bible calls us to be witnesses to share the good news of the gospel And so during this time we encourage you that you be a witness just because we're Isolated that doesn't mean that we can't stop being witnesses we can use a social media to witness We can give somebody a phone call a family member a friend find out how they're doing. This is a great time actually to to to really Talk to somebody. There's no rush. There's no busyness and We as believers we have to be witnesses and witnesses simply shares with somebody what God did for them What God what they've seen God do so we believe that every believer must be a witness and second thing We believe that every every believer has to be a disciple maker Jesus when he was living as disciples his last word said go into all the world preach the gospel and Make disciples he gave us as believers not pastors not some special People in in in the church, but every person in the church needs to be a Disciple maker meaning that just to be a person that that encourages others to grow Encourages keeps others accountable. He can helps others to It helps others to grow with Jesus and so Here hunger generation like we already said we do have groups available even in this time You can go to hunger gen.com slash groups and get connected to people and grow together be discipled and be a disciple maker, amen so I Want to talk a little bit about? faith and fear Somebody said that fear stands for false evidence appearing appearing real and sometimes it is the truth that when we We can find ourselves in a situation in a place where we begin to Make things up in our head Where we begin to create worst-case scenarios the things that do not did not happen Oh most likely will never happen and we begin to believe those things that we make up And we begin to create and allow fear to creep in into our body into our mind into our life into our body and and we can we can allow fear to dominate our life and That's one side of fear, but there's also the other side of fear a natural fear a fear that God is Giving us It's God given a fear to protect us for example fear of heights because we could fall and harm ourselves fear of being alone because God has created us in the community God said it's not good for men to be alone and therefore we we need community, you know, I thought Before this whole quarantine. I thought I'm not a social person and I don't need you know I don't need people but few days into it few we goes by when by and I was like I was craving social interaction interaction and so doesn't matter you might think you're What's the word in? Intervert not extrovert you're introvert you you don't really need much people But I think this pandemic and this quarantine showed that every type of a person in Intervert and extrovert they need people we need people and so people fear comes in and in in many different ways But I want to address today The fear that we have That's a natural fear because in this time in in in this in this season where we're in in this pandemic It's true that people are dying all over the place It's true that people are getting infected and so it's easy to look at at what's going on this pandemic going on and Begin to give into this fear this fact that people are are dying and there's a chance that I might get infected There's a chance that you know, I might I might suffer harm There's a chance that I might even die and it's true. It's not it's not an illusion It's not something it's not false evidence appearing real. These are the facts There's also fear of of a financial loss financial harm Which most a lot of us will will will come in in in contact with and it's not a false fear It is a it is a legitimate Concern a legitimate uncertainty today that we might we might suffer a financial harm because of Because of businesses are shut down people being a laid-off Contracts are being cancelled cancelled new projects are being cancelled and and and there is we can allow that fear of uncertainty that fear of financial loss to begin to take dominance and root in our In our heart and our mind and it can lead us to a pretty devastating place And so as people of faith as children of faith as People that have inheritance of faith. We must we must choose Faith over fear and today I want to look at some examples in the Bible Some people that have chosen fear and where it led them and some people that have chosen faith and where they have end up you have to understand that How you respond to your fear the natural fear the fears that we address fear of financial loss You know somebody the fear of of gone losing your business fear of of gone bank traps fear of being laid off Fear of becoming of getting sick fear of your parents getting sick your grandparents getting sick and dying You know all these natural fears, but how we respond to that fear will either destroy us or He would he will establish us. He will either strengthen us and give us Greater resolution to push forward greater trust in God or he will destroy us push us away from God make us bitter And then at the end will kill us First story I want to look at is a story of of King Saul and Bible says that in Samuel chapter 13 14 15 There is a story developing where King Saul he's faced with With this He's faced with an enemy that's Philistines that's about to attack him he's he's faced with almost certain death because Saul has only three thousand men He has an army of three thousand people and Philistines that are coming against them They have just chariots alone three thousand chariots plus 6000 chariot riders and Bible says of a vast army like us like a sea sand on a shore so King Saul he's facing a Threat of death he's facing a threat of slavery. He's facing a threat of occupation He's facing in fight a threat of financial of financial loss. She facing a threat of humiliation He is he has a legitimate He has a legitimate right to be afraid. He has a legitimate He has a legitimate fear. It's not on that's not something he made up in his mind That's not something he kind of came up with the worst case scenario. This was the fact this was the scenario that he was facing and Saul King Saul he started out the right way. He started out seeking a prophet seeking a word from God But as the prophet delayed We see the army begin to scatter Bible says they begin to be fearful of Philistines They begin to run into the caves and hide and then Saul eventually gives into that fear and He that fear led them to disobey God fear will lead you into disobedience if unchecked fear fear that that you don't you you don't You will not the fear that you will not get hold of and control Will eventually will lead you into disobedience to God's word and do disobedience into God It will lead you down the path That you did not desire we see King Saul he He runs out of patience He gives into the this public public fear and this this this This commotion that's going on and he brings a sacrifice and as soon as he finished that King Saul I Prophet Samuel comes to him and says Samuel. What have you done? Why have you not waited as you've been? Instructed you should have waited for me He says because you give into fear because you did what was pleasing in your side because you were impatient now your kingdom will be taken away from you forever and Because of that decision That he made Based on a temporary situation based on the fear that he was facing His future was destroyed Don't base you don't base temporary decision Don't base your permanent decisions on your temporary situation Don't base your temp. Don't don't base your permanent decisions in the in the time of Fear don't give into fear and make permanent decisions in your life We see that that disobedience Led them to destruction and checked fear will lead you to make critical mistakes Every time you give into fear even if it's a legitimate fear fear for your life fear of economic loss Fear of going bankrupt fear of losing your loved one Whatever the fear might be when you respond out of fear You will always make critical mistakes critical mistakes in your life. You will always go You will always choose the wrong Path to take you will always be impatient because faith breeds patience fear gives you fear breeds impatience and so We see that King Saul he suffered a devastation devastating loss He lost his kingdom. He lost Not only he he lost his own life eventually, but he lost He lost his family. He lost everything literally everything In the same similar situation in the same type of situation almost exact King Jehoshaphat. He hears that the nation of Moab and Amon and a few other nations they coming against them King Jehoshaphat He is facing annihilation. He's facing slavery. He's facing exactly same thing that King Saul was facing but in that moment in that time King Jehoshaphat he makes a different decision He makes different. He takes different approach and different step different steps. He takes steps Towards faith instead of fear and his story turns out to be different. So I want us to take a look at what King Jehoshaphat did and there's four things that I found for myself to encourage my faith And hopefully this will encourage you and your faith that King Jehoshaphat did to combat fear and to build his faith We see in verse 3 in second Chronicles chapter 20 that Jehoshaphat he feared Bible says in verse 3 says and Jehoshaphat feared He experienced fear see You can be a man of faith a woman of faith you can be a righteous man, but you can still experience fear because fear is a natural It's a natural feeling That we experience when we face uncertainty when we face harm when we face death when we face When we face unknown and so King Jehoshaphat instead of giving into his fear He Bible says first thing he does He seeks God through prayer and fasting so Anytime you find yourself Afraid every time you find yourself facing uncertainty If any time you find yourself being fearful for the maybe You're facing sickness or you're going to you're battling through through a sickness that that You might end up dying or you might end up being severely affected by it or if you maybe you're facing a Financial loss facing bankruptcy loss of a job loss of contract loss of your of your business You can do two things you can try to act out of fear Begin to borrow money begin to do this begin to do that begin to try to solve it on your own Or you can go to God you can wait on God through prayer through fasting Bible says that we need to come to God it with Thanksgiving and Supplication bringing all our all of our requests and our needs before God Or we can begin to be in panic and choose to not wait on God Ignore his guidance ignore his instruction and begin to try to do things on our own We see that King Jehoshaphat first thing that he does he Goes into fasting he declares fasting he goes into prayer and begins to see God's face I think when you face with uncertainty first thing that you gotta do you have to go talk to God Not talk to your advisors not talk to not talk to your friends even though all of those things are good Bible says that in in a more There's a safety in and in multitude of Counselors all of those things are good, but first and foremost and the first thing that we got to do We get around to God we gotta pour our heart out to God We gotta let God know that we are afraid God is not afraid of your fear Let him know that you are afraid of your enemies let him know that you're afraid of the uncertainty Let him know that you are afraid of the fact that I'm not sure what tomorrow is gonna bring God is not afraid of your fear Because often we think that that faith is absence of fear, but it's not it's Faith is simply looking to God for a solution faith is simply looking to God that he is your provider He is your healer despite of faith is not what if but faith is Even if somebody somebody said that faith is not what if God doesn't come through What if God doesn't heal me? What if I lose my job? What if I lose my family? What if I lose my parents my my grandparents to this coronavirus or or other sickness, but faith is even if God doesn't come through. He's still God Even if I don't get healed God is to my healer even if I Will have to go bankrupt and I lose everything like Job did I know my Redeemer lives and he will restore me to even greater glory than previously before Faith is not an absence of fear. Faith is Faith is to have courage in spite of fear and so we see that the way Josephette he combats his fears and he builds his face. He goes to God. He talks to God. He brings He brings his request to God. He Begins to speak to God. He begins to humble himself. Why but says that if my people humble myself they turn from their wicked ways and Then they pray to me that I will hear them. I will heal them. I will deliver them So I want to encourage you that in this time as we're locked up in our houses as We you know, we have more more time on our hands. Let's spend more time in prayer Let's spend more time seeking God. Let's spend more time in his word Let's spend more time with God because God can get you through this God can supernaturally get you to the other side We have Monday this coming Monday Tuesday Wednesday, we have prayer and fasting Our church we as a church would do every single month First three days of month first first Monday Tuesday Wednesday of every month We pray together as a church and we fast and we see God's face And despite of this corona virus we first was wondering should we do it should we continue this this this prayer and fasting? Should we not should we do it from home will be easy, but we've we've decided that you know We have to do it special in this time that we have to see God through prayer and fasting So this Monday Tuesday and Wednesday coming up. I encourage you wherever you at Whatever you are watching us from India, South Africa watching us from Europe. You're watching us in from South America you're watching us in in United States wherever you at Canada Join us in this prayer and fasting. Let's see God during this time What a better time to see God than this time because during times of troubles and uncertainty It's easier to see God. It's true. It is true. It's easier to see God sometimes You know the problems and the heat of the problems. It kind of forces us to to humble ourselves It brings the right perspective it tells us that we're not in control God is in control So we need to see God more. So during this time, let's pray Let's see God's face through prayer and fasting second thing that we I see that Johasaphat does in verse 5 then Johasaphat stood in the assemblies of Judah and Jerusalem and the house of the Lord before the new court Jehoshaphat he went to church Jehoshaphat went to the house of God now I know right now at this moment. We can't physically go to church, but we can join online We can join our home groups Okay, but I'm speaking not just for this time, but any time you find yourself in difficult situation oftentimes Oftentimes difficult situations Make people bitter bitter against God. Why did God allow this to happen? Why did this person in my family died? I prayed for them to be healed to for them to be why did it pray that this person got on a car accident and died? Why did this happen and that happened? I prayed at God in answer and and and unanswered prayer and Kind of sets a root of bitterness in the heart and instead of going to God and letting God know their frustration Their disappointment their fears they distance themselves from God. They distance themselves from church They distance themselves from the community of saints and they leave the church I want to tell you that Don't allow fear to drive you away from church away from your community away from the saints away from your home group Allow that fear on the opposite push you closer to God's people home groups Whether it's online whether it's in person Once the quarantine is over Be part of the community be part of a local church Don't be a person that while we promote church online while we promote being connected through online But make sure you also have a local church Where you are part of a pastor that you have that can pass to you a Leaders that you have that you're submitted to so that you can be Disciple so you can grow in Jesus and how be held accountable be a part of the church go to church Bible says that do not forsake us Not not forsaken our own assembly together as the habit of some But encourage one another in Hebrew 10 25 Bible says and perhaps 27 17 that iron sharpens iron so one man Sharps another There's another story of a light of Elijah prophet Elijah a mighty man of God and he was afraid and It's interesting if you listen if you read the story of Elijah He was afraid after literally few days after after performing some crazy miracles Elijah The story of Elijah goes like this Elijah comes out of three years of hiding comes and confronts King Queen Elizabeth and King Ahab He challenges them and their gods and their prophets Just a King Elizabeth. Sorry Queen Queen Jezebel My back So he challenges Jezebel and King Ahab and the prophets He goes up to the mountain and he says the God that will answer by fire. He's a true God So pretty much. I'm talking about he's a man of faith He has courage one man against the whole nation one man against 400 Bail prophets And he says a God who will answer by fire, I mean you got to have some serious faith And he challenges them and of course God shows up not only got answers by fire Just consuming sacrifice. He consumes everything even the water the wood the stone. I mean, it's a crazy miracle Just fire comes down from heaven Bible says and licks it all up And then he goes on I mean I'm talking about courageous man Manful of faith goes on and he kills 400 men 400 prophets of Bail. I mean we're talking about Man of faith man of courage. We're talking about zealous men. I mean, that's a man that I want to be Full of courage and faith and not only then God gives him a supernatural speed He outruns the horses and the chariots. I'm talking about eventful Time of his life.  What is this one woman?  What's going on? What happened? But even great man of faith Can fall into fear? Thank God that he recovered for it and he didn't give into it with the help of an angel and help of God So that's why I'm saying don't be afraid to come to God with your fear Just don't act out of it You can talk to God about your fear, but don't act out of your fear and so we see that One of the reasons why Elijah was Afraid we're still talking about going to church being a part of the church being a part of community being a part of home group One of the reasons why Elijah was afraid he admits to God is because I am alone That was his fear. There's two things. I'm gonna underline the second one But his first one he says I am alone Everybody all the prophets are dead. I Am alone see we were never meant to be alone and this pandemic showed it to us That's why one of the worst form of punishment in a country that exists is being jailed or being in prison And even if you misbehave in that Confinement the worst form of punishment as you've been isolated completely in the box by itself by yourself Without any human interaction our mind can't handle it. We need see God gave us the spirit to connect to God He gave us the body So that we could connect with the world physical world with the earth and he gave us a soul so that we can Interconnect with each other We that part of us loans for another person another a community and The reason one of the one of the main reasons why Elijah was running for his life One of the reasons why he was afraid and when even when depressed and wanted to die was because he felt alone But God tells him listen Elijah, you're not alone You're not alone. There's seven thousand of people like you at just the prophets We're not even talking about priests and Levites and other men of God other people that fear God So one thing I want to One thing I want to encourage you is don't be alone Even when this quarantine ends don't be alone see When devil will succeed if he can isolate you he can send you thoughts of fear. I'm worthless I'm nobody nothing's happening. Nothing's working out in my life I will gonna die from this disease find yourself in a community get plugged into home groups That's why home groups are so essential.  Amen the next thing that he does in Verse 10 actually starts from verse 7 He begins to remember God's promises and past victories if you want to combat fear and build your faith you have to remember God's promises to you and His past victories we read verse 7 says are you not our God who drove our inhabitants from this land before your Before your people of Israel and gave it to the descendants of Abraham Your friend forever he begins to recall and tell God he begins to encourage himself with the past victories that God has done In in in the life of Israel in his life And he begins to go on and then and describe how God protected him during famine and pestilence How he in verse 10 it says and now here are the people of amen and more up and more and a mountain of seer whom Whom you would not least Israel Whom you would not let Israel invade when they came out of the land of Israel Israel the land of Egypt He begins to remind God that these very nations that are coming against them in the past got Stopped them from invading and destroying Israel.  It says that you have a Jehoshaphat. He begin to say Begin to speak God's promises of your life He begins to remind God said God we can't be annihilated by this army because didn't you promise this land?  Don't give in to fear Allow his word to rebuild you speak his word be reminded of of God's Victories in your life of God's promises in your life What you focus on will determine what you will be filled with if you focus on fear I Mean if you focus on negative things if you focus on this constant news How many people died out of this virus? How many people are affected?  Economy is worse than it was during a great depression and this and that honestly Just 30 minutes of it will destroy every bit of faith that you got in it What you focus on what you give attention to will fill you and will produce that very thing Negative news. I mean we as a church we don't ignore the pandemic and what's happening and the casualties And and and and and and the economical hardships that we're in we're not ignorant But don't focus on it find positive things Find things how many people already recovered the medication that's being developed that that's that that's helping people to recover Focus on the fact what government is doing to help to boost the economy will come up It will not it will not be like that great depression past and and and and and people Rose up and and people our businesses rose up and we became better than ever 2008 when the recession hit Also took a lot of people down but short few years shortly after we were back on back where we were and better than ever before We will come out of this focus on the bright side on the good news Focus on the word of God let the word of God feed you let what he says about you Feed you his promises for you The second reason coming back to Prophet Elijah second reason why Prophet Elijah reveal reveals when he ties talking to God Second reason why he Was afraid Was because he saw Jezebel kill the prophets of God and He thought he was afraid of uncertainty will God spare my life Will God come through for me this person died out of cancer I have exactly the same cancer and they prayed and They still died this person Claim declared that this gonna happen. That's gonna happen. They're gonna receive the breakthrough yet. They filed for bankruptcy you know Prophet Elijah was focusing on What died what was lost what was Taken away and when he started talking to God, I want you to notice what God says to him He says Elijah. Yes, some prophets are dead and we don't know why we don't know What happened was it their time was it their destiny was it there was it was Wide got we there's things that happen in life. Why some people don't get healed Why some people don't get delivered. Why some people experience hardship There's things in our life that we do not know but one thing we see from the story of Elijah that God Refocuses Elijah. He says I spared seven thousand Elijah was focusing on How many died how many were killed? God comes to Elijah says Elijah listen There's at least seven thousand that are spared. I Want to encourage you Don't focus on what God has not done in your life Focus on what he has done Don't build monuments on the things that God Has not done in your life on unanswered prayers Somebody prayed and in workout for them somebody got sick with the corona virus and they were a pastor They were a leader and they died from it or this or that and they confessed and they declared So I'm 91 that no pledge comes shall come near my dwelling We can't look at what's happening around We can't base our faith on what people did and what has not happened We have to base our faith solely on the word of God. We have to find Places testimonies we have to recall The moments where God did something for us and not focus on the things that he has not done God comes to Elijah says Elijah Don't focus on the prophets that were killed focus on the ones that I have spared Focus on the ones that I have spared I believe that our focus will determine whether we'll be What we focus on what we feed ourselves with will be determined whether we were filled with faith or Fear if you feel yourself that God has spared seven thousand. He will spare me You will be encouraged We see that Elijah he meets God on the mountain. He goes to church. He meets God there God refocuses him. He focused on it and then we see Elijah Being renewed he worships God and it brings me to a last point point four is that Jehoshaphat in verse 25 He begins to worship God. He sets aside Levites and he Sends them out and the whole before he sends them out the whole nation praises God since praises to the Lord and they They're saying praise the Lord for his mercy endures forever and We see that God when they begin to worship God when they begin to exalt God see it takes faith to worship God in In spite of uncertainty it takes faith to worship God in spite of hardship in spite of a loss in spite of death It takes faith to worship God To worship to truly worship God it is an expression of faith That's why during this time as you pray and fast as you see God as you feed yourself Half-time of worship don't just listen to some nonsense watch bunch of Netflix and listen that some of it has its place Don't get me wrong.  They got falsely accused and they got beaten and thrown into confinement into the prison I Mean at very least do not complain, but definitely not worship But despite of that being beaten be hurting Bible says they had open wounds. That's how bad that they got beaten Paul and Silas they begin to worship God they begin to exalt them They could have been afraid for their life. They could have been whatever, but they begin to worship and during that time God came through supernaturally I believe that he despite of the despite of impossible situation despite of being confined despite of being in prison despite of limitation Despite of things looking doom and gloom if we worship God God will bring us through supernaturally if we focus on God's goodness if we Pray in fast and see God's faith if we consecrate ourselves if we Worship God from the bottom of our heart from everything that we have I believe that God will bring you through this time and any time that you face hardship supernatural God will bring a supernatural provision in in the story of Jehoshaphat We see that he put he puts up a Levi's right in front of not only they just praise and worship God And thank them, but their battle plan was simple Levi's upfront and then soldier followed and as they were praising God as they are worshiping Bible says there came a confusion into the to the enemy scam and Enemies become begin to kill each other and by the time they came to the place of battle by the time Israelites came to the place of battle the enemy was destroyed every single one of the Bible says not one escaped and without fighting a battle Without fighting a single battle they were enjoying a spoils of war I want to tell you today that you're gonna come out of this This quarantine better than you were before you might have to go through some pressing times You might have to apply for a new job. You might have to start a new business You might have to do something But I'm telling you if you don't give up if you can worship in God if you keep focusing on God declaring his goodness His promises over your life you will come out of this better than you came into it You come out of it better than you come into it You know that some of these greatest businesses in this country came out of Some of the most difficult financial times in 2008 recession out of that time we We've seen in this country come out some Really big businesses that all you all all familiar with what's up was started them Uber was created Groupon Instagram pinstress slack square in that recession time Somebody who did not give up hope who had a positive outlook who looked to the bright future came out of it bigger Then they were in it Throughout the history GM orders in 1901 when country was going through a financial difficulties They became great. They became a big company as we know today Disney in 1923 also in a very difficult time in a hardship time in the economy in the country Burger King 1953 after Korean war Things economy was stagnant. They started it and then we know Burger King. Thank God for Burger King Microsoft in 1975 with the high unemployment and inflation rate They started the business and they came out of that time and we know Microsoft today all over the world in 2001 Apple Started in in in a burst of dot-com bubble the worst time to start a tech company and They came out and we know Apple today I want to encourage you that your best days are in front of you not behind you your best days are ahead of you Don't give up hope. Don't be depressed. Don't fall into despair. Don't give in to fear Don't start making foolish decisions that will lead you in destruction But choose to walk by faith.  You're a daughter of faith We have inheritance of faith and we must walk by faith Baba says that it's impossible to please God without faith. So today you and I we need to choose faith We need to choose faith The fear in men brings a snare, but he who trusts the Lord will be exalted David says in his song Baba mentions to not be afraid in a Bible 365 times once for every day of your life God says to Abraham do not be afraid. I am your shield and your great reward David says in Psalm 23 verse verse 4 even though I walk through the valleys of shadow of death I will fear no Because you are with me Psalm 344 says I sought the Lord and he answered me and he delivered me from all of my fears I pray that God will deliver you today from your fear. I pray that today you will choose faith I pray that today you will pick yourself up and you choose to combat fear You choose to work with God through prayer through fasting through worship through focus in your mind and the things that are good Things that are godly through confession of faith and today I believe that God will give you a supernatural victory You will receive spoils of war without fighting a war battle You will be greatly blessed. I know it takes faith to believe that you're gonna come out of this time with the big spoils But that's all faith is We are different type of people. We are people of faith. We don't live by this world standard We don't live by this world economy We can be affected by it, but our ultimate source is God.   I Encourage today Be strong and you're not fear your God will come. He will come with the vengeance with divine Retribution he will come to save you. I encourage today choose faith Choose God choose worship just to look to him and he will come and save you with vengeance Not just not just barely say he will save you and restore you in Jesus mighty name I hope you receive something today, and I hope you choose faith over fear in Jesus mighty name Hey, this is Pastor Vlad and thank you for watching this sermon Please click on the subscribe so that you can be a part of our hungry generation YouTube community and click on the bell as well so that you can be notified when we upload the new sermon Thank you for watching and God bless you