There is this interesting phenomenon in China today when all of a sudden, at the time of political summits or international sports event, then magically the sky over Beijing is blue. A city that is usually clogged in smoke is under perfect weather, not a single cloud in the sky. So how does this happen? I'm not a meteorologist or an atmospheric chemist. I'm a political scientist. I am interested in understanding the governance structures that lead to blue skies over Beijing or blue skies over China. I wanted to understand the kind of information, scientific data and analyses that feed into this process, what is done as a preparation, what is done underway, how is it implemented and what are the effects of these blue sky campaigns. So as a case study, we looked at the G20 summit in Hangzhou in 2016 and we wanted to understand how this was happening. What did the local government do in order to clear the skies? We were expecting that, of course, because governments in China are very powerful, they just shut down industries in a certain area, they restrict control and this has done a talk and very top-down and for a single event. We very soon found out that there is a lot of communication with scientists, a lot of input by scientists into this process and then we included these questions. So we wanted to understand what did the scientists do, how did they communicate with the local government and how did the local government use this information that was provided to them by the scientists. So altogether we wanted to understand the working conditions for the scientists, how they were involved in this process, to understand what kind of information the local government then took up and processed and also the relationship between these two groups, so the scientific task force on the ground and the local authorities in Hangzhou. We did empirical field work in China, basically qualitative interviews with both the scientists involved and representatives of the local government. We wanted to know from scientists how they basically worked, how they cooperated, scientists from Beijing with scientists on the ground in Hangzhou, how they communicated with the local government and then again how the decisions on the side of the government were taken. So which inputs by the scientists did they take into account when they considered all the measures they had to take in order to make the skies blue. The challenge was that during the G20 summit there was a lot of security measures in place in Hangzhou and we were not able to follow and observe the process as it happened. So during the G20 summit, which was our ideal plan, but that was not possible due to security reasons, we were only able to reconstruct the process afterwards. So we talked to the scientists and to the local officials and asked for their retrospective impression of the whole process. That's of course difficult, but we tried as best as we could to triangulate that with documents, media reports and other voices we could get hold of after the event. I was actually surprised to find that the G20 blue sky campaign had lasting effects. When I went into the field, I was expecting that it's a one-time activity, smorg-free venue for three or four days and then everything goes back to normal. Against this picture that we have of science being heavily controlled in China and policymaking not having anything to do with scientific insights, what we found was that there was a very intimate connection. You had technological upgrading, you had training for the local environmental officials and an overall much better overview of pollution sources in Hangzhou. And this information can be used in the future as well, for instance, when there is a smorg-alert. But there are of course constraints to the scientific input into policymaking. One example was that while the scientists were mapping the pollution sources in Hangzhou, they found that ground level ozone was a huge problem for the city. But because this was not part of what the government imagined as smorg sources and as the actual problem that had to be tackled, they ignored this information. So the scientists were not able to lobby for solutions for ground level ozone concentration in Hangzhou at that time. Altogether, I think the picture is not as black and white. There is scientific input into policymaking up to a certain degree in China. I think our findings are relevant at different levels. First of all, it helps us understand local politics in China better. We usually focus on Beijing and the major political decisions being taken by the central government. But what happens in this microcosmos on the ground in the local state where the state meets the people, but also as we found out local authorities interact with scientists? How does it work in practice and in detail? And there's many gaps in the literature still when it comes to these aspects. So understanding local Chinese politics better is one dimension. But I would also say we understand more about the nature of modern Chinese authoritarianism when we look at the interrelation of science and politics in China today. There is this old narrative of the Chinese Communist Party being a technocratic regime. But I think there is a lot of nuance that we can add to this narrative if we look at the micro procedures that I talked about. China moved away from taking political decisions only on the basis of ideology to trying to also bring across this image of a political regime that takes into account the latest and the best scientific findings and the most advanced technology. And in general, we understand more about both domains also individually. So under what constraints does science function in China today and how is scientific information being taken up by political authorities in China and what does it also make with, again, Chinese authoritarianism as a modern science-based regime? What we did so far, I would still say, is exploratory research. So there's a lot more we can do. I'm building a new research group here at the Max Planck Institute where we look at China in the global system of science. So the macro structures of this topic that I have just laid out. We look into the internationalization of universities in China, China's enormous ascent in scientific rankings and publication numbers, for instance, the agency of scientists when they interact globally with their peers and how they then face these constraints at home in China. I myself will continue in this domain where I look at micro structures. So far, I've looked into environmental governance, but there's other things, population governance, mobility, many, many different aspects you can study in order to understand this relationship between science and politics in China. And as I just said, looking into these micro structures you also always, I would say, understand more about the bigger picture and that's always where I come from in my research. And that's what I want to continue now.


She's the right hand of Skeletor. This is Evil Lynn, the Evil Warrior Goddess. Hey guys, welcome back to Comic-Gun TV, the only place on YouTube where all geek culture collides. I'm Shannon. And today on the show, we're taking a look at the Masters of the Universe origins, Evil Lynn, Evil Warrior Goddess. Modern posing, retro play action figure. So I never had an Evil Lynn growing up. A friend of mine did, but I never did. And in fact, just like when I reviewed Teela, I didn't have very many of the female action figures. Didn't have She-Ra. However, a close friend of mine had She-Ra. Didn't have Evil Lynn, didn't have Teela. So anyway, as you can see on the package, new for 20. You got the classic Masters of the Universe packaging there. Comic book inside. That's a really nice image of Evil Lynn right there. Includes comic book. Evil Lynn wields frightening magic, making her both Skeletor's greatest ally and his worst enemy. So as you can see, she comes with a staff, fire crystal ball into hand, or fit crystal ball into hand, sorry. Twist into powerful battle positions. So just like with the original Masters of the Universe action figures, this is supposed to show action features. However, it really just shows posibility. And then over here, we've got He-Man, we've got Teela, we've got Man in Arms, Skeletor, Evil Lynn, and Beastman. Now let's go and open up the package and take a look at Evil Lynn. So as you can see, Evil Lynn pretty much has the same sculpt as Teela. In fact, at the end of this video, we'll go ahead and bring Teela in and compare the two. But until then, as you can see, she comes with her magic wand, which I feel should be longer. I want to say it was longer in the 2000 X series. I can't remember if it was longer or not in the original series. But for articulation, unlike Teela, her headdress does not come off. So it's sculpted in there. But her head can turn side to side. And just like with Teela, there is hindrance from the collar and the chin. This side, not much, but going the other way, I guess you can get it over it. So the arms, there is no butterfly joint, but there is a ball joint and hinge here at the shoulder. Go all the way around. Hinge out. Hinge and ball joint at the elbow. It's pretty stiff. I don't want to risk it. Hinge and ball joint at the wrist. Waste articulation here. Legs can go up that far. They can go back that far. You got a bend at the knee and swivel. You got a swivel at the boot and a hinge and ankle rocker at the ankle. So for comparison, let's go ahead and bring in Teela. We'll go ahead and take her battle harness off though. So you can see just how alike the two sculpts really are. As you can see there, they're almost identical. I mean, mirror paint jobs really. Other than that, the only difference are the heads. Everything else is pretty much identical. And now for further comparison, let's go ahead and bring in Shira from the toy line from a few years back. And as you can see, they display really well together. I really like it. Furthermore, I wanted to show you that Evelyn did come with the same exact comic as Teela and Man at Arms. So now I've got three copies of the same comic. And let's go a step further. If I can get Shira to stand, she's been sitting on the original Swiftwind for so long that her legs aren't wanting to stay in place. So I was unable to get Shira to stand. However, let's go ahead and compare Evelyn to Skeletor from a few years back. The Filmation Style Skeletor that we got in the vintage line. And they display really nice together. I really like the look. I like how the Masters of the Universe Origins figures really match up in size and sculpt everything with the vintage Masters of the Universe vintage and the original Masters of the Universe toy lines. You can really mix and match to display them. So anyway, there you have it guys. This has been the Masters of the Universe Origins. Evil way. Take care Geeks.


everyone and welcome. This is Melissa Armo with the stock swash and reviewing one of the biggest trade calls that I made this year in 2019. And it's interesting. This is BYND. This was a new issue and I don't normally train new issues. So it's kind of interesting because this worked out beautifully. And now that I look at it here, I say, God, the stock looks dead. Dead as a doornail. But anyways, caught this here just at the very right time. This was June 7th. Seems like a long time ago now looking at the stock called a bunch of options trades here on this day, then into the following day. And the stock actually ended up going to what I said, which was 200, the dream target right here. It literally went straight up. In fact, it went past 200, 20188. So really nice move, really nice bullish gap here in BYND. And looking at the stock now, I mean, it looks terrible. But remember, this is a new issue. So it opened here on May 3rd, hasn't even been out for a year yet. So considering that, the stock had such a tremendous move. I don't know why this has fallen off. I don't really care. For those of you that don't know what I do, I just look at gaps. I'll look over the stock as gapping and I rate the gap to determine if it's a long or short. I wouldn't do anything with this gap necessarily here today, although we are gapping down here today. But I think the market was gapping down today too. Yes. So BYND gap down today with the market. But overall, if you capture this move, which we absolutely did, I mean, I just had perfect, perfect, perfect calls in this. And for the people that traded it, everybody did well with this. Everyone made a lot of money. And for the people that traded it, if you've never traded this, when it is moving, and it has like some of the biggest momentum I've ever seen when it moves. And man, I mean, it's just the options trades I called in this just flew, flew like the dickens. I mean, the options chains were just moving like wildfire. It was really, really fun to watch, really fun to trade, really fun because it was great. I think only one trade in that period. Yeah, one was a loser of the six that I called. And the other five worked and the other five were just big trades, just huge trades. So really, really, really nice calls on BYND this year. And this is definitely one of the biggest trade calls that I've made this year. This is one of the best gaps that we had to do to the bull side, which was this, this one here, this BYND. I would not be long this right now. Is it going to continue to drop? Nobody knows. Back, let me just look up and see here when the next earnings are. But this stock looks now the way when I, which is why I typically do not do new issues. It's something you say, oh, this, you can't really get a good read on that. I mean, I, let's see here March 18th, March 18th. So yeah, I mean, this is, there's news out in this, but it's not negative news, but the stock has been falling. The stock really has hardly been moving and has been falling off really since the gap down here that happened 1029. But the earnings aren't until March. So we'll be watching it. We'll be seeing where it goes. It's trying to hold this area up, but I don't have a hundred percent picture that it will. So while I'll be watching this on the earnings of March of 2020, huge calls here by me and BYND. Great trade for everybody on the letter. Fabulous, fabulous mover. And again, really fun to trade. Just almost never seen anything like it quite frankly. The moves that the stock had, the way that it moved. I mean, this day here was a gap up open at 130 and literally within a week, it ran right up here to 200. I mean, it was just an incredible move. And again, if you were in it, the profits were just enormous on this. So beautiful move and BYND, one of the top trade calls by me of 2019. We'll see what she brings in 2020. If you're interested in signing up for the Golden Gap course and learning how I rate gaps to determine what gaps are longs and what gaps are shorts and what stock picks to train and in what direction like the BYND, which I picked, then email me and Belisa at thestockswish.com. Have a great day everyone and happy new year.


This study investigates the diagnostic accuracy of medical students using a clinical diagnostic support system, CDSS, Google, and neither, control. The results show that the CDSS and Google groups had higher diagnostic accuracy than the control group. Additionally, the CDSS and Google groups had similar levels of diagnostic accuracy when it came to common diseases. This article was authored by Yazotaka Yanajita, Kiyoshi Shikino, Kaise Kishizika, and others.


From Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering SAP Sapphire Now 2018, brought to you by NetApp. Welcome to theCUBE, I'm Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend and we are in Orlando at SAP Sapphire Now 2018. This is a huge event, not just 20,000 people here, but there's about a million people SAP says are going to engage with their live and on-demand video experiences for Sapphire. Amazing. We are excited to welcome, for the first time to theCUBE, Janesh, Jane, the VP of Global Delivery at CenturyLink. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, thank you guys for having me here. So the theme in this event is really around what SAP is doing to enable the intelligent enterprise. This is really beyond digital transformation where customers have to have a customer-centric view. It's about infusing and embedding, emerging in advanced technologies, AI machine learning, into business processes. How is CenturyLink helping customers on that transformation journey? I think that's a great question. Let me give you a little bit of background behind what CenturyLink is all about because this is all SAP here in Orlando, right? CenturyLink is all about connecting customers in the digital world. And we recently acquired Level 3. And with that Level 3 acquisition we became now, we provide trusted connections to all the connected world, all the network world. So you can imagine in digital transformation, you need a very strong foundation when it comes to connectivity, network, infrastructure, and the security behind that. And that's what CenturyLink does. That's our core business. And with that journey, as we started that journey, we have 60 plus data centers as part of CenturyLink core strategic assets. We have around 500K miles of fiber optics, which is one of the, we are the second largest in the United States when it comes to network connectivity and redundancy across. And in 60 plus countries, I think all this strategic assets makes, provides us very strong foundation for any customers who is embarking this digital journey. This reminds me of one of those reasons survey done by McKenzie and Global Institute where they said that they figured out the digitization index for Europe was 12% and for North America was a little better than around 18%. But look at the gap, how much of huge, how much of gap is there in terms of exploring the full potential of digitization. So I think our journey in terms of giving that digital transformation starts from our strong foundation of our strategic assets of data centers, network and security. Along with that, as you mentioned about the intelligent enterprise, we have a very strong practice in terms of not just descriptive analytics, but we do prescriptive analytics, we do machine learning, we have IoT, and we do big data analysis as well. So all these things combined together provides a complete end-to-end solution. And of course SAP plays a big play here and we can talk about that in terms of what we do on the SAP side as well. So let's add some more color to that. When I think of CenturyLink, I think about the 60 data centers. Even when I think about SAP, what I normally consider CenturyLink's role traditionally in the SAP relationship is that, you know what, CenturyLink to get me better either close to my customers so that data injection can happen faster with lower latency. When I think of CenturyLink, I think of lower latency to hyperscale cloud providers so that if I have bold on applications, I can get closer to my core SAP data. But what I'm hearing is that CenturyLink has greater SAP capability outside of that. Tell us about the SAP practice at CenturyLink. Glad you asked that because everybody's wondering about CenturyLink and SAP relationship. In fact, let me go back in time here. Few years back, I would say five years back, CenturyLink acquired Cognalytics. Cognalytics was all about deep HANA expertise, deep analytics, and all about BA strategy. And then recently, a couple of years back, they acquired Seal Consulting. So these two organizations which CenturyLink acquired, that gave us a deep roots into SAP ecosystem in terms of what CenturyLink and SAP can work together. Now let's look at Cognalytics. They were all about HANA, core HANA expertise. They co-innovated with SAP in terms of their HANA analytics. They came out with a number of use cases in terms of predictive science. And then when they acquired Seal Consulting, it was all about S4 HANA transformation, which is absolutely the theme across this sapphire and for all SAP customers globally. So from Seal perspective, which is now, of course, part of CenturyLink, but now we can provide infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, OSDB as a service, which is already part of CenturyLink. Now with that, with Seal and Cognalytics coming in play, we are end to end shop in terms of SAP strategy, digital transformation strategy using SAP tools and products, implementation upgrades, application management services, and continual improvement as part of the digital transformation every customer is looking for. So I think that's how we are using the strategic assets of CenturyLink as part of the SAP expertise coming in play. So every customer, digital transformation to any business is just, you got to do it, right? Or you will lose relevance and go out of business and we've seen a lot of incumbent retailers, for example, go away because they haven't been able to transform digitally. I read a stat recently that said 70% of digital siloed, digital transformation projects fail. So how does CenturyLink and your expertise with SAP, S4, with HANA, how do you help customers be successful? Do you come in and see these siloed projects that maybe Shadow IT had evolved and help them to break down those silos so that they can actually facilitate what it is that they need, which is that 360 degree view of their customers, what they want, when they want it, to be able to predict what they're going to want next. How do you help break down those silos? Right, now I think this is a known problem, known challenge across all of the customers who are embarking this journey. I'll tell you what, I'll give you a simple, the way we work, our digital strategy is very much aligned with our customers' business and IT goals. So what we do first and foremost is we want to align ourselves with what the business and IT goals are. Let's double-click on that, right? So if I look at the business goals for most of the customers today, A, they want to make sure they want to protect the revenue stream, right? B, they want to make sure they have real-time position, no latency in terms of their business decision-making, right? And C, they want to make sure that they go into the new markets. They just can't stay siloed in the same market there. Plus, know the unfamiliar competition which comes up many times. So that's the business aspect of the goals. We want to look at that and make sure that we align our implementation, our strategy, those business goals. If I look at IT side of that, and I'll tell you what, these are the things which are being missed out with most of the partners in this ecosystem. So if I look at the IT side of it, first and foremost, we want to make sure that IT goals are, it's all about innovation. They want to be innovative. They want to have minimal shelf-wear so that they can innovate all the time. They want to evolve the resources so they are aligned with the lines of business all the way. That way everybody has a career path and they are evolving to the market needs. And lastly, it's all about making sure that all the mundane tasks, if I look at, they need to focus on core competency and offload all the routine tasks. And we very much aligned as part of the journey to those business and IT goals. So if you look at our mission, just look at our mission in terms of overall central length for SAP customers. We want to provide them a private, managed, secured cloud, which is scalable, which can be commissioned in a week's time with full automation, completely secured, data protected, and an uptime of 99.99%. And take care of all the lights on kind of routine tasks so they can focus on their main core competency about business decision, new business, business process design, and things like that, which have been lagging behind. So that's our key theme in terms of how we drive all the SAP integration. So there's a lot of complexity behind getting this much value out of any platform, whether it's complexity at the data analytics layer, whether it's the networking that needs to be done, the design and deployment of a NetApp stack. We're in a conference where all the hyperscalers are here. Yes. The company's smaller than central length, provided it's larger than central length. How is central length uniquely positioned to basically go to whether it's a Fortune 100 customer or someone down level to basically add value where these other providers potentially will struggle with. All right, now I think it's very true. We need to be nimble.  And I completely agree with that. I think what we do is, I tell you, one of the unique positions we have in this market space is, I can, you know, we can proudly say that we are, we don't need to go to any third party when it comes to data center allocations. We have our own 500K lines of fiber optics. So network is where we provide, we can provide minimal latency from network perspective, right? We are all over the, we are 60 plus countries. We are into 350 metros. We can do a metro DR. I think if you look at our network, our hosting capabilities, our infrastructure capabilities, we are uniquely positioned compared, you know, what the customers need today as a one stop shop or a one hand to shake to make things happen for them, right? At the same time, we are very nimble for many customers because that's how central link has grown up. You know, they acquired us and we were 800 people company. So was the other acquisition as well. So we can very easily adapt, innovate, comprehend and adapt to the needs of the customers based on our core competency, our solutions which are available and strategy which is very much fitting most of our customers in the retail space, in CPG space, in manufacturing space, in healthcare and in life sciences. So we have some designated industry solutions as well which can help us to drive those values quicker. At the same time measurable. Being nimble, I think of, you know, being adaptive and being flexible, but adaptive struck up. Actually, Haso Plattner this morning in his keynote talked about SAP being adaptive in the context. I think he was talking about intelligence and everybody wants to paint intelligence all over everything and they talked about SAP being adaptive. That kind of aligns with something I read recently that Bill McDermott said which is where SAP was the last to accept the status quo. I think he was talking about it in relation to CRM specifically but the first to change it.  How are you harnessing that your adaptability to meet their needs on some of those emerging trends? Absolutely, this can be very overwhelming if you really look at what everybody's talking about. Where do you start with? I think we have been doing this for the last six years even before the keynote announcement to be honest to you guys. We have documented 60 to 70 use cases in this case. So what we do is when we approach a customer or a prospect, we come out with some specific use case for their line of business. It can be in a marketing campaign, it can be in a supply chain, it can be in financials, it can be in insurance. So depending on what the needs are, we have those documented use cases. So what we do is for each of these use cases, we break it down in terms of what problem are we going to solve? What is the problem definition? And for that problem definition, what's my use case? How do I solve this? What are the alternatives? And how do I reach to my measurable value of that solution? And then we have built in data models ready to go for each of these use cases behind the scene. So that helps us build something which is nimble because the data is available. We just need to customize to 20% of what the customer needs are and then provide that value right away. And once the pilot goes live for a small segment of user community, then we expand that to the larger audience to see the value of whether this is a predictive science, machine learning or just pure KPI driven analytics. So we do that and then we expand that. This is what we have done with number of Fortune 500 companies and we're really proud of what we do in terms of being big but being nimble. So speaking of being big, talk about customer engagement, not necessarily the actual customer conversations, but how do customers engage with Centrally? You know, one of the simple things that you look at the hyperscalers, I can go to the website and when I have a question, I can type it in and I'll get a script that answers me in an hour or so. What is the engagement model for interacting with Centrally for new customers? I think, actually let me go back on this one. I was reading a survey in a CIO magazine. Actually, there's a recent survey last year it was that around 1,000 plus CIOs who were interviewed and most of the CIOs, all the CIOs had SAP systems in their companies and 40% of them said they want to move from on-premise to cloud. Right there, that's our engagement strategy there, that we come as a one-stop shop for all these customers who are planning to move from on-premise to cloud. Why? Because number one, they want to reduce their capex, upfront reduction in your cost. They want to make sure that their steady-state cost for keeping the lights on is bare minimal. So whatever budget is left out, they can focus more on innovation. We take this sliver line of keeping the lights on and moving them from on-premise to cloud as part of our engagement strategy to start with. As we do that, they realize, customer realize that we are not just hosting partners, we just don't provide scalable private managed security cloud for our customers, but we can also do SAP implementation end-to-end, which is whether this is ACC upgrade to S4HANA or this is a digital strategy for S4HANA going forward or just HANA as a pure analytics tool or the different SAP suite of products, whether this is hybrid, whether this is Ariba or other suite of products which are very much in a SaaS model aspect of SAP. We support that end-to-end and our support model is based out of the United States. We have offshore centers in India. So globally, follow the Sun kind of approach. We do this between our number of units here in US and in India, that's our engagement strategy approach. So last question is, we're in the NetApp booth here at Sapphire now. Tell us about what CenturyLink, NetApp, SAP are doing within the context of automation. Oh, wonderful, yeah, great. That's important actually because I think if you really look at the pace of what customer needs today, the pace is changing so fast, you know. And in a typical SAP landscape, you want to commission a system, a development system or a production system within weeks or within days. Go on other days where you need two months and three months.  So what we have done is we want to get into the automation mode, you know, and we are heavily investing in that part with the help of Cisco UCS case. NetApp plays a very big role here in terms of providing their data-driven strategy, their hyper-converged infrastructure as part of the storage system, and working with another partner, Gnomec, to make sure that all these guys behind the scene have a very good orchestration layer to automate the whole process of building the infrastructure, building the application, building all the services, and handing it over to our, to the customer team for them to start the journey. So that whole cycle can be reduced by the automation. So I would say NetApp plays a big role there, no doubt about that because most of the IT organizations are data-driven today. The SAP workloads are changing, and you can't wait for those change manually to be operated, you know.  And this is where we are going right now in terms of automation. Well, thanks so much, Janash, for stopping by. I wish we had more time, but talking to us about what CenturyLink is doing with SAP, with NetApp, for example, to help customers on this arduous digital transformation journey. We appreciate your time. Thank you so much. I mean, this was great. Thank you. Enjoy the rest of the day. We want to thank you for watching theCUBE. Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend from SAP Sapphire 2018. Thanks for watching.


They pigeonholed the whole issue into one community, and then they sent their people in. The RCMP included went in on behalf of these companies. The companies had their own security to come in and start to create divisions amongst the people. Assuming that the mining exploitation in our territories, which is literally imposed on blood and fire, is to say that not only does the exploitation occur with the territories, and therefore the two things are linked to each other. The exploitation of the territories and the exploitation of the women's bodies. Over 90% of the women that we talked to did say that the mine had clearly created problems in the community. The most dangerous impact that resource extraction activity is having in Baker Lake is increased violence against women and girls. In July 2010, until the end of September, there have been at least 72 Indigenous peoples killed, documented at least. Among the 72 are eight Indigenous women. One of them was pregnant when she was killed. But in addition to that, as they begin to participate, they begin to lead movements in defense of water, in defense of forests, So, there is a systematization of the society itself to say that they are women, that they are no longer from the house, that women, as men like it, are from meetings to meetings. The Inuit women working at the mine were mainly working as house cleaning staff for a predominantly male workforce. And so this did make them very vulnerable to sexual harassment. What we see across the world and in Canada on mining projects that are already in existence, the increase of violence against women because of the increase of revenue that leads to the increase of alcohol and drug abuse, which leads to the increase of domestic violence.


Mr Speaker, before I comment, I'd like to do two things, one to express my sincere condolences on the death of a member of the medical community who died this morning in very suspicious circumstances. Second, I'd like to wish all musicians a happy, sense of serious day. This morning, I had the pleasure to listen to the St. Lucia Police Band, and they are at the vintage best. And I hope during this year's budget, we can do something to improve the situation. They are in dire need of facilities, etc. We hope we can assist them during this year's budget. Mr Speaker, the long-standing issue of termination benefits to majestic industries and liat 1974 limited workers will be settled, and I'm reading from the budget address which I delivered on 26 April 2022. Mr Speaker, you may recall about 30 years ago, the owners of majestic industries, a government manufacturing operation at Bizi, left St. Lucia, own workers termination payments. My administration will honour this long-standing payment to majestic industries for the issuing of government bonds which have been accepted by the representative of the workers. You may wish to note that this is another commitment made by the former prime minister which remained unsettled and left now for this administration to honour. Mr Speaker, the government has also entered into a similar arrangement with the non-management liat workers who were terminated by the closure of the company in 2020. We are currently in discussions with the former management staff including pilots to arrive at an acceptable settlement. Mr Speaker, our decision to settle these outstanding payments is yet another demonstration of our continued commitment to the upliftment of the welfare of the workers of St. Lucia. Mr Speaker, after discussions with the representatives of the workers and the National Workers Union who represented the workers and the non-unionised workers at liat, the Cabinet yesterday endorsed the following. Payment of outstanding termination benefits totaling 4 million, 436,500 and 78 dollars and 16 cents to ex-employees of liat 1974 limited according to the approval list. That the Attorney General's Chambers engages the lawyers representing the National Workers Union refigured to the formation of a special purpose vehicle to facilitate payments totaling 1,960,000 to ex-employees of majestic industries. That the Department of Finance facilitates payments for the issuance of St. Lucia government bonds. That the bonds issued be considered as full and final settlement of termination benefits to the ex-employees of liat 1974 limited and majestic industries limited. The Attorney General to ensure that upon receipt of the bonds that the appropriate arrangements are made to indemify the government of St. Lucia from any further payments or claims related there to by the ex-employees of liat 1974 limited and majestic industries limited. That the Attorney General's Chambers assess and provide feedback to Cabinet with respect to the status of the building belonging to the majestic industries limited situated at Bizi in the quarter of Kashmir. Mr. Speaker, I'm sure that the workers at majestic industries who for more than 20 years have languished hoping that someday they will be paid have realized now that they have a government that is truly interested in the welfare of people and the welfare of the workers of this country. And Mr. Speaker, the situation relating to liat is a fundamental principle that we had to be faithful to because Mr. Speaker liat has been criticized vehemently liat has been put under the All sorts of criticisms by Mr. Speaker right now is easier to go to Barbados or Antigua. It is easier to go from Miami and get to Barbados from Miami and get to Antigua than it is to go to Antigua directly because of the absence of liats. So Mr. Speaker, this move by the government is to give confidence to the workers of liat that even though they have been attacked and brutalized sometimes due to mistakes that they have made but they have never been appreciated. And I want to say clearly Mr. Speaker that the former prime minister had absolutely no appreciation for liats. Absolutely no appreciation for liat Mr. Speaker whereas it was important for him to subsidize international airlines and nothing wrong with that he had to do it for the tourism industry. When it came to liats he is on record the same not one cent will the government ever invest in liats. This government Mr. Speaker, we are going to work with the other governments in the OECS and the region in Barbados to ensure that some form of liats gets back on the internet because the region cannot survive. We are not liat Mr. Speaker liat is a public good and whereas the former prime minister always looked for excuses why we could not support liat. We are showing that is good faith by showing the workers in liats that we appreciated what they did and that is why we are paying them their tribulation benefits. Mr. Speaker I want to thank the workers of liats for their patience but also most importantly the workers of the majestic industries because these are single mothers. We talk about single mothers at the time but these are single mothers who are unscrupulous investors. Let them without determination the severance pay and the tribulation benefits but this government we are finding the resources to pay these workers truly putting people first and truly putting the workers as an individual first. And that is why we honoured the civil servants salary increases. The public servants are increases and that is why in December we are going to pay the public servants their back pay as promised. Mr. Speaker I also want to thank the workers for their patience. I also want to thank the National Workers Union because the National Workers Union were very very patient. I must thank them for that Mr. Speaker. There are a number of letters that they received Mr. Speaker promising all kind of things. The land that Wilwood tell belongs to the company should be sold. Proceeds from the sale should be used to compensate the workers. 150 other former employees are prepared to accept $10,000 each as an extra payment in the year of severance. Notice to grant vacation entitlements to being closure to this matter. That was a letter, one of the letters of July 16, 2020 signed by the former prime minister. Written to the National Workers Union July 16, 2020. Up to today, one year later, July 21, 2021, nothing. Mr. Speaker, so I want to thank the workers and the many other letters Mr. Speaker, which I will not put in the statement. So I want to thank the union for their patience Mr. Speaker. I want to thank the staff of the Ministry of Labour for working diligently with the workers to ensure that the calculations are correct Mr. Speaker. Led by the Minister. I also want to thank Mr. Speaker and again the liat workers. So Mr. Speaker, I am sure that the Ministry of Finance will make it possible to get the bonds to these workers by Christmas. And because of the confidence in this government these bonds will surely be sold as soon as they are received by the workers. These bonds are surely going to be sold and the workers will have a good Christmas. Coupled with the money that they sell the bonds for, the majestic workers and the liat workers. Coupled with the fact that the civil servants will get their back pay. And coupled with the fact that there is a general upswing economically in the country will have a merry Christmas. I thank you.


If you've already created the content, it doesn't take that much longer to put it in Spanish and create an environment that they feel comfortable in, right? And so what we saw is that there are so many manufacturers that aren't creating an environment that is inviting and authentic, and so they're searching out ones that do, right? So they are going to have the head start with this consumer. Welcome to the Smarter Building Materials Marketing Podcast, helping you find better ways to grow leads, sales, and outperform your competition. All right, everybody. Welcome to Smarter Building Materials Marketing, where we believe your online presence should be your best salesperson. I am Zach Williams, alongside my co-host, Beth Papnikilov, and today we're talking about, gosh, everything from marketing to Hispanic contractors, how you should be targeting the channel. We've got an awesome show lined up for you. We are really excited to welcome Kevin Kilpatrick. He is the chief marketing officer of Blue Lumber and an absolute expert at knowing your customer, targeting them well. He's been in our industry for quite a while, and we're very excited to have him on the show. Kevin, thanks for spending time with us today. Awesome. I appreciate the invite, guys. I've been listening to you guys for a long time now, so you've been kind of hopping along on my workouts for about a year and a half now. So glad to be on this side of the microphone. We are, too.  So currently, chief marketing officer at Blue Lake Lumber, like you had mentioned earlier, but just got here like weeks ago. So before that, I've really been chasing this residential remodeler for about 20 years now. So I grew up in the agency world in Dallas and then jumped client side to Home Depot as director of marketing at Home Depot for a couple of years and then started my own media company. And this media company was primarily targeted against Hispanic pros and how we target primarily him and get him to drive sales with Hispanic, and then we kind of grew into the general market. And then spent the last couple of years at Lowe's and kind of saw the world through that lens. And like I said, just like three weeks ago, I jumped over to Blue Lake. Kevin, one thing I'm really interested to hear your perspective on is we're talking in advance of the show is your process for marketing. Marketing has like this very like, hey, we have goals, we have objectives and things like that. But oftentimes we don't get to the nitty gritty of like how do you actually get things done and do it in a way that is measurable, that is effective, that meets our audience where they where they need to be, as well as positions the brand the right way. So I'd love for our listeners to hear from you about your perspective and your process of how you approach marketing and the results that you're seeing from that. Yeah, sure. I pretty much use the basic formula for the last five years or so. And it's kind of a six step process. And I'll just kind of kind of walk you through those steps if you want. And we can kind of take the conversation from there. So because this the same process is it works for like big company positioning and as you're positioning your brand down to product launches or a grand opening or what have you. So you just kind of abbreviate some steps. But I think it's important to kind of think through each of the six steps. And and quite honestly, it's it's not till step six is when you actually pull the trigger and you start brainstorming and advertising. It's just the other five steps are to get you there. First of all, you got to know where you're going. And so you always got to set a goal out there. And generally it's a revenue goal, but it can be an awareness goal. It could be, you know, a conversion goal. It could be a lot of things, but most of the time it's revenue. But you got to that's one number one. And a lot of people skip that and just kind of start digging in and don't realize kind of where the true North is. So kind of real quickly, Kevin, when you say revenue goal, do you mean like marketing attributed revenue or like what's the company revenue that you're trying to so I like to try to drill down to what we can control. So it's it's the marketing driven as much as we can. Right. So and what I've had the most like doing is being collaborative with the leadership teams of different organizations and and making sure they're buying in. We know where true North is. We know what the goal is that we're we're working against. And that's how we're going to be measured as a success or not. That's great. Sorry to interrupt you.  Yeah, no worries. So the second one is once you got to your revenue goal is understanding the customer and and that's probably the second most important step is really understanding who you're targeting. So, you know, it's all the buzzwords, the customer journeys and the personas, the demographics, psychographics. But that's where, especially in the building materials area, digging in and finding out exactly who your end customer is. And for me, like I said, it's residential remodeler. So it's a large percentage of Hispanic pros out there in the market. So right now, the department, according to Department of Labor, it's like 27 percent of the total market is preferred Spanish, right? And it is a native's identifies themselves as a Hispanic person. And so, you know, you look around the the industry and not a lot of folks are going after that segment. I think that's really a failure of not knowing your customer at the end of the day. So it's not drilling in and really investing time and energy, finding out who that end customer is. So from the Hispanic side, I mean, it's, you know, because once you understand their social media habits are different. So the platforms that they use are different. They are much higher users of social media than the general market contractor. We see their the platforms they use are a little bit different. We know how they learn is different, like what what mediums, like when you're giving instruction manuals or videos, a lot of folks get kind of get a high level. They understand that, OK, a lot of research comes back and that the the probe will say, yeah, I speak Spanish and English on the job site. So they're like, OK, check, I'm good. I'm just going to do English and we covered everything. But if you put yourselves in their shoes and you dig deeper in the research, it's like when you're trying to understand how to install something or the mechanics or something, you want that to be in your native language so you can fully comprehend that. So you might be able to communicate on the job site in English, but to really understand it, you need your native language, which is primarily Spanish or we see some Portuguese, but it's primarily Spanish out there. So that's where that knowing your customer, the building material industry and especially the Hispanic pro, as we call it, is critical. So that's number two. The three step is once you got your goal, you understand completely your customer is your positioning, right? And understanding the landscape and where all of your competitors stand and then where you can carve out space for your own and be very differentiated in the market. So, you know, laying right on top of other competitors is always tough and it makes your spend and your time and energy go up to try to differentiate from your competitive set. So really understanding the positioning in the marketplace is critical. Fourth step is aligning sales and marketing. And so many times these the two different organizations are on two different paths. And I'm a firm believer that marketing has to support sales, right? So a lot of times there's some turf wars and there's back and forth. But I think that if we as marketers aren't making that phone ring or aren't providing those leads or explaining and walking the sales team through on how to use HubSpot, for example, it's a process we're going through right now and how to activate that and the automated and how that plays a role, then that's a failure on the marketing side, right? So I think you have to align the leadership teams on sales and marketing, but everybody has to understand where you're going. So and you can tell the organizations where it's two different paths, right? You can just walk down the trade shows and IBS or whatever and you can see, OK, they're not talking, right? I mean, what they're selling and what they're actually are two different things. Can you give me an example of what you would see at a booth that would tell you, oh, those sales and marketing teams are not friends versus the and like the opposite. What are key indicators that they're well aligned? Yeah. So I think and without naming names, of course, I've seen it in the window category and then doors sometimes. So it's it's where the the marketing team is talking about the look and the feel and the creative and then selling the end dream and what it looks like at the end of the day. But technical sale, it's very, hey, listen, we got to get in there. We got to talk about specifically the materials that's there that differentiates us and specifically the details. Again, it's very divergent and not not aligned. And I think the companies that are aligned and do work, I think it's they're singing off the same hymnal, right? They understand because I think the salespeople have been brought along on this journey so far, so they understand the personas of the customer. They understand the journey, they understand the pain points that that the customer has before they get to it. And they understand the kind of the sale cycle right along with the marketer. So it's like, you know what, we're you're building a deck and and a DIY person that's building a deck to kind of building their own deck. It's almost a 14 month process from when they have the idea to investigating when they're when they're purchasing and what they're going to purchase and what kind of lumber they're going to purchase or these fantastic tropical hardwoods to make your deck look great and the installation and then on down. So it's like a 14 month kind of sale cycle when you're contacting us, when you're marketing to a contractor, it's like a three week sale cycle, right? I mean, it's like, bam, bam, I got it. I'm putting up six of these things this month, right? And I got to just get going. It's a whole different are you in stock? If you had the specific million requirements and then that's what they're looking for. It's like that whole selling the dream is is out the window. I mean, these guys want I need it right now. I already know what I want. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. I've got seven questions based on the things you've already said. Keep going. OK, so there's two more. So we've got set the goal. We understand our consumer positioning. We're hand in hand with the sales teams. We are moving in the right direction. I think then the next step is kind of trying to figure out your cadence internally for your planning and responsibilities. So a lot of times when you have an agency that you're working with or you have you're doing everything in house is making sure everybody understands on the team what their role and the responsibilities are. And we're focused on the campaign. So whether it's getting ready for IBS, it's who's in charge of the booth, who's in charge of the collateral, who's making sure everybody knows at the end of the day what it is or the bigger campaigns. And you have enough resources. Sometimes your appetite is bigger than you have resources to to execute against. Right. So then before you start advertising, you got to make sure it's let's pull in some additional some folks to help us out. So that's important. It's kind of getting everybody accountable and understanding who's going to do what. And then number six is that's when you start the advertising. That's when you create the creative brief, the strategy brief. Everybody get away on the same team. And then we start kind of doing the fun stuff in the marketing. But, you know, I think people outside the industry or marketing industry, whether whatever field, they just jump straight to step six, right? And they start doing the advertising. That's the fun part. Where the heck are we going here? Here's a brochure. Here's some pictures. Right. Yeah. Right. So again, so I personally use that process for the bigger the bigger planning as well as the small grand openings or new product launches. I love that. If I could go back to you talking about knowing your customer. I love the call out that you have about creating content and targeting the Hispanic customer base. I'd love to hear your opinion on how manufacturers can do that in a way that offers authentic customer support to the Hispanic customer base, simply offering installation information in English and Spanish is not authentic customer service for a significant portion of your customer base. So can you talk a little bit about your experience of building out an authentic presence amongst that target demographic? And that's when we had the name of the media platform was Constragia Aldia. So the up-to-date construction guide and it was a hundred percent in Spanish and we started as a magazine and we kind of tripped it into video and social and digital and everything else and really watched trends closely. We can tell you we worked with over 200 different manufacturers on this process and then targeting this consumer. Right. So it is like I said, there's there's some intricacies on how they differ in the media habits or how they learn. And then being authentic to your point is so many times we had clients and we would advise against this, but they would run an ad with us or buy some media with us and it would be in Spanish and it would look pretty and you'd hit that link and you go to their site and it's in English. I could see it coming. I could feel it. So you're inviting them to the party in Spanish and then you're like it's everything's in English. It's easy enough to I mean, it's an extra step and it's an extra expense, but to translate the videos into Spanish and have your own YouTube channel in Spanish to have your your your manuals are downloadable in Spanish and every touch point needs to be in both languages from the from the original ad or the digital ad all the way through their journey and learning about you. The YouTube videos. It's easy enough to translate the the downloadable information, the white papers. You've already created the content. It doesn't take that much longer to to to put it in Spanish and and create an environment that they feel comfortable in. Right. And so what we saw is that there are so many manufacturers that aren't creating a an environment that is inviting and authentic. And so they're they're searching out ones that do right. So that they are going to have the the head start with this consumer. I have like a million questions about this as well. Kevin because I think you know looking at the individuals where you know they're Hispanic and Spanish is their first language. Are you not only it sounds like you're not only you know drawing them in because you're prioritizing them as individuals and you're trying to hear them out. But you mentioned earlier on about their specific habits like what they're doing on social media. What you know what their online habits look like. Can you speak to that a little bit like how how are they different than let's say contractors that we you know that are not Hispanic. Yeah. So I think there's there's two primary things that jump right off the page at the first is that the Hispanic pro is hesitant to give their information away. So email campaigns all of that. So everybody's like oh it's immigrated immigration related. And that's why no no it's just culturally the Hispanic community just doesn't give their information away. Right. And so it has nothing to do with immigration. But your email campaigns you're not going to see them go in and volunteer and give you an email for your automation. Right. So so what will they volunteer for. Is there anything they will volunteer for. Like are they open SMS or they open other things. They will do some SMS. However social media is the way off the charts. Right. And so we saw social media particularly Facebook. And I know and you know and contractors and in general we see the whole it's kind of a generational thing as far as Instagram and Facebook and we've seen that the big boxes as well as the my company is where we were else is that these guys are primarily on Facebook. You can catch about 98 percent of them on on Facebook and Instagram is kind of a distant number two. But we see their usage and in particularly in the groups for the Hispanic consumer. And I think it's just a human nature. I mean these guys are alone on a job site. Right. And you think about you're in a country you don't speak the language as well or not. But you you crave this contact in this this companionship in this community. And so these Facebook groups we saw a lot of we would just put them up and they just take off. I mean they're showing each other pictures. They're asking questions. I mean it's just phenomenal. You've got specific Facebook groups just for Hispanic pros. So it's not like hey we're we're reposting the same thing in English and Spanish. You've got Hispanic only group. Absolutely. OK. So we just saw the groups in the primarily work better. So and then I know Beth I listened to your your podcast a couple weeks ago on on TikTok and and that taking off.  He's not on TikTok. You can't convince me he's on TikTok. Yes. I am so completely wrong. So Kevin if it makes you feel any better. I had that exact conversation with Zach like three years ago when TikTok was launched. He asked me I'll never live this down. We were in an Uber at a building materials conference and he's like what do you think about building materials for TikTok. And I was like unequivocal. No pause.  We have no business on there. That's not going to last. Wrong. Wrong. And all accounts Beth. So wrong. I in my last gig at Lowe's. I mean the head guy on the merchandising side. But in Lowe's pro was like hey we need to check out TikTok. And I was I mean it was hours me fighting again. I was like listen it's not it's not happening whether it's Hispanic or not Hispanic. These guys aren't there. I am completely wrong. You mentioned right before a podcast we were talking just prepping about the Hispanic customer base. And you mentioned specifically Masonry has a almost like 50% Hispanic customer base versus English native language speaking. There is one of my favorite TikTok accounts is called viral builders. And one of their videos is a Hispanic man doing a Masonry install and he's just scooping the mortar, tamping it down, scooping the mortar, tamping it down. That's the whole video. It has hundreds and hundreds if not thousands and thousands of views. It's fascinating. Like that's it. It's somebody on their phone. We were wrong Kevin. I'm glad we were wrong though. I'm sure. I mean and I've gone down those rabbit holes as well. And you start watching TikTok and where does that hour go? You know, but it's I think contractors are humans too and they get lost and an entertainment but you know that you start seeing the postings and you start seeing them showing off their work and then influencers. I mean it's it's growing. I mean I don't have as much experience with the Hispanic pro and TikTok. We've got to put some studies to that. But we know contractors in general the general marketers. It's definitely there. Is there any manufacturers out there Kevin that you look at and go, Hey, these guys are doing it really well when it comes to targeting the Hispanic pro? Yeah. Mekita has down really is and they've been doing it for a long time. They really invested and have stuck to it. And so Mekita is getting a lot of market share. We're seeing the DeWalt is starting to do some smart stuff. And then the paint companies and because you think that the painters kind of over index and it's like, you know, almost 60% of professional painters are considered themselves Hispanic. So Sherwin Williams is doing some really smart stuff. So they're there. And then I think the big boxes know how to play in that space as well. And they're really trying to to even do better. But they're both doing great. It's funny you mentioned Facebook. I was looking at GF's Facebook account a month or two ago. And they have a series where they bring on a Hispanic pro in like the roofing space to share about their business or share techniques. And the entire webinar, like the entire thing, it's like two guys, two or three guys. It's entirely in Spanish. It's like right on their page and like it's weekly or whatever it is. I was like, man, that's I mean, it's not a lot of work, but it's really smart.  Yeah. And you know, and then the roofing industry, you know, I mean, as a whole, yeah, it's the majority of the business owners and the laborers are Spanish speakers. That's great. So Kevin, for any manufacturers listening listening to this podcast, they're like, Hey, you know, really value your insight about process and valued your insight about how to market to the Hispanic pro. You know, if you gave them one piece of advice for them to be more effective this next year, what would you tell them? So I think it truly goes back to what Beth said earlier is being authentic, right? So you just got to step back and you got to think about as as a user of the product, take yourself out and just pretend they're speaking Polish and talk of you are speaking something else. How would you want to learn about that? Right. And really look at every touch point and then really understanding and dig in from a consumer research standpoint and what percentage of your your customers are speaking Spanish and prefer Spanish to learn. And then if it's a large percentage, and I think you have to be authentic and every touch point you need to address. It's great. Kevin, for our listeners, if they want to get in contact with you, what's the best way for them to do that? Yep. So I'm on LinkedIn. So you can find me there as well as email is Kevin dot kill Patrick at Blue Lake lumber.com. It's awesome. Kevin, this has been awesome. Thank you so, so much for coming on the show.  And we're like, yes, you absolutely should. But it's like, it's a lot of people. It feels like a big daunting task that is more work that they've got to translate and they're committing to something. But what they really are is not just coming to the work, but they're committing to their customer, you know, and so really appreciate your help. And for our listeners, if you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you check out then view dot com slash podcast to subscribe to get more. Until next time, I'm Zach Williams, alongside Beth Love. Thanks everybody.


This 2017 Chevy Silverado 2500 Crew Cab Short Box is stock number 12063Z. We're here at Summit Automotive in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. You're new and used heavy-duty truck headquarters. This 2017 Chevy Silverado has the 6-liter V8 engine. This truck has been fully-safetyed and inspected by our service shop. It has a fresh oil and filter change, all the fluids have been checked and topped off. And this truck is 100% ready to go. Graphite Metallic is the color we shoot all of our videos in 1080p. 60 frames per second, so if you have HD capabilities on your computer, tablet, smartphone, or television, turn them on right now because it is your best way to check out the quality and condition of the truck before seeing it in person. And if you like the video and would like to subscribe to our YouTube channel, we do videos of our new and used inventory each and every day here at Summit Auto. In the bottom right-hand part of the screen is a subscribe button. Click that, and then click the bell notifications. You'll get updates on the videos we do each and every day here at Summit Auto. It comes with a nice set of factory step bars. It has the XD Series 20-inch painted alloy rims. No scuffs or scrapes on there, and it has Open Country Toyo 35 by 12.5R20 LT tires. And these tires look like they have probably about, I'd say, 60 to 70% of the tread left on them. This one does have the Rancho suspension, and it also has the Rancho lift kit on it. It has a heavy duty aftermarket front bumper. Some aftermarket headlamps. We'll turn those on at the end of the video so you can see how nice and bright those are. Chrome trim grille. You do get the cowl hood there. Hood's in nice shape. Passenger side front fender looks really nice as well. And the passenger side rim. No major scuffs or scrapes on there. Looks pretty good. I like this graphite metallic paint. It's got a lot of metal flake in it. You can see just how reflective that is. And as you go down this side of the truck, take note of how clean the body is. How reflective and mirror-like that paint is. We take these HD videos so if you are far away or even if you're close by and just cannot make the trip down but you're still interested in purchasing the vehicle, you can see the truck, hear the truck, and have confidence in what you're looking at before you even get here. So when you do get here there's no surprises. Pretty clean down this side. Doors look really good. This back rim. Pretty nice shape as well. The front tires have just as much tread as the front tires. The frame and underbody looks pretty good too. And underneath here is all the remaining factory exhaust. A little bit of dust on the frame but nothing too bad. And the cab corners all look really good as well as the lower rockers. Comes with factory chrome step bars. Coming around to the back does have LED tail lamps as well. Rear bumpers in really nice shape. I didn't see any dents or dings on that. Working sensors. Rear bumper steps. Full towing package which includes a receiver hitch 4 pin and 7 pin wiring. The tailgate is in a very nice shape as well. Didn't see any major dents on there. Does come with a bed rug. And it does have LED bed lighting up there. Tailgate shuts nice and solidly. And as you come down the driver's side just as clean as I pass under side. No major dents or dings on the box. And for full disclosure this back rim is in excellent shape as well. Down the rest of the side of the truck looks pretty good. Does have the power mirrors with built in directional signals. They are heated and does have a driver's side blind spot mirror. They also power fold in. Inside the LTZ package gives you the black leather interior. No major rips or tears on the seats. Does come with a set of weather tech floor mats. Does have heated seats, air conditioned seats, auto headlamps turned off where we'll drive. Factory brake controller tilt, telescopic steering wheel. Power windows, power locks, power mirrors and memory driver's seat. It does have the Bose sound system. And these mirrors do power fold in. I always like showing both sides so that you know that both sides are working properly. We'll hop inside. Take a look at the miles and the ignition and the radio. And everything that the interior has to offer. See that this one has 65,708 miles and spring cluster is very nice and clean. Does come with the heated leather wrap steering wheel. Bluetooth and audio control or information center controls on the right. Cruise controls and forward collision warning controls and heated steering wheel buttons on the left. Has the six speed automatic transmission with the optional tap shift. Has the Chevy MyLink system, AM FM and Sirius XM radio capabilities. You can see it does have the factory navigation system on it as well. AM FM and Sirius. And then it does have a projection manager where you can project your cell phone to the screen via Android Auto or Apple CarPlay. Project your cell phone to the screen. So if you have a different navigation system or just want to play music or media on there you can do that through the screen. It's a pretty cool system.  That's for your LED or your cargo lamps. It also is for your LED lights in the bed. Does have the parking sensors and lane departure. You get two USBs, two 12 volt power points and then a 110 volt, 150 watt plug-in. Passenger side format and seat are in excellent condition. And this one does have the power sunroof. Up here you get your map lights, power side and rear window buttons. Sunroof controls and your home link buttons for your garage door security systems and lane systems. On-star and SOS buttons in the review mirror as well. We'll take a quick look at the back seats and then we'll start it up. Take a look at under the hood and check out all those lights in the front. Back seats are just as clean as the front seats. No rips or tears back here. It does have the latch child safety system. Power slide and rear window with the built-in rear defrost. Seats are in really nice shape. It does have an all other floor map back here. Keeps your carpeting looking like new. And this one does come with side curtain airbags. Bottoms of the doors all look pretty good. And we'll start it up and take a look under the hood. Starts right up. No check engine lights or anything like that. I'm going to turn all the lights on here for you. I would personally like to thank you for checking out the video today. And hopefully from this HD video you'll be able to tell just how clean this truck is all the way around inside and out. Under the hood we have the 6 liter V8 engine. Engine bay is very clean. It's very smooth. Once again this truck has been fully safe and inspected by our service shop. It has a fresh oil and filter change. All the fluids have been checked and topped off. The truck has been gone through mechanically 100% and is 100% ready to go. You can see those projector lamp headlamps there. The LED running lights, fog lamps. And to see more pictures of this truck or one of our other 450 new and used cars trucks. SUVs, minivans, Wranglers, halftones, 3 quarter tons, one tons. You name it, we got it. Go to that website right there at www.summitauto.com. Full pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle from two locations. All at www.summitauto.com. If you'd like to check out more HD videos, you can go to www.youtube.com. Remember to like, subscribe and share on this video and all the videos that you see there. Click the bell notifications. You'll get updates on the videos we do each and every day here at Summit Auto. In fact any second you will see a link to subscribe to our YouTube channel in the upper left. 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We're back live at VMworld 2012. This is in San Francisco. This is theCUBE. Siliconangle.com's flagship telecast. We go out to the event, extract a signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier, the founder of Siliconangle.com, and I'm joined by co-host. I'm Dave Vellante of Wikibon.org. We're here with Jay Srivallal, who is the CEO of Arista Networks, a multi-time CUBE guest. Welcome back. Good to always be back. Thank you, Dave and John. It's a pleasure. It's always great to have you on theCUBE because the greatness of Arista and the greatness of theCUBE is something that we love, that combination last year. You were one of our most popular segments, dynamic, very cutting edge, and we were actually talking about how networking's changing, and I'm really excited to have you here today because the networking business is upside down with excitement. People are exploding with interest around networking and software-defined networking. You guys have had a great success in this kind of modern era, as we're calling it, in the data center, leading the charge. And so the first question I got to ask you is, I mean, you've got to be pumped about this software-defined networking trend. Oh boy, it just plays so straight into Arista. First of all, thank you for calling us great. Arista actually in Greek means to be great, so we're working on greatness at all levels, technology people and the people I'm surrounded with right now. So as you rightly say, software-defined networking was literally made for Arista. If you remember last year, I told you networking had gotten sexy, and I think SDN just proves it because what we can now say, and look straight in the eye and say, is we have the only software foundation for networking that's modern, open, and most importantly, programmable. It's this extensibility and programmability that really, really gets to the heart of software-defined networking. And at Arista, we've been working harder on it with a very clean sheet of paper for eight years. And finally, we can see the customers deploying it with much success. Well, I got to say, we talked last year and we had a great CUBE interview. I see out there Pauline, Nis, Hi Pauline from Intel. She actually said on the CUBE, that the network is the bottleneck and we talked about that last year. So Jay Shree, take me through the current state of networking. Obviously, we're bullish on software-defined networking, as you know, and you guys are doing it. How's that bottleneck changing? What are the key trends that people should focus in on when they look at this segment? For the folks that are in IT, not inside the ropes, know the inside baseball, but what are the key things they need to be looking at around this shift to this modern, new networking landscape? Well, as Pauline can attest, I think what's happened is the storage folks have put in terabytes of storage. The compute guys are really pushing multi-cores and multiple compute capacity. And all of a sudden, we always sat back and thought the network was not the bottleneck, but the IO, in fact, is. And the applications and the capability of these applications are pushing the envelope as well. So what you see now is the real emergence of a new type of cloud stack, where no more can you just sort of have good enough for all these technologies, but you really have to build the best of breed for storage, compute, and the network has to, therefore, be a very critical foundation, and literally the IO that connects all of these. And of course, we're at VMworld, so I could not mention the sprawl of virtual machines and how that's affecting networking foundations as well. And so this new combination of best of breed applications transacting over the network and bringing in the right resources of workload, mobility, storage, and compute is, I think, fundamentally changing the way networks are deployed. It just can't be static anymore. Pat Kelsing was on this morning, the new CEO of VMware, first time on theCUBE as the CEO, and we were talking about the virtual machine sprawl. And particularly when you talk about software, you cannot not talk about virtual machines, but specifically how that's impacting VMs up and down the stack. So for example, there's a lot of advances in low level virtual machines that's impacting programmatic decision making, management of programs, big data analytics. So the question I want to ask for you, ask to you is, you've got a unique position. You're a CEO of an emerging company that's at the cutting edge of this, but also you know the tech. So what is your angle on this data-centric infrastructure? Because what you're seeing is data is now at the center of the value proposition, Jay Shree, and we had an earlier comment yesterday around the guys who were talking about operating systems. And in the old days, data wasn't really a part of the operating system design, but now data is, and the quote was, if SSDs were around during OS design, a completely different model would appear. So take us through the view of that. What's going on with this data-centric infrastructure? Is it real? Is it a builds-on conversion network? What's your take on that? If I could add some color to that, John. As well, Jay Shree, for the last five, seven years we've been focused on doing more with less, just to tell you know, TCO, cutting costs. You're talking about new applications. That to me says we're going to drive new business value, really drive productivity for the organization. I think you both are hitting on the massive drivers of why we need to really rethink this problem is the way big data is changing, not just the analytics, but also the applications are no more a closed mainframe or a closed clients of architecture. It's really traffic patterns that are going east-west and pushing the envelope of everything. So let me step back and say, what is it in software that defined Networking that's so exciting and why is big data such a fundamental part of it? First what it says is you can build a more advanced network topology. You can have a leaf spine architecture. You don't have to have layers of high latency. You can bring all of this into one flat topology. This is why the invention by both VMware and Rista of VxLands is so important because we completely remove the concept of subnetting or having layer two boundaries, layer three. All of a sudden you extended the LAN architecture from an artificial limit of 4,000 VLANs to literally unlimited. It can be 16 million segments and addresses. And one spec, one IETS spec that now everybody's embracing is right there. We're showing the industry's first VxLand demo with F5, EMC, Icelon, of course VMware and Rista. But we're bringing all this together wire speed all the way from, like you pointed out, delivering the application to the network reacting to it to all of the big data scale out resources from Icelon responding to all of this. It's pretty amazing when you can do all of this with one technology innovation VxLand. So translate that for me into talk about the business driver of, I got a business, I got people with multiple phones, I got zillions of access points in the network. So. I think you said it best, it's workload mobility of all those zillions of applications and access points but take it another whole step further which is not just across physical boundaries but really physical, to virtual, to cloud. The enterprise is changing. The enterprise is no more a monolithic stack. It's really about bringing the openness and the programmability to every aspect of our resources and applications. And whether it's big data, whether it's web 2.0, whether it's high density compute, or whether it's high frequency trading or massive oil and gas applications or social networking, all of these have some very common attributes that are now requiring networks to respond in a programmatic fashion. So you guys have shipping product in the market with Arista that's cutting edge. We've been seeing on our dashboard, Cisco is putting out a lot of noise in the social sphere around Cisco. I don't even think they actually have a product shipping. And they had an announcement at VMware yesterday. Can you, what was that about? Did you follow that? But it's difficult to parse through all of what Cisco does, how about I tell you what VMware and Arista do and then we can comment on the broader Cisco. Obviously Cisco is a well-established enterprise company, but private and public clouds and especially the movement to software-defined networking, Arista began it with its software and it's the only one in the industry I can challenge anybody who says they have a software-defined network whether it's really an enterprise network that's been sort of funged into a software network or if it truly is open and programmable in every aspect. We've been long partners with VMware for the last three years. We developed VM Tracer, you might know we won the award for VXLAN. This year we demonstrate the industry's first multi-vendor VXLAN demo. What we're really doing, just as VMware brought server virtualization to the industry, together with VMware and the controllers, especially with their NYSERA acquisition, we're really bringing network virtualization to the industry so that we can go beyond an isolated boundary to really the whole world across data centers, across clouds, across virtual industries. You know John, Oracle Bot. And Sam, what was the Cisco thing again? Cisco thing was, what Cisco can best say? Well, so what, you know Oracle Bot is, just say no comment, just say no comment. John, Oracle Bot Zygo, that's called, that's software defined networks, that's SDN. I don't know about that. I don't want to get into Cisco because there's nothing to talk about there because obviously the announcement yesterday was kind of like a, there was really nothing to say. I think it's a confirmation of a partnership they already had, that's good. That's like saying my husband and I are still married. That's the news release, right there. So if the software proliferates, right, the software that you talk about VXLAN, you're changing the role of your company. You're no longer just a switch vendor. You're evolving your company. What are you becoming? I think the best way to describe this is we're really the new standard in software defined cloud networking. We have brought the application to the network and the network to the application and these high performance transactions require a new class, a new dimension and a new more modern software because it requires a new cloud stack and these are no more closed proprietary connectivity points but really a way to enable the next world of workload applications. Jay Shree, let's go, let's get into that because I want to, this is important because there's a lot of fud out there around software defined networking, even the word software gets kicked in there, everyone starts screaming, oh no, I'm this, I'm that. Take us through some use cases, specifically. Yeah, let's talk about what you can really do with software defined networking. The first thing, as I said, is build the right cloud topology. So our use case in many cases is they're moving from the enterprise, they're putting in a big data storage, typically it's a Hadoop cluster and they want to build a large scale out storage and they'll use a Rista leaf and spines and build out the topology, that's one use case. The second is they need to introduce what I'd call SDN control points. So the control points may be for enhancing network virtualization or it may be for quickly rapidly configuring their servers so they can cut down their server configuration time from six hours to 20 minutes. We have a number of large software providers that you're all very familiar with right here in the Bay Area or all over the world that are using zero touch provisioning to do that kind of one touch software defined network. VM Tracer which we work with VMware on is another example of a SDN touch point where you can not only say I'm building a virtual network but I can now transcend virtual to physical as a use case and this is where network virtualization really shines and the final is what you've heard of a lot which is controllers and management. Does the network manage the management station or does the management station manage the network? Well, if you build a very distributed network and the controller has the right open APIs Arista has taken the approach that we can be controller friendly with anyone. We've demonstrated that with vSphere. We can do that with HP or OpenView or some of the service providers build their own management and the key here is to unshackle the APIs, make it programmatic and work with them so you can have a single point of control and manage. So you're talking about top down management model right? Yeah. That's what you're enabling. You're talking about a closed stack now becoming an open stack with best of breed components every step of the way I connect to the best big data storage, the best compute, the best virtualization. So you buy the whole abstract pool automate message? Oh, you bet. And the reason I buy it so much is because it starts with having best of breed server virtualization mapped into your storage and it isn't a single vendor. It's really a multi vendor provided you have the right open architecture and you have well-defined APIs. Okay, so I got to ask you, let's step back for a second. I want to ask you some more of a common question around your take on the Sierra, okay? So here's a startup. I know the guys have met him a few times and they're doing some cool work and open stack, et cetera. You got $50 million in funding, give or take a few million here or there and then boom, a billion dollar acquisition from VMware. I like it, I'm proud of them. So it's good, it's great outcome. But the effect people go, people who aren't in the industry go, oh my God, that's massive. Great exit, everyone does well. What does it mean? So what does it mean? So for the person out there who's trying to read the teeth, why did that happen? Can you share with your opinion on that? One quick analogy first of all, I think NYSERA is like the Instagram of networking. One of the ways to look at that is sometimes and every once in a while there's just awesome technology, awesome team that comes together and they're so valuable, they created a value proposition around not just server virtualization, where VMware is the leader, but really bringing that to the network world, right? And the network virtualization platform, as NYSERA calls it, was really pioneered by some very brilliant folks in NYSERA. And they didn't have, they haven't had the time to take it to market and develop the use cases because they got snapped up earlier. But that doesn't mean there isn't a crown jewel there. And certainly, ERISTA views that crown jewel as NYSERA has built an open virtual switch controller that now complements VMware. And the two together, working with ERISTA EOS and physical switches can transform the way software defined networking. And in particular, network virtualization can be done. So we'll have Martin on. This is technology as its best. So tomorrow at two, we're going to have Martin, the co-founder on, from here, we're going to go into great detail about that great exit and great team and great company. And so it's safe to say then you're excited for ERISTA with this acquisition. It validates us. It validates us, it gives you more room to grow. You think the growth on there will be significant from this? Absolutely. We have been working with NYSERA even before the acquisition and we've been working with VMware a lot. We look forward to seeing more demonstrations together from us. Great. So NYSERA is creating a new land grab around software defined network in which we need and we need more developers. We need more solutions. We had Ping Li on earlier and Frank Artali from the venture community talking about the excitement around the VC community. So question for you is, what kind of new startups might emerge that will come into the space? Because with that kind of exit, obviously it's going to draw some new entrance in. So what's your take on that? Because eight years ago, nobody was funding networking and everybody was saying, Cisco and Cisco's buying every company and that's it. If you actually looked 10, 15 years ago, Cisco had a half a billion dollar market cap and the sum of all the companies couldn't add up to a hundred billion, right? Things have changed today. If you look at the Best of Breed companies, whether it's Riverbed or F5 or Rubber or newcomers like us like Arista, what it says is if you focus on an application segment, if you build great technology and you take it to our customers, our customers are very hungry for alternatives. Our customers are in the center of figuring out their big data strategy, their cloud strategy, their virtualization strategy and the only way to solve that for the VCs is to really innovate there. So what new areas do you think are going to be, is there any white spaces that you see that need to be filled by some startups that you see as opportunities? The gray space is more than white because a lot of people are already filling it, right? But I think the fundamental shift is you're going from just thinking about the stack as an OS and an independent storage layer to really data transactions. The new application is not your standard email or mainframe or client server, but a whole new of data applications that require you to manipulate the data and therefore the software very differently. Whether it's for wired, wireless, mobility, anywhere. So the question I want to ask you here is more about a CIO type. So imagine you're talking to a CIO and you turn your business hat on, you have to kind of talk a little slower. You say, and they ask you, what's this data infrastructure? Because we kind of bought convergent infrastructure. We're modernizing our data center. We're going to the modern era, the Hadoop era, the Arista era. We're moving to the new way. What does it mean? Why is it, what's different about this new data infrastructure that's different from convergent? What would you say to that person? I think in one single word it's agile responsiveness. The CIO has to deliver applications and services in real time, which is more and more difficult to do with an existing legacy infrastructure. So what he or she has to do is peel off and build that private cloud or public cloud and think of it as the Amazon of infrastructure in some ways and really think about the layers and the mission critical applications and not necessarily succumb to their legacy habits and behaviors. So you see a lot of, based on your early comments, a lot of innovation coming to networking. You want to stay independent. I'm inferring that from some of your moves lately. So how do you stay independent? How do you make yourself? I think the best way this can be answered is to say we continue to build best of technology and our customers ask for our independence. As you know, I've shared with you often, we've still been going at the rate of one new customer a day. So over the last three and a half, four years, we have now 1,500 customers and our customers talk to each others and by strengthening our independence if you will, because they're all looking for an alternative and an alternate way of thinking and breaking old habits. You guys do have a great reputation. I go visit a lot of startups and growing startups and web scale companies and I see Arista boxes by the palette in there and they're not buying one or two, they're buying a lot of the high-end boxes. So congratulations on that. Thank you, thanks for your support. I appreciate it. I guess my final question is, what's next for you this year? Obviously the market's frothy. What's your plans? I mean, obviously between can you growth? What's your growth strategy? Well, our business plan is to continue to achieve profitable growth, not just growth and continue to innovate. We're never afraid to build the next new thing even if it replaces the existing thing. So our focus will continue to be big data and application-driven software-defined network continue to power more and more of the clouds. Cloud networking was our mission but it's really taken off now with the cloud providers and service providers because they're seeing that it's mission critical. It's seeing that it's reducing their apex. So we want to be one of those companies that people remember as do as they say and say as they do and really continue to execute on our vision, not just have a vision state. Maybe I'll ask one more question because I have no one more minute left but because you're so great content guest. The VC's out here that was just on, what would you say to them if you ran into them in a meeting, they're like, Jay Shree, what should we be looking for in the next generation software-defined data center? Because now it's not just about software-defined networking, a whole new operating environment is being reconstructed with data infrastructure and big data. How would you guide them? Assuming they're your friends now. They've always were my friends but they're especially friendly now, yes. I would guide them the following. Since your valuation just went up by a billion. I would guide them the following way, which is really look at the problem you're trying to solve whether it's a software-defined storage or compute or virtualization or application problem and don't try to be all things, focus on the micro-segment and do it extremely well because I think that's what's always made VC's innovative, funding innovative engineers and companies and solving a specific problem rather than the broad problem. We are big companies to solve the broader problems. What we've been lacking is the innovation for the specific software-defined issues that have been on the controller or the infrastructure side.  Thank you. A lot of energy, a lot of knowledge and congratulations on a risk to you guys who continue to do well. I know you've worked hard. When networking wasn't sexy, you started a company, you built a team. The roller coaster of a startup, you've had great success, congratulations and thanks for coming on theCUBE. It's always appreciated, you guys are my favorites. Thank you very much. This is theCUBE at siliconangle.com, we're here at VMworld, we'll be right back with our next guest.


What's good YouTube, this your boy T-World back at y'all again with another speed art video. If you're new to the channel go ahead and hit that like button, come in, subscribe, make sure you hit post notifications so you will be notified every time your boy drops some heat. In today's video I'm doing a mixtape cover for my little bro Jay Lane, he's a very dope artist. I will have all his links in the description so you can check him out. Originally when I did this video it was gonna be a step by step tutorial but after I recorded it I checked the audio in there. It was too bad man so I just went ahead and made it a speed art video so I make sure I make it up to y'all, I make another, I make a couple more videos where I'm doing it step by step so you can really see what I'm doing for those who wanna follow along and also too I got more videos coming mainly on how to draw and the best apps to use on your phone if you wanna do art on your phone and stuff like that. I would like to thank y'all for the love and support man we on our way to 100k subs. So y'all finna be seeing a lot of dope content man, I'm talking about with the art and music, I'm finna just turn it up a notch for you guys, I appreciate y'all, you know what I'm saying? Make sure you stay, stay tuned, more heat coming soon and I'm out this time.


Texas had an alumni game so of course Roger Clemens took the mound doesn't matter that he's 56 years old his two sons say go get him Daddy's is get away from me kids I got work to do this one's brought to you by draft Kings opens up looking like Roger of all check this out little Leg kicks less but just getting the swings and misses probably 15 miles per hour less But he's hitting 83 84 now. He's got to dig deep.  There's no way. I'm gonna be able to do that. So each world's one 79 how about that drops it right in there, but then tries to go back to the well kid pokes it to left Come on show some respect strike yourself out. Now this kid's button. What are you guys doing? You trying to get killed trying to get a bat thrown at you shakes the catcher again Probably calling for fastballs. No, thank you slices that one the left oh to just fouling them off goes inside Not gonna happen staying away from the fastball elevated there and then another ball in play not going well outside up High walks this next batter getting too flirty doesn't want to throw a fastball in the zone and get rocked next batter's up has Them oh too But then he's getting flirty come on 56 year old Roger Clements. Come on. No flirt with us Just bring us the heat. I don't have that heat. That's the problem. Kids are like. Oh, no, it's not the dad I remember oh No, but he comes back he goes strike one strike two on a foul ball then oh He finds the splitter check out this nasty pitch just darts and dives away 56 year old Clements Bringing it gets the double play ball gonna need some help sons One time one time do something special for me can't do it to run score Three runs score. He doesn't escape trouble. Look at that pitch.