Hello, I'm Dr. Lewis Meyers and this is Health Care Today. Welcome back. We've had a brief hiatus over the summer. I hope all of our listeners are enjoying their summer. We live in Vermont, which I think is the most beautiful state in the country. Our guest today who is on Zoom with us from Utah might disagree, but a lot of Vermonters, particularly this time of year, like to be outside enjoying all that Vermont has to offer. We want everyone to be able to do it, enjoy it, but also do it safely, and that's why I'm so pleased to have our guest today, Dr. Richard Ingebretson, on with us from Utah. He is one of the nation's experts on wilderness medicine. He's going to talk to us about what wilderness medicine is and some of the specific some of the specific things we can do to stay safe. Let me basically first introduce Dr. Ingebretson to you. Dr. Ingebretson is grew up in Utah in the Salt Lake City area. He graduated from the University of Utah master's and PhD programs in biophysics and subsequently has taught astronomy and biophysics to college students. He then went to medical school graduating from the University of Utah Medical School in 1993 and went on to do internal medicine residency at the University of Utah and a fellowship in emergency medicine, and he has worked clinically in those fields over the many years since. In addition, he has been involved in academia and he's associate dean of the University of Utah Medical School. He is a long-time environmentalist and a certified river raft guide has taken many trips down the mighty Colorado River and other rivers out west and is the founder and president of the Glen Canyon Institute. He's also the director of the Wilderness Medicine program at the University of Utah School of Medicine and he is the medical director of the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Search and Rescue. He has just returned a couple of days ago from two weeks in France where he was teaching students there about wilderness medicine. I would also add on a personal note Dr. Ingebretson and I met a very long time ago when we were both first-year students at the George Washington University Medical School before he transferred back to Utah. So I'm very pleased to welcome him to the show. Honored to be here, Lewis. Very, very honored. Thank you for having me, of course. Absolutely. Well, let's begin just a brief overview Wilderness Medicine. I think it's one of the newer subspecialties, if you will, in medicine and medical education. What is it and how did you get involved in it? Well, it came out of the fact that I was an outdoorsman. I was a hiker, climber, a river after and when I graduated from medical school, I actually saw a biker crash up behind our medical school and I really didn't know how to treat this guy very well and here I was a physician and so during my training and residency I became very keen on the idea that there needed to be more formal education for physicians and medical people particularly on Wilderness Medicine and so when I graduated there's my training. I went to the School of Medicine Curriculum Committee and said we need to teach Wilderness Medicine. Well, there really wasn't any curriculum at the time. You know, what do you teach? High altitude illness, frostbite, cold, hot, snake bites.  We called it Advanced Wilderness Lice Aborder, AWLS. And it came up with the program and we keep advancing it. Now we teach everyone. I think everyone in the world should have that and I am going to say just right now while if you'll let me just plug our website because most of our material is free. We have a podcast series called A-W-L-S. It's where we listen to podcasts. You can go there and listen and learn about how to be safe in the outdoors and you can go to WildMedU.org and look at our text books are free, look at our practice tests. Everything there on the side is free and learn about Wilderness Medicine. So just to start, but that's how it began and we have taught literally tens and tens of thousands of people trying to keep people safe in our beautiful world, particularly Vermont, which is the most beautiful state as we know, right? Well, thank you. One of the foundational differences it would seem to me between Wilderness Medicine and the more typical clinical medicine that we learn in medical school is that when you're out in the wilderness, you don't have all of the support systems that we would have, for example, in a hospital or we're in a more urban setting. So that you're really having to improvise, I would imagine, in ways that you might not have to in a more formal setting. Is that correct? Well, of course, that's absolutely correct. You don't have the tools of your trade when you're in a remote area. So one of the things we try to teach is emergency response that if someone is injured or profoundly ill, how to treat them. And we also look at ways of making diagnoses and determining whether a person needs to be evacuated into the front country to where they can get definitive care. They're not. But there's also something else, even more than that, is things that you really don't think about, sunburn, for example. People put sunscreens on and they don't know what is in them. We just finished a series, a new podcast and a chapter in our book on sunscreens, for example. What's in them? What's good? What's safe? And what should you have to prevent? So that people when they put sunscreens on know what they're putting on and which ones work and which ones do not. That's a new one. And how about water? Where do you get your water from? Do you take it with you or do you treat it? If you choose to treat water, how do you treat it? Everybody goes to the store and buys a filter, but does that work? No, you really should have two. But we go through our discussion on how to make sure your water is safe and make sure you're doing things to prevent. And the biggest problem people have out there are things that you don't really think about at home. For example, you don't really think about your shoes. But when you go in the backcountry on a hike, the shoes become probably the most important thing on your body because if you get a blister or you get foot pain, you're done. So we go through a lot of effort in making sure people take care of their feet, cutting toenails and making sure that the three arches in our feet are well protected, the proper socks, moisture, and get rid of friction blisters. So there's a lot to it. And categorizing and teaching, it's been a great challenge, but it's been a lot of fun for us. But there's a lot in wilderness medicine. And it can go on. But another example would be bugs. At home, you get bit by a bug, and if it's an irritant to you, but out there, it could be life-threatening if you have anaphylaxis or if you get real sick. So we go through a big process on how to treat bug bites and just any bites in general. So you are right. As you well know, I think one of Vermont is right now facing a crisis because basically much of the state has been under water this week. Major flooding. And people's lives are uprooted. They're having to wade through water, sometimes up to their waste, and how their homes have been flooded. Essentially, you're looking at almost a wilderness medicine right now. What would you advise people who are in these situations? Well, here's something about floods and water that we don't think about. I mean, there's the obvious danger of drowning, but there's also another danger that we overlook, and that is water brings up feces and fecal matter, both human and animal, and so we are subjected to those. And so our drinking supply is bad. And then the diseases that are carried in water that we normally don't worry about are going to be prevalent there. And we're sorry about what's happening back there. But water, apart from just drowning and being destructive, carries just an insane amount of disease. Yeah. Let's talk about some specifics, heat and cold exposure. When you talk to medical students or citizens who are taking your course, what kind of advice do you have about, of course, we're in the summer season now, so obviously it would be more heat exposure. But what kind of advice do you give? Well, when we talk about heat illnesses, the first thing we like to teach is that there is no such thing as cold. We often say keep the cold out or get in from the cold, but in reality, there is no such thing as cold. And when you put ice next to a body, you're not putting cold into summer, you're just drawing heat out. So the first thing we like to teach people is that our human body is producing just an insane amount of heat that is wasted out of our skin. And it needs to be going out constantly, unless you get into an environment where it's going out too quickly, like in Vermont in the winter, and then you try to trap the heat. So all of our bodies, it's a game of keeping heat in or getting heat out. A clothing, all of our clothing is designed to help facilitate that. For example, some things are designed to keep, well, let me put it this way, all our clothing is air. Air is how we trap our heat or let heat out. Air is a poor insulator, so when we buy clothes, we look at the amount of air that is in our clothing. And air is quite expensive. You can go to the store and spend $200 on a jacket. It looks real pretty, but all you're buying is air, and it's in bundles, it's in plastic bundles, but the point is that heat is the key. You either let heat out of your body or you keep heat in the body. And so if somebody's too hot in the summer up there, you want to put water on them because that will get heat out of them. If you're in the winter up there, you want to put air around us in coats or jackets or wool or something that will keep heat in. So we have to teach kind of what clothes are. We have to teach how heat enters and leaves our body, but just to always remember there's no such thing as cold. And when you put cold or you drink a cold drink, you're not putting cold into anything. You're just drawing more heat out. What about hydration? When people go on long hikes here in the summer, what do you advise in terms of hydration? Of course, that's the great question. Our entire glycolytic pathway, that is how we create energy is driven by water. And anytime we get down on water, you're subjecting yourself to both hot and cold illnesses. In the winter, we need a lot of water also. So staying hydrated is essential. And one of the things that the normal person, let's say the normal person, just anyone can do, is there's no specific rule, but you can kind of start looking at yourself and saying, am I getting a headache or am I thirsty? And just stay on top of that. And when you're drinking, you should also make sure that you're using drinking electrolytes and sugars as well. A lot of times you'll feel thirsty, you have water, but you're down on salt. So having fluids that have salt and electrolytes in it is important, but it's hard to drink too much water when you're hot. And just make sure you stay well hydrated. That's a real big problem. And if you get over hydrated, I mean if you get too hot, get water on you to draw that heat out. That helps. Let's talk for a moment about water safety.  You've been on some of the big rivers out west. We have some big rivers right here in Vermont right now, much bigger than we are used to. What should people do to be safe around water? Well, a couple of things. Drowning is a calamity of young people and very young people. If you look at the numbers, the people who drown, whether it's on a river or at home, it's toddlers. So the number one thing we have to do is watch children. That's who drowns. It is children. And that is true worldwide. That is not just true in Vermont or in our country. It is true everywhere. Toddlers need to be watched. And you can't leave them alone for a minute.  Children will drown in them. So that curve drops off at about three, four, five years old. And then it peaks again, starting at about 16 to 20, but of teenage boys, much more than teenage girls. So the next group that are at risk are of adolescent boys primarily, although it's true of others, but it's the same kids that get injured on bikes without wearing helmets, car accidents because they are where seabills are going too fast. So it is a calamity of young people. Very few people die generally by comparison. Once they get about 25 years of age, people become more cautious and more careful. But watch the kids, particularly toddlers, keep them away from streams.  Then the other thing you want to be very careful of, and this is another huge problem of drowning, not just in wilderness but at home, and that is drugs and alcohol. Kids who are impaired because or anybody for that matter, whether, and it's usually alcohol, they will have difficulty rescuing themselves and they'll fall in. And if you look at the numbers on river trips across the country, the vast majority of them are alcohol-related.  So watch the kids, watch those young toddlers. It's an astounding high peak around two years of age where children drown. What are some, can you tell us one or two of the events that have happened either on your trip or on an associate's trip that's specific on your river trips where medical intervention was needed? Well, I can tell you that on the trips that I run around as a river guy, we never had a situation where we thought that somebody was going to need evacuation. We were always able to handle it and we were being very, very safe and I'm very proud of that. And that said, because of my work in search and rescue and it's all I can to share, I can tell you some situations. One, I'll tell the story briefly and this was a kid who was up in Idaho rafting. He was 20 years old. He overturned in a kayak and he didn't get out and when his friends got to him, his helmet had pulled back over his head and he had hit his forehead and they pulled him to shore and tried to revive him but he died. This is called the Payette River about 20 years ago. But what happened was the father of course was just grieved beyond words but he realized that the problem was that the helmet was not safe.  I worked with the Bloomberg School down there in Hopkins not far from you and developed a helmet that has multiple straps and a swing that comes down in the back and when you tighten it, it will not come off. And it comes down low in the forehead and he changed the world of helmets.  When you have a helmet on on a bike and you land, your helmet hits the ground first. But on a river, if you fall in, the helmet hits the water first and can push off. So we warn people now to make sure they get one of these brand new helmets that they produced out of that boy's death up in Idaho that is very, very safe. It changed the world of river rafting and they're all over. You'll see that but make sure you get a really good helmet on and wear it. In terms of people getting lost in the wilderness and sometimes it can be not far from quote unquote civilization and they don't have to be out in the middle of literally nowhere. We now, a lot of people have GPS of course which has been a big change in the last 30 years but GPS doesn't work everywhere and cell phones don't work everywhere. If someone gets lost, what advice would you give them? What are some of the things they should do if they realize they're out in the woods and they're lost? So this is a very good question and the one thing I am going to ask people to do is go to our site and you can read about this for free on our WildMedU.org site. We have a course called Search and Rescue. It's for people who do this very thing. There's a chapter and they're called Lost Person Behavior. Another one called Search Techniques. So what we have discovered in the new generation is that older people will go down because it's easier to walk to go down. Younger people know to go higher and they're stronger to go and get GPS. So one of the things you can do is if you're the searcher is go to our site and read about where people go. First of all, get help. I mean just contact Search and Rescue rapidly. Learn about where people go and why and the kids go up and the adults go down. Older people who get confused will lie down and start to cry and things. But here's the deal. The people that get lost and we need to trouble our kids. So here's one thing that we really want to emphasize. And it came out of the death of a young boy many years ago in California that only was about 200 yards from where he got lost. This young kid had gone off and it became lost. The family looked. They ended up having thousands of people looking for him. They didn't find him for a couple of days. He had died. But out of that came a thing called the Hugga Tree Program. And you can go anywhere online and read about Hugga Tree with kids. And one of the problems they have with kids is they're taught not to talk to strangers. So if you see Searching and they see a stranger, they won't talk. So what we try to tell kids, and you can do this, is tell them to hug a tree, stay next to a tree, and give young people, or anyone that matters, you might think you lost, give them a whistle. The kids can sound their, they have sounds on their phones, but give the kids a whistle that they can blow. And then they have found that if you give that kid a code name, a code so that you can say, here's the code. And so when people search for them, they can yell out the code. They can blow the whistle. And if they just tell them to hug a tree and not to move. And the find rates on children have just skyrocketed, just if you can get kids to hug a tree. And then they find them. And then to have a code name or a whistle so that they can blow it. And then they tend to find them much better. It's a really good and important issue. That's very, very helpful. Thank you. Let's talk about animals out in the wilderness. For some reason this summer we've seen a lot of bear sightings here in Vermont. Of course there are other animals as well, koi dogs and raccoons, etc. What do you tell people about approaching or avoiding animals when they're out and about? So of course the answer is to avoid them. And to be careful. There are some animals that are predators like bears and we'll think you're attacking them. So just stay away from them and talk to people on the trail as you're hiking. Have you seen animals? A lot of animals like cuckoos and mountain lions and all these cats will actually see you before you see them. But not with bears. We were hiking last summer up in the U.N. mountains in Utah. We were coming down late with a doctor buddy of mine and we came across two moose that were absolutely the most beautiful things I think I've ever seen. So we walked on them and they were enormous. Well we just stopped and kind of backed up because you don't want to get angry about a moose.  So you always have these decisions. One of the reasons we go out Lewis is to see animals and to see the wildlife. What a blessing it would be to see moose or a bear but you just have to understand that they don't share that same hue. Obviously we'd rather not see a human and if you startle them. One of the things you can do is go into any... In one of our books we talk a lot about animals and how to approach them and be careful of them on a wild-bed youth site and that'll kind of tell you ways to avoid them but the blessing of being in our world is seeing these creatures but you do need to be careful especially about the ones who... The avoidance is the primary way to approach them Would you recommend people carry bear mace though? So specifically about bears you should carry bear spray. It's capsaicin powder, chile powder and they hate it. You have to be within about 30 feet. Oh my gosh they'll run away from it and so yes if you're worried about bears carry bear spray and it works they are strongly telling it's not to use guns now because you'll wound the bear and they'll just get angry and they'll attack but they will run from mace. A lot of videos online about the bear spray it works insanely effectively. Yeah, I absolutely carry bear mace. That's a good pearl. Let's talk about fire. I know that is more of an issue out west where you are. Fortunately here in Vermont we haven't yet been... Don't have as many forest fires and in fact this summer as I said it's just the opposite we're inundated with water but if you're in an area in the wilderness and you smell smoke and you don't know where the fire is coming from what should you do? This is an interesting thing. Where we see this it's interesting that you would ask this question because you know you have these three long trails in the United States that go from the southern border up to the Canadian border beginning with the Appalachian Trail and then the Rocky Mountain Trail and then the very, very, very popular Pacific Crest Trail begins on the Mexican-U.S. border and then goes all the way to Canada. These things are roughly about 7 or 8,000 miles takes three months to hike them and the problem that we're seeing now on the Pacific Crest Trail is the kids start late spring and then they end in August before they go back to school takes three months to hike these things tens of thousands of people are on there but they get into those fires in Northern California and the Cascades and so go move away. You don't want to be anywhere near them. So one thing you want to do is keep communications devices and like you said earlier you absolutely cannot rely on GPS and cell phones you really need sad phones you need to keep up on where the fires are and move away from them because you see people getting trapped get off the trails whether you're on the Pacific Crest Trail or just on a couple of day backpack you see the smoke know where the fire will be know before you go and just move away from them because it's a real problem and people get lost from each other in the smoke you may not be right in the fire but we've had cases on the Pacific Crest Trail some of those awful fires up in the Sierras where people get lost because they just couldn't see just keep communication lines open with people about where they are it's a big problem Now out west you have had a huge winter of snow in the Sierras that always brings up the concern about avalanches when people we have a lot of skiers here in Vermont not as many avalanches again I think as you do out west but what do you tell people about your country skiing well that's a real tender subject with me and with the people in this area because we lost a lot of people this year to avalanche and it's almost a tragedy I will tell you one case a young man in his upper 40s went up to the mountains east of Utah and Brighton in one of the ski resorts one Saturday morning to clean snow off his cabin and he had a scraper he leaned it up there and hit it and the whole snow bank from the top of his cabin came down on him and he suffocated and that was one that hit a lot of the community Hark is a very popular young man with a family and he was killed in a roof avalanche so they happen and you need to be on the lookout for them at all time for those of you who do go in the back country here is the thing do not go everywhere has a place you can call in the west we have the avalanche centers and you call them and if there is a risk don't go we lost 10 people were caught in avalanche between two canyons east of Salt Lake City one came up one side and the other from the other side and they were skiing on a hill that was 28 degrees now we say you shouldn't be on slopes 30 degrees and above you don't go on and my group we say 25 just to be safe and theirs was 28 degrees and they deemed it safe because that's what most of the books say and an avalanche came down and killed 6 of the 10 and it was just all young people and it was the day after a big snow storm the sun was out blue sky and that's when you want to go there were a lot of warnings but they chose a hill that people ski a lot but the new snow 28 degrees and it took 10 of them and the only reason the two others didn't die is one guy was able to get a couple of people out that helped dig out some of the others and just a tragedy so know before you go I know it's a huge temptation here because we were a big skiing community but we lost a lot of kids and remember it's not just skiers the number one death in avalanche comes you go up on the way up high and you turn around and you hit those cornices and the whole avalanche will come down and most of our deaths in Utah from avalanche this year were people on snowmobiles I should say snow burning snowmobiles and if it says don't go on a hill don't go on it just avoid them there's no way to survive an avalanche if you're in one you're just going to suffocate and what a way to die concrete like that so it's a real tender subject for that share we can't educate people and we still had a record number of deaths this year and indeed you are and just the last couple of minutes we have we've been talking about some of the terrible things that happened but I know over the many decades your great love for the outdoors can you talk a little bit about that and why it's been so important in your life to be outdoors and helping guide people through the outdoors is my life that it's who we are I mean we evolved in the outdoors it's part of our genetic makeup and we're meant to be outside and we're meant to explore and there's a big part of our Olympic system which tells us to get out and explore and see beautiful things and go places that you know sometimes logic wouldn't tell you to go but it's essential that we go outside mentally and physically it's essential that we take our young kids out there be careful with them make sure that you look at our work on children in the world and make sure you keep them safe but get people out there go out there and be safe you don't have to die in an ambulance you don't have to be mauled by a bear and you don't have to be injured and we should emphasize these are rare occurrences and the great majority of people do fine can you in the we just have a little bit of time left can you slowly repeat the information for your website because I think people would really be interested in that true I'll tell you and I can I tell you the podcast is and the podcast A-W-L-S like Advanced Wilderness Slide Support A-W-L-S wherever you listen to the podcast it's free we have about 90 podcasts now informative we have cases and then WildMedU WildMedU as in the letter u.org that's the University of Utah site the resources on there are free and we want you all to go there and learn and tell others about them and be safe in the back country in this beautiful world of ours I want to thank Dr. Richard Engelbretson for being with us he is yes and and sharing all of that you've learned over the years and and continue to do the work you're doing out there I want to thank everyone for being with us we will see you next month and hope you have a safe and really enjoyable summer thank you


My name is Daniela Medina. I'm from Costa Rica and I was studying at Griffith University. I just finished a Masters of Environment with major in Climate Change. What I loved about Griffith University is just the fact that the environmental faculty is very multidisciplinary. So I had the opportunity to choose courses between science and policy and economics. So it's also a very green campus and just a great atmosphere to study at. I think Australia and my country of origin, Costa Rica, have similar challenges as well, especially in the environmental area. So I was motivated to come here basically because I acknowledged the great contribution Australia is doing in my field of research. And I could definitely see the potential to bring home that knowledge and apply it back home. For the Australia Awards program, it's a great opportunity for every professional just seeking to progress their professional and personal careers. So my advice would be just to stop thinking about it and just apply. I'm really happy about the decision I made, especially because it got me the opportunity to just get to know so many people around the world, not only Australians, and also the opportunity to study overseas and just gain so much knowledge and experience. Well, I just think one of my favorite things I learned here in Australia was the fact that the working environment is quite open. So you basically have the chance to go straight to your boss and talk about your issues or your concerns. So I think that's a great approach to a good working environment.


Good morning. So I've got a slightly sad confession to start off. I have spent my entire adult life in universities. Universities on four continents, I might add, but that is only a very, very small consolation. With that confession out of the boat, I've got to say that in all of my years in universities, I have never seen an IT staff hustle quite so much as they have this morning to pull all of this together. I have also never seen anything to tell you the truth, quite like what we're about to do. It promises to be unique, innovative, challenging, spectacular, you've never done it before. We're not quite sure what's going to happen. I encourage you to break out your laptop or your phone to follow along to pay attention. We're going to try and put on a show that we are calling the Age of Pacific Master Blogging Challenge 2011. This is a first for us, for the ANU camera, but I think it's probably actually a first tool to stop. This is something that nobody has really tried before and we're going to do our best to make it work. We're delighted that all of you can join us for this challenge. This is the first time, and I've got to say, I'm absolutely delighted that we have four master bloggers here with us who will be struggling for glory in our 2011 challenge. I understand that some of you queried in my attire, and for those of you who know that there's a chap in the middle of this picture who's wearing a cravat, and any of the Australians in the audience will know that that is Matt Cravatalicious Preston, and he's joined here by George Columbaris and the other guy, as you can see, who are the three hosts of Australia's most popular television show. And for the past couple of years, this show, MasterChef, has taken Australia by storm every winter. And it is, I guess, with that show in mind, drawing on its potency, its popularity, that we came up with this idea of a master blogging challenge. Millions of Australians tune in to watch MasterChef. It's on pretty much every night of the week, and I should note that occasionally I can be counted among their number. So I know that the most popular part of MasterChef is something called the mystery box challenge.  We have, just to remind you, a map of the world in Burmese, a Southeast Asian trident, the Canton sweet and sour sauce with extra pineapple, some photocopied data from the Dean's Library, and in particular, I should note that that data is from a book titled Rising China, Global Challenges and Opportunities. We have the 1985 edition of Ultrashock the Philippines. We have a Royal Wedding commemorative tea town for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. And we, of course, have an Astartian beer. So our master bloggers, drawing on this mystery box, will be encouraged to draw inspiration from at least three of those ingredients when they're coming up with their blogs. So I insist all have to make use of the Astartian beer. Apart from that, there are no rules. This is no-hold barb blogging. They are encouraged to use their creativity and to really challenge themselves and challenge us with the best blogs that they can come up with. So I should get down to introducing our master blogging challenges. In the green corner, fresh from the hallow halls of Columbia University in the United States, we have East Asia Forum blog wizard Dr. Shiro Armstrong. Shiro is a research fellow in our college with expertise in international economics and international finance as well as politics of the Asia Pacific region. He is also the co-founder of the East Asia Forum blog. He brings years of blogging experience to the table. Then in the red corner, we have Cynthia Bannon, who's been the diplomatic editor of the City Morning Herald and the age for many years. She's a veteran journalist. She's currently completing a PhD in our college. Cynthia warns me that she has never written a blog. Not once. So ladies and gentlemen, and Cynthia, let's see what she's got. In the blue corner, we have Graham Dovelle. He writes the Canberra column for the interpreter, which is the blog of the Low Institute for International Policy based in Sydney. Graham was the ABC Southeast Asia Radio correspondent in Singapore and has done several skits as the Canberra-based foreign affairs and defence correspondent for Radio Australia. He's been all over the place in his very long and distinguished journalistic career. He's covered the Falklands War, cruising Beijing, Thailand and the Philippines, Beijing after the pro-democracy movement and also the return of Hong Kong to China. He globes pretty much every week of the year. So, Cynthia and Shira, watch out. And then in the yellow corner, we have Dr Andrew Walker, who is the Associate Dean of the ANU College of Asia in the Pacific. For the past 10 years, he's worked on a wide sweep of issues surrounding rural development, resource management and modernisation in Northern Thailand. Andrew is the co-founder of the ANU's New Mandala blog and he blogs pretty much every day. I was down at the local betting shop this morning, weren't on the street and not hoping to hit too much pressure on him is that Dr Andrew Walker is the favourite. That's the most challenging challenge of the year. So, again, let's see what he's got. If you would like to follow along with us, there are plenty of different ways you can do it. At this particular moment in time, you can get on to the blog site, Asia Pacific Week Slash Challenge should do the trick. You can also get to us through the longer URL or you can load us up through Twitter, et cetera, et cetera. I'm going to be moving around the room once our master bloggers get down to business. I'll have a mic. I would very much encourage you to ask questions, get involved, make comments. All of this is going to be happening up on the big screen. We'll have this other screen up here where there'll be other things flicking through should prove to be really quite exciting. As I said to start, we've never done this before. Nobody's ever done this before, so let's just see how we go. Master bloggers, we have a 40-minute clock. You have your mystery box. There are a range of ingredients for you to choose from. You need to choose at least three and everybody has to use the Asahi beer. Those are the only rules. The 2011 Asia Pacific Master Blogging Challenge starts now. Nick, I'm sitting there as a comment already on the blog. There is Andrew. Two comments, okay. We'll get to the comments in a minute. And... Okay, so our bloggers are going to be kicking off, and they're just about to get themselves started with what's going to be 40 minutes of blogging. We're going to pull everything up on the screen here so that we can see what is going on on each of their own screens. And I should say, while he's up here in front of everyone, that Glenn Landrell deserves a special land of applause for all of his work in getting this set up. This is a feat of IT wizardry, and I reckon by the end of that he's going to deserve a drink. So, a round of applause for Glenn Landrell. We're going to have an opportunity to talk to them before too long, but before we do, are there any thoughts from the audience? Does a mystery box look particularly challenging? Are there ingredients in there that you'd really like to work with yourself? Any targets? Well, I hope they use the game in a multi-tell. I guess for most of us it's the most impressive part of it, and how they probably mix it with a sauce? But I know for sure that they all be going for the beer, so those three regions probably will be the ones that look forward to especially the game. OK, thanks for that great comment back there, all about the sweets and our sauce, the juicers, the chess and pain breaches, and the beer, it's quite a combination. Does anyone else have any ideas about what they might do with our channels for this particular mystery box? Yes? Do you know which country the tower is meeting? Ah, good question. Come on, OK. Thailand, China, what have we got? It is cotton. 100% cotton. And it carries a code number 291R, if that helps anyone, but as best I can determine, it doesn't have a place of manufacture. So, no. Any other thoughts? All right, well, we might then just get a quick update from our four master bloggers. You can see what they're getting up to here on the screen, and we'll be able to toggle through the areas of what they're playing around with. This is Andrew. There you go. And what they thought was comparison, they're reaching out, they thought it was a private place as well, so they thought it was an adult occasion until I was with the bloggers. Very physical, friendly, and free as an adult ever. And why do you think I'm so deep while we're here? Very excited about the quality of it. And also, this is what I said, how did you know I'm there, possibly? Like in Skylanders. Look at that, very far. Thanks, Andrew. It's in here? That's how you find it in Skylanders. I'm feeling a little bit raising in the headlights up here, but I have found, actually found this this week, I don't know if you can see on the screen, but it's an illustration that I've just seen. It sums up my situation today. I'm just updating my blog. As someone who sees this in front of me, Brian tells me it's a nature of cruising embrace. It's a lullaby. It's a lullaby, a lullaby. And I have to say, I'm sort of more from the old reading school, and so we'll just have to just have to see how I go today. Please be patient. Great, thanks for being here. We're looking forward to what you've brought for us. How about you, Shiro? How are things playing out in your living room? Yeah, pretty good. I'm watching a tweet about it. Someone doesn't find it too interesting. I don't know who it is. Come, put your hand up. Yeah, if you've got this. Yeah, go for it. Oh, yours. Thanks, Shiro. And, Brian, how do you... Well, see, as always with these things, this is actually not a computer. This is actually just an old reading typo. It's all in the way that you construct it.  Yes. And as I always do, and I've rolled the carbon paper in, and when I've finished, I've seen bits of paper off to that big blood layer that Cynthia's got. And that's how you do it. That's how you do it, yeah. Okay, all right, wonderful. We look forward to what you're coming up with. I see already that you're playing around with the metaphors from the mystery book. Well, when you get paid, when you get paid by the word, you actually produce the words. A good lesson for everyone out there. When you get paid by the word, go for the word. So we are all keeping along here, I suppose, all watching and waiting, some with anticipation, some with a measure of concern for exactly what all of this might need. Does anybody here have much prior exposure to academic blogging? Is there something that you're familiar with that makes sense in this university context? Have you sort of looked at a few people going their heads to you, frowning, people shaking their heads out of their minds? Always okay? I suppose that one of the reasons why we were excited to get this Asian city master blogging challenge off the ground is that within our college of Asian and Pacific, we've got a fair few people who spend a not inconsiderable amount of time doing academic blogging in different formats. I'm one of those people. Shira Armstrong is another. Andrew Walker, of course, is another skill. And between a fair number of us now in the college, we have come up with different ways of trying to get academic content out to much, much wider audience. We don't pretend that too many people read most of our academic journal articles, but we do know that a lot of people read or put up on our blogs. So we are here as everything is kicking along. I suppose maybe with the anticipation for what our master blogging is going to come up in the next 40 years.  We need a bit of cheering. I mean, you've got to get into this. Sort of rah, rah, and you've been... And Nick, Yeah, that's right. A bit of... I've forgotten how I've got photos. How come I... Come on, Nick, the fan, come on, come on. A bit of wave. A bit of a wave. I've got wave from the audience for crowd. We've got wave. Over this wave. And back again. Back again. Haven't you ever been to the Sydney Cricket Grand? Okay, on weekend with the wave. Okay, starting on this side. One, two, three. Yes! Forward it's dying out. And the four people at the back get to chuck chickens. Okay, again. Back. One, two, three. Yay! Well, that must be a plus. So, we're kicking along. We've got the timer set now. It's counting down. 30 minutes to go. Our master bloggers are writing the thick of it. Shira Armstrong has asked us in guidance on uploading photos with this particular blogging platform. Not every blogging platform is the same. But I can probably assist here. Does that incur penalty? Okay, thank you. Okay, so we're there. And here, select files. But I suppose, why don't you read this slide if we were here to put on this display or blogging talent and flair. Is that we hope that you all come away somewhat inspired to think that, okay, blogging doesn't necessarily have to be something that takes all day or needs a great deal of resources or extra effort. It can be something that can be almost done in a spare time. Any other comments from our audience? We've got one down the back. Therefore, I happen to know from the fact that your brother is in the audience here today. And I just thought he might have a comment on your performance. That's very interesting. We're fairly experienced bloggers whether it's writing bloggers or reading blogs. And it's a pretty familiar with the tropics and tactics that people in the focus here like to use, you know, the trolling, the flaming, the stirring, etc. I would like to see coming over to the cooking school today and we'd like to see some people who are trying to mix it up in a very commingial way, potentially good for some conflict. Thank you. Oh, come on. I agree with you. No, just for you and my brother. It's a bit awkward. You know, he's got to have something to put into the mix. It's not just, he's not just sitting there. If he wants to throw, he's got to throw. Come on, a bit of argy, argy for the audience. A bit of argy, argy. Okay. That's a great, great, good suggestion. I think the Twitter feed is starting to light up. Is there anything there that anyone would like to give our attention to? A sigh should be the top prize. A sigh should be the top prize. Okay. All right. That's a good recommendation. War. Oh, okay. Hang on. We'll put some up. Less chatty. Okay. All right. Hang on. Okay. Hang on. So, do you just have to publish? Is that all you have to do? Yep. Okay. So, we have a question. What is flaming? What is flaming? Four.  Repeat. Help with the spelling. Does anyone want to put a trolling on the box? Oh, we've got to prepare trolling All right. In the meantime, I should just draw everyone's attention to the fact that on this side screen here, we have Graham Burbell's uh, a whole thing drawn at his blog. So, he has, as promised, using his old school typewriter style, decided that the best way to get it up there is just to be banging out short paragraphs and then putting them up for the world of short paragraphs. Blogging is all about short paragraphs. It is indeed. And it's much, much easier to read that way. And so, we've got Graham's a whole new graph here up on the screen for anybody who is inclined to digest that. And we have with our comments for two, do we get prizes for commenting? I'm Tom between the tea towel and the Dean's economical charts and I haven't bought it. Um, very common. Suggests that they would, um, like to sue the nears of what we've got here. I reckon there could be bids for the tea towel, I'm afraid, but the economical charts are all yours.  You can add comments. You can tweet about it. You can do whatever it is that you'd like to do to, um, participate in this. I think one of the, there's a nice thing about bloggers that need to be a one-way conversation. So please do maybe it's doing some one a hard time. Go to Shiro. Okay, so we've got a blogger explaining to them some of the hard time intentionally. Middle row. Go to Shiro. I have 20 dollars on me. Shiro, how does it feel to have the audience behind you? It's not the audience. It's just one. They're like, Shiro, okay, so there's at least one person here who is all the way with Dr. Shiro Armstrong on the train. Okay, we're thinking that Shiro's going to give us some interesting stuff. Andrew, we're now 23 minutes in. Now, we might be on the screen. Hang on, we've got 23 minutes. Where do we get time? Tell him to shut up, so we can rock. Thanks Andrew. Good to be here to give you a call for it. And just to clarify, we have 23 minutes on the clock. Now just over 22 minutes on the clock. So we've got plenty of time for our bloggers to be pulling things together. I know that Shiro chipping things off his list of things, mystery box ingredients. He wants to make sure that he gets his free minimum from the mystery box and then he also uses the Asahi beer. So we're all kicking along. We're all, I think, a bit of a flavor of what this challenge is all about. It's not easy this blogging. It's certainly not easy when you're doing that with a live audience. Hey, where's the book gone? I think... Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's going on then, here? Ah, yeah, yeah. Are they all still on the table, boss? I think everyone is still on the table, right? Bit. Oh, watch these people. He has. He has. He has. He has. He has. As the time runs down it's 20 minutes further than 10 minutes. You have to play it up, mate. He's actually done a good thing, isn't he? On the clock. I think that as Shiro has suggested, this isn't easy. This isn't easy. It's basically not an easy goal. There's the Twitter feed asking for points to be deducted for spelling this thing. Oh, what? Oh. And I have to spell it. With the totem I can put that hand up and make a plan in between. That point should be deducted for spelling errors.  Can you tell us why you think spelling is so important for people? I would like to say it's important for people. Delphi, it's Praniel. Crosperphobia. We hold it in the U.S.T.O.P.U.H. from the United States. Oh. It's Australian or American spelling. Let's get a show of hands. Who would prefer to read blogs with Australian spelling? Okay. Who would prefer to read blogs with American spelling? I think Australian has to vary today. So, can we have one response? A response? Yes, please. Okay. That's an extra subtlety but except that we're probably doing a blog in a way that's relevant to our audience, our master blog, so it should only take 15 minutes to check out the anchored comments. Okay. We have a comment. Concerned blogger take me through and have a shower. What it says now, all I can imagine is taking a shower. Be nice to the nerds in the back row. We are even gone. That sounds like a threat. Yeah. Okay. So, the nerds in the back row are laying out a bit of a party budget on their own and support for comments to come. All right. Let's just go on the back over to our table of master bloggers. I just might interrupt Cynthia's work. This is Cynthia's first ever blog and when Cynthia was invited to be involved in the master blogging challenge, she insisted she'd never done before and I said, Cynthia, that is wonderful news. And I said it was wonderful because to have someone who knows that this is something which you can do, you can do quickly and you can do for the very first time. So, Cynthia, how's your first blogging done? It's awful, actually. I thought I'd start in my first part by trying to get at least one degree into elevate so it would take a bit of pressure on myself which I did with the view because when I get by this lot I find that view really helps three other thought cases that I can do now. Then I started to think this is my first end blog. What do I want it to be about? And then I started to think, well, my favourite bloggers in the world or writers in the world, the one question that I'd really like to ask them is what's bravery when you've got this amazing choice out there through the internet, this whole world of websites and news sites and writers, what are the best writers of really? And I'd be really interested to find out about your list of masteries because I'm sure they're all very different. I would go to give a bit of a a taste of mine and there's probably going to be a long kind of traditional medium out there, old medium for a bit of a mix. And it's just something that I'd like to know from you guys and quite a bit of stay crystal kitchens or more endow or someone like that, the bloggers that I read a lot, you know, what are your masteries? That'd be something that I would really interested in. So that's what I'm doing now. Thanks, India. That sounds like an invitation to me. So if anybody out there with the comments or the tweets would like to perhaps make some suggestions about what the must read things are, traditional media or new media that please feel free to send those messages in. Shiro, you've worked out the picture of this blog engine. Can you talk through your headliner? My headliner. How many I'd say years in the world is this negated forging? So, thanks. He's the winner. Am I going to read it out? He's the winner. Unfortunately, in China in 2003, where 500 Japanese businessmen had at least as many Chinese prostitutes over three days and hit the headlines in a very bad way. So, I'm trying to wait for something I know. Hang on. Hang on. How do you know about the truth? Not about the 500. You're really deep, you're really deep here, boy. I'm only going to write on something I know. My research, Japan, China, trade relations, politics, gone for that angle. You know, I find a topical book and so I've got a study somewhere, a couple of pictures of prostitutes and, you know, some catchy words like Andrew mentioned that bring some people on the post. Absolutely. What do you have sex in there? Okay. So, shouldn't you suggest that he's going to use a bit of Google, baby? I think it's in the blogging world, so sex and orgy are going to be turned to the Google algorithm that's going to pick up on and hopefully drive traffic towards his blog. Okay, we've got a tweet that's coming through that suggests that Shiro is recycling his girls at the blog post. So, I know one of the issues with blogging is that they came together to repeat with any response from Shiro at this point. I knew it was the same picture and went to the post. I only got to try it out. Are we up? Yep. Well, explain it. Okay, Shiro's going to explain his sexity later on. Let's see if there are any other comments from further down the line. Graham, how are you finding things? Oh, it's good. It's relaxing. Japanese, Japanese, orgy. Orgy, yeah. All right. So, Graham's looking very relaxed. We have some more comments that have come in here. So, let's have a look. We have all right. We have the Huffington Post. We have Go Cynthia. Go Cynthia. So, you're being your first blog suggestion right about new families for a back. A wonderful suggestion. Is smoke coming out of the server? A bad thing. Yes.  Now the bloggers handle the added pineapple in the source without overpowering the other items. Now, that's a great question. All right. That's one for our bloggers to mull over. Andrew Sullivan, the ultimate master bloggers, says you have to update your blog at least every day in order to be permanent. Thoughts from down the master bloggers. That's a great question. There's a comment there that I'll read out. In the spirit of free exchange of ideas of all sorts. There's a shower in the heat of power to toilet outside. And that's all we've got from the list at the moment. Let's just make a quick poll on our master bloggers. When they're producing blogs or reading blogs or what have you, do they think that updating your blog regularly is a key thing to bear in mind? Let's start with you, Andrew. The comment is a key thing to bear in mind very, very, very often. But in other words, there's one thing that you want me to not have regularly. The same is my own stuff. I don't know about that, so I think that's to the extent that we've achieved any success with human art. Which I think a little bit is leading that on average we're posted every day in the five years. So I think that's a lot of noise. Thanks Andrew. You're reading blogs and it's important that they're updating when you do it? I guess definitely. Otherwise you're going to look at it once in a while. You know, if you look at it seven times, I think it's not really going to go back again. So I think that's critical. Okay. How does that work for you, Shiro? Does each stage of forum have to get updated every day? Yeah. We put one thing you guys probably checked out the web page and I've seen a few magazines uploading but we do try to write from research and link back to the research. So most of us they all go through peer review and then tutorial process but quite often they link to deeper research and the idea is to try to communicate these 30-page research pages into something policy makers or you know Shiro. What about you Graeme? How often do you think you need to blog on the interpreter to keep people interested? As I said my mental frame is actually it's a type of so it's whenever I want to whenever I run a roll of a bit of carbon paper I think the beauty of the web is that when there are when every every minute there's a deadline there's actually no deadline so you file whenever you feel like it and that's the great freedom. I find it much more liberating I for decades I actually had to deal with this where there was a half hour TV and they had to be fed in an alley radio button this stuff is great because if every month there's a deadline then there's no deadline. Great. Thanks Graeme I think those are some really insightful insights there based on a very long and distinguished career as the Australian journalist blogging does change the rules there means that every minute can be a deadline which is quite remarkable I think we have any comments from the audience now I think we'd like to shout out to what we need to say How are we going at the time? We have I think about ten minutes left now we can just try ten minutes and thirty-three seconds there I think himself he's probably the man I'm showing you back before to all right we might pull up the comment stream on the screen the nerves so now we know that my dial was created in the shower and I wonder if it goes through so many laptops okay that's cheeky I like it I like it a lot and you know Andrew's back in a glass of water everyone I suppose is coming down to the business end of their blogs for today we've got up on the screen here some instant and immediate commentary on the Twitter thing Andrew constant and consistent blogging is the key so I suppose as much as this must a blogging challenge is somewhat artificial it does show that there are so many different ways that academics journalists and others can now engage in this that we can if we're just there in front of our lecture theaters talk to students sitting in 7 hours writing our academic papers or books so that's one of the challenges also one of the wonderful things about it we've got less than 10 minutes now so I'm not going to get involved in distracting our master blogs too much more but I wouldn't like to hear from anybody in the audience who's got any comments or reflections we have one right over the back we'll come to you in a second if you're recycling I know it's a comment that doesn't say anything but the question was where are the specific ingredients thank you very good it's a great and somewhat awkward questions where are the specific ingredients on this table we have them in the world I think that's right we've got the specific ingredients over the back and at least for some of our specific island neighbours they're stellar along you're ongoing a vibrant relationship with the British world family that might be too long to go with your all so I appreciate your finger on something but in the front I like that I think that's sharp go on who's got tips on how to make academic lobbying interesting for others any must do's and must don'ts to somebody who's never done any more lobbying from the audience or panel or any great thank you very much that's a great set of questions with the audience in the front up the back there we have a picture of what you want to see with some suggestions there's a saying in vlogging and that's content is king and that's what counts you know you're living in my love it's very nice and it's put together great but it doesn't have you know one of those what it does have is content and really if you go into content content content and that's what comes from intellectual property so that's my thank you we have a question in the more common here is all coming in and the crowd continues and doing some lobbying others just somehow have this I think if you can demonstrate if you've got something interesting to say no one else is saying it and you can do so but the last vlog you pretty came to be from so it's a good tip thanks for that also we have another one over here and then on this side one of the things I think is really important is relevance so you know the East Asia Forum we used to have fairly regular meetings each week saying what are the issues that come out this week and what are the important things that's happening this week and basically setting the agenda make sure we knew that the person again is going out well on things that people care about and which is being now because when people search for what they want to read they're doing searches they don't stumble across the East Asia Forum great thanks Tom there's a pretty key point there there are lots of good blogs out here already but the key thing with content and dry ingredients it's going to be relevant to somebody and there can be all kinds of niche topics that can be a big relationship we have another comment here just a just a short comment from you Madara I think it's not a content it's a key I think the key is the content that's very nice and we have another comment over here I'm sorry I don't have a comment but actually I have a question so when I started doing my own blog a few years ago I just did a personal blog because at the time I was in my high school so I know I mean most of our kindness today they're actually doing academic blogs so my question is that when you want to both show your family interest and your you know your story of life do you choose to put this two title stories in the same blog or do you prefer kind of personal blog and a family blog that's a terrific question and I'm sure it's one of that is on many other people's minds as well so I just want to get some quick reactions from our panelists or at least one or two of them four minutes to go now so I won't be striking for long Andrew but just let me ask you this was a good pleasure as it were and would you make a personal analysis on your academic blog yes just to make across personal I think like someone said before what's the key to make a academic blog interesting and I think it's in a sense to have it academically informed but not academic but we don't view reviews we have some review cases that get sent in but for me a little bit of a hit and miss a little bit of spontaneity I think humans important I'm certainly not saying that that happens but it's a different sort of approach and I think that means mixing your personal stuff into a blog I think that's very important alright thanks Andrew and I just might ask Shiro for a quick response to that would he stage a forum ever verge into dealing with more personal matters not really know we keep that the other private what what did you it's a little drier it's a little drier in that sense but you know we have a on the call he's like how purpose and a strategy and you know we have a bit of fun with pictures sometimes but in terms of you know there are a lot of blogs out there you probably read there's a marginal revolution and the others that have ideas or one sentence posts and their personal and funny people ask me for good response here and there people engage but it's a very different style absolutely okay thanks for that Shiro I will leave the audience wondering whether you have a personal blog perhaps written under some soothing that none of us have thus decided that we have less than two minutes on clock and we have a look if there are any comments that have come through in the past five or so minutes let's just scroll up there we've got first picture for the economics charts two dollars for Andrew pics from the shower or whatever um cheap stuff I might say I think the presence of the associate did end with college but as you probably picked up by now that's all in the spirit of this event and all I think also in the spirit of good academic blogging there can be a bit cheap back and forth we don't have very long at all on the clock now if there are any final comments from the audience we'll hear those otherwise we just might wait for our master bloggers to wrap things up they have something like one minute to go let's give them a round of applause we've seen what they've all got up on their various screens here um my first tennis lesson and I've just entered Wimbledon um that is a headline provocative headline a good one um we've got the great Nobel blog he's emerging quickly I know that he hasn't changed his headline yet um any thoughts on the headline ground it's just such a great headline I think it'll be there for days I mean you know when you hit it the first time you don't change okay thanks for that bro okay we've got 10 seconds so what's your specific master blogging challenge as you would all by now appreciate has been something to give ourselves a bit more of a sense of how it's all playing out what I like to do now is just to take a minute just to all take a deep breath and then we're going to ask each of our master bloggers to talk through what they managed to do over the past 40 minutes talking through perhaps some of the successes but they would attribute to their work but also perhaps where things didn't go quite according to plan so our bloggers are basically all got themselves set up and have I think everybody's blog posts now up on the website so those of you with a laptop or a phone in front of yourself will be able to log in and have a look at all of them do feel free to share your screen if that proves a way of looking through things but what we will do now is we will go through each of the blogs and they will be up on both of the big screens at the same time and we might start with Andrew Walker's blog which is up on the screen now Kate and Will's wedding gap begins anthropologist etc etc etc hang on I thought it was his blog it is it is it is and so we are going to see big or bloody academics paraphrasing actually are there going to be footnotes as well or we are using the Harvard system there is there is lead text there is lead text there is lead text there is lead text there is there are there is lead text very or very secure and the very secure is there is is is a think there is Okay, thank you.  I just might ask Cynthia how you went and how you found your experience of blogging for the very first time? I've found it very difficult and I think that's because when I write an opinion piece, I usually have a burning issue that I really want to write about and when you're sort of based under pressure and having to make sense of something that you haven't really had that time, whether it's in a shower or somewhere else, to sort of parlor and think, you know, what I've been so strongly about is it's really hard, it's very hard to do it. So full credit to those people who do it all the time because I don't think it's easy. I'd kind of like to put some illustrations up there that I try to look at how to do it. So I'm sorry that I might not be very careful. What more journalist than an academic? I am more journalist than an academic. Thanks, Cynthia. And again, those of you with the screen in front of you can read through Cynthia's very first blog post which is titled My First Tennis Lesson and I've just entered Wimbledon. So yeah, do feel free to scrutinize and digest that one. Shiro, how do you go? Okay, I know what you're saying, but it's hard to just blog with a timeline because when I write something, I do write around an issue that I want to write about, maybe I've just written a paper or something I've written about before is in the news, that's topical. And I take seriously a day to write a piece, half a day short, on average probably a day. They take a long time to write, so doing this in 40 minutes is pretty rough. I think I covered most of the elements, well, more than half of the pineapple in there at the end. I got this, can you see that? Sexy picture from BBC to do with the orgy. See, it's all right. Yeah, that's about it. Thank you. Thanks, Shiro. For those of you who should be able to make that out there, it's a somewhat busty silhouette against the Chinese flag as the BBC's icon for that particular news story. And now, to turn into Graham. I think Shiro is far too modest. He's learnt the first law of blogging, put sex in it and it'll be a bit more history. And Graham, how did you find your blogging today? Fine, I suppose, I spent many decades doing radio. And radio is proof positive of the line that ignorance has never any barrier to Germans. And can you talk us through a bit of what you actually did with your approach to ignorance and journalism today? Well, when in doubt, illiterate. So I started with a bit of illiteration. Okay, wonderful. Wonderful. All right, well that gives you all a bit of a flavour for how our different master bloggers have done. Do we have any new comments for the comedy world? No, we have some tweets up on the screen. Kudos to the master bloggers Impressive Innovative Cool. Asia Pacific Master Blogging Challenge has finished. Who will win?  Who will win? And we'll come to that in about three or four or five minutes time. In the meanwhile though, I think it'll be nice if we did just get some reactions from the audience. Okay, be nice if you all told the master bloggers a bit about what you think they've done here for us today. Let me bring up a piece of it. Is it a stressful to understand? Okay, so the question is, was it as stressful as MSN? I don't have a hundred and something people watching me when I'm working for MSN. It's a little bit stressful, yeah. Absolutely, I think it is stressful. It's very brave of our master bloggers to come here. Very few of us would ever be in a situation where we actually have our screen being put up on a big screen for a hundred other people to really actually do it again. That's really quite a confronting situation. So kudos to everyone. Any other comments or questions for our master bloggers? Well, just as someone who doesn't follow many academic blogs or anything, I want to say congratulations to the organisers and the bloggers because you're definitely inspired by me to kind of go out there and look it up because it seems to be a really exciting thing. So thank you. Okay, great. Thank you very much for that. To me, that's very exciting. Just being involved in this, to me my main objective is just to say to you, you can do it. You can employ. It's not that difficult. My experience with students, too, is that often people get tied up in the writing block and they try to work on a chapter and they try to write a program. They just write a short blog post, put it out there and see what comes back. And often it gets people's ideas down, just the responses you get. So I really, really encourage you, who both as an academic or as a student, just make part of the normal writing practice. I think it doesn't have to reduce the amount of other writing you do and increases it. Thank you very much. Thanks Andrew. Sure. Yeah, as all researchers, we probably know that if you publish a paper in a journal, you know, it doesn't, people may read it, may not read it, you know, you might get five people reading. If you take the main points you find is put it on a blog, your own blog, or link to a much bigger blog over the mornings, you know, it automatically gets a thousand people having all that. So I think it's definitely a good idea. It should be part of your outreach, your research. It's a no-brainer. Great. Thanks, Andrew. Yeah, I'd agree with that. I think one of the stories that I like in it reflects back, I suppose, on my way I think about writing is about Remington's or all of Eddie's. But people who think about typewriters as that process, one of my great favourite columnists in the years gone by was a guy called James Reston who wrote for The New York Times. And Reston was not writing his column for a month because The New York Times was on strike. And a friend bumped into him in Washington and said, why are you looking so absolutely bereft and lost? And Reston, I thought, came up with a classic journalist's line, which was, how do I know what I think until I see what I write? And I think that's what this is all about. Thanks, Brian. We have another comment from the audience. Actually, initially, just a few weeks back, I think four or five weeks back, I was inspired to blog by seeing one of the lecturer blog. Then I started my blog, but I didn't know how to do it. And I seek support with one of my IT colleagues who's doing a PSG in UDS. And then from there, I learned to blog. And I'm writing and I'm posting to an integrated blog as well. And whoever asks me, integrating to my film, I link to them and go and see, visit like that. But really this time that I've been blogging has, again, another insight and also the lesson that we can even blog among the enemies of all. And I mean, get to learn more about the, I mean, in our own field or can get other insight, other inputs in a really good way. Thanks a lot for organizing this massive blog. Thanks. Thank you. Our pleasure. We have another comment from the start. Are any very fine comments from the audience? So it's now one of them. One over here. Okay. Yes. Thank you. Some to the comment here. We can take another couple of comments. It's 12.15. We're breaking from lunch at 12.30. And in the meantime, we will have an opportunity to decide on the Agents in the last blog of 2011. And we'll come to how we're going to do that precisely in the next few minutes. I was just wondering, as an academic, I came from a science background and I know that research is something that's really held close to his chest. So how do you go about putting your ideas out on the website? I worry a lot of people will steal your ideas and talk to themselves and there's no way to hold them accountable. Great. Thank you so much. There's going to be some interesting responses to that. They will need to be brief. Andrew, what's your field? I think the best insurance is to have ideas so eccentric. No, I'm not. Works for me, so. And to Andrew. Cynthia, how would you approach that as a journalist? Do you think that academics should be cautious about getting their ideas out to the wide audience? Well, I can't say I have any personal experience of that and it's, you know, it's recently taken an issue to start to weigh out.  You know, what's the point on the shooting, Cheryl, and other people and I guess that there are risks involved, but I think that's a job that we have to make. Thanks, Cynthia. Cheryl? Yeah, I'm not so worried about people stealing my ideas or anything. I'll be more, I mean, the benefit far outweighs the cost, I think, of getting your ideas out there quickly before anything else, especially if it's, you know, something on the Asian Pacific or something very topical that you're working on or if you have a finding in science. I mean, if you put that up there, it's dated, you know, someone copies it and can sort of point to the fact that, well, I've found this first. So, yeah, I'm not too worried about it. I think we should do too much and you don't want to give away everything all at once and, yeah, you might want to pay them some stuff. I don't have a problem with that. Great. Thanks, Cheryl. And what about you, Graeme? Do you think that there are real risks here for academics or are there the opportunities outweigh those? Yeah, I suppose there's a, when you're talking about two different things, aren't you? You're talking about research and you're talking about what you call publishing. I mean, I think you're probably talking about two different parts of the field. And I think I can theoretically understand what you're saying about the importance in your research. I suppose I come from a game where, you know, one incident is an anecdote and two incidents are statistical evidence. So, you know, the research side of what journalists do is sometimes not quite as rigorous as what you guys do. But the beauty, I think, of this sort of stuff is that you can actually publish as you go and actually make more, lay more claim to the field as you're going through it. And I would have thought from dealing with academics over the years that that issue of publishing in some ways might be a little less than it once was. You know, you don't necessarily have to do everything to appear a view. You can actually put some stuff out there. And it's always amazing what you get back. The real fun part I often find is the starting point is what you put out there, but often the really interesting stuff is what you get back. Great. Thanks, Graeme. I think that's a very nice note on which we will end our effort to get some conversation going between you, the audience, and our panel of master bloggers. There seem to be a range of tweens that have also come in here. Profound wisdom for Graeme. How do I know what I think until they write? And, of course, this question that lingers over the entirety of our proceedings today, who will win? The game is the winner. The game is the winner. Every master blogger is a winner.  So the way that this works is that you can either ring the numbering question from an Australian blogger, or you can send an SMS with the two final red digits. So that's 96% beyond 97% for Shira, 98% for Graeme, or 99% for Andrew, to the number up on the screen. I think this is a free charge from Australian mobile phone numbers. So there should be no dramas for you. I actually think you could also vote as many times as you like. So that old age vote early to vote off. And vote with both hands. That's all you get, busy time. All you get is a busy tone, and here we're seeing the votes go up on the screen. You don't need the 6-1, we don't need the 6-1. You don't need the 6-1. Stop voting Andrew. How many phones has Andrew got? I think I'll put up an additional post if anyone's interested. Okay, so Andrew's put up an additional post, which we can now have a look at on the screen over here. While we're doing that, we have our master blogging audience, popularity contest, which is a tourney who's done best. Andrew's installation is a shower. Also for those who would like to see his other episodes today. We've had 13 votes so far, Andrew's still in front. We're going to close down the voting in just over two minutes. So for those of you who'd like to vote, those of you who've written an Australian phone, who do you have? People haven't actually read the question. If you'd like to share your phone with them, please do so. It's pretty neck and neck, isn't it? Come on, since you've got a phone. Come on, Michael, come on. If you've actually read any of the blog posts today, that's not bad, it's about a third of the audience. I've read at least some of the blog posts. Come on, keep voting. Okay, if you're voting, you're going to get the most this year. You should stop it now. She raised the distance. You've got about a minute to go. Oh, yes, come on. Go, Cynthia. Go, Cynthia, come on. Come on, Cynthia, we want Cynthia. Come on. We've got a lot. Take the phone off Andrew to start. Go, go. Yes, I did. Come on, go, go, Cynthia. Time is up now. This is an information provided by some very clever Australian scientists who have worked out a way to make this happen. It does appear as though somebody is still voting, but you have finished our survey, and Sam, we're now going to be in a position to see the very final panel that's coming up on the screen. 200 votes. This is actually a tie election. Hang on, where's my envelope? I didn't realise we were doing it to tie rules. Thanks, Brian. 2011 Master Blogging Challenge, no old bar, no rules, except you had to use the assigned beer. Our master bloggers have showered themselves in glory. I think that the audience is somewhat a vibe of which approach they refer to this kind of master blogging event, but I think what we've all seen is an absolutely stellar effort by our four master bloggers. They've taken time out of their very busy schedules to be with us here today, and I think they all deserve a very hearty round of applause. Thanks for our appreciation. Before we get to those, it gives me great pleasure to allow those master bloggers who came in behind our leader today with their tiaras, which have been very specially organised for the event. So thank you very much. There you go. Thanks, Graham. Thank you, Shiro. Thank you very much. You're the green one. The green one and the shiro. The green one and the shiro. And for you, Drew, you have our belt. With an eagle and a star, this is... I'll just have to read it to you. He reads, World Wrestling Champion. 2011, 2016. I think we're in mix. And we also have a bowl of wine for each of our master bloggers, Graham, Shiro, Cynthia. Thank you all. That wraps it up for the 2011 Asian Pacific Master Vlogging Challenge. You've been a wonderful audience. Thank you for taking this seriously, but not too seriously. And thank you also for giving so much wonderful support to all of our master bloggers. Thanks again.


High schools in Hubbard County came together today to learn the impacts of distracted driving and drunk driving. Our own Cheryl Moore shares the message for this week's cold and apple. It was made to look and feel as realistic as possible. The mock car crash held at Park Rabbits High School told the story about how one bad decision can change a life forever. Mock car crash is the exactly what it sounds like. It's a fake car crash, but to set up to educate people with actors, rule players. And then the first responders come in and make it all happen. Multiple agencies participated in the demonstration today. After the mock car crash, the students piled into the gym for some games and prizes. There was also a powerful message from a speaker who told his personal story of how his brother was killed after he was struck by a drunk driver in 1994. My brother never got to marry his high school sweetheart like I did. Most importantly, my brother never got to sit in the gymnasium and hear a powerful message like you just distracted driving is a problem and the Minnesota State Patrol has been fantastic at giving out as much information as they can. I was invited here to give an impactful speech, but today it was about the students three high schools, including Park Rapids, Nevis and LaPorte all came out to hear the message today. That's equal to about 550 kids at the end of the presentation. They were all encouraged to sign their poster and take the pledge to never get distracted behind the wheel. These kids are pledging to not text and drive, to not drive distracted, to not drink and drive, and to make good decisions. So that's that's why we're here. And those who are involved feel the kids got the message loud and clear. When we talk about fatal crashes we call it the fatal four. What results in those types of crashes and that's usually alcohol, distracted driving, unsafe speeds and lack of seat values. I mean we target just those four things and we can keep bringing that up to them again and hopefully can really focus on that to make make the changes and get the education, the information out there so again when they get in that vehicle whether they're driving or passenger that they do the right thing or they speak up and do the right thing. Reporting in Park Rapids with this week's Golden Apple, Sheryl Moore, Lakeland News. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


Welcome back to SuperCloud 3 everybody, where we explore the critical issues around cross cloud security and the impact of generative AI and large language models on this space. It's our pleasure to welcome Jaya Baloo of Rapid7. Jaya is the Chief Security Officer, which by the way is a super set of the CISO title. Welcome Jaya, good to see you. Thank you so much. So when I talk to Chief Security Officers or CISOs at technology companies, I find that they have sort of a dual role. One is looking after their internal security and maybe their broader ecosystem, but also salespeople love to trot folks like you out to help them educate their customers on your best practices. So how do you balance your time? Where is your focus? To be very honest, I wish I could say that there was a balance, but I've just tried to figure out, pretty much a long-term strategy of what do I find important and then I balance prioritization really on urgent more than important when it comes to a day-to-day or week-to-week perspective, while keeping those important things in the background and still trying to get those done. So it's a little bit of an impossible task, to be honest. Okay, so it's got to be frustrating sometimes. You're probably putting out a lot of fires and there's paper cuts, but then you have initiatives. When I talk to CISOs and CISOs, zero trust is a journey and pretty much everyone is on that. And so that's the strategic aspect of your business. So you still have to try to sort of fit that in, obviously, to your day-to-day. Well, how do you think about that zero trust journey? So zero trust is only a part of it, right? We've had this concept of zero trust or principles of least privilege forever since, you know, Carl Magnan man, we've tried to understand how to parcel our trust and then like trust but verify from the Cold War. So we know this stuff. However, what I think is really more important is that we have like an overall plan. So I like to say that every company on earth needs to get three things right. They need to understand themselves and their risks. So security awareness, then they need to be able to see how it's going. So visibility, but then, you know, they get drowned in data. So visibility and risk intelligence. So they can prioritize those important things. And then finally, security capability. So they know what they need to worry about. They can see how it's going and they can act as quickly as possible. And in those three things, I've put in all of the principles of what kind of awareness tactics do we need, both internally and towards customers. Then in terms of visibility, like how do we improve our logging and how do we improve our threat intelligence and, you know, other kind of capabilities. And then when it comes to security capabilities, it's those foundational things. You know, understanding our architecture, making sure we can do architecture improvements or network forensics capacity or again, re-architecting a network for zero trust. Yeah, that's a nice framework. And as technology evolves, you can evolve your process as well. Broadly, how do you think about, you know, given this theme of super cloud, how do you think about cross cloud complexity as it relates to cybersecurity? So let's start out by this notion that having multiple cloud providers is a benefit and a feature, not a bug. And the complexity is definitely there. But, you know, at the risk of sounding like a marketing thing, I have to use all of my own products, the ones that we give to customers, we use them internally ourselves. We are customer zero effectively for all of those things. And I manage our disparate cloud environments using our own products of our own cloud security tooling called the inside cloud sec. And that means that I can look at the GCP workloads, the AWS and Azure stuff in like, you know, a single pane of glass and have this good overview and have this asset understanding and ownership status and understand like how our policy driven baseline are complied with or not. And whether we have the right coverage and the right policies in place to, and when I say policies, I mean technical ones, not paper ones, but so the right technical policies in place to actually be able to monitor those things are important. So as a practitioner, how do you deal with this? I mean, obviously rapid seven does a lot, but it doesn't do everything. So you always hear about, you know, the dozens or sometimes hundreds of tools within an organization. How do you as a practitioner deal with that complexity specifically? So I try to make things really simple. You know, when I start making that strategy, I told you about those three things that I have in my framework to determine all of the strategy sub components and everything that I'm working on. But when it comes to like an operational focus, again, I really think like complexity is the enemy. So if we keep it simple, I focus on two things initially, vulnerabilities and incidents. I have a baseline, we have frameworks, we have all different types of certification schemes. I wanna understand, you know, where are those areas, those gaps, those potential places of exploitation for an attacker? That's where I put my energy because everything that is allowed to remain persistent both in terms of vulnerabilities as well as long running incidents prevents an opportunity for the attacker. And those are the things that I'm trying to diminish. I'm never going to get rid of them completely. I'm just trying to diminish their window of opportunity to do something bad. So when you think about the shared responsibility model across clouds, there's certain things that the cloud providers do. I mean, Microsoft, for example, does a lot. They compete directly with a lot of companies. You know, Amazon maybe focuses more on the infrastructure side and leaves a lot of meat in the bone for the ecosystem. When you think about sort of filling the gaps that maybe Rapid7 doesn't do, how do you approach that? Do you, so you got the framework, but then ultimately you need technologies. So do you sort of, do you partner up with folks that are adjacent to you? You're sort of not competitive. And so what's that mosaic look like? Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. No, that's okay, yeah. I was just enthusiastic to say, absolutely. Look, I think honestly, because again, we are a multi-cloud environment, it means partnering up and we have a very strong partnership relationship with Amazon, also with GCP. Like we need to work together. And, you know, in that sense, we're very much agnostic. It's really about how can we get the best benefits of the integrations that are already there, make sure that the product works together and then give ourselves the greatest degree of visibility and control as possible. So yes, absolutely yes. Very much so for partnerships and integration. I wonder if you could talk to sort of developers, both your developer colleagues and then your own developers in your organization. They want to get code running. They'd like to do it on one machine, perfect it and then deploy it in the exact same environment, ideally, because it's so much easier to work that way. When you think about multi-cloud security, take a simple example. When you onboard the AWS, let's say a single cloud, you might spend hours or sometimes a day or more creating permissions and roles and hierarchies in one environment, let alone multiple environments.  So are you able to both internally and what do you see within your customers to create that common experience across clouds and how do you do that? Again, I think that setting up those baselines and luckily my team doesn't do that. We have an amazing platform team and amazing engineers who help create those baselines and those builds that the engineers can use regardless of which cloud environment they are. I think it's trying to make sure that we're not being too rigid to our developers, that they have a degree of freedom and possibility while at the same time maintaining the standards to what we want across the board for security and quality. That last part is not easy. So it's really about continuously pushing out those baselines and you mentioned something that I found really interesting. You were saying doing everything in the same place. Like one of the things like from a cost perspective, I think that does make sense to try to like bundle those things in the same place but I have to tell you that I think fundamentally like when you wanna address customer needs it's better to have that diversity because customers don't have vanilla environments. So actually having that experience, being able to understand the pitfalls and the advantages of having these multi-cloud solutions or problems in that case, I think it actually helps you have a better conversation with those customers when they are trying to implement those same solutions. Yeah, and you're right. I mean developers, they want to tap best to breed some cloud vendors going to come out with some hot new thing. I mean, we've certainly seen that with open AI and they want to tap it. And so to your point about standards is an interesting one because you know, you take the super cloud concept, it is about yet another abstraction layer whether virtualization containers, we're always abstracting in this industry but sometimes you want to go deeper into the primitives because you might have some standard and you might need to tap some capability. So it's not a, to your point, it's not a no-brainer to provide that level of standardization. But at the same time, you have to create an environment that minimizes complexity. So again, it's a balancing act, I presume. Yeah, yeah. And again, I don't think we're great at the balancing act, right? I don't think anyone's really going to say, like, oh, I've got that down. I think we're still trying to figure out what is that optimum of usability versus security? And these are discussions that we've been having for a very long time. I don't think that, you know, you can take a very like fundamentalist approach. Like, no, it should always be security first because I actually think like, we forget sometimes why these principles exist. They're here to further the business. They're here to accelerate our deployment, not hold it back. Yeah, and AI, generative AI, it's like yet another abstraction layer. We're now, whereas Amazon turned the data center into an API, now we're going to be speaking in natural language to program, to access technology. So let's talk about AI a little bit. A couple of many part question here. First of all, how do you think about AI, both within your existing products and using AI for your frameworks to know better, maybe prioritize, to visualize, and maybe inject intelligence into your system? How do you use that? Again, I have a certain professional defamation. Like whenever I think about AI, I think about it from a very like fundamental, do the defenders have an advantage or do the attackers have an advantage? So I really think about it very much from a security orientation. And I think that for a very long time, we weren't seeing anything but an advantage for the defenders. So like building it into tool sets, finding ways to make things better, determining with a more fine-grained tool, like all through all this information that we needed to wade through to see if there was an attack. I think we have that advantage for some time. I don't know that we will retain that for the same amount of time just because of the accessibility of some of these LLMs to do things that we wouldn't consider it so well-intentioned as being on the defending side, but more on the attacking. And I think that's the area that I'm the most concerned about now. So I think the potential for attack right now is the thing that most intrigues me about AI in relation to security. So your premise, if I infer correctly, is that the technology industry had probably priority access to AI prior to the AI heard around the world. And now the attackers have much broader access. They're obviously using it to write better phishing emails, but there are so many other ways that they can use it. And I tend to agree with this. It's very unclear whether AI is ultimately going to be of greater benefit to the attackers or the defenders. It's just maybe it accelerates or accentuates this never-ending escalation. Well, very foundationally, if we say that you can use AI, for example, to write better code, it doesn't have to be code that's just used for the defender. It can also be code that's used by attackers. So like all technology, it can be dual use. It can be used for good and it can be used for bad. I think the issue that we need to understand is how can defenders get better at already thinking proactively about defensive strategies to counter those threats that we know are coming? Right. And so I want to end around culture because I often say bad user behavior is going to trump good security every time. So it's super important that people are hyper aware of their environment and the best security practices from a user standpoint. So how do you go about developing a security conscious culture? Well, I mean, it's easier somehow in a security oriented company to kind of put security first, but that being said, I really like to bring knowledge about what's happening in the rest of the world on a weekly basis back to the rest of the company, just so that they are as aware as the internal security team of look at what's happening now. And it's everything from attacks that are happening elsewhere that we can learn from, but also new development. So in relation to AI, for example, you might have heard of darkbert, which is an AI LLM that's like being fed on darknet data. So it's actually going to be a tool eventually for like law enforcement to be able to search through data that's there on the dark web and do something meaningful in terms of finding attackers as well as data, et cetera, all different types of things that could have been compromised. So I think even here just knowing about the potential and the capability of the people who are not having the best intentions in mind, that's something really, really important to bring to the fore at every company in order to make sure that we understand the why of doing security. It helps us remind everybody about, you know, what the value of doing good security is within a technology organization. So at a security company like Rapid7, Jaya, I would imagine your entire staff has an appetite for that type of education. I would think in many of your customers, you know, when you go to an insurance company and you get down to the claims agent that they might get fatigue when their eyes start to roll over when they start to, you know, get, here's another one because you open the paper every day. Is there, have you seen any kind of best practices to keep those folks at the front lines and engaged and up to date? Yeah, absolutely. Look, a good threat intelligence thing should start with, you know, what is there to learn about myself? So obviously information that is of direct relevance to that company, that's where we start the messaging. And then it's, you know, me, people like me and then everyone else. When you get a look at what's in the paper, it's like all the other stuff. It's the generic stuff that you get first. So I think the best rule of thumb is to make it as personal as possible.  They're not just the humans that work at companies. They're also humans that have devices at home that have maybe smart lamps or robot-controlled lawnmowers. And you want them to also understand that. But I think it really begins initially from a corporate perspective of starting with what is directly a relation to their company and then their industry and then the rest. Know thyself, good advice, Jayla Baloo. Jayla Baloo, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE and helping us with SuperCloud 3. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. You're very welcome. All right, keep it right there for more content at SuperCloud 3 live from Palo Alto, California.