I want to talk about robust-first computing, it's what I've been working on, and show a demo of the demon horde sort, which is a particular approach to sorting that exemplifies this robust-first idea. Now we have computers that are extremely cheap and less weak, fairly powerful, and that culture of correctness and efficiency only, CEO software, is creating incredible security problems, the security nightmares that we're living with today that we kind of think they're sort of normal when in fact they're crazy. So if we think robust-first, we say let's make sure we're in the ballpark and then try to get it data. The architectural goal is to be able to take this computational model and scale it indefinitely large. As long as we have money to buy the nodes and power to power them and space, real estate to plug them all together. To do that, we need to focus on robustness. This computer potentially could be so big we cannot finish it before we start using it. We're going to be able to plug in more stuff while it's going. It's going to be so big that some fraction of it's going to be getting repaired or crapping out one way or another as we go. The computations that we build have to be inherently robust so that we can slap this stuff together. In each site, it can either be empty or we can have an atom, one atom. And here's an atom. It's called DREG, which stands for Dynamic Regulator. This diamond shape is called the event window. That is the limits of the number of sites that this guy in the middle can access when he executes. So there's 41 sites total. They are all within a distance of four, counting in city block distance. When this guy in the center is executing, he can read and write to the event window arbitrarily. But once he gives up control at the end of his event, then some other guy gets picked and he can read and write the event window, which might be overlapping, might be completely separate. The movable feast machine as a whole can be executing many events simultaneously as long as none of their event windows overlap. Now the way DREG specifically works is this. When it behaves, it looks north, south, east or west. One of those locations picked at random to see whether it's empty or occupied. And for example, suppose it looks north, it's empty. When it's empty, it picks some random number and with some low odds, it will create a resource atom, an atom called REZ, in that spot. And with a very low probability, instead of creating a REZ, it will create another DREG. So DREG can reproduce into empty spots, but it's very low odds. On the other hand, if it looks in a direction, in this case, if it looks west, it finds it's occupied, it picks a different random number with a different probability and maybe just erases the thing, whatever it is. At the end of the step, it diffuses and in general, diffusion respects whatever constraints there are on the local layout, okay? That's it. That's the DREG rule. We've got one DREG in it and we'll start it up. So there it was just diffusing around and eventually it will get lucky and decide to make something. Now, it can't destroy anything because it's the only thing that there is in the universe there. It made a REZ. Let's get rid of the grid because it gets visually a little crowded. We're artificially slowing this down so that we can get a little clue what's going on. Let's let it run at its natural speed and you see what starts to happen. If you can read these numbers over here, there's currently two, one, one. There's 50 REZ, 60 REZ, and so on. Overall, there's 18, 19% of this little grid is occupied by something. If we let it run, given the particular probabilities I picked for creating stuff versus destroying stuff, twice as likely to destroy as to create and that tends to make it float around a third of the sites in the grid occupied. So now we're at 32%. It'll end up going a little above a third, 35%, something when it reaches equilibrium. One of the essential things about parallel computing is you have to deal with deadlock, crowding, queues full, and so on. In this robust first approach, this particular demonstration, we're saying let's just deal with that by putting in this lower level that keeps the world about one third full. We can do more with this. Suppose I put in another element, he's a sorter, the demon horde sorter, but one of the behaviors that he's got is he looks around himself when it's his turn to go, and if he sees REZ, he converts them into more sorters. So if we let this run just for a brief bit, the REZ have been taken over. We can take a dragon REZ base and build things on top of it that will compete for the available resources, and they will automatically keep their total population under control because they can only get as big as the number of resources. Okay, this is a cartoon of the world of a sorter. He looks to his right and up to see if there's a number that's bigger than the number he's carrying because that's a number we're going to try to sort smaller numbers up, bigger numbers down. So if he sees a bigger number above him, he would like to move it down. If he sees a smaller number below him and to the right, he'd like to move it up and to the left because in all cases we're going to sort from right to left. So in this case, the 79 is bigger than the threshold and so he'd be interested in moving it down. The 24 is smaller than the threshold, he'd be interested in moving it up, but the destination for moving it up is all currently occupied. But we've got an empty spot, so what the sorter decides to do is take the 79 atom, copy him down to this empty spot, erase him from where he used to be, moving it sort of a little quantum, a little increment of sorting, and then as the sorter updates its threshold to be the value of the atom, it just moved. So at the end of this event, the 43 will have changed to a 79. You're not trying to do the entire sorting job yourself, you're just trying to make things a little better. And by making this spatial assumption, saying that we're going to sort from the right to the left, small is up, big is down, that allows the individual sorting element to make things better. So here we've got a much bigger grid than we have last time, it doesn't look bigger because the atoms are all drawn smaller. And so on the field there are these little eggs at regular intervals, each consists of two sorters and two dregs, and if we look on down there's more, and there's more here in the middle, another egg. In addition, there's this guy who's an output guy, and the idea is we're sorting right to left, so eventually the data guys will reach the left, and these out guys will suck them out of the system and do whatever the rest of the computation needs with them. In our case, it's just going to score them, it's going to say, well I know what numbers ought to be coming here, and we'll check to see how well the sorting is going. Similarly, over at the other end, on the right, we've got an input guy, he's going to generate data, just at random for purposes of this demo, to be sorted by the demon horde sort, and the guys in the middle are the demon hordes. So when I start this up in a sec, it'll be a little confusing because a bunch of stuff will be happening at once, but the first thing you'll see is the input grid will spread because in addition to creating inputs, the input elements are designed to look above, look below, and if the spots where there should be another input guy, or don't have an input guy, and they're empty, it goes ahead and puts a new input guy there, and the output grid makes a denser row of two, so we'll see the grids grow. As the input grids grow, they will start generating data, the blue atoms, and then the sorters will do their diffusion, and the drag will do their diffusion, and create res, and so on, so let's take a look at its behavior. All right, so pretty quickly, we've now got a full stack of green input grid guys. It takes a while for the machine to warm up. The sorting error is seven positions on average, that's pretty bad. If it should be the neighboring guy, that's the sorting error of one, off by two guys, and so on, so a sorting error of, well, now it's down to five, is, you know, better, still not very good. Let's let this run quicker and start to equilibrate a little bit. Now we're doing a little better. The sorting error is down to about three and a half positions on average, plus or minus, which is not too bad, and the categorical error is a tenth of a percent, sometimes never over the course of a 500 step period, not too bad. And this thing is embarrassingly robust. Unlike the correct first CEO approach, where you do something once, remember it, and then trust it from then on, here we are continually in the process of recreating ourselves, or we can blow like two thirds of the entire machine away. And again, now the score is definitely a categorical error is up to a third sorting error is terrible. The thing is getting all jammed up here. So it takes a little longer to recover. One last point here. This is a picture that's showing just the sorters, but instead of showing them as red, it shows them colored by what their threshold is. You know, it looks like there isn't a whole lot happening in the last third of this grid. The colors seem fairly uniform, but they're making increasingly fine distinctions. If we want, we can start stealing resources from this sorting thing. The machine adjusts. Eventually, its sorting performance starts to degrade. But now we've got all of this space over here. There are still events happening here. OK, so that's it. This is obviously a different way to compute than the way that we've gotten used to it. But in a way, it's a lot more like how society computes. All of the stuff that we do in the world tolerates these little errors. The idea is that each computing element, instead of assuming that everything else is absolutely perfect, should assume that everything else is trying, but might not be perfect.  Like the sorter doesn't try to get the correct answer, it just tries to give a little better than it gets. Thanks for watching.


Thanks for coming back to a special yes-network presentation. Brooklyn Nets media day, Ryan Rucco, Sarah Kustak with you and we are now joined live by the net general manager Sean Marks.   Sean, there's obviously there's so many different things to dive into with you. I guess first things first we'll start towards where we're at now. How do things feel right now with this group collectively? Yes, Kevin, Kai back in the fold, but the team as a whole as you guys get ready to start training camp tomorrow. Yeah look I think what we've seen the last couple weeks as guys come back into the gym, you know there's a level of anxiousness about getting back around each other. There's a lot of smiles, guys have been competitive you know. That's what we're all about right? Seeing this group together, seeing them play together, start formulating these bonds both on and off the court. So that's the fun thing for me right now is and then of course you know tomorrow when Steve gets to roll the balls out there and we get after it. That's you know when you can when you can do that the other rest sort of gets you know pushed to the wayside a little bit. The rest there's a lot in the rest and you look back I mean we can date back to two seasons, the past two seasons, but in particular last season all the moving parts, different iterations of the group and all the challenges that came along with it. But after the postseason and the way things finish, what was it like for you as you were initially trying to approach the offseason, figure out what was going on with the group and then deal with the trade request by Kev. Yeah look I think collectively as an organization none of us were happy just to be brutally honest when you don't live up to your expectations, you know you fail, you fall short, whatever you want to put it. This gave us an opportunity to really do a deep dive and reflect on you know our processes right you know it does everything we do for you know whether that's from staffing, from roster management, coaching, you name it, we looked at everything, we did that collectively as a group from you know myself, Steve, Joe and every department we looked at that and said look you know you can't point the finger you've got to look in the mirror and say could I have done things differently here that's not the outcome we wanted and again nobody's gonna sit here and make excuses we don't want to sit here and go well we lost X amount of games because of this mandate or this mandate or that so you know it's time to move on from that but again you know take hard and learn from some of the mistakes that were made along the way. When Kevin made the request did you think I'm going to have to trade him or did you think I'm gonna try and find a way to still keep him here how did you navigate that? Well it's tricky one I think when a player of that you know stature comes to you and says look this this may not be the place to me I want to look somewhere else I mean you've what can you learn from that you know again sit back and say okay why do you want why do you want out you know is this you know you know can we change this at all or are you just completely steadfast in your approach right now Kevin so you know we spent a lot of time talking you know as a group with including Kevin and so forth and obviously we came back to you know we're here and we're gonna go after it again with him and we're very thankful for that you know that's that's not an easy ultimatum to handle and you've got on that you know as a GM you've been on that as an ownership you know Joe and Clara had to own that you know and the coaching staff Steve right so it's on all of us. When you say not an easy ultimatum to handle there's there was a lot of not easy things to go on in Kevin spoke Kyrie spoke Ben spoke obviously earlier in they seem very open and insightful and honest about conversations that were had hard conversations that were had Kyrie mentioned you know with his contract extension a tough pill to swallow in the way things went on with him what do you think that can do for this group moving forward in just the approach of going through a lot of uncomfortable awkwardness to get to the place that you're at. Yeah I think if you look back six years ago we we pride ourselves on having a chip on our shoulder and something to prove flying under the radar whatever cliche you want to use but now I mean you hear the guys up on the podium and and they have that chip on their shoulder you know there's there's a level of humility amongst all of us but again it's it's it's nice when your backs against the wall and really kind of nobody may be expecting you to bail while the naysayers are still out there so well let's go prove them wrong you know and I think you saw the guys up there being able to be very honest and upfront about you know some of their emotions and some of their feelings of what they went through the summer you know people talk about like you know maybe what Steve and I had to go through I mean the whole organization had to go through it and you know reflect on it you know you talked about Sean at the year end of your press conference some of the getting back to the culture that was being built and last year being I don't know your exact terms we're talking about kind of like a bump in the road or a step back when Kyrie and Kevin are talking about those honest conversations how much of it also was you guys as an organization telling them hey this is what we need culturally from you as well here if we're going to make this work I mean I'm sure it's a two-way street but what what kind of was important for the organization to get across that these are things that are going to be important for us collectively no matter who's a part of this group moving forward yeah it takes everybody you know this is not just the culture is not decided by one guy in an office right there's decided by an organization as a whole and we have to have an identity that fits with the brand out here that's you know that's always being the Brooklyn way and it will continue to be the Brooklyn way so for us it's important to have those conversations with those guys include them in it but into the way into the day you know it goes back to our press conference earlier than you like you know have people that want to be part of something bigger themselves you know a competitive group and I think that's all we have here when you finally come to that conclusion for Kevin and and you guys to continue the partnership what was what was the the final conversation like or what kind of got you guys all to that place of hey not only do we want to do this but we can do this even after everything we've been through and we can do it right and build what we want to build honestly I think that's it's best when you're face-to-face when you look somebody in the eye and so I'm like look this is how we're building this organization this is what we're doing this is how we're gonna go ahead and do it and you're the right guy to be a part of us and you know he obviously took some time to think about it and and came back and said yeah this is where I can this is where I can leave my championship aspirations and you know he has a legacy at stake like we all do we've talked a lot about lineup roster combinations optionality that comes along with it coaching staff obviously the first two seasons for Steve Nash unlike probably any other for the first two years of a head coaching career some different pieces on that staff as well this season what's what's your expectation anticipation what are you looking for in terms of growth out of that group and out of the staff you know I think what makes Steve special is there's there's nothing he hasn't seen on the court and off the court that our players haven't sort of gone through or maybe gone through so there's an area of expertise there's some storytelling that Steve can do that can certainly help our players I mean he's been at he's he's been to the top of the top right and as close as you possibly can be so you know I hope our guys really utilize him for what he is and his experience out there what I've seen so far this summer from from our coaches and the dedication that's been put in you know they too have a chip on the shoulder everybody has something to prove here you know so again it gets back to just just literally being excited to get back on the hardwood you know and once it's media days over we can sort of forget about that and get back to what the important things are one of the other things Kevin talked about was even as he had requested the trade noticing what you were doing with the roster and liking what was being built and still envisioning how he would fit what were some of your focuses with who you did bring in here in the offseason whether it's TJ Warren or it's Sumner or obviously Royce O'Neill in that trade and kind of the pieces that you brought in to augment the stars who are in fact back yeah well you're always looking your roster throughout the season seeing where the holes are what might fit what didn't fit what didn't work and so forth and and where our holes are moving forward and what are some of the complementary pieces around there and I think you know you start with with Royce you know the trade that we made for him knowing the contract that he's on and and not really be able to find a player like that in free agency so being able to trade for him knowing that here's our window what he brings to us on and off the court from you know from the defensive person he is you know being able to spread the floor like he can the one thing that's not talked about enough is Joe Harris being back yeah I look at Joe as a little bit of a new addition right he's back and that's gonna be super excited but to bring in you know my Keith and Edmund and TJ with their area of expertise they all have something in common which is they have something to prove you know every single one of us something to prove from a previous season or couple seasons that have been lost Ben obviously is someone there's a lot of focus on and how he'll fit his style of play him coming back from the back surgery what have you noticed out of him this summer I know he's been here been in the gym what have you seen from him I think it's just his confidence you know I think talking to him you know when we when we first acquired him it's it's a different been you know and he's got to become accustomed with who we are and you know we're gonna put our arm around him support him and and do everything we possibly can't for him to deliver on the court for for this group and be in the best place possible succeed and I think we've seen that we've looked at the dedication that he's put in this summer I mean you could look at his body yeah he is he's a big man out there and it's been impressive just to see to see him go and the way he goes is a little bit like our engine I mean he'll fuel us I mean the speed with which a guy that can play with is pretty impressive I'm waiting to see if his accent comes out a little bit more being around you and Patty staff it's downplayed a bit throughout the course of his career but I think it's strong of the mind we'll see we'll keep an eye on it showing you've addressed this in part and you're about to go to a press conference and I know once you get past this day you'll be happy to not have to address this anymore but just a few a few bookkeeping things for people at home that I'm sure are wondering one did you ever come close to trading Kevin Durant do you feel like you ever there was ever a deal that was almost made look I think we have to be honest about it and when a guy asks you know to be traded you have to do your due diligence so yeah absolutely we made those calls and we at least picked up the phone when when when teams called I could be honest I wasn't making a whole about going calls I mean why would you do that they're gonna come in when Kevin Durant's available exactly there was no shortage of that but when you know you hurt him up there I mean it's he even admitted to it it's he's not an easy person to trade right when you're trading Kevin to get like for like I'm not sure how you do that so there was also a report that he wanted you and Steve gone was that your impression at one point with Kevin this off-season look we he and I never had that exact conversation together but like you know I think we have this mutual respect for one another you know I obviously respect the heck out of what Kevin is on the court and who he is as a person I love our upfront conversations we've been brutally honest from day one here so you know this has been a tough offseason and and for for a lot of people so let's own it and and it's been tough for Kevin and I don't want to put words in his mouth as to what he was feeling and what he was going through but the same time my job here is to put the right pieces around him and to help you know collectively here lead this organization and get to where we want to be and then the other one is Kyrie he talked a lot about having honest conversations and getting to a place where he also felt like he needed to get to know everybody going on this journey as Ben goes by going on going on this journey together getting to know it it sounded like he was implying beyond just his teammates but everybody here collectively when you guys came to a place of where you're now at in harmony what what was that conversation like or what were those interactions like to bring you to a place where he clearly feels like he's all in on this group and what you need and you guys seem to get across the message that you needed to at the end of last season as well. Yeah well I think it's usually beneficial for both sides right I mean you heard him before like how he was thinking about what what else is out there is the grass greener but then you know he wants to finish something he started to started here in Brooklyn I think he brings up a good point to getting to know one another both on and off the court and we talk about that a lot but when you miss over 200 games you know and I'm not talking about just Kyrie I'm talking about the you know the rotation players for us last season that's tough to sort of build camaraderie and community you know there's a sense of chemistry you know on the court so hopefully this year knock a wood you heard all all the guys talking about health and getting after it and being around each other so you know see where it goes. How excited are you just to see the pieces you've put together out on the floor collectively Sean hopefully with somewhat of a runway this season to actually play together. Very excited I mean these guys have put in a lot of work this offseason so I'm extremely proud of what the staff has done and what the players have done I mean there's a lot of guys who have been in in Brooklyn for a lot of this offseason so you know let's roll the balls out. All right Sean well we appreciate the time we know it was a wild offseason we know some of these questions aren't the easiest answer but we appreciate you being with us here alive and don't worry you get to go do it again with everybody else in just a little bit so that's Sean Marks net general manager joining us live still a little more


Hi everyone, I was a dumb. I forgot the recap. This is the recap for the all-about-the-cup hockey mixer 12 boxes of some pretty good stuff Thanks everyone for making that happen, I appreciate it It's a kind of a longer break, but I feel like we got some really nice stuff. Um, I'm just showing you relics and In autos, but there were a ton of young guns cards that popped out earlier in the break Here's the cup hockey stuff, which is really nice that Bobby Hall so on and so forth and There you have it and then the left side will get those cards right there. Thanks for watching. Thanks for Hawking with us I'm Joe. I'll see you next time for the next break. Bye. Bye


introduced my name is Sarah. I am currently the VP of engineering at ReactiveOps and my one job is to advocate for engineers. You hear the word developer advocate but I am an engineering advocate and I speak up for my engineers. But before I was a VP I was an engineer just like many of you and my one job was to work hard to go to work every day and solve challenging problems to help customers and other engineers to learn from people to teach people and on top of all that try to keep up. And unfortunately the result of all my hard work always seemed to be that the organization shortened deadlines gave me more work made me work longer hours. I was stressed almost all the time right as we heard about this morning and Burnett was a real threat. And I always had a hard time trying to decide why my hard work translated to others negatively right because these results did not align with what I thought I was achieving. So why is there that disconnect between myself as an engineer and other groups, other audiences? I started thinking about it when I wrote this talk and I think it all comes down to misaligned values. So what we're going to talk about today is value in engineering work. So first of all let's go ahead and start by talking about what value is and how we may calculate it. When I first proposed this talk to my engineers at React Bobs, one of them said to me you cannot devalue engineering work. It has a value that cannot change. And he was right, but what he was talking about was actual value. Actual value is something that is intrinsic to an element, an object or a piece of work. It is factual, it is well understood meaning that we can measure it and we know it and it cannot be changed by outside forces. So this is the type of work that my engineer was talking about, this value. But there is a second more complicated type of value that a lot of us don't think about and that's perceived value. Perceived value is all about how something is experienced, a perception of somebody. It's very much based on individual point of view. I have a different perceived value than all of you. Some groups may have different perceived value than others and that can be manipulated very highly. I want to give you an example and somebody said please don't give a cheesy example. So I went and I actually did the opposite and I'm going to base this on cheese. So I'm going to show you, oh no. Okay. So I'm going to give you two pieces of cheese. On the left, I think your left is a block cheddar, something you'd find at the grocery store, a craft, a cracker barrel, you know what it is. And on the right is an artisan aged cloth bound cheddar. You're looking at these two things and based on your experience, your perception, you are assigning a value to each of those cheeses. One may be your jam, one may not be. So let's talk about what's going on. The actual value of those cheeses is static factual thing. It is maybe the type of milk, the fat content involved, the texture, meltability, age. All those things are inherent to the cheese. And we can look on the back of a label and we can say this is the nutritional value, this is a fact. And in all reality, those two cheeses that I showed may have the same actual value. So why are some of you thinking that the other, the cloth bound maybe have a higher value? It's all about perceived value. So I want to kind of get your juices flowing about what may influence perceived value. In the case of cheese, one of them may use unconfined dairy animals. If you're all about animal rights, that may be appealing to you. Some may be made on family farms that pay people living wages and that could be something that you really care about. One of them you may pick up at your local farmers market and it is supporting somebody in your community. That's important. And it goes down the list. Somebody takes great care. And at the end of the list, I mean, one of those cheeses just looks way more delicious than the other one, right? And that really depends on you. You could like something that's just going to like make you a delicious mac and cheese, or you want something to show in a fancy, you know, get together at your house. So what we're really talking about when we say actual value versus perceived value, we're talking about features, right, the features of the cheese are the actual value versus the benefit somebody may reap from them, which is the perceived value. So perceived value seems like a really interesting concept, right? So how may we calculate or predict what a perceived value of something should be. In marketing, there's this concept that I honestly, I learned when writing this presentation because I wanted to do some research about why this may be the case. And it's called the perceived value equation. And the hypothesis is that the perceived value of something is roughly the ratio between the benefits and the cost of something. So something is going to benefit you, but there's always a cost attached, right? It may be price, it may be trouble that you have to go through to get it, etc. And the perceived value that you have is going to be a ratio of those two things. So how might you maximize a perceived value? How might you make sure that people perceive your work or your product as really highly valued? Well, you kind of, I mean, all of your engineers, you can look at this ratio and say, how can I maximize that? The first thing you can do is either really increase the benefits of that cheese, of that engineering work, or you can drop the cost, right? And you can play around with those two values. But what in the world, when we're talking about our engineering work, is going to shift perceived value. There's two things that I think are really important. The first is the audience. Again, I said, perception is an individual point of view. So if I'm presenting something, my work or cheese, the audience is particularly important. They're going to have a different perceived value. And then the second thing, which we're going to talk about today is communication. How you communicate the benefits of something is going to increase the perceived value. So if we loop back to the cheeses, you know, I pick up the craft block of cheese, it just says cheddar on it. I don't know the benefits there, right? I just know the inherent actual value. But I pick up the clothbound cheddar, and it's going to tell me this is an actual description. It's raw cheese crafted by hand in small batches on a farm nearby. Like, all of a sudden I'm picking out words. You guys not seeing this? Oh, sorry about that. All of a sudden, you're seeing all these words that are basically triggering your benefits, right?  Oh, raw milk is way healthier for me. And so you're seeing the benefits communicated to you. So let's go ahead and talk about communication. And now we're done with cheese. We're going to talk about engineering work. How do we communicate value? So in communicating work, what we're doing, when we sit down to write a blog post, a tweet, presentation such as this, or even just a pull request of your work, what you're doing is sharing your experience, what you've gone through with that work, right? That is how we communicate engineering work. So now I want to tell you about a specific type of communication that I think many of us are have written in our past and we are kind of guilty of putting out there in the ether. It's what I call up and running communication. And this is a term that I came up with. It may be very wrong, but it is what I call it. And maybe as I share this with you, you can either tell me whether or not it's a good term. But what is it and what do we mean? So up and running is a term I think is very familiar in tech. We've heard it before. There's certainly blogs that you've read or presentations that you've seen that talk about up and running. But I want to show you a particular example of what I think it means. So I think of it as a race. This is Usain Bolt running 100 meters. In the beginning, on the top row, you've got him in the starting blocks, preparing himself, building tension, setting his mind right, and then he's up, right?  And then running, to me, is moving in the right direction. Unfortunately, up and running is a very ambiguous term. Running could be anything in that race. And I think there is a misconception that up and running covers an entire topic. It covers beginner, intermediate, and advanced in a topic. So if I say up and running with Kubernetes, you're like, oh, that's all I need to know about Kubernetes. Well, that's not the case. Up and running is your first application. You're moving in the right direction. You're not a Kubernetes expert, right? This communication is based on becoming a beginner. So it's focused on getting started. It doesn't talk about any upcoming hurdles that may happen in the race. It doesn't talk about the advanced technique that you may need later down the road to beat somebody else or to, you know, regulate your breathing or anything like that. And we don't talk about the finish line. We don't talk about what the ideal end state is, right? We are just talking about the beginning, which is useful in some cases in frustrating others. In the wild, what this looks like is this. I have a couple titles. Hopefully the colors have translated. I really like neon, so I just went with it. So I'm going to read a couple of them. Ansible up and running, automating configuration management and deployment, the easy way. Docker is easier to use than you think. AWS made easy, painless container management with GKE and Kubernetes. And my very favorite, a weekend, a Rails app, a Kubernetes and a manager, which I feel like somebody should be walking into a bar. But what I want you to notice when you look at these titles is that there is a common theme here. There is an emphasis on something very specific. And what that is, is simplicity. We are not sharing challenges. We are not sharing roadblocks. We're not sharing the hard work that we went through to learn this information. All the time that we spent. All the people that helped us. And we're talking about saving time and learning something quickly and being able to implement it and showing people potentially the power of something. That's the emphasis. We already talked about what we omit. We're not even registering the implications. What's going to happen when you hit scale? Or when you need to go to production? Or when you need to be multi-regional?  We're not talking about that.  To loop back to my title, up and running culture is slightly different than up and running communication because culture is simply a pattern of learned and shared behavior of a group. Right? It's something that we have absorbed into ourselves as our identity of engineers. We've seen this communication and then we feed into the system. Right? So the engineering communication culture is such that we go out there, we look at blog posts, we learn from them. And at some point when we finish a project, when we learn something, we write a blog post and we feed it back into the system. And it's constantly depositing and withdrawing from this library. Right? That's our communication culture as engineers. And just like memes on the internet, you know, the definition of a meme is a thing that is copied and shared. We are emulating the behavior of communication that we see. So if we have Docker is easier to use than you think and somehow we learned something from that, when we go to write our blog post about Kubernetes, we're going to say, oh yeah, Kubernetes is easier to use than you think. Right? We're going to emulate what other people have communicated in our behavior. And that's when it becomes up and running culture. It is, so this is the crux of my presentation, it is a specific type of communication that we participate in that is focused on introductory level material. It glorifies speed, it tries to simplify topics, minimize effort, and inherently try to explain something that's really scary and make it less scary.  Right? But why do we participate in this as engineers? When I started to think about the perceived value equation, I thought to myself, what are engineers doing when they communicate their work? Well, they're min-maximizing it for themselves, for other engineers. They are trying to lower the cost to themselves by saying it's easy, it's fast, but they're maximizing the benefits. I learned this awesome new thing.  It's going to be effective and impactful. Right? So I have both raised the benefits and lowered the cost, which should potentially skyrocket the perceived value for engineers. But why is this a problem? Well, it's the audience. I'm going to posit that it is the audience.  You're not taking into account the audience of other people that may be experiencing your work. So you are in fact miscommunication, miscommunicating the value of your work. So I want to talk to you about a couple, just a couple of audience types that may be picking up on your communication and valuing things very differently. So the first is decision makers. These are CTOs, CEOs, VPs like myself potentially, who are removed from engineering work and their job is to take in information and make decisions for your company.  You're going to extrapolate from your experience, problem solve, troubleshoot, do all the hard stuff, and then innovate for my company and make sure we change. That's what I want if I hire you. Those are the benefits that I'm looking for. Unfortunately I caught your blog post that said Docker is easier to use than you think. And what you just told me is that these topics that you're trying to work on are very easy. You didn't need that experience that I paid for and potentially these problems in the community are already solved and all you're doing is implementing. Right? So through that communication, that up and running communication, unfortunately you have dropped my perceived benefits. And so what I do with the equation is say well heck, the benefits communicated to me by your work are much lower than I expected. So to keep the same value of you, right, I hired you and I need to make you useful, is that I need to drop the costs to make the value stay the same. I have to drop them a lot. And unfortunately what that turns out to be is that I shorten timelines. Right? Because we're expecting this work, Docker is easier to use than I think. It should be fast, right? The problem is well understood. This should be not a challenging thing for you to solve. I then also say well you've got this handled. You know Docker and Kubernetes and you deployed to it in 24 minutes and you know potentially an Azure walked into a bar. These teams should be smaller. So I'm going to hire for a position that's called DevOps engineer which covers everything, right? Because all of this is easy so you can do all of it. And by the way I'm going to give you new work, more work because the tools that you are communicating to me about have made your life easier and the automation is going to take away all that work you have to do. So because you communicated to me that the benefits are lower than I expected, I am going to do everything that I can to drop the cost involved. And this I think is why all of us are really frustrated that our bosses are piling work on our desk and telling us you know Docker should take you a weekend when in all reality that may not be true. The second audience that I want you to think about are beginners. This is really important because when beginners are starting to learn in our career field what they're going to do is go on the internet and they're going to look at your blog posts and they're going to watch your tutorials. Potentially they're going to look at a presentation and they're going to take back another perceived value. Unfortunately because you told us that Docker is easier to use than you think and I as a beginner really struggled with Docker. I really couldn't even get it installed on my Mac. I didn't know what an image was. I had to search on GitHub to try to figure out what an example Docker file looked like. I spent 45 minutes really struggling with basics and you told me Docker is easier to use than I think. You are setting unrealistic expectations. You are telling me as a beginner that my time was wasted that I potentially am dumb because I cannot figure out what you did and so I'm seeing unrealistic expectations. There's an inequity in resources. You have your colleagues at work. You have an expert friend in Kubernetes who can help you learn. Beginners don't have that but they see that reflected in your work without seeing the challenges involved because in your blog post you didn't mention that you had a buddy who knew everything about Docker who told you that. Then the lack of future thought again up and running communication is about the beginning. We are presenting it as if it is the full topic but it's not. It's just the introduction and so what this beginner sees is a potentially a beginning to their learning about a topic but then you haven't touched on the challenges, you haven't touched on what's next, the advanced topics that they need to learn so again they're lost. This is really frustrating and so the perceived value equation for beginners looks like this. Well heck the cost of this work to me just went up really heavily because it's not easy and yet you're telling me that it is and so my perceived value goes down. So again you've communicated to me through up and running communication that the value of your work is less than it is. These are just two groups. There are many other groups that you need to be thinking about sales, marketing, recruiters, customers, other types of engineers. Your family at home like there's all kinds of audiences that you need to take into account because they have a different perceived value equation. So I want to talk, this is my last section about the methods that we can use to communicate our work better. The first is set expectations. At the beginning of your blog, your talk, your tweet, make sure that the audience knows what they're in for. Say this is a beginning to understanding and potentially the first application of Docker, right? Don't say Docker is easier to use than you think because we're not learning the entire topic. We're learning a beginning intro. Tell them as explicitly as you can. Leveling. This is an interesting one. I am very guilty of not leveling. I didn't level this presentation, although it's challenging to do. But I want you to clearly label your communication. If it's beginning, intermediate, or advanced material, say so. I went to KubeCon last year and I thought it was really valuable that they leveled all of the talks. So they said this is a beginner talk, this is intermediate, this is advanced. Because then, it doesn't matter what my context, what my point of view is, I can look at it and say, oh, this is a challenging concept, right? This is something that I need to invest a lot of attention in and really, you know, this is the piece that's going to fit into my entire journey. People will be able to self-select your material. The thing I really don't want to happen is for you to write an article that says Docker is easier to use than you think. And a CTO seeing that and telling all of their engineers, hey, this is beginner material, this is very interesting, right? You need to set the context for people who aren't you. You're going to affect engineers at other companies by communicating these things. I want you to share the rest of the story, like Steve Harvey. I want you to communicate more than just up and running. You need to communicate advanced topics, anything that you've learned. Push past those starting blocks. Talk about implications, consequences, next steps. My favorite, favorite, favorite thing in blog posts is when you say, next time we're going to talk about X, right? Because that means to me that this isn't the end of the story, that there's something else that I need to be aware of because I've just learned something brand new and I need to know about the challenges involved later. So talk about the rest of the story. Focus on the benefits. Unfortunately, you do not have too much control over other people's costs, that's going to depend on their situation. So you need to sell the benefits as much as you can. Tiffany talked about this in the earlier presentation, which is the big sell. You need to make sure that other people understand the benefits of your work. So when you're talking to your boss, you're saying, this is exactly why my work matters to you. This is going to meet your quota. This is going to make sure that we get across the finish line on that particular project. If you don't accurately represent the benefits, unfortunately, they will become a cost to you. Be authentic. I think lots of people talk about this. Do not photoshop your work. Share the trials and tribulations. If you're going to write a post that's Docker is easier to use than you think, somehow you need to be able to make room for all the times that you failed, that your image didn't compile or the container failed when you started to run it. These are all natural things, natural progressions of our learning and our work, and they need to be shared and made clear. Your failures are as important as your successes. Some people understand this. Site your sources is something that I like to say, because, again, a beginner does not know where you've got your information. It's not even possible that everybody who wrote a beginning up and running Docker article all learned on their own. There's no way that you, I mean, maybe you read the code base and you did, but it's not likely. You have learned from somebody else. You have pulled from sources, whether it be code, whether it be tutorials, whether it be a friend. So make sure that you share those things so other people can benefit. And not to use value judgments. And this is really hard. Don't judge your work for other people. When you say things like easy, simple, quick, you are assigning a value judgment to your work. You're not giving the other people a chance to take a look at it for what it is on a factual basis and determine whether or not they think it's worth something. And this is important for all audiences. And then my last ask of you is to try to use precision in the way that you talk. We're all engineers. If you write code, if you maintain a system, precision is really important. Precision in your word choice is extremely important. I would prefer that you, like if don't say docker is easier to use than you think, say these commands, these 10 commands will help you begin to understand docker fundamentals. That is far more precise. And it communicates exactly what you want the audience to get out of it. You are not value judging anything. So that's my spiel. The last most important thing, again, that you can do for your communication, making sure that other people value your work is to make sure you take into account the audience. If you are presenting for a decision maker in your company, you need to use certain words. You need to give certain benefits. You need to make sure that they understand what they're getting out of your work, what they are getting out of your work, not what you're getting out of it. If you're writing onboarding documentation for new people in your company, again, it's not about you. It's about them. What do they need? How do you show them the benefits of this way of learning what you do? If you're writing an article for your marketing people, who's your audience? Potentially your customers, right? And they are going to have different benefit needs than you as an engineer. So I want you to think about the perceived value equation for each of your audiences. I want you to practice empathy, put yourself in their shoes, think about their point of view. Where are they coming from? How are they going to see value in my work and then address their concerns? Hopefully what you've gotten from this talk is a couple of things. One, it is very important that you communicate your work well. And the second is that this up and running communication that you've probably seen in the community and potentially you've participated in is not working well for us. And I would prefer that we start moving toward communicating in more effective ways. Thank you. Thank you, Sarah.


Hi everyone, Sean with jaspyscasebreaks.com here doing 2020 Panini gold standard footballed six box half case break pick your team Number seven from a fresh case on release day Here's our list Ron Wester with last spot mojo with the bills colts and New York Jets Thank you, Ron for closing this out and thank you to everybody else for getting in on this Fresh case so pick your team sevens coming out from the first and then Pick your team eight which is coming out later this night this morning. However time it is for you So you can see in here. There's 12 boxes. We're gonna break this down into six So I'm gonna go left side right side That's six there on the left No Dan gold standard seven sold out before anything. I promise. I just went through like 60 70 orders Since they hadn't been done since like 530 So you can see six on left six on the right. I'm gonna roll a dice to figure out which ones we're doing Dan these ones have been sold out for a lot longer. That's what I'm saying orders The last order the time orders were checked was 530 so five hours ago So that means in the last five hours all of these or breaks sold out. So I promise you this is the exact order So one two three is gonna be from the left four five six is gonna be for the right and it's a one So we're going with the box on the left No worries, Dan. I mean worst case scenario. These are gonna be online for you tomorrow to watch So even though we're doing this break later on I'm still gonna write number eight on all of these You can see on the front. I'm gonna write eight and this is gonna be for pick your team eight later on Yeah, as of right now. I mean we've got breaks until at least three in the morning We started at what 7 a.m. This morning.  You're all good. So good luck everyone. Here is the six boxes for pick your team number seven We'll go two at a time This stuff's been really nice so far Hopefully I can keep it rolling for everybody So how's everybody liked the gold standard so far? Super nice, huh, Dan? I couldn't believe the stuff that we've getting out of here Stickers is gonna be kind of the it's more common than anything nowadays, Dan Just the way it is You got a double T Higgins double patch RPA? Very nice. I think Joe said there's a there's a base card on the back and then Everything else is on the front Three three chase youngs in one six box break So let's see while I'm getting this set up Cincinnati Bengals Sean Maddock obviously Joe Burrow Miami Dolphins, we've got Scott Goodman Los Angeles Chargers Richard Schmidt with my chargers Good luck to everybody Phil Delphi Eagles Jalen Hertz Nick Stover Cool So base cards or base parallel Peyton Manning to 75 for the Indianapolis Colts and Ron Wester and Lynn Bowden Jr. to 99 for the Las Vegas Raiders and Dan Ivers Rookie on Lynn Bowden Jr Multi-functional on this side Denzel Mims to 75 for the New York Jets Ron Wester last spot mojo and Albert up a boonum to 99 for the Denver Broncos and Eric First up relic white gold to 199 Anthony Miller for the Chicago Bears going to Nick Stover Congrats Nick gold rush Alvin Kamara 41 of 9199 for the New Orleans Saints That's going to David Ivers I pulled a bunch of them James those first boxes were insane like it seemed like Every box either had a Jason or it had many many many. Oh, that is 41 of 9199. That is Jersey number for Alvin Kamara So Jersey numbers hit there for David Ivers and Saints. How did did you get it great at James? For the Washington Redskins five patch Relic there 95 of 199 Dwayne Haskins mother load Wow James Congratulations, man. What are recent sales on that? Next up Paris Campbell good is gold auto 139 of 199 Indianapolis Colts. That's going to Ron Wester Rookie patch auto 18 of 75 Justin Herbert for my Los Angeles Chargers Congratulations Richard Smith Damn James. Congratulations, dude. That's awesome. Oh The camera froze Give me a second You guys see the camera froze, right? Okay, guys, give me one second. I got to fix the camera. Okay, everybody. So Main camera, I don't know what happened, but in the meantime We're gonna MacGyver this. Well, what happened there? Hold on Delete there you go. Hold on one second. Joe's calling. So I'm gonna call Joe after the break and Figure out how to fix that first camera But I don't know what's going on in the meantime. This was the last hit in the first box Justin Herbert RPA to 75 you can see the can't the quality on this isn't as clear But we'll work with it for the one break. Okay next up patch for the Baltimore Ravens Mark Ingram and that's 193 out of 199 Baltimore Ravens is going to Aaron Billingsley next up Gold Rush 56 of 199 Jerome Betis for the Pittsburgh Steelers go into Jeremy Muller bears tops does tops does sticker autos all the companies do Because sending somebody 200 of a card to sign Is harder than sending them 200 stickers for them to sign and dual relic to a talk of Iowa and Joe burrow numbered 140 of 249 So that's gonna be randomized between the Bengals and the Dolphins So Cincinnati Bengals Shawn Matic Miami Dolphins Scott Goodman. I'm gonna randomize that at the end to one of you next up auto Cole McDonald for the Tennessee Titans. That's numbered 130 of 199 Is that the quarterback from Hawaii? It is he looks so different Doesn't have that crazy hair anymore at there. Just auto not patch auto golden debuts for the Raiders Four of 99 Henry rugs That's going to Las Vegas Raiders, which is David Ivers David you can see right out of the pack the corners these thicker cards are a little bit hard But you can see the white on the corners there Just a heads up, but Still nice rookie auto there for you Henry rugs next two boxes Surprises the corners on that card or like that because it's not like it's on the bottom of the pack Kind of disappointing totally Oliver Cole McDonald had a farm. I like that Makes sense Cool So you've got Tyreek Hill the 75 for the Kansas City Chiefs and CJ Noga and DJ Dallas to 99 for the Seattle Seahawks and John McCall next up kick returner and potential wide receiver three Probably not though Joe Reed Los Angeles Chargers that's number 20 of 75 for the Los Angeles Chargers and Richard Schmidt and Julian Edelman to 99 for the New England Patriots and Joey Ventre first up Michael Gallup 22 of 199 gold gear for the Dallas Cowboys and Jordan Chatham Sounds good bears obviously I'm working with what I have right now since the main cameras. So newly minted Henry rugs To 225 relic there for the Las Vegas Raiders David Ivers Auto DJ Moore for the Carolina Panthers number 85 of 99 Golden Gloves auto Carolina Panthers is Mike Kirk. Congrats Mike auto for the Carolina Panthers as well Derek Brown seven of 25 Stud from Auburn, I think what top five pick Carolina Panthers again Mike Kirk congratulations Potential new running back number one since Darius Geist got himself fired Antonio Gibson That's numbered five of 49 for the Washington Redskins and Jerry Bennington Congrats Jerry Devin Singletary two color relic 38 of 49 for the Buffalo Bills and Ron Wester Adrienne Peterson relic to 199 for the Redskins Washington Redskins Jerry Bennington Gabe NT2 was actually really close. It was one spot away from selling out dual relic for the Green Bay Packers AJ Dylan and Jordan Love no randomizer on that That's 214 of 249 For some reason that picture of Jordan love looks very suspicious like it's not actually Jordan love Like I know these are Photoshop, but I feel like they might not have used the right picture. It's hard to see But I don't know maybe it is it just looks very weird Green Bay Packers that one's going to Ron Wester John Hightower the fourth for the Philadelphia Eagles to 199 Philadelphia Eagles Nick Stover No, it doesn't look like it doesn't look like Rogers, but it definitely doesn't look like like Jordan love Congrats Philly and Nick Stover and patch an auto For the Tennessee Titans Darrington Evans 31 of 99 Tennessee Titans is Arthur Hackett Congrats Yeah, we're using we had to use a different camera because the main camera Oliver in the middle of the break went out. So I'm gonna try to figure it out at the end of this break I thought I would at least Muscle through this one. So I'm using the Nick cam as the main camera for now I Well right out of the pack you guys can see that one there, so it's definitely a print issue Okay, first up Green Bay Packers rookie running back AJ Dylan one of one Hard to see because of the camera, but that is a one of one congratulations Green Bay Packers and Ron Wester rookie one of one too and For the New York Jets Sam Darnold 10 of 99 New York Jets Ron Wester last spot mojo Bryson Hopkins for the LA Rams, that's number two out of ten super low number there Los Angeles Rams going to Eric Ainge Yeah, they'll they'll definitely take care of it for you. They just don't guarantee that they'll give you the same one Yeah, David, that's your your rugs auto That's the one I pointed out to you that you could see the corner straight out of the pack We're white and then like I said and Furnace Ennings you can see the peeling down here on the bottom That's numbered 63 out of 99 New England Patriots. Sorry about that, but that's going to you Joey Venturi Yeah, exactly David. They might not get you the same exact card, but they'll get you something hopefully of equivalent value Typically if you tell them like kind of what team you're a fan of or what player stuff like that They try to help you out their customer service is pretty good. You just got to give them a chance You know what I mean? Don't don't hang them up first Aaron Jones relic 89 of 199 Green Bay Packers coming up a lot recently Ron Wester single relic Seyquan Barkley 173 of 199 for the New York Giants and Joshua Schreiber and For the Philadelphia Eagles Jason Kelsey Nice auto there 43 of 99 Philadelphia Eagles is Nick Stover CD lamb for the Dallas Cowboys 37 of 49 Little smudge there on the card Dallas Cowboys Jordan Chatham congratulations nice quarter wide receiver there for you and Patch and auto Washington Redskins Jerry Bennington 26 of 99 and Antonio Gandhi Golden Last box here guys. Good luck everyone Debo Samuel 35 of 199 for the San Francisco 49ers and Francis day a cop looks like we got another randomizer guys wide receiver CD lamb Jerry Judy and Henry rugs 209 of 249 And that's gonna be between the Cowboys the Broncos and the Raiders so Jordan Chatham Eric Ainge and David Ivers So that'll be the second randomizer at the end of the break Patch and auto for the New England Patriots 69 of 99 Devin McCordy 69 New England Patriots Joey Venturi. Congratulations Last hit of the bro. No, not last to the break. We got two Christian Fulton auto rookie auto for the Tennessee Titans 167 of 199 Tennessee Titans Arthur Hackett congratulations last hit of the break Jacob Eason quarterback patch and auto 95 of 99 for the Indianapolis Colts Ron Wester last spot mojo. Congratulations Did pretty well for yourself with that the Packers and a couple other spots And now guys we're gonna do two randomizers. So let's switch over to random.org So The first one is gonna be between the Bengals and the Dolphins and the second one is gonna be between the Cowboys Broncos and Raiders and we're gonna do a dice roll same dice roll for both randomizers guys We're going to five and a four nine times. So good luck everyone one two three four five six seven eight and Ninth and final time Bengals so that dual relic to a talk of Iloa and Joe Burrow is gonna be going to the Cincinnati Bengals and Sean Maddock congratulations Now the triple relic Nine times on this randomizer one two three four five six seven Eight and ninth and final time. Good luck going to the Broncos and Jerry Judy Denver Broncos, that's for you Eric Ainge. Congratulations guys And that was 2020 Penini gold standard football six box half case break pick your team number seven I'm Sean with jaspyscasebreaks.com and we'll see you guys next time


I don't think I need a lot of coffee production. As I mentioned this morning, I have a pension and research for solitude in grain costs, small range, as well as a stationary coach. But I think the one important thing to mean is to share with you some of the results that we have been obtaining from a couple of studies looking at the relationship between plant intensity and plant intensity in corn. Over the last four years, I have conducted, me and my graduate students, Damiano, have conducted a study looking at the impact of plant intensity and plant intake, not only on corn yield, but mainly on athratoxy. So today I'm going to be just presenting the yield results and he will have plenty of opportunities to share with you the athratoxy results. While we are looking at this, we are trying to figure out how we can adjust corn management to review the risk of athratoxy in corn. And what are the factors that take that role? Not only our management factors on athratoxy, but also the environmental factors, the weather conditions during the season that might promote athratoxy in corn. Along with that, I will present Aira for this year. It started with conducting two locations in Alabama, looking and comparing drought tolerant, a drought tolerant hybrid, one of the Acomas hybrids, combining against the conventional corn hybrids. It's really, I mean, can we increase yield using these new hybrids? And what are really the yield components that are changing between these Acomas hybrids and the conventional hybrids? All of the results and all of these studies have been conducted and they're dry land conditions. There is no irrigation. Why is that? We have a big percentage of corn farmers that is field farming dry land. That's one of the reasons we would like to have some data for them. The other reason is that when I started this study in 2010, two of the research stations that I chose didn't have irrigation capability. Now they do and perhaps I would have to maybe continue the study and the modification or more, make some modifications, but it was pretty much, I conducted the test with the infrastructure that we have at that time. I would like to start, I always like to provide a little bit of background information of why the, the hybrids are responding in one or another manner. They are making a signals that I don't, they don't have sound from me. Okay, good. So first of all, I want to start with this. How the corn and the modern hybrids are responding to increase increments in planting densities? If we look at this graph that contains information from all US and Canada, this is how much the response to increases in planting density has been over, I would say the last 30 years. In 1985, at a planting density of 23,000 seeds per acre, the average yield was one of five bushels. When they look at 2011, and they were using 30,000 seeds per acre, the average yield was 160. So the rate, the yield, the rate of yield increase per year based on increases on planting density has been two bushels per year. And I'd like to thank also my colleagues by introducing and the comparison of all hybrids and modern hybrids. Why we can increase yield by increasing planting density with the hybrids that we have today. So and this graph is really, I like it because it's really explaining what's happening with our modern hybrids when we increase planting density and what happened if we use, let's say all hybrids and we try to increase planting density. Sometimes we don't like to take risks and we try to perhaps stick with what we know, with the things that we used to do as far as management, but now we have hybrids with new genetics, hybrid that has been selected under perhaps some stress conditions. And that's why they are performing much better and they are providing a much higher response to increases in planting density like this graph is showing. So the genetics on the new hybrids, especially improvements in a stress tolerance, especially at high planting density allow those hybrids to yield more than all hybrids. But I'd like to also to point out that not every hybrid is going to have the same response to increases in planting density and my colleagues were showing that earlier. Why, what is happening with those plants when we increase density? What are the physiological changes that are occurring? One of them and my colleagues mentioned this is light interception. Higher light interception is occurring as a result of higher leaf area as the population increase. I remember when I was looking at preparing this talk, I remember my plots and I remember how those corn plants in the plot with the higher planting density was looking in relation to the lower planting density. The leaves were much more upright on the higher planting density than on the lower planting density. So more upright leaves enhances photosynthetic rate near the ear. Therefore, photosynthesis increases then seed number increases. That's one of the reasons because one of the ways the plant is compensating and is resulting into higher yield. Studies in Minnesota by these colleagues found that the maximum intersected photosynthetic after radiation. Look at this, it was 95% occur at the highest plant population tested and they were testing 47,000. So those plants at higher plant density were able to intercept much more light that that's gonna result into energy, into carbohydrates and also increase photosynthesis. There are some downsides of increases in plant population that we need to take into account and one of them is the diameter of the stalks. When you increase the planting density you will have plants with much smaller diameter, a stalk diameter and that's gonna perhaps put your plants at risk for lodging. However, the modern, the new hybrid, the modern corn hybrids have much lower lodging percentage than the old hybrids. What else is happening with those plant densities increments? In the past, as plant density increased, there was a big gap between the silking time and the flowering time and you know that it has to be a synchronism between these two moments, okay? So and that when there was an increased silking, sorry, when the silking was delayed relative to antithesis, the pollination was reduced so the final yield was impacted. Today, modern corn hybrids being bred for increased tolerance to stresses are showing a much narrow interval between silking and flowering. So that is favoring higher populations. So there is a much narrow time between these two events and synchronism. The other studies have shown also an impact on test weight when we increase planting density and higher test weight at higher planting densities. With that background information I would like to go into the results of these two tests that I told you. Those tests were conducted one in Fairhope, Alabama, South Alabama, and the other test was conducted or is being conducted in Prattville, Central Alabama. We started the Fairhope test in 2010, so we have more data. We started only two years ago in Prattville. So what's happening when I have on these graphs here is on the X axis I have the planting densities that we were evaluating and here is the yield and the different colored bars represent the two different planting dates that we were testing. Those planting dates we tended, we wanted to be one month apart. So the standard we were testing, the black bars represent the standard planting date at that location and the hatch bar represent the corn that was planted a month later. That's what we wanted. I want you to see two things. The first one is how different and how low the yield from 2011 was compared to 2012 and 2013. And some of my colleagues might say, Brenda, why you are showing this? And I'm showing this is because I want, and you know that the risk that you take when you farm dry land, okay, that's the first thing. There was no response, of course, to plant population under this condition and no matter what your density was, the plants were not responding. Why? There was no water. There was no water. And remember, my colleagues were pointing this thing out. We see a benefit by increasing planting density when we have some resources. If you have irrigation, yes, you will see a much more yield benefits. There's sunlight, but then if there was no water there, there was no response. However, you see that we have much higher yield when we delay the planting. And I will explain later why. When we look at the data from 2012, data from 2013, and I will have a slide later on, the data from 2014, we see that there is exponential increase in yield as we increase the planting density, even under those dry land conditions, okay? So, but then I would like also, you see the yield increase as your plant density increase. The biggest question is, are those significant differences and are we making some money with those changes? If we look at 2012, this graph, no significant differences between the 20,000, 22,000 rate compared to the 26,000 rate, and also there were no significant differences in yield between the 26,000 and the 36,000. However, there was a significant differences in yield between the 22,000 and the 32,000 and the 30,000. So, there was a yield increase when I moved from 20,000 to 30,000 at that particular year, at that particular location. Let's look at the situation in 2013. You see that there are differences in the way this corn responds as in terms of planting date between these two years, okay? In 2012, there were not really significant differences between these two planting dates. You see that the bars are pretty much the same. But then when we look at 2013, the later planting day had much lower yield than the earlier or the standard planting date for that location. And when we planted these tests using the standard planting date, you see a much better response of increasing planting density than planting that crop later. And all of that is related to water. To the rainfall distribution and the rainfall amount that we have during those critical periods of the growing season. I wanna show you a little bit of the weather data from these three years. This graph on the top represents the deviations, this zero line is the normal or the historic average of precipitation for those particular months, okay? And the bars represent either precipitation that was below normal or below average. And the positive bars represent precipitation that was above average. So let's look at 2011. That was this year where we have this terrible drought. And you see that all the precipitation, except for July, were above average, below average. The same issue with 2012, but only on the months of March and April is where we have precipitation below average. And then May and June that are usually the months where we have especially June when silking a car at that location, we have precipitation above average. So perhaps that's why, if we look at this bar, perhaps that's why the April 13th corn, perhaps a little bit better than the 2020 of March corn, because during that year, we have June precipitation, main precipitation above average, okay? When we look at maximum temperature, this is another variable that is very important, especially during the silking and grain filling period, with if we look at 2011, all the maximum temperature was almost above historic average for all that year. If we look at 2012, we have maximum temperature above historic average from March to May, and then it decreased from June to August. Those things might explain those differences also in yield. So here I'm summarizing the results in terms of the relations that I established, trying to explain those differences in yield, and I wanna focus on the 2012 and 2013. In 2012, precipitation above average in May, June and August, that was what happened. Maximum temperature below average from May to August, and this might explain the similarities between, the similarities in yield between these planting dates. Of course, the May and June precipitation in 2012, favoring the later planting. If we look at 2013 that I wanna contrast these two years in terms of the differences in response to planting date, precipitation above average temperature was observed between May to August. Okay, so we have decent precipitation. When we look at maximum temperature, we have maximum temperature above average in the month of June. So I feel like that heat during the May, during the month of June really impacted silking and a little bit of the grain development for this later planted corn, the April 18th. That's what I think it happens. And then these are the results for 2014, and you see that these two graphs are very similar. So that means that these two years really behave in a very similar fashion with the early planting date or the standard planting date, out yielding or having higher yield than the later planting date. And also you see the response to increased planting density. I would like to move a little bit to the results from Plathville. Again, I have only two years of this test. And I wanna point out again, the differences or the impact that planting density have on your yield and planting date have on your yield. I know it's difficult to follow and to know what the weather conditions are going to be for the rest of the season when you plant your crop. You don't have much clue when you plant in March, what's gonna happen in June, especially in this part of the country when we have this huge variability in rainfall. But look at this is 2013, okay? And these are the differences in yield when I planted at this location using the standard planting date compared to planting this crop a month later. But the situation was completely the opposite when I look at my results from 2014. Again, all of this is related to, a lot of that was related to the distribution and amount of rainfall and the temperature between these two years. Again, if we look at the response of increased planting density at this particular location, this particular, these two years, you see that there was, yes, an increase in yield as we increase the planting density. In 2014, it's very interesting the results and we were just finishing processing the data few weeks ago. You see that there is a very distinct variation between the two low planting densities with respect to the two highest planting densities. You see that there was a much higher response to increase planting densities in 2014 than 2013 for that particular location. I wanna move and I wanna use perhaps the next three minutes sharing with you the results from this year evaluating one of the pioneered aquamax hybrids compared to one of the conventional hybrids. These results are from Fairhope and I think the graph is very self-explanatory. The black bars are the bars that represent the yield from the aquamax hybrid and the red bars represent the conventional hybrid that is not being marked as drought tolerant. So look at the differences in yield when I look at the 24,000 seeding rate compared to the 28,000 seeding rate. So there was, just by looking only at the aquamax yield, there was not really much yield increase when I compare these two seeding rates, okay? But when I look at 28,000 compared to 32,000, there was a 14 bushels yield increase by increasing seeding rate for that particular hybrid. But it's also very interesting to see the yield differences between each one of those seeding rates when I look at the aquamax hybrid compared to the conventional hybrid. So the differences are really significant. What is causing, what is driving those changes in yield, those differences in yield, not only by planting density, but also between these two hybrids. And I highlighted here, so if we look at year length, okay, especially at the 28,000 and the 32,000, the aquamax hybrid was much larger than the conventional hybrid. When we look at year diameter, look at the differences in yield diameter between the aquamax and the Pioneer 33D14, okay? So bigger year diameter, and when I look at the number of grains per year, there was a larger number, a more higher number of grains per year coming from the aquamax compared to the 33D14. Let's look at Pradvio, and this data is similar to Fairhope. You see the biggest and the highest yield response from the aquamax hybrid to increase the plant population compared to the 33D14 hybrid. Again, what was happening in Pradvio, so we saw a bigger year diameter from the aquamax hybrid, and we also saw a higher number of grains per area coming from the aquamax hybrid, but only at the 28,000 seeding rate. And that's all that I have for you. I wanna acknowledge the funding that I have received to conduct these two studies, and I forgot to include the logo from Pioneer, but they have been very supportive also of those studies. And with that, I will be happy to take questions if you have.


Hi, I'm Mark Vekere from University of Pretoria. Please join us on day 1, 1545 for the round table on the Ground Up Land Governance Experiences. This is not going to be the academics talking, this is a panel of land activists from Indonesia, Scotland, Kenya and South Africa, sharing their real experiences of people driven land reforms and land governance. It's a panel put together, together, together with International Land Coalition, Namati University of Pretoria and Wageningen University and you will be very welcome to join us. This is so important because land reforms so often are driven by the people and our governments are so often failing us, so come and hear how people are doing it themselves.