Hi, everyone. Thanks very much for attending. It's good to see so many familiar faces here. And yeah, I've probably saw some of you in the EU session. My name is Ed Beiford. I'm a product manager. I work on messaging and streaming, primarily working with some of the RabbitMQ teams that work at VMware and helping customers and prospects understand how to use event-driven architectures, how to figure out all the hard things about distributed systems, messaging, streaming events. I like to, in my spare time, do training for triathlons. I enjoy it. I mean, nobody really likes running, I guess, but I do my best. And obviously, recently, keeping track of how many prime ministers we have in the UK, because that's been a revolving door, which is embarrassing. All right. Thank you, Ed. And Marilyn Basanto introduced myself earlier. So I run all the product management for edge competing. And then so my fun fact is actually not very dissimilar to Ed, but I also love training for half-marathons. We've done 53 of them. I'm due for another one very soon. So yeah, besides talking about data at the edge, we talk about our stats together. All right. So sort of what I was alluding to this morning was, and the funny part about this morning is the reason me giving that keynote was so much harder for me is because I really didn't want to give away all of the content from this presentation. And this is the part of actually the most excited to talk about. And so at the edge, I know I talked a little bit earlier about the manufacturing vertical, but I was talking a lot about the instant experiences. And we all have, since we never let go of our phones, everyone expects those instant experiences now. So from the customers, they want to be delighted now. And then from a business perspective, I want to show efficiency. I want to show cost savings. I want to show the justification for putting these new experiences in the store, right? Because to the consumer, it's the fun part. But for the businesses, it's what am I getting out of this? Not just the data, but how am I improving my operations? So the overall story, of course, is what we all know, that the workloads are moving to the edge, and it all has to do with the line of business applications. So it's all the different use cases. What's interesting and what's challenging, I think, from us or from, and I assume it from other enterprises, of selling into enterprises to the edge is getting to the right target audience. So here we are at KubeCon, and our audience are developers. And developers are excited about the tech. They're excited about how I'm gonna enable them to get these new type of workflows put in the edge. But it's interesting when you go talk to the enterprise, at least for VMware, we typically talk to the IT buyer. So the IT buyer, they're like, well, we know I need the platform, but then you talk to them about like, so what are your apps? What's driving you to the edge? And they're like, oh, we know we need it. What's being asked for? But they don't, it's, how do you get these multiple groups of people for the edge to come together to talk about these new immersive experiences and kind of put together both sides of the house, the business operations, and then the developers getting the new experiences. Okay. So this is, I realize now that this is probably a similar slide and I should have just kept one, but the point I wanted to make here is that, edge has some of the biggest spending that's happening at the edge. And in particular, some research produced out of the beginning of the year from IDC is on what verticals, and those verticals really are retail and manufacturing. So it's no surprise that SIVM where we're focusing on retail and manufacturing, which is, fits to the adjacent market, such as automotive, power utility, fulfillment centers. So these are all the areas that we can really help revolutionize with our tech at the edge on what's necessary. So going back to kind of retail, because that'll be kind of what it'll lead us into, it is, well, I've already talked a little bit about the transformation this morning, which is to kind of recap, right? So we know edge is the future and so really going back to the instant delight is we're really augmenting that human experience. So that's really where we're kind of focusing on. So then again, how do you get to those instance experiences when I said this morning that in many cases, all these data is everywhere and different systems? So to highlight on the retail example, if you look at this chart here, this really kind of shows like, we use the term store the future, but I like every name then I call it the digitization and modernization of retail stores. So a lot of the stuff in the stores gets done, the manager, pencil and paper in hand or they've got some legacy VMs or you're stuck with your ISVs, I wrote your point of sale. It's very costly then to write your own point of sale. They know they wanna put in computer vision. There's a multitude of these ISV vendors that are, sorry, working on optimizing like loss prevention algorithms, like they focus on just building that one key inferencing for the retail or one vertical. And so how do you, as the retail store says, well I'm gonna put that out on my shop or on my store to take a look at how fraud and loss is happening and then you can take computer vision and apply it to inventory control. And then the other thing about retail is that they also have fulfillment because if you think of, especially during COVID when stores were closed, they ended up becoming kind of their own mini fulfillment centers. And although of course that was happening manually, how do you, a lot of that technology that had to come very quickly over the last two years, now the retailers are looking at how am I gonna actually put this together into a more automated, digitized way rather than having to quickly do self, curbside delivery and self-check out and all those bits. So what's interesting in these use cases, just to touch a little bit more is it covers a variety of the topics of what I was saying. Some of it is for the customer's engagements, some of it is for the business operations and then of course not to leave out, some of it is for safety and regulation, right? So it's ensuring we satisfy with our solutions, both sides of the businesses. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the data problem. So now you saw some of the use cases that are being deployed in retail and like I said, some of this stuff, these are things that happen day to day, seemingly mundane things but let's kind of walk through our workflow of what that looks like. So there are a lot of use cases. So let's say you're in the store and someone falls over, seems the obvious things come to mind of what do you need to do? And also depends, of course, the context is important. Depends on what that fall was, who's in the store, all these different bits. So let's go kind of the first thing. So if someone fell in the store, the first thing you assess is how serious is this problem? Do I need to call paramedics? What do I need to do? So then you have, so now you need to figure out who's in the store right now? Who should make that call? And so typically then if you have an inventory of who has come to work that day, that's stored in some either in your Excel sheet or some database somewhere. So then now it goes to who's got the skills? Which of your employees should you send out? Who's had the first aid training? Who's got the right qualifications to go help someone urgently? So that's also typically yet in another database, your training data, or it's in the cloud. And then third, is this a security incident? Did someone get pushed because someone is stealing? Did someone, what is some type of incident where you have to then log the incident report? So that goes back to someone running, what happened, did something get spilled? So now you've got the cameras and the surveillance that you have to keep track of of that incident for police reports, again, or for insurance purposes. When this incident happened, did something get spilled in the store? Do you have to dispatch someone to come and clean it up? And then lastly, kind of putting it all together, does the manager need to be involved, or is it something that the employees can kind of handle themselves? So it goes back to if you go to all the different sources at the top, these are all in different separate systems. This one incident, how does it kind of all together to kind of communicate across these items? So you can kind of see that the data problem across the different systems kind of just explodes. And this is just one scenario of one thing that can happen in a store in a day that typically these type of incidents will happen multiple times in a day. So then now you have the volume of the different type of eventing happening. Okay, so now again, I say I cover that for one use case. What happens with you've got this mirrored numerous use cases happening more at one time. So you've got a whole mess of data systems that don't talk to each other. And it kind of just becomes a huge spaghetti monster of a challenge to solve. So now I'm gonna go ahead and pass it over to Ed. All right, yeah, thanks Marilyn. So we talked about one specific case and one problem. You can imagine that's multiplied as Marilyn said over numerous use cases. But really what we wanted to return to now is thinking about what is the goal. And we think of the goal as being the ability to unlock the value that the developer can provide to a customer. And really, we know that business value doesn't solely rely on infrastructure. It also relies on really being focused on what is that customer need? What's that internal tool need? And essentially anything that gets in the way of a developer just delivering value, accessing data, provisioning infrastructure, even just thinking about what are the myriad of different devices that exist at the edge location. All of that is noise that gets in the way of just producing some kind of application or some kind of tool that brings you business value. So we were looking at some of the customers we speak to over the course of our jobs and we really recognize five main data related challenges that get in the way of developers delivering that value. One of those challenges is limited bandwidth. Now this is a problem across multiple edge locations and really what happens is the cost per location can really add up. You've got hundreds of sites, you've got thousands of sites, maybe even tens of thousands. You've also got different types of connections. So like the traditional asymmetric connection is probably too low bandwidth. And then things like MPLS connections, more symmetric, probably too expensive. And then you actually end up with the locations becoming real net data producers because of the number of different devices that exist across that environment. And that can add up to a lot of ingress and egress traffic when you're thinking about where that ends up, which data center ends up, which region does it end up in. You've also got data being stored in silos. So as Marilyn mentioned, there's a lot of different types of edge applications and people think we're already doing edge. That's true, but those things end up in silos because there's a number of different ways that you can implement it. Oftentimes enterprises aren't thinking about a joined up way to do this across multiple different use cases. They would have delivered a computer vision solution or a point of sale solution but not thought about ways to make efficiencies across those. And because of that, there's a range of different vendors which might necessitate different kinds of workflows to access that data. So again, your developers are having to learn different ways to access data and connect things together. There's then no common API for publishing and subscribing to data, which again makes things more complex for developers. And then the event formats can be different. So then your developers are having to deliver new event handling logic for each event source. Now, those were some of the challenges but you didn't come here for challenges you came here for answers. But why do we need those kinds of things? Well, the main patterns we're seeing people try and implement are these three, and of course there are a myriad of other ones, but these are the main patterns which seem to help with these problems. So you've got AI and ML inferencing and we've already discussed several times that AI and ML inferencing should be happening at the edge for expediency. And as we know, the majority of AI and ML inferencing is, or training at least, is gathering data in order to make those models work. So that's why data is very important here. You don't need somebody to store that data and what we see is people implementing or wanting to implement a consolidated event stream. You might have streams of data in different locations, but sometimes it's the context between, and as we'll see in the demo, it's the context between what's happened in one part of the store with what's happening in another part of the store that you really need to tie those things together. So you need something that consolidates that. And then you also need to be able to do analytics on that stream. So analyzing the events but also analyzing the sequence of events to iteratively improve on those processes. And if we drill down a bit further, what we can do is take a set of open source components and really, these are the heroes of our story. We've got the spring application framework. We've got RabbitMQ that can do message queuing and event streaming. And you've also got Key Value Store and Apache Geo. There are others, of course. You can swap these in and out for different solutions, but these are the ones that we're going to go through. So what I want to do now is expand or move away from maybe retail, but think about logistics. In this case, it's a package sorting application at a logistics company. And we want to, you know, this to be customizable and composable, but again, we're going to use some of those heroes we just mentioned to think about how to implement different parts of this application. So what's happening here? Well, imagine a delivery company, a logistics company that's got packages coming down and conveying a belt and they need to be determined which delivery chute to be pushed into by a particular diverter arm. And that decision needs to be made quickly. You can't be communicating back up to the clouds. You need to make it locally. And if it cannot be made within a certain time frame, the package is going to go somewhere else to the wrong place. It may need to slow down the belt. You need to halt sort of processing. And again, that costs money. So this is laid out a little bit like a service blueprint, this diagram, if you're familiar with that. So we've got the kind of front stage. And at the front stage, you've got the developer who's sitting there writing application source code. The developer wants to push that application source code to the edge. And they don't know exactly, or they don't need to know exactly where it's going to be deployed. They don't know exactly how it's going to be deployed. And this is all going to be handled by a common API. Then you've got over here this edge compute stack, which is essentially taking the application, building it, versioning it, deploying it, making sure that it's running, making sure that dependencies are installed in those edge locations. And then down here, you've actually got the physical edge location. So you've got some compute, you've got running apps. And so essentially that process means that you've now got the source code up and running. Again, via a set of common APIs. Now you've got your application, your package, rather. And that's being scanned and inference via local AI. And what happens is the package is travelling down the conveyor belt. And as soon as the package is being scanned, then there's an event which is being generated. And that's a package recognised event. So we're going to have somewhere to put that. And as previously mentioned, we need to put that somewhere that has a end-to-end view of events that's happening in the business. And so we put that into a consolidated event stream. But the process doesn't stop there because you've also got the whole journey of the package. So you've got the diverter arm which is moving and routing packages to different locations. That's, again, a decision and also a diverter arm movement. And we'll see why that's important later. You've then got, once the package goes into that delivery shoot, it's going to go to a particular delivery truck. You want to, again, change the status of the package. And then you want to make sure that package reaches the customer, even process feedback relating to that delivery so that you can drill down and see if there are any problems and inefficiencies in the process. All of those events are being stored in the consolidated event stream. Now, as we said, a lot of inferencing happens at the edge. And we want to also make sure that the important events are being filtered and synced back to headquarters depending on what network is available and what bandwidth you have. And why do we want to do that? Well, there's a number of different reasons, but you might want to have an audit. You might want to actually train the rule sets there and have future analytics use cases be developed based on that data and that stream of events. And you also want to update that rule set. And then, of course, use that rule set to essentially iteratively improve on the model and have that passed back down to the application. So here we have the icons put into place which describe some of the open source components that we can use. So you've got the application deployment mechanism in Knative. You've then got also RabbitMQ acting as the consolidated event stream. And then you've got a number of different processes happening which allow you to filter the data using Spring, using KeyValueStore of Geode, and then also using the deployment rule set to deploy that AI model back to the edge. And why is that important? Why are some of those future analytics use cases important? Well, a number of different things you can do with that data. And the fact that you have a common API which allows you to do that greatly reduces the time to develop some of those new applications. So, you know, we can take some examples here where you've got training staff can be easier because you've actually built up a digital twin type model of an end-to-end package workflow and everything that happens in that package workflow so you can try and help staff understand what to do. You can also do things like predictive maintenance. You know, we mentioned the diverter arm that's moving packages to different locations. You can keep track of what that means for the diverter arm and what you need to do in terms of maintaining that machine so that you can prevent it from breaking down and actually stopping the flow of packages. You've then also got things like, you know, future automation use cases, things like forklift trucks or, you know, lifting and shifting AI-controlled trolleys that could move packages to different locations. And you've even got, you know, dynamic scheduling of maybe even automated and self-driving vehicles, delivery vehicles in the future. But in order to do all those things, in order to train that, you need to start keeping track of the events that are happening today so that you can work out or even model before you start some of these expensive projects thinking about how or what the improvement might be if you had rerun that. We're going to segue now from logistics back to retail. So these are some of the patterns that we've seen in logistics, but we find some similarities in retail as well. And we're going to go into a demo. Okay. So what we've got here is we've got a dashboard. And the idea of this dashboard is it shows in a retail location a fridge door being open or closed. And there's also a number of sensors in this demo which show the temperature of various food items. And you can see there's alerts and warnings. So the intelligence comes here not from just taking the silos of data from each of the sets of sensors, but also processing and correlating the data at the edge location and then filtering it such that only the relevant alerts are communicated back to headquarters. So we've got some components here, communications being done locally using MQTT via RabbitMQ. We've also got Apache Geode or GemFire used to correlate events, so the door open and higher temperatures. And what we're using here is Spring Cloud Dataflow to deploy applications which are going to analyze some of the sensor data. And they deploy them as streams. A stream is essentially a spring boot application that's going to be deployed at the edge. And we have here, as you can see, a scripting language which defines the rule set. So we're looking for temperatures over a certain value and the door being open or closed. If the doors open, we send a warning. And we're also logging everything into a RabbitMQ stream so we can order and track what's happening if we want to later. So as you can see here, we're creating the streams. Spring Cloud Dataflow is actually deploying those streams and deploying those applications. There we go. The deploying is happening now. The deploy has been successful. So we should switch back to the application. And the important thing here is that, you know, only the correlated events are being communicated as being actionable. We don't currently see any alerts or warnings currently. What we need to do is generate some data from the sensor. So as you can see, we've got a temperature sensor here showing a value of 11 degrees. So we're generating that. We head back to the application because the temperature is below the threshold. There are no alerts and, of course, no warnings. And if we go... generate higher than expected temperature for the frozen food, I'm going to start generating something like... it's 36 degrees for sensor 2. So these are just simple programs that are obviously generating some values and feeding them through RabbitMQ. And go back to the application. We start to see some alerts. But there are only warnings as yet because we only want to be communicating the important things back to headquarters. And the important things are where there's something actionable. And so what we're going to do now is we're also going to trigger the fact that in IL-8 there's a door open. So we're generating some more sensor data in IL-8. Clearly, I'm talking too fast. And so, yeah, IL-8 has a door open. What we're seeing is that warnings are coming through because there's a door open. And so the idea is then that the employee should go and close the door. And as we see here, what's happening neatly is we've got a local application running on the left. And then we've got data being replicated to another application that's running in the cloud. So again, we want to process locally and then broadcast data to the cloud only as required. All right. Thank you very much. Do we have time for any questions? Any questions? Well, if you don't have any questions, we are going to be at the booth outside. So come ask some questions there.


and welcome to the Hawaii Smooth Jazz Connection. I am your host, Gwendolyn Harris. My guest today, Deshanan Higa, a multi-talented performer, composer, and arranger, his professional experience expands over 30 years and has performed locally and globally with many renowned artists, including Algerot, Jeff Lorber, Michael Feinstein, Burt Baccarac, the original Elvis Presley band, Diana Craw, David Tau, and Wynton Marcellus. Wow. He has recorded music for film, radio, video games, studio, and live CDs. In late 2018, Deshanan released his first solo album, Words Cannot Express. Deshanan is currently nominated for two Nohuko Hano Hano Awards for Jazz Album of the Year and Most Promising Artist. Please welcome to the show Mr. Deshanan Higa. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me, Gwendolyn. You have to excuse me, because my eyes are right here. Let's start right now. But thank you so much for being here. I've seen you around town. I've seen you play with different people. But this is my first, I've always wanted to meet you and I'm getting to do it. Yeah, well, this is a good place to do it, right on your shelf. Yes. Well, let's get started. Tell me, when did you start playing music? I started at the age of nine while I was in the fourth grade. My family and I were living in Hilo on the Big Island at the time. And over there, they start kids very young on instruments and a band. And they actually started in the third grade. So when I joined the band in fourth grade, I was already a year behind, if you can believe that. But it was something that I really wanted to do. My brother was in the band already, and I wanted to be like him. And so I joined the band. Interestingly, though, I wanted to play drums. That was actually my first choice. I thought it was really cool. You know, what boy doesn't want to hit things, right? So I thought that would be a really great instrument. But there were already too many drummers in the band at the time. So my band director said, you got to pick another instrument. So the next coolest instrument I thought was, oh, the trumpet. That's the one for me. And it just took right away. I was like, love it first sight. So the trumpet, and you just stuck with it. You don't play any other instruments? Oh, I play other instruments. What do you play? I play a bit of keyboards. I do a bit of hand percussion. And then I also do programming and beat-making. Which is kind of a big thing, right? That sounds interesting. Oh, it's fun. Oh, goodness. Now, you play many styles of music, ranging from jazz, Latin salsa, the modern electronica, and hip-hop. Which style do you like the best? Yes. All of it, Lauren. I mean, it's really, I guess if you were to look at my music collection and see what I have the most of. I mean, I have all of that in my record collection. But probably the thing that I have the most of would be jazz. But jazz is increasingly becoming broader in its definition. And so it bleeds over to all those different other sub-genres or genres of music. And so it really encompasses all of that. You just like it all. I do. So let me ask you this. So we have your regular jazz, your, how do you say it? What's regular jazz? I don't know, that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm trying to get at. So we have our jazz. And then we move into smooth jazz. So what's the difference between the jazz and smooth jazz? Well, I think that the jazz that you're talking about is what most people probably think about when you say that we're jazz. And it's kind of related to the jazz of the 40s, 50s, and 60s, like Big Band, some hip hop, or not hip hop, but bebop, the cool school, that kind of range of jazz. So I think that's what most people think of. And then smooth jazz is actually a style that was born out of fusion and the influence of rock and funk into jazz. And so that came much later, like in the 70s. I said, I'm getting schooled, I'm getting schooled here. Now, you're the founder of many music groups.  But I want you to just talk about the most recent, your most recent group, the Subtonic Orchestra, because you guys were at Blue Note. Yes, yes. So talk to us about that, about that group. Well, that group came out of my desire to do music on a bigger scale. Most of the stuff I do live around town is a small group, the quartet, quintet, which is kind of like, in terms of jazz, it's what's most conventional and expected. And so that's what I've had to work with. But I heard other colors and other instruments I wanted to incorporate into my music. And so I thought, OK, let me put together a group that's bigger, that encompasses more of the sounds and colors that I wanted to give to people. And so that's where Subtonic Orchestra came out of. And that really includes the, besides your usual bass, drums, and keys, I added also guitar percussionists. And then instead of me just being the only horn I have three other horns, trombone and two saxophones and play other woodwind instruments, too. Because I was going to ask you, how many people are in that? Because just from the pictures, it looks huge. It's large. It's definitely on the bigger side. It varies from anywhere from like eight to like 11 or 12 people. And all of you could fit on the Blue Note stage. I didn't make it to that show because I was out of town. But all of you could make it on that stage. It's amazing, isn't it? We fit. We fit. And I wasn't sure we're going to fit. But you remember that group, Incognito? Yes. Yeah, one of my favorite bands. Anyway, so then when they played at the Blue Note, and they had, I think they had like 14 people. Yeah, it was massive. And they all fit on the stage. So then when I saw that, I'm like, OK, I can fit my band. You can do it. I can do it. You can do it. I can do it. I can do it. Now, most of you probably know that Mr. Deshen and Higa here, he's in the Royal Hawaiian Band. How did you come about that? How did you get into that band? Well, it's the most. That's a big band there. It's hard to get into. And it's the only band of its kind in the entire country. It's a concert band, wind ensemble format. And it has roots to Monarchy, the May of the Third, in 1836. Wow. It started the band. Yeah, so it's over 180 years old. And it's now under the city and county. And so it's a government job. It's steady work. These benefits, it's just a dream job for an instrumentalist like myself. And so it's very competitive and very difficult to get into. And I have, I guess, the unique distinction of being in the band twice. Yeah, I did it once in the 90s. And then there was a stint where I got married and we lived in New York. And I did other musical endeavors. And then we came back to Hawaii. And there was an opening in the band again. And I auditioned for it. And by God's grace, I got in again. So it's an audition. It's an audition that I had to go through. Now, where can we see the band around Hawaii? Well, most people don't know this, but the Rural Wine Band plays a lot. Really? They do over 350 concerts a year. Really? Yeah. Yeah. And nobody knows that. No. Nobody knows it. That's because we're always somewhere. You know, we rarely hit the same place, you know, twice. We do have our regular concerts at Eolani Palace on Fridays at noon, and Cop Eolani Bandstand in the park on Sundays at 2 o'clock. So those are kind of our benchmark gigs. And these are every, this is every week. Every week. Every week. Every week. OK. Right. But everything else in between, we're just scattered all over the island. Oh, wow. That's something. I learned something right there. I learned something right there. Yeah. Now you just talked about you in between time, in between the band time, you met your wife, got married. Yes. And I understand that she is in the musical field too. She was on Broadway. That's right. That's right. She was in the original cast of Miss Saigon. Oh. Yeah, that opened on Broadway in the 90s. Yeah, she was a part of that. I didn't know her then. I only met her much later in the late 90s after she had moved to Hawaii. Yeah, I was playing in a swing band. You had Xanac Lindsay. Yes, I did. I did. Who makes a girl? So we were in a band called Hula Jo and the Hot Jumpers. OK. This was in the heyday of the Neo swing movement. You know, everybody, they were doing all this swing dancing, right? It was kind of a revival of swing music. And so we started a band along with some other cats that, you know, friends. And we used to play at just on the street at Aloha Tower. We used to be called the Pier Bar. Later it became Caponos, right there on the water. And so we would play there. I think it was like twice a month. And people would just come out in droves and just dance. And Rocky, my wife, I hadn't met her at the time. But she was an avid dancer. She just loved to dance. And so she would come out just to swing dance. And so I met her in one of those times that when we were performing. And our drummer knew her. And he introduced us. And so we just kind of hit it off and we just became best friends. Now I've seen her perform with you before. She sings. So I've seen her perform with you before. Yeah, she's quite the singer.  She sings with my subtonic orchestra, sometimes with my smaller group, Quad Pod. And then she has her own gigs, too. That sometimes I'll play on her gigs. But these days she's doing a lot of teaching. Like she has like 30 kids or something that she teaches. So she's kind of taking on more of that kind of mentor, educator role. And she's doing a wonderful job. She's very, very talented in not just singing and dancing, but in teaching also. Now do you teach? I have. I'm currently not teaching because my schedule with performing and writing and arranging and composing, it just takes up a lot of my time. And then along with that, just other church activities that I'm involved in with music as well, it takes up a lot of time. Oh, OK. Well, we have to go on a quick break and we will be right back. So don't go away. Hi, I'm Rusty Komori, host of Beyond the Lines on Think Tech, Hawaii. My show is based on my book also titled Beyond the Lines. And it's about creating a superior culture of excellence, leadership, and finding greatness. I interview guests who are successful in business, sports, and life, which is sure to inspire you in finding your greatness. Join me every Monday as we go Beyond the Lines at 11 AM. Aloha. Aloha. Aloha. I'm Lauren Pair, a host here at Think Tech, Hawaii, a digital media company serving the people of Hawaii. We provide a video platform for citizen journalists to raise public awareness in Hawaii. We are a Hawaii nonprofit that depends on the generosity of its supporters to keep on going. We'd be grateful if you'd go to thinktechhawaii.com and make a donation to support us now. Thanks so much. Aloha, and welcome back to the Hawaii Smooth Jazz Connection.  Welcome back. Thank you. Now, we were talking earlier in the show. We were talking about all types of things. But I'm going to ask you, who would you like to collaborate with? Well, if I'm going to think globally, one of the names, I mean, there's a whole bunch of names, but one that comes to the top actually is Bruno. Bruno Mars, you know? He had local ties, right? He's from Hawaii. Right. He made it big. He's an international superstar. But I just like him as a singer, as a composer, as a writer, as a performer, as a musician. I think he's one of the few real gems in the music industry in that he's a real musician. And real musicians recognize other real musicians, and he's definitely one. And so I think it would be really fun and neat to collaborate with him on some stuff. And I would like to see that, too. That would be amazing. That would be amazing. Well, since you are here, why don't you just give us a little taste? Can you play for us today? OK, well, one of the things that I really like to do is fuse the genres of jazz and hip hop together. Oh, OK. And so I'm going to need a little bit of help, though. Uh-oh. See, you didn't tell me. Oh, yeah. But it's easy. It's really all I need you to do is. OK, and you know I can do that. I can do that. That's all I need you to do. OK. I agree with just what I need you to do. Oh, politics, do you have coming up that the viewers can come? We can come see you. Yeah, well, I'm working on right now doing a residency at the Blue Note. Oh. Yeah, and so the Blue Note has become a mainstay of the Hawaii music scene. And it's one of the go-to spots if you're a musician and you want to play in a real music club or a real audience that's not just there to eat or have drinks, but they're there for the music. Yes. And so it's a great venue for live music performance. And so I was really honored that they asked me to do something regularly for them. So I'm in the process of putting some material and things together in the subtonic orchestra format, maybe in the quad pod format, my smaller format, but basically doing something with those groups that's fresh and new every time. Nice. So yeah, that's kind of my big project right now. Oh, well, that's awesome. That is awesome. I can't wait, because you know I'll be there. You know I will be there. Now you released your CD, Words Cannot Express. How did you come out? And it just came out maybe about a couple of months ago. How did you come up with the title of that? That was easy. That was easy. Because as an instrumentalist, the trumpet is my voice. And of course, there's no words to what I play, right? And so it's all instrumental music. But it expresses and it communicates so much. As an instrumentalist, there's a lot that I want to say in the instrument that doesn't necessarily translate to words, because it's something that it's a heart language that people understand. They don't have to have words to be able to understand what I'm trying to communicate. If it's love, if it's passion, if it's anger, or if it's any kind of emotion, I can communicate it through the horn and people can understand. So that's why it transcends words. And so coming up with the title for the album, it's like, well, I can't think of a better title than Words Cannot Express or an instrumental album that this is. Well, I can tell you, I've heard it. And I love it. And my favorite song on there is Bebop. Boop, beep, beep, boop, beep, boop, beep, boop. I love that song. I love that song. And I played it on my radio show, but I just love it. I love it. Thank you. I think I'm a grown-up. You know how I got that title? How'd you get that title? OK, because, you know, you've heard of Bebop. Yes. Well, this is kind of like Bebop backwards, because it's like modern Bebop with a hip-hop influence. So it's kind of like taking Bebop and turning it on its head. So I just kind of put the two words backwards, and you get boop, beep. It's awesome. If you have not bought that CD yet, you need to buy it. You need to buy it. It's titled Words Cannot Express by Mr. DeShannon Higgs. It's an awesome CD. I've played it over and over and over. Now, I asked this question of all of my guests, and it has to do with music in the schools, because I want to see what they have to say. So as you know, they're gradually taking the music out the schools. You know how we used to have it? You go back, because that's how I played. That's how I learned. What can we do if we can do anything to keep it? To keep it in the schools, because I think our kids need this. They need, you know, kids are very susceptible to suggestion, to influence. They're an open book, right? And so you can write anything you want in them, and they'll take it. And so I think it's real important, in order for them to value the arts and music, they need to see that the people that they look up to value arts and music, right? So it's by example, first of all, by example, so the adults need to embrace art and music and creativity and beauty of all kinds, you know? Not just in jazz, but in everything, right? And then educate the kids, you know, bring them up to appreciate and see the beauty in those things as well, you know? So that's how family values get passed down. This is important, and you need to see how important this is. So you teach the kids that this is important, you do it by example, and then you do it by education. Yeah, that's true. That is so true. We can't just have the schools teach it. It has to come from the home, a mentor of some kind, you know, a big brother or big sister, somebody that the kids look up to say, look, this is important, you need to check this out, you need to dig this. And a lot of times, the way that musicians become musicians or artists become artists is that something they saw or heard sparked that desire in them. They were inspired by a great work, and that continues today. The kids coming up to that, they're no different, you know? They need to be inspired by something.  Now, who inspired you? We're talking about mentors. I know you said earlier you saw your brother, but is there anybody else that might have inspired you in the music? Yeah, there's a lot of influence, but I think if I have to go back to the beginning, and this is what we're talking about with the mentors. Yes. I was playing in a little church orchestra. I was in the sixth grade at the time. And there was a trombone player who laid a tape on me, and he was in his 20s. And he says, here, check this cassette tape, and back then it was cassette tapes. And I put that on, and it was a Maynard Ferguson tape, right, but from the 60s, 1961 and 63. And I had never heard trumpet playing like that in my life, because he's just high note screaming player, it's super dynamic. And I'd never heard that. And it just, that captured my heart. You know, I heard that, I'm like, oh, wow. Is that what a trumpet can sound like? I wanna do that. And you're doing it. I wanna be like that. And you're doing it. Well, it sent me on a track for the rest of my life, and it made me improve and made me practice hard. I injured myself a lot in the process of trying to do what I heard. But it was a great learning experience, and that was the thing that drove me. And it was because somebody took the time to share music with me and inspire me. Nice, nice. Now, as you know, we have musicians that some make it and some don't in this industry, in the music industry. What is your advice that you could give a new or upcoming artist in this industry? Well, that's really tough, I mean, right? You know, I would love to be all positive and say you can do whatever you set your mind to do. And that's generally true. You know, it's, you can't put a cap or ceiling on desire and determination. If somebody wants something bad enough, ain't nobody's gonna tell them otherwise. And I'm certainly, I'm not gonna tell them otherwise. You know, so there's a lot to be said about the inner drive and desire and tenacity for that. Now, having said that, there's also the flip side of that, is that some people need, they have all ambition in the world, but they need a heavy dose of reality too, you know?  That's a heavy obstacle.  Things like that. So you need to kind of work within what you're given, you know, and go from there.  And based on those two things, you make your decision. Nice, that's great, that's great advice. I sure hope so. That's great advice. Now I know you talked about the upcoming Blue Note project. Is there anything else that we can be looking for from the trumpet master?  You're nominated for two? Yes, I am, for Jazz Album of the Year and also for upcoming artists, promising artists. So yeah, I'm a little bit nervous about it. I'm trying not to think about it, but things are definitely ramping up towards it and I have a lot of supporters, a lot of friends who are rooting for me and they'll be there at the show and yeah, so we're just, we're hoping for the best. And, you know, I really hope that should I win one or both awards that it would just give more fuel to not just me but artists like me who wanna do similar things, you know, and pursue music and pursue their art and it'll definitely put the wind in my sails for the next project.  I was there last year, I'm gonna try this year to come but thank you so much for joining me on this show. This has been awesome. Next time we're gonna have like a little set up, we're gonna have like a little set up here, we're gonna have little drinks here. Oh, yeah, yeah, I was kind of waiting for that. Yeah, we're gonna have little drinks. We have to get the bartender, you know, to come on out. You know, can I have my Mai Tai, please? You know, next time we will do that but thank you again for coming and joining us on the show. Thank you, Gwen. Thank you everyone for tuning in to the Hawaii Smooth Jazz Connection. Tune in next week. Until then, aloha and God bless.


Innovation from Donaldson setting free and the first time strike is a curler into the top corner 10 minutes post now but it's headed away by Colchester Only as far as the edge of the penalty area and certainly dispossessed as well But Bradford City gets Donaldson away on the left-hand side into the box now Clayton Donaldson pulls it across the face of goal free header Andy Cogh Bottom corner, goal! City back in the lead 57 minutes gone, Colchester won Bradford City 2, Clayton Donaldson with the assist, Andy Cogh with the goal That was great work from me by Son, just the way he was going Assisted in getting that ball back in Winless run is finally over for Bradford City It's a welcome return to winning ways for Mark Truman and Connor Sellers A valuable three points for the Bantams on the road It was nervy at times but Keane Scales opening his account His first senior goal inside 10 minutes A brilliant effort into the top corner and then Andy Cogh Getting Bradford City 2nd to send them back into the lead on the 58th minute


The VCD program is designed to equip students with the practical tools needed for analysis. We study trends and estimates, asking how do we know what's going on in context of violence, what data is available, what does the data capture and how reliable is it. We look at levels of violence, war violence, non-war violence, structural violence, gendered violence and psychological violence. We ask about the violence of individuals on the one hand compared to social and political violence. Violence and conflict are not extraneous to processes of development, but really significant in terms of moving things around, making change and distributing political and economic resources. If we look at the violent conflicts that are taking place, for example in Syria, in Congo, in South Sudan, we can see they're having a massive influence on the development of those countries in terms of who gains economically, who holds power and is able to impose an agenda. The lens of violence and conflict is helpful to us in analysing how power relations are challenged or reinforced. Racism of course arises largely from direct forms of violence and history such as colonialism and slavery. These processes sometimes now find more symbolic expression, but it still affects people's identity, support networks and relationships with the state. If we bring together these issues of forced migration and racism, we see a third form of violence which is manifesting itself in the crisis of democracy that populations are facing around the world with the rise of the populist right wing. The violence shapes development through the tightening of political space, attacks on journalism, journalists or activists and also through destitution when people are unable to dislodge politicians that keep the country in a state of generalised emergency and poverty. The students who take the VCD programme are passionate about how power relations work, including how they operate through violence and conflict. These students come from all walks of life and have a whole range of career destinations. Pulling apart how violence works, when it starts, how it escalates, who benefits, who loses, opens up a lot of opportunities for managing conflict and reducing violence. Understanding what led to or sustained violence can be really useful in avoiding reconstructing the same forms of violence in the future. If you have any questions about the course, there's a lot of information on entry requirements, structure and scholarships online. If you have further questions, please feel free to contact me, Dr Zoe Marridge, on ZM2.asoas.ac.uk.


Just because that you've been through, it's prepared. Elizabeth City State University. Thank you so much. At this time, it is my pleasure to present Ms. DeNeal Banks, our reigning Ms. Elizabeth City State University, to introduce our speaker. Oh, to welcome Governor Pat McCory as the speaker for ECSU's 160th Commencement Ceremony. Governor McCory was sworn in as North Carolina's 74th governor on January the 5th, 2013, following a seven-term tenure as mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina. Prior to becoming their mayor, he served on their city council from 1989 to 1995. Under his leadership, Charlotte made the kind of strategic advancements that made it one of America's most promising metropolitan cities. As governor, he has worked to improve North Carolina in three key areas, the economy, education, and efficiency. The historic tax reform he signed into law was designed to place money into the pay checks of North Carolinians by reducing personal and corporate tax rates. The governor also reformed North Carolina's unemployment insurance system and streamlined the state's workforce development programs to provide higher skilled workers in less time. Governor McCory's focus on a community service reflects his lifelong dedication to improving the lives of others. President George W. Bush appointed him to serve on the United States Homeland Security Advisory Council between 2002 and 2006. He has also served on numerous charitable boards in this state. Governor McCory earned degrees in education and political science from Catawba College. He and wife Anne have been proud to call North Carolina home since they married in 1988. Today, they join the greater community of Elizabeth City State University in applauding our May 2015 graduates. Ladies and gentlemen, it is with great Viking pride that I present to you the honorable Governor Pat McCory. Thank you all very much. You know, it was when we were walking into the stadium and I saw the students' smiles, it just gave me pride of their accomplishment. But what gave me even more pride was watching your parents and your brothers and sisters and your cousins and your uncles and your spouses and your grandparents have this smile of pride about what you've accomplished. And to see this around this stadium at Elizabeth City State University means that you're fulfilling your potential. And it reminded me when I graduated from high school in Jamestown, North Carolina, from college in Salisbury, North Carolina, of getting hugs from my dad and saying, when he hugged me after my graduations, each time he would say, son, keep fulfilling your potential because every one of us were born with a certain ability that you need unleashed to make our society and our country even better and keep striving to unleash your potential. And the proudest time I ever had in my life was in November of 1995, a week before my father passed away from cancer. He was in a wheelchair, knowing that he was in his last weeks of living. And I was proud to be elected as mayor of the city of Charlotte. And he got to see it.  But keep going because you need to leave this a better place than when you arrived. All of you are fulfilling your potential. And that moment in my life in 1995 will be a moment where I'll feel my father's hug forever and ever. And I want you as students here to enjoy the grins and the hugs that you're going to get from your relatives and friends after this ceremony. And remember that hug forever. And have it keep incentivizing you to move forward and making a difference. And there are some students here that I want to recognize that continue to fulfill their potential beyond anyone's wildest dreams. And one of them, for example, is Mr. Donye Moffitt, who was graduating with a degree in aviation science with a minor in aviation management. After falling in love with flight as a child, Donye was drawn to Elizabeth City State because it is one of the few universities that offers a degree program in aviation. Donye's hard work paid off shortly after arriving here at Elizabeth City State. He earned after the Thurwood Marshall College Foundation scholarship. And during his freshman year, he was selected to attend one of the greatest leadership institutes, and that's the Thurgood Wood Marshall College Fund Leadership Institute. Donye also earned a summer internship at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. And perhaps his biggest honor was being elected the reigning Mr. Elizabeth City State University. And a few days ago, he earned yet another distinction by being the recipient of the Chancellor's Student Leadership Award.  And I want you to stand up to represent Elizabeth City State University. You make us all Viking proud. God bless you. Now, let me also talk to the students because you would not have made it out here with your great faculty. Many faculty could be doing a lot of other things throughout the United States of America, earning a lot more money elsewhere. But they've decided that teaching and helping other people learn and exercise their brain is their calling and their fulfilling their potential. And let me talk about two of those people today. One is Dr. Linda Hayden. Dr. Hayden has been a distinguished member of the Elizabeth City State University faculty for more than 30 years. And during her tenure, she founded the Center of Excellence in Remote Sensing Education Research, a center that focuses on marine and ice sheet research. Her work at this center has been groundbreaking. In fact, there is an ocean bay in Antarctica named after Elizabeth City State University because of her work and her discoveries. And back at our own shores, Dr. Hayden has earned numerous awards, including the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring. Closer to home, Dr. Hayden founded the Celebration of Women in Mathematics, a program that encourages young women in northeastern North Carolina to explore and pursue the field of mathematics, which is needed now more than ever. And this program has served approximately 8,000 middle and high school girls since its beginning in 1995. She's helping fulfill the potential of thousands upon thousands of young men and women throughout North Carolina. And one partner is one of a research and teaching colleagues, Dr. Dardell Johnson. Dr. Johnson, you have spent much of your professional career introducing young students to the wonder of higher mathematics and science. NASA has recognized the effectiveness of Dr. Johnson's work and has funded many of your science and mathematics education initiatives. Dr. Johnson, you're also a man of romance. You have been in love with Elizabeth City State University for more than 40 years, dating back to the days when you walked the campus as a student in the 1970s. He was a big deal back then, too. He was president of the Student Government Association and for two years was listed on the Who's Who and College and University. And if that wasn't enough, he was also the captain of this great football team. In fact, Dr. Johnson became the first student athlete at Elizabeth City State and the CIAA to be awarded the NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship, which he used to study mathematics education at the University of Kentucky. These are just two great examples of people that have made a difference in fulfilling the potential to help each one of them. We all need to give them a round of applause. Now, when I was born in 1956, the president at that time was Dwight David Eisenhower. And he was another president that we don't talk about much. We talk about him as the supreme allied commander during World War II, but we don't talk about him as a two-term president of the United States. And one reason I'm talking about him today is because he wanted our country to fulfill its potential. And one of the great things he did was invest in connecting our country and highways and railroads and commerce and creating jobs. He connected the east with the west, the rural with the urban. And this today's generation and my generation are still feeling the positive impact of those investments connecting our country, rural with urban metropolitan areas with all parts of our country and with each other and the east to the west. Well, I believe we have to do the same thing here in North Carolina as we're now the ninth most populous state in the United States of America. And if we're going to keep moving ahead of other states like we moved ahead of Michigan just two months ago, we're going to keep growing. And we need to prepare for that growth so you can either sit and react or you can prepare. And like Eisenhower, I'm recommending that we invest in new highways and rails, that we invest in new state parks, that we invest in our ports at Moorhead City in Wilmington, that we invest in intermodal facilities to help commerce and create jobs, and that we invest in our community college, and that we invest in our universities here in North Carolina. And one of those great universities is right here, Elizabeth City State Universities. And we're going to continue to invest in this great university because you are crucial to our economic revival right here in North Carolina. And we want to connect Elizabeth City State University, not just with the rest of North Carolina. We want to also connect you to Hampton Roads. This is coming from the governor of North Carolina. I want to connect you to Virginia and the economic progress they're having there at the ports. And we're going to build new highways to help you do just that. But we also want to invest in this campus. And I'm working with your great chancellor to invest in building a new library, to invest in updating the grounds here at Elizabeth State University, to invest in the maintenance and operations of your dorms here at Elizabeth State City State University, to invest in beautifying this beautiful campus, which we need to make even more beautiful. The chancellor and I have talked about, you have outdated buildings that frankly need to be torn down. We need to improve the quality of life and the learning conditions for the students and future graduates. And we plan to do just that with these bonds. This is investing in the future. We need to leave this a better place than when we came. And that includes it right here at Elizabeth City State University. You are crucial to the state of North Carolina, not only for this region, but for the entire state. And we want to work you in continuing to fulfill the potential of these great students. And before I conclude, I want to go back and recognize the two professors that we talked about. Dr. Hayden and Dr. Johnson, I would like you to bring, come up to the front here, please. This is unexpected. They do not know this is about to happen. Dr. Hayden and Dr. Johnson, as governor of North Carolina, on behalf of all the 9.6 million people live in this state, I'd like to bestow upon you the highest civilian honor that I can give as governor. And that's the order of the long-leaf pine. You are examples of people who are fulfilling their potential and helping others do just the same. May God continue to bless each one of you and thank you for your service to this great university and to the state of North Carolina. Thank you very much. Congratulations to the class of 2015. Governor McCrory, we thank you for your inspiring words. Your support of Elizabeth City State University and its graduates and for your continued work for the betterment of our great state of North Carolina. Governor, if you would please return to the podium of Elizabeth City State University. We again say thank you for sharing this historical day with us and ask your acceptance of this gift as a small token of our appreciation. On behalf of the state of North Carolina, I accept this gift. Thank you very much. Thank you. At this time, we recognize our special guests in attendance today, representatives from local, state, and national government. If you are here joining us today, if you would please stand so you can be recognized. So we can recognize you. Representatives from the University of North Carolina Board of Governors, our own ECSU Board of Trustees and our trustee emeriti. If there are members of our foundation board, if you would also stand please. And a very special welcome and thank you to Mrs. Frances Fennebrisk, Mrs. Debbie Hinton, and Mrs. Jean Hinton for joining us today. It is also our absolute pleasure to have with us today Representative Howard Hunter, Joseph Peele, Mayor of Elizabeth City. Councilmen Darius Horton and Tony Stamats, County Commissioner Cecil Perry, Colleen Santa Anna from Santera, Rich Olson, City Manager, Reverend Kim Brown, Mrs. Pat Norman, United States Coast Guard Commander Bruce Brown and Wife Vonda and Harold Barnes. We say to you again it's our absolute pleasure to have you join us for this special occasion and we thank you for your continued support of Elizabeth City State University. I now invite Mr. John Fennebrisk, Chairman of the University of North Carolina Board of Governors to the podium for a special presentation. Everybody's got a script. I wanted to point one thing out. When we were asked to come speak, there was a column where we could check it off and pay an extra $25 for a seat in the shade. As you can tell, Pat, Henry and I failed to fill that out and pay the $25. So this is my second graduation at Elizabeth City State University and I love this school. Governor Pat McCrory, members of the Elizabeth City State University Board of Trustees, Chancellor Stacey, Franklin Jones, Dysinguished Guests, faculty, staff, and most importantly, 256 students who will be college graduates or degrade graduate students in a few minutes and to your parents and family members. So I'm gonna give greetings again like Henry did because I know Henry's gonna be here. So on behalf of the 32 members of the University of North Carolina Board of Governors, I bring you our greetings. Our congratulations on your attainment, culminating in today's ceremonies and wish for each of you can continue success in your future endeavors, which hopefully includes a job about which you are passionate to begin. So what am I doing here? First, Chancellor Franklin Jones had no choice. She had to invite one member of the Board of Governors to a graduation ceremony. She assures me I was among her top 32 picks, but that is an incomplete explanation. I was elected chairman a year ago. The chairman actually, the only perk I can figure out the chairman has, gets his first choice of our 17 campus graduations that he wants to participate in. I chose Elizabeth City State University.  Chancellor Franklin Jones told me this morning that I am the first chair of the UNC Board of Governors to celebrate graduation at Elizabeth City State University in at least 13 years. It's a real pleasure to be here. So you are 244 undergraduates, 12 graduate degrees, at least 180 of you hailed from North Eastern, North Carolina, a number that I am determined to grow in the very near future. This school will grow, improve, and prosper. Elizabeth City State University has the unwavering and enthusiastic support of your chairman of the University of North Carolina Board of Governors. You have much to be proud of, your own achievements, and those of your university. But I want to ask you to think about something. Tomorrow is soon enough, today is for celebration. Higher education is in the middle of a period of tremendous financial crisis. Generally speaking, tuition has increased dramatically. Faculty and staff salaries have been stuck in a rut, and student loans total over $1.2 trillion dollars. The governor and the state legislature have more demands for tax revenues than there is supply. What can you do about it? Actually, you can be pioneers. You can financially support Elizabeth City State University as alumni in the years ahead. Please make it a personal priority to support your school. Private philanthropy is essential, crucial to the continued success of this campus. Lead the way, participate at any level each and every year. You deserve to celebrate, but it's also important to acknowledge the contribution of the faculty and staff of Elizabeth City State University, especially those teachers who have helped, encouraged and provided you with a proper guidance to succeed. There are a number of faculty members on this campus who exemplify outstanding teaching. Today, I want to recognize one of them. It is my privilege to present this year's Board of Governors Award for Teaching for Excellence in Teaching to one of your most outstanding faculty members. Established by the Board of Governors in 1994 to underscore the importance of teaching and to award great teachers across the university, the awards are given annually to a tenured faculty member from each UNC campus. Recipients are nominated by special committees on their home campuses and selected by the Board of Governors Committee on Personnel and Tenure. Each winner receives a bronze medallion and a significant cash award. ECSU's award recipient is Dr. Ephraim Guibo. Dr. Guibo was not able to attend today's ceremony, but I want to tell you why he is ECSU's award recipient, highlighting his outstanding professional achievements and saluting his commitment to great teaching. And for his friends, I want you to know I gave his check to the chancellor for him. Dr. Guibo is a professor of biochemistry in the Herman G. Cook Department of Natural Sciences. He joined the university in 2003 and served as chairperson of the Department of Chemistry, geology and physics until it was merged to form the Department of Natural Sciences in 2013. With over 12 years of university service, Dr. Guibo has made significant contributions to the academy. He has had a great influence on his students and spares no effort to develop not only the intellect, but the character and life skills of his students. This breeze feels good, playing havoc with my notes. In honoring Dr. Guibo, we also acknowledge the more than 14,000 dedicated faculty members who teach over 221,000 students throughout the University of North Carolina. Graduates, there are many faculty like Dr. Guibo here at Elizabeth City State University who have helped you along the way and I invite you to thank them, including the deans, assistant deans, program coordinators, librarians, enrollment and student service team, operations staff, and many others. So let's thank them right now. Thank you. I was going to finish with that and then this morning I said, you know what, you're sitting next to the governor, which is an honor for me. He has been my governor for two and a half years and been my friend for 25 years. Not only is the governor of North Carolina honoring you with his presence, he comes today as a huge supporter of education in general and in higher education in particular. In conjunction with the members of the General Assembly, Governor McCrory understands that the University of North Carolina system is the greatest economic engine for the citizens of North Carolina. We are blessed that our predecessors established this great system and have nurtured it and given it to all of us so that we now have among the very best University systems of the nation. Believe me, the UNC system is the envy of 49 other states. You are graduating with a degree from Elizabeth City State University, a degree from the University of North Carolina system, a degree honored and respected throughout the United States. What you have attained with hard work and persistence is indeed a very big deal. So that is it for me today. Thank you for allowing me to participate in this extraordinary day and may God bless each and every one of you. Thank you. Thank you Chairman Finnebres for honoring our Dr. Guaibou and for those words to our students. You're doing so in person on this day for the first time in 13 years is duly noted as historical and greatly appreciated. Ladies and gentlemen, please now join me in welcoming three very special young men and one woman who have committed their time here at Elizabeth City State University to not only mastering their respective disciplines but also to preparing to serve our country as exemplary officers in the United States Army. Lieutenant Colonel Gallick, please come to the podium to deliver the oath of office to our newest ROTC officers. Thank you Madam Chancellor. Governor McQuarrick, thank you for showing and Austin, it was great to hear your comments today. Distinguished guests, distinguished friends, family members, I know it's hard to see the name plates on their uniforms but on the far right working in I've got Second Lieutenant Cameron Cecil Field Artillery, Second Lieutenant Michael Davis Quartermaster Corps, Second Lieutenant James Lee Engineer Corps, Second Lieutenant Lativia McJunkins Medical Service Corps so that you know what they committed themselves to they're going to restate their hotel office for you. So please raise your right hand and repeat after me. I state your name, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic their bare true faith and allegiance to the same and I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I'm about to enter so help me God. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor and privilege to present to you the newest Second Lieutenant to the United States Army and the National Guard from Elizabeth City State University Viking Loud, thank you. Chancellor Jones, we now recommend candidates for graduate degrees. Chancellor Jones, it is my privilege to report to you that the candidates here assembled have qualified in all aspects for their degrees by successfully completing the curricula offered by the graduate program at Elizabeth City State University. Were the candidates for the master of education in elementary education, master of school administration, master of science in biology and master of science in mathematics please stand and remain standing. Chancellor Jones, it is with pleasure that I present to you these candidates who have completed all of the requirements for graduation. They have been certified by the registrar and have received an affirmative vote by the faculty to be awarded the master of education in elementary education, master of school administration, master of science in biology and master of science in mathematics are now recommended to you for the conferral of their degrees. By virtue of the authority vested in me by the University of North Carolina Board of Governors and the Elizabeth City State University Board of Trustees I do hereby confer upon you the degree for which you have been qualified with all the honors, privileges, and responsibilities thereunto appertaining. We also wish to present a special university medallion to our graduates who have successfully completed their master's degrees. Were the candidates for the master of education in elementary education, master of school administration, master of science in biology and master of science in mathematics please proceed to the platform to receive your diplomas. Congratulations, please be seated. Baccalaureate degrees will now be conferred. Chancellor Jones, it is my privilege to report to you that the candidates here assembled have qualified in all respects for their degrees by success of their degrees by success of their degrees. Chancellor Jones, it is my privilege to report to you that the candidates here assembled have qualified in all respects for their degrees by successfully completing curricula offered by the academic departments. They have been recommended by their department chairs approved by the Honors Council where I propose certified by the registrar and have received an affirmative vote of the faculty to be awarded the degrees the bachelor of science in education bachelor of science, bachelor of arts and bachelor of social work. At this time, I am pleased to begin the conferment of undergraduate degrees by presenting the bearer of the mace. Chancellor Jones, it is my pleasure most distinct indeed to inform you that the official bearer of the mace is Melissa B. Sawyer. Ms. Sawyer has earned the honor of this title by virtue of being the graduating senior who has the highest cumulative grade point average of 4.00. Bearer of the mace, Melissa B. Sawyer, please come forward for the conferment of your degree. Chancellor Jones, I am pleased to present the bearer of the mace, Melissa B. Sawyer. Ms. Melissa Sawyer, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the University of North Carolina Board of Governors and the Elizabeth City State University Board of Trustees, I do hereby confer upon you the degree for which we have qualified with all the honors, privileges, and responsibilities thereunto appertaining. Our distinguished faculty member, Dr. Linda Hayden, will assist you with hooding and will escort you to the bearer of the mace chair located here in front of the vertex of the Viking V. You can't forget the trustee. Yes, that would be a 4.00. Congratulations, Melissa. Chancellor Jones, before we proceed with the conferment of degrees, I am honored to have the opportunity to recognize those seniors who are graduating with highest honors, Summa Cum Laude, having achieved by their diligence a cumulative grade point average of 3.8 to 4.0. Would those students please stand and remain standing? Those seniors who are graduating with high honor, Magna Cum Laude, with a grade point average of 3.6 to 3.79, would you please stand and remain standing? Seniors graduating with Cum Laude honors with a grade point average of 3.25 to 3.59, please stand and remain standing. And seniors who have completed four years in the University Honors Program, all of whom are noted in the program, please stand. I am pleased to acknowledge all of the Summa Cum Laude, Magna Cum Laude, Cum Laude graduates and graduates of the University Honors Program to the Honors Program graduates, especially, I would like to commend you for having achieved the excellence required by a highly demanding and rigorous curriculum. I salute all of you for your diligence and perseverance and encourage you to continue to excel. Thank you, Honors Scholars. You may be seated. Chancellor Jones, I am pleased now to present candidates for their respective degrees. Chancellor Jones, on the recommendation of their department chairs, certified by the registrar and by affirmative vote of the faculty, it is my pleasure to present to you candidates for the Bachelor of Science in Education, Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of Arts, and Bachelor of Social Work. Would all of the candidates for their respective degrees please stand. By virtue of the authority vested in me by the University of North Carolina Board of Governors and Elizabeth City State University Board of Trustees, I do hereby confer upon you the degrees for which you have qualified with all the honors, privileges, and responsibilities thereunto appertaining. Will the candidates for the Bachelor of Science in Education please come forward? Candidates for Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of Arts, and Bachelor of Social Work, please be seated. Lily Ann Arnold, Janelle Barnes, Atea Brown, Jessica Butler, Jasmine Harrington, LaQuantra Harris, Patricia Holly, Sheena Hunter, Flora Leach, Jeremy Pied, Kristen Pelton, Alyssa Powell, Latrina Powell, Catherine Reigns, Chelsea Scopoliti, Tracy Twine, Brianna Whitby, Doris Wills. Congratulations, please be seated. Will the candidates for Bachelor of Science degree please stand? I am pleased to present candidates for the Bachelor of Science for their degrees. Candidates, please come forward to receive your degrees.  Will the candidates for Bachelor of Arts degree please stand? Will the candidates for the Bachelor of Arts degree please come forward to receive your degrees? Mariah George Blanks, Jamelia Bond, Jonathan Boone, Morris Bowser, Shawn Brown, Shaniqua Brown, Catherine Bunch, Kevin Chapman Jr., Katelyn Clark, Kristie Davenport, Demetrius DeLoach, DeAndre Druit, Ayesha Evans, Tyarius Fields, Justin Garland, Avery Givens, Amonte Hagez, Hark Lay, Betty Harvey, Anthony Kearney, Chantel Knight, Tiffany Long, Leland March, Anthony Moreno, Francis Maxwell, LeRon Melton, Bill Montavo, Shadei Reeves, Shanish Robertson, Aluga Routon, Shamara Russon, Brianna Silva, Ernestine Simpson, Jamiah Sims, Phillip Smith, Tyrus Smael, Cacada Spencer, Tracy Tan, Pearlie Turner, Zaleen Turner, Yolanda Van, Tiara Walton, Chiquita Ward, Ellen Whalen, Victoria Whitaker, Tiffany White, Juanita Willis, Tara Yagin, Kanisha Young. Please be seated. Will the candidates for bachelor of social work degree please stand? I am pleased to present the candidates for the bachelor of social work degree. Would you please come forward to receive your degrees?  Congratulations, please be seated. At this time, we will present the bachelor of science degree for Cortez Pierce posthumously to his mother. Would ROTC please escort Mrs. Pierce to the stage? This concludes the conferral of degrees upon candidates comprising the spring graduation class of 2015. Now, would all of the baccalaureate graduates with bachelor's degrees please stand? Please symbolize the attainment of your degrees by turning your tassels from the right to the left. Congratulations, please be seated. To the spring 2015 graduates on behalf of the entire Elizabeth City State University community, congratulations to all of you for achieving this important milestone. At this time, I would also like to recognize our honor marshals. Honor marshals are the highest ranking students academically from the freshman sophomore and junior classes. During each commencement convocation, we invite those top students to participate as honor marshals. So I wish to recognize those who accepted our invitation and are here today. Will the honor marshals please stand and be recognized? Thank you, honor marshals. You may be seated. I would also like to recognize and thank the ECSU host and hostesses for the fine job they were doing during this event. We also appreciate their continued support of our commencement convocations. Most especially, I would like to acknowledge the ECSU Concert Band and Choir under the direction today of Professor Tamisha Brock for the wonderful wonderful wonderful music and the message in it. Now I welcome to the podium Ms. Collina Neal, president of the senior class to deliver the farewell remarks. Good morning, Chancellor Jones, Governor McCrory, board of trustees, distinguished guests, faculty and family. My name is Collina Neal and I am so proud to be president of the graduating class of 2015. I'd like to start my speech with a few thank yous. First I'd like to thank God for allowing each of us to make it to graduation in one piece. Thank you to everybody who made it to this stadium today. I know many have a far and long to reach the middle of nowhere and for that, you are greatly appreciated. Thank you to my parents for always encouraging me to be the leader that I am today. You guys have always been there for me and I love you both. Thank you to all the professors, especially those in the department of business and economics. We may not have always seen eye to eye but each of you have taught us skills that we will use for a lifetime. College is what everyone refers to as the best time of their life. The experience that people say will challenge your mind and expand it at the same time. Many of us started our college experience here at Elizabeth City State University. Through the years we have evolved from awkward adolescence into the beautiful and intelligent group of young men and women before you today. It is tough to distinguish ourselves from the classes that have come before us. However, we are a unique class who have had to stand together in order for things to go our way. It is also tough to make the most of a year that was marked by a great deal of change but despite all the obstacles we have had to overcome this year, individually and as a whole, we should all be proud of ourselves. Our degrees have opened many possibilities for our futures. Tomorrow, once the commencement ceremony is over and we are no longer bound to Elizabeth City, our journey begins. How will you use your gifts? Unlike school, life has no core curriculum. We have no scripts, no real guidelines and most of us don't even know what's coming next. What choices will you make? The entire world can be viewed as an elective. The paths are infinite and the outcomes are uncertain. Graduation is simply the closing of one chapter of our lives in hopes of opening another. I will end my speech with a quote from the late Steve Jobs.  Don't be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice and most important have the courage to follow your heart and intuition because they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.  I leave you with this hoping that you fully grasp the concept of it. It is so easy to get lost in the world when you don't know or listen to yourself. We have spent four years some more than others establishing our character, friendship, and memories. It is now our turn to use the values instilled within us to start our next chapter of life. Continue to climb and remember there is always room for improvement. Now I want everyone to take one final look around.  I pray for love and light to guide each of you on your new path. We finally made it guys. Back in pride. Back in pride. Back in pride. Thank you. Thank you Miss Neal. At this time, Dr. Jeanette Evans, President of the National Alumni Association will come forth to administer the Oath of Allegiance to the University. It is my pleasure on behalf of the ECSU National Alumni Association to administer the Oath of Allegiance to the University to the 2015 spring graduates. I should like to say that I consider myself as living history here today because 52 years ago when we had Governor Terry Stanford speak, I was sitting where you are sitting. So I'm happy to have lived that long to be able to witness this day. So I ask the graduating class to please stand. On page 25 of your program booklet you will see the Oath of Allegiance and I ask you to repeat after me. I hereby solemnly pledge unbroken allegiance to my alma mater in appreciation for the opportunities for development afforded me as a student at Elizabeth City State University. I pledge active membership in the National Alumni Association wherever I may be. Through association with my fellow alumni I shall forever do my best to uphold the ideals and traditions of my alma mater. I pledge as a person to exemplify high ideals by rendering positive and dignified service to the community, state, nation and world. Thus living to bring honor and respect to my alma mater. So again on behalf of the National Alumni Association I say pride, thank you, congratulations, you may be seated. Newest alumni of Elizabeth City State University as you depart with mixed feelings of joy in your accomplishment and perhaps a little sadness in leaving your second home, remember that ECSU is your alma mater. It is most of you the first adult academic and personal development experience that serves as the foundation upon which you will build the rest of your life's work. Take to heart the words that you are about to sing. They say we'll hear when duty calls ECSU faithful and ever true will be to you for in our hearts we'll still love thee ECSU. We expect you to visit us often to send us good prospects and to give back generously so that the students who follow you will have even greater opportunity and remember the future lies before you like a field of driven snow be careful how you tread for every step will show. Take with you our very best wishes for a wonderful future and Godspeed. Would you please stand for the singing of the alma mater. For permission I declare our 160th commencement convocation closed. Let's receive the benediction from Reverend Chick Broadfoot pastor of the Christ Episcopal Church here in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. It is indeed stately and worthy of our praise and thanks. Let us bow our heads together. Almighty God, creator, sustainer and redeemer we come to you on this great day with thanksgivings and grateful hearts for this historic institution for the faculty and staff charged with the care, nurture and formation of the class of 2015. Thank you so much for all the support you have done for these graduates that have stayed the course that have passed the test and have earned their degrees they have persevered and they've made their families proud they've made memories that will last a lifetime grant them your truth and your wisdom may they turn their sights towards the fulfillment of their hopes and the blessings that they make may you be by their side and may the peace of God which surpasses all understanding keep their hearts and minds and the knowledge and love of God and of their Son Jesus Christ our Lord and may the blessings of God Almighty the Father Son and Holy Spirit be with them and remain with them always. Amen. Please be seated for the recessional.


Hi everyone, Joe for jaspyscasebreaks.com here coming at you with our last box of 2021 tops definitive Collection baseball there it is the last box was the middle box box number two that we're reserving for pick your team 24 We all know it's from the same case Very big. Thanks everybody here for making this happen. Appreciate it Matt ended up with that last spot mojo right there and there are the results of the Results of the number block right here, which is in a separate video So it works just like our serial number break applies only to those teams for this break right here I guess we'll leave this Right over here the gold frame in there Let's put this back around here this blank card right here to Slow play some of the hits a little bit and you can see all the hits on the top camera right there They're not going anywhere All right, we got Dale Murphy a two-time NL MVP with 2,111 career hits 18 out of 35 for Matt and The Braves now this guy again all right Matt Medlin with the bravos on this side. We got Tristan McKenzie nice rookie Otto Going out to the tribe. That's gonna be for Richard Miller Cleveland this is for you 22 out of 50 supplies here. I'm gonna shock my gallon. All right All right, the gold frame is Is Roger Clements nice six out of ten rocket Roger Clements Red Sox edition And that goes to Howard picked up the red socks straight up We got Patrick Corbin jersey and Otto 17 out of 30 Matt Medlin with the Nationals I think I have all these cards upside down. There we go You got Carlton Fisk 14 out of 50 nice. This is a red Sox edition of Carlton Fisk Another one for boss another one for Howard 14 out of 50 few more. Oh, wow A Corey seager walk repealer dual relic dual Otto One out of ten And the Dodgers are a number block team Nobody wanted the Dodgers Nobody wanted them straight up And now it's going to go to Dodgers one Which is PJ Congratulations indeed nice looking card a couple more to go I think the last two you generally are just relic onlys So that's a nice dual autograph. Let's see what we got here for the last two Now we got a Max Scherzer jersey Maybe a week or so ago A couple weeks ago, maybe we're thinking would they trade Max Scherzer with the Nationals trade Max Scherzer, but I feel like they've been playing some good baseball lately Making up some ground Matt Medlin with the Nats. Let's just check the standings really quick before we see the last card Yeah, they're either kind of crawling out of out of out of last place They're just a game behind the Braves Just a few games behind Philadelphia. I mean A lot of season left and there's no a Cinder guard One out of 30 Nice two color patch for the Metropolitan's And that's Howard with the Mets. There you go Howard Thanks, everyone That's it for definitive collection baseball. Keep your eye on the store jazby'scasebrakes.com. We always try to pick some of this up And we always try to pull monsters like this. Thank you very much for watching everyone I'm Joe for jazby'scasebrakes.com and I'll see you next time for the next one. Bye. Bye