Realistic Gaming here today We are finally back with some more Roblox scary stories I'm actually pretty psyched for these because look at the lineup we got we got Granny we got chunky-chucky We got slenderina ants I mean slenderina and slender man and we got piggy and the last would not lose We got the wedgie board by God so much evil missing one robe Combine I don't know if I could take this guys And I also think this game contains jump scares so beware. I warned y'all man.  Oh my god Okay, it's like the Kool-Aid man gone wrong or something. All right you guys and also how can I forget it is fry yeet So happy Friday to everybody and I hope you guys have an awesome Friday Or maybe if it's Saturday for you guys and on the different time zone and also guys before you start The video make sure to check out my social media the links are below make sure to check out my Instagram Twitter and Tiktok. No, I did not do any tiktok cringe videos By the way, just to let you guys know and also make sure to like it comment and subscribe if you're new to the channel All right, so let's begin with this great granny. Make sure you have your volume up for this story scare factor 8 out of 10. All right, so we're gonna get scared 8 out of 10 guys. Let's see how this scary This really is okay kids. It's bedtime. You're staying at great granny's Joe's tomorrow's night Okay, mama climbs up ladder lays down in bed All right, so as we can see the mom said that they're gonna she's gonna leave them with a grandma They're great grandmas we can see so they're going to bed. All right kids. Good night night, mommy Kids are ready to go to sleep and let's see what else happens next mom is about to leave the room Wait, mommy falling asleep. All right, so the boy Jackson is still awake I don't know what's going on with my boy Jackson man. What do you need Jackson? Who is great granny Joe? That is one weird funky name. All right, let's prepare ourselves. Oh My god is a crusty granny The mom remembers the time great granny Joe beat her up as a kid This is not turning out good for these fellas. I'm sorry Jackson. I gotta go to bed now. Oh Okay, good night mommy right so the girls longing to sleep. Look at her. Oh My gosh, she has no idea what she's gonna get herself into Okay, Jackson close his eyes and starts to fall asleep. Oh Man, all right, so they have bones follow sleep already. Let's see what happens next Okay, so there they are sleeps innocent poor little children. They're sleeping in their bed.  Okay, it thinks in mind.  Why you be so evil?  Okay granny thinks in mind It's now time for my revenge Trying to get revenge wait, but how's revenge wouldn't it be revenge of the kids beat her up for beating up their mother? It looks like she just be crazy continue not for madness You guys who that laughs? Okay, I'm getting pushed back wakes up confused.  All right, let's go over here Listen to me kiddo if you're going to scream one bit you will be done Jackson is scared as everything.  All right, let's see what happens next You know what your family would now suffer. Oh, no Jackson screams. So now she threatened him. What is she doing? Is she she's hiding under the pillow? My god, what's up everybody in here? She got she killed Jackson. No What ha ha ha?  No granny. How could you? Oh, no man. Get your granny Out of here mom. What are you doing? The powers mine Jasmine is next. Oh gosh She's going after Jasmine next for Jasmine the rest of peace to my boy Jackson mom Please why would you ruin my life once again? Oh my god? What is wrong with granny Joe because you were late? I did not like when people are late dude Is she insane? She's killing everybody because she was late. What? Oh my god What kind of reason is that? Okay?  This is a crazy plot twist man. I don't know what's going on here. Yes. It is exactly Oh, no, I cannot believe this. I cannot believe it myself. Oh look Jasmine woke up steals the bat That's what I'm talking about Jasmine. She is fighting back for her brother and her mother and her own life Wax granny. Okay. Nice.  She smacked her right in the face. That's what she deserves man She deserves plenty more of those Jasmine no leave Jasmine mommy. She's doing the right thing. Oh, she knocked out granny He needs some milk. That's what you get granny greedy. You saved me in the next generations from great granny I'm glad we're safe mommy. Okay, so Jasmine came in took the bat and smacked granny right in the face knocked her out To the cops arrived. You're arrested for the killing of Jackson and great granny. What? Do they arrested the mom and Jasmine for killing granny do what is wrong with this cop you arrested the wrong people buddy. Oh My god, that was a major plot twist at the end. Oh No, all right guys so far our next story. We got Chuckie doll care factor six out of ten Oh, man, look at his head. It's sticking out of the box All right, let's go in this Chuckie doll story daddy. Can I get a new doll?  She should have told them picks out doll Why would you get no? She doesn't know any better. All right, let's keep on going. I made my decision Okay, let's go pay for it now. Oh, they're gonna go pay for Chuckie doll now. Hello. Is that all you're getting? Yes, that is it for today.  Um, I have to ask why is it all so expensive?  Do you still want to get it, Brittany? Yes, daddy. That's like, bro I'm paying two hundred fifty six for this. I'm losing an arm for this dog But of course anything for the marvelous for your marvelous child, right? You would do anything for your child That's is thank you daddy for getting me this doll. You're welcome, Brittany. I'll make some dinner Oh my god, look she got Chuckie out the box. Oh Man, all right. He looks friendly as of now, but we'll see more as you go in the story. Oh This doll is so heavy.  You have two minutes if you don't you're dead Brittany starts crying and runs. Oh, no poor Brittany She's scared for Brittany daddy throughout the doll now sweetie. Don't be silly. It's just an antique It was an expensive. Let's go see it upstairs.  Oh my god. She killed the dad. No, what is she gonna do now anything? I see well join my clan and we can kill others together or else you will die Okay, no, he's recruited Brittany.  Whoa, dude. She they made a buddy doll out of Brittany Whoa, all right. That was quite an interesting ending man. That was insane. I did not expect that at the end All right, so for our next creepy story, we got slender man and slender Raina Oh my god, look at these two skirt back in nine out of ten. Hold on to your seats ladies and gentlemen We shall get spookified. Okay class I want you to meet the new student a new student. Where's the new student? Who is a new student? Is it the girl or the guy? Or is it the girl back there? I don't know. Let's go check out. Yes. Come in. Oh, the student is coming in. All right All right, let's see Do the new student is slender man. Hi. I am slender. I am excited to come to school. Yeah Why does slender look like that? I don't know. Yeah, that is so messed up. They're really bullying there They're bullying slender man. They're really judging him just soft when he looks like come on guys Have some better sense of humanity right on the board. Oh slender. Did you peer pants? What is slender peer pants? I think she's just making up a rumor already. They're really bullying poor slender man All right, stop going good for slender Oh No, actually you then oh my god. Come on. Let's go now. What is going on? Runs out of the room. Yeah. Oh my god They have said slender man and they met and turned into his evil form. Hey, that's what they get for picking on him, man It's like they sort of got us on the bad guy side because they make their bullying slender man before they even knew about him What is wrong with these people? Yes, I have infected Diana.  Did he infected the girl and he turned her into slenderina? That is insane Okay, how do you get those kids? They stay at the campsite every Friday. Let's go get them at 3 a.m. Dude, they're planning an attack on the other kids that ran away This is crazy. Oh guys. Are you sure it's a good idea to do this today? Yeah, it's fine.  Oh man. We'll see what really happens the next Friday. Oh Man, it always didn't come out tonight for a reason Andrew.  Do you know I'm done with you? What is wrong with Andrew? He started Oh my god, slenderina has arrived to the scene and slender man too Slender man is slenderina. Please. I beg you. Please not me. Good job slenderina. You got Andrew Oh, no Andrews next on the list. What? There's a baby slender man Jake join us, please. Good luck running away. I now have baby slender to poor Jake. He's shocked He's like really shocked. He doesn't move and where in the world did this baby slender man come from? Oh Man, all right. Why am I the only student mr. Davis? I think everyone is just absent today Alois All right, so Alois managed to live for now But we don't know if they're gonna come after her after all and for the teacher He should be good right because he didn't do anything. He didn't bully slender man for slenderina.  I am so excited. All right, so now piggy Oh, it's only five out of ten. Come on.  Have you guys been hearing about the legend of piggy? No, what is that? All right, so he's telling them about piggy apparently they don't know who piggy is So they're in for a story ladies and gentlemen piggy wanders around the metro at 3 a.m. Every night and he leaves cash How much cash did he leave? All right, so piggy leaves cash at the metro? That is a bit odd. I hear he leaves about 1 million Roblox What's piggy must be rich? Oh, we should go then Preston is just a legend. Oh my god Okay, so now Preston wants to go and check it out himself. I mean who wouldn't want a million Roblox, right? I know you guys wouldn't go totally Fight somebody for a million Roblox. All right. Let's go over here Daisy. Just because it's a legend doesn't mean it's not true I still want to go you do you I guess right so Daisy like you know what guys it's just a hoax I don't believe in none. None of this nonsense. You guys just do your thing and Preston is still being hard headed and he wants to go check it out because of Roxy being persistent. Here's the plan We go to the metro 230 and break in at three deal deal deal All right, so now seems like they're set for a plan to go to the metro and break in to see if it is true or not. Oh Here they are 3 a.m. All right guys keep quiet. You stay here while grab the loot I'm a little uneasy, but I'll try my best. Where's the loot? Give me the Roblox. I Want to take the Roblox before they do. All right five minutes later. What will Roxy be back? I'm not sure it normally takes like 10 minutes. I think uh-oh Roxy has been back. It's been five minutes guys 10 more minutes later. It's already been a while Preston. It's fine. She's probably taking her time Maybe she can't find the money. Uh-oh. I wonder what happened to Roxy. It's been 10 minutes an hour later Wow This is just getting out of hand guys Preston. I am going to look for Roxy. I don't care what you say Daisy No, oh, so now they're separating don't separate that is like rule number one in every horror movie guys Oh, and we got a piggy jumpscare. All right.  Tell me where Roxy is first. Oh, no, she got the girl. Oh So she's like Piggy does not leave money. It seems like piggy loots you for your money at the metro It seems like they interpreted this story wrong the whole time. Oh, no, Roxy is dead ha ha ha now Give me the money here. This is all I have. Oh, dude. Piggy just stole somebody's robes in the metro Oh my god, Piggy. What have you turned into you maniac? You are arrested for the murder of Roxy and Daisy It wasn't me. It was piggy. She's insane. He piggy isn't real. Let's go dude And these two all these stories they always have a plot twist I mean, it's pretty awesome because they don't end how you expect how they would end They all have a little twist at the end what makes it more awesome Right, so I had to pay robux. It says VIP only for this story So I I mean I didn't mind supporting this game because it is well made as we can see and there's also another part to it And man, let's just get that to the end. All right, so let's go into this one Ouija board oh 10 out of 10 guys I think this is the first one that is 10 out of 10 on the scare factor I don't think these guys paid for it. So you guys are gonna have to watch it on the video So I'm a glitch in all right. I'll see you glitch in man. Let's see if they glitch in All right, let's begin with this. Look what I found in the attic. Oh, no, she found the Ouija board Oh, that's kind of sick. Is that a Ouija board? Oh, these guys are in for a trouble. Yes, it's a Ouija board Okay, uh Sasha, I don't think that's a good idea. Oh, man. Let's see what happens. Oh Tristan.  I would not play with the Ouija board myself Man, you gotta be cray cray. Okay. Fine. Let's play. Uh-oh, they peer pressured Tristan Into playing the Ouija board guys don't ever get peer pressured into anything The outcome will never be good. Okay. Let's see. All right, I'll go first.  Are you here? Yes. Oh my god, the Ouija board is talking back They just don't work the spirits spirits.  Yes, Tanner? Why would you say that dude the Ouija board said yes? These guys are challenging the spirits now. Are they crazy?  That's how it works Don't ask me, but that's how the evil magic voodoo works behind this Oh man, I could care less. I don't believe this anyway. Oh Tristan. Oh my god. All right. So Tristan like man This is just fake bad. Whatever. When will Tristan die? No Taylor.  I would just go hide like in a police station or somewhere not a police station somewhere Where you'll be safe. I don't know wherever you can be safe Tristan. This can't be guys. Are you done? This is fake while Tristan will see in a matter of minutes if it is fake or not How will Tristan die from the spirits? Goodbye.  See you guys tomorrow Tristan. I'm sorry Okay, so it seems like Tristan's a little freaked out and he's like I'm out of here guys He shouldn't have left though. He should have stayed with the group because Bad things are about to happen man mark my words.  I hope he doesn't but he probably will Oh no, okay, so now we're at Tristan's house. I'm scared But why am I believing this? Oh no, he's crying in his room Poor Tristan. What's the matter? Nothing mom. It's fine. I'm going to bed now Poor Tristan. Oh, no. Oh, okay. Good night, son. Good night Dude, did you not see his child crying when he clearly said nothing's a matter?  You gotta be better than this So that's from the dead silence movie or game over out of though But that was that's a freaking movie if you want to watch scary movie guys Make sure to check it out. Oh Tristan. Oh my god. He killed himself. Oh, so that jumps where we got the spirit attacked That's what it meant the spirit attacked Tristan and as we can see Tristan is now Dead on the floor. He is no longer with us. Oh my god recipes to Tristan Tristan passed away I just got a call from his mom. We shouldn't have done that. Oh, no Of course, they should feel guilty because Sasha should feel guilty because she's the one that found the Ouija board She's the one that instigated and she's the one that started out of this man All right, everybody's waiting over here. Hey I'm over here guys over here. All right, there you go. Now they saw me. They allocated me now All right, so this is a double major thumbs up to these scary stories shout out to the creator of the game I really love your stories that were awesome. You should keep on making more so I could keep making more scary story videos But he does have another one the first one So we should go back to that one on some other time to make a video on those that should be awesome as these were So 10 out of 10 to all these All right, you guys well if you guys enjoyed the video make sure to slap the like button for your boy If you're new to the channel make sure to subscribe and turn down the notification bell on and I will see you guys in the next one


Welcome and thank you for joining us for another episode of the nonprofit show. Again, we have Brian Greenwald with us of Generate Impact, and he is going to share with us what the process of tech discovery for nonprofits looks like, how it should be conducted, what it really entails. And we are so grateful to have you back with us, Brian. Before we get started, I also want to make sure that you know who we are. Julia Patrick is the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. I'm Jarrett Ransom, you're nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven Group, and we would not be 400 episodes strong if it weren't for these presenting sponsors, you're so grateful. Have deep appreciation for each and every one of these presenting companies. These companies exist for one sole purpose and that's to help you do more good in your community. If you have not checked them out, please do. They exist in your community, they exist online and they literally are here to help you move your mission forward. So please do check them out. And again, today's guest, all 30 minutes of today's episode focused on you, Brian, Brian Greenwald, VP of Business Development with Generate Impact, welcome. Great to be here again. Just ready to get started. Good deal. Well, you are our guru for all things tech. And one of the things that we noticed, you've been kicking around this phrase tech discovery. And I was like, I didn't want to appear to be ignorant, but I was like, what the heck is that. And I finally got up the courage to say, okay, whoa, let's stop talk about this. And then you described something that I was like, wow, I didn't really understand this and I wish I had a different steps along my career. So I think this is a really good thing to talk about we're all getting so freaked out about what's the latest technology we need to get how do we upgrade our software. This isn't working but that will all this, but you're kind of saying no wait let's try a different approach so that's what we really want to dig in today. So what the heck is tech discovery. Absolutely so I want to start by explaining that the phrase discovery kind of comes from the custom development world where you're going to be creating something new and in the platform technology or the product technology world. More often than not you're going to see people use the word assessment. And so deliberately is the word discovery, because discovery for us means, let's find out what we don't know before we make decisions. And what we find is that people come to us and they ask the question, what tool should I be using. And we kind of go back and say, you know, that's the wrong question. The question is, what is it are you trying to accomplish and what questions should you be asking. And what is it that we don't know. And so we are more often than not recommending rather than an implementation project or a design project or a build. So let's do a discovery. Now it's important to understand that discovery is not something new it's something that you actually have to do, no matter what you're going to do but my splitting that out as a separate project. So basically saving yourself from the things you don't know. So, at the end of the day, while it might seem like it's something new or something additional. It's actually the first phase of any project, and by making it a separate project, you're making two things one you're mitigating risk and two in the long run you're lowering costs, which are absolutely two goals that I think every project should and probably does have. So a discovery is basically where you're doing all of that exploration of what are the actual problems we're trying to solve what are the business needs, what are the gaps, what are the risks. What do we need to take to actually implement this, what do we need to design. Do we need to do a technical proof of concept before we implement anything in all of that which can represent anywhere between 40 to 60% of the actual cost of the project will actually in the on the other end, lower the risk because when you go into that build, you will be doing it within by making informed decisions instead of educated guesses and that is the biggest benefit of doing a discovery first. So that's the timeline of this Brian, I'm curious the timeline and the individuals involved I'm curious who plays a part in this. That's a really good question so most discoveries last about 46 weeks.  It could take a week. What are you doing with them and your advocacy tool. Or are you doing a full scale it assessment, where you're going to be looking at things like your basic back office infrastructure, your staffing, your adoption practices your life cycle management, your project prioritization you're you're planning that could be you know we're we're actually about to launch into one that we were scheduling for about 14 weeks. So a lot of it has to do with scale and scope. But it's it's surprisingly efficient. Now, those who will be involved is obviously it's going to be your decision makers, but the advantage again of that processes that you can actually include end users practitioners, the folks who have to maintain their services, and even your, your, your clients and, and, and folks who are the recipient of your services depending on what type of technology we're talking about. So you have an opportunity to really involve voices across the organizational ecosystem, and particularly helpful in that is is is uncovering unforeseen insights.  And sometimes that results in a very different outcome than you might expect going in. So I'm a big believer in the phrase, you know, you don't know what you don't know. Right. And so, are you saying that when you go through this discovery you almost need like a sherpa or somebody that can guide you through and ask you these questions because you know what I tend to hear from nonprofits and especially with leaders. They're like, Oh, our system doesn't work. It's the worst. And then, and then it's just like, throw it out. Get your credit card out and buy another subscription to something else versus figuring out what doesn't work so I'm wondering how do you do all that. I would say that the the other phrase that I really love is that when if you do that if you say the system is the problem. You're kind of looking at it through the wrong end of the telescope. Right. Okay, so it's not only that you don't know what you don't know it's also like yeah you might need to make a change but let's measure twice and cut once which is a phrase in in carpentry. Yeah, so you're making an assumption, especially if you're an executive and you're not actually doing the day to day work. It might be the system. It might be training. It might be processed that supersedes the technology, it might be team alignment. It might be leadership alignment. It might be technology but it might be something else. So rather than make that assumption that it has to be the tool. So let's replace the tool the reality is that no technology is the solution to anything you've heard me say this a few times. I believe that technology is not a solution. Technology is there to empower, it's there to enable, and it's there to accelerate but your people, as you hear me talk about ad nauseam are the actual solution. So you can have the best tool in the world, but if you didn't create the roadmap for adoption for process alignment for team alignment for leadership alignment. The best tool in the world will fail. So you have to actually go through that process of making sure what are the business objectives, what are the gaps, what are the risks, what are the risks of doing something, what are the risks of not doing something, what are the alternatives, and then make an informed decision that because you've worked out all that detail and you've gotten by in by making it participatory. It's a much better chance at succeeding in that project and you might be right it might be the tool, but just picking the next tool that you read about in a blog post, or you know has the buzz is not necessarily answer. One of our values is practicing practice is practicality. And that is like, we're not going to look for the most fanciest whiz bang solution we're going to look for the right solution, which might be something really simple, maybe the answers already in your mind. Maybe it's just reconfiguring the tool that you already have and optimizing it for the people and processes that you have. And maybe it's a new tool, but there's so many options out there that you do need that guide that person in that team that's outside of your business processes, who can, who can walk you through that. Yeah, and see it differently. One of the things that Julie and I have noticed and again we aren't necessarily in the tech world, but most of our best friends are right.  You, you kind of talked about this just a little bit, you know, about if there is an email sent to you or this whiz bang product and I keep thinking FOMO right it's this fear of missing out of the new technology opportunity, or like the first thing that's going to solve the world's problems and make my life easier. And there's there need not needs to be but I'm imagining there's some risks to that, you know, when it comes to performing this discovery and that's another reason to do that is that you just don't focus on this new bright shiny, you know, object because you suffer from FOMO. Yeah, exactly. And that's why discovery is essentially a risk mitigation process. So think about it this way and you know a cost mitigation process. If you make assumptions, and you ask a vendor to give you a price for an implementation of a tool. If there are lots of unknowns. If there are lots of if you're asking the wrong questions or if you haven't truly investigated what the root cause of the challenges that you're facing. A couple of things are going to happen first of all if you're going to ask and you know I was on the buy side so I absolutely get the idea that you need cost certainty wherever you wherever you can like that I always went for cost certainty like I want to know what it's going to cost don't give me a range don't give me a sliding scale. What it's going to cost. The problem with that and not doing that discovery first is that you're asking people to make educated guesses and so as a vendor, what they're going to have to do is they're going to have to price in that risk. And so they're going to have to price around worst case scenario, that's the one scenario that happens the other scenario is that you guess wrong, or do you ask the wrong questions and halfway through it's like, Oh wait, this isn't going to solve our problem I thought it did or the well meaning account rep at that product company, whose job it is to see that their product is the silver bullet. Didn't tell you this one thing or, you know, was operating on a wishful thinking kind of thing that, yes this tool can do anything they can solve all your problems. No, no tool can solve all your problems. And so then you have cost overruns you have redesigns, or you do exactly what you set out to do and at the other end of it you're like well you know what. This isn't any better than what we had before. And so that's why splitting out that discovery. And you know working with a vendor that's going to hand you all the deliverables that you would need to implement yourself or go to another implementation vendor. It's actually counterintuitively the safer bet, then saying well in this RFP we need to know what it's going to take to figure it out and to build it and to maintain it. And so you're asking them to make a lot of guesses. And when people have to make a lot of guesses and estimating, they're going to give you the highest price in that range because they have to price it for their risk. And so the discovery is actually a more honest way for these technology vendors to work with you. I'm thinking about this in another way I have somewhat of a curveball question so get out your bat as we like to say, ready. When we're doing this discovery. What do you think the percentage of organizations are going to come back with an answer that's like, it's not on the tool side, it's not on the software side. It's on your side, it's on your training knowledge talent. It's really you that's not making this work. I think that it if you're working with a with a technology agnostic vendor who is mission focused right who's not worried about their revenue so much as supporting your mission. If you have a partner like that that's sort of in a fox hole with you. They will say, look, we don't think you should do this, we think that there's another way. We're actually this December going to be launching into a very large people process and technology alignment and optimization project with a international humanitarian organization that I will not name now. But basically they spent a lot of money on a very large engagement technology project and they're finding that they're not getting the results that they need they're not getting the, the, the adoption that they need, because it's such a huge change management process. And so the work that we're going to be doing them is actually not to change their technology. Exactly. The point is to look at the leadership in the people and the processes, allowing them and create the, the, the behavioral change to get them to buy into that technology change and then there could be some optimization of that technology as well. And the point is, as technology vendors, we have to get real about the limits of what we can do for organizations and look beyond the technology products and services that we're trying to sell. And think about it in terms of what is going to enable the people in this system to be the best version of themselves at work, because like our director platform tech likes to say and we all like to say, nobody goes to work every day. Deciding that they want to do a bad job or that they want to wrestle with their technology they want to do they want to deliver the services that they're there for technology is just one part of that equation. And if you ignore the other two people in process, you're making a mistake and discovery can validate all of that before you make a technology investment.  So if we're keeping something but we're adding something else into the mix. Where does this integration come in and is that does that often prohibit the new software or are we at a place 21st century now right moving into 2022 even where integration is like, you know, I don't know the blissful marriage that's happening. Yeah, I mean there's definitely a place for integrations we we do a lot of integrations between systems between CRM systems and advocacy systems and between CRM systems in LMS is our, you know, we recently did one between a CRM and Google calendar. So there's lots of different ways that you know if those core systems gets you 80% of the way there. Then you can overcome a lot of manual process friction, make data centralized and available, make it easier for reporting for program evaluation for for modeling for investment and fundraising dollars. If you find a way to deal with that 20% and that's where custom integrations and sometimes native integrations can be really helpful.  So maybe you integrate that with with a with a more of a marketing CRM that where that data can be shared. And it's, again, it starts with a discovery and I think we're going to talk about my favorite project that we didn't do. Yes, tell us more about that because I just am so curious. I love that you say this and it and it's, it's the best project we never did. Yeah, so I love it. So it's just like the perfect example of why investing in a fixed price, fixed scope discovery before you commit to any kind of technology change is so important and valuable so recently working with with a wonderful advocacy nonprofit. In the DC area, they came to us and said we would like to integrate our CRM with this advocacy tool so that the data can flow between them. And so we said great but we want to do a discovery first because there's an API in this side and API on that side and we want to do a technical proof of concept to make sure that what you want the system to do. It can do. And to make sure that the build is within your budget. And so we did a discovery. And at the end of it we found that on the advocacy tool side that the API wasn't out of the box able to support the integration that they wanted. We went back to that advocacy tool vendor and we said hey, we need you to, you know, support us which is very common, most product companies who have robust APIs will support the changes that they need for their clients. In this case, this particular product vendor was not able to do that. And so we were able to come to the conclusion as a result of the discovery. Hey, this is going to cost too much for us to build this for you. We don't think you should do this we think that you should find a different tool. And so the conversation went from, we want to integrate these two products to, let's find a different advocacy platform that's going to do what you need it to do, and you're going to save money by doing that. And so that was a thrill, because, again, as a profit enabled and not profit driven business. We would rather lose business for the right reasons than win it for the wrong reasons, because to a person that people have generated impact and it's not a plug for generate impact but I think that there's a lot of vendors like us out there.  And so, to be able to say to that client, it's not in your interests to buy this next phase from us. Of course they agreed out of the box because it was a high price set. So, I mean, I don't want to overstate it. But that was a really fulfilling and just a wonderful case study of why discoveries are so important. And if people can get past the ambiguity part of it because there's this feeling that what am I buying. When I buy a discovery we're buying an insurance policy that your technology project is going to be successful, or it's going to fail and fail fast and save you money. I love that story. And when you mentioned tech agnostic, I, I feel so privileged to know that there are several tech companies out there that really do have that core value. And again, another plug bloomering is one of them Steven Shaddock I was, I was searching around some CRMs for a client of mine and he mentioned another system and I said, is that a product of yours and he goes no it's a competitor and I was like, whoa, so to know that this is just I think it is super, super cool. I have a question Brian that really relates to today's time during this great resonation so we're looking at turnover within staff. How do these assessments and the new technology. I'm thinking, you know, are there some best practices that the organization the team can put into place to transfer this institutional knowledge when and if there is a staff turnover. Absolutely. So the big part of the, the discovery process and actually where we're kind of, and we talked about this on other shows, looking at the problem through the other end of the telescope or so not sort of like tool out to people. You start by looking at it through people and that means that part of the discovery is, what's our adoption plan. What's our life cycle management plan. What is our doc, our project and product documentation plan. The first case scenario is where you have were single points of failure in your system where when somebody leaves. They take that institutional knowledge they take the workarounds that they have developed to deal with that product process friction, and they walk out the door with it, and you're left high and dry. You actually eliminate those single points of failure and you ensure continuity of operations continuity of service, and you protect your investment by in that discovery planning for adoption planning for life cycle management. And hopefully that's a train the trainer activity and not where you're dependent on a third party like us we know like we have no interest in coming and camping out we want you to be empowered. So it involves that that plan for adoption and then plan for a reasonable amount of self sufficiency right so you can never stop or absolutely every technology need. But if you have a solid plan of, of, you know, having a certain amount of self sufficiency that you don't have to have additional billable support every time you have an issue. That's that should be part of the discovery process as well. I'm, I'm so glad because you know there's, whether it's FOMO or it's a new staff coming in and the staff member saying, I can't work in the system I need this system and then you know the individual, as we know, I think it's the director of development, the tenure, the kind of national, you know, tenure there, I think is like 18 months, maybe two years. So that's, that's a turnover, you know, and making sure that the organization is able to, you know, continue to thrive through turnover or through this cultural change right now that our nation is experiencing with a decrease in the workforce. Right, I just had to ask that because it was, it was shining so bright that it was like well how does this work but of course generate impact and Brian Greenwald has that answer and it's really within this discovery so what a great concept. Yeah, it's really interesting to run because I'm thinking about a lot of times, we were talking about this chair, I think, last week with one of our guests. I think sometimes we work so hard to get an integration with something. And then we're like, okay, we're done. We have that new website or we have that new eBoss server. And then it's like, yeah, this is not going to work for, you know, the rest of your lives you got to keep coming back to this because things change. Yeah, that's right. I think that's a really, really important point about the other way that you can do discoveries and the other, you know, sometimes your discovery can be a reasonable cost that can have a long range impact so you don't necessarily, you can decide what part of that to build as a minimum viable solution. Right. So, the outcome of the discovery is a roadmap for the future. Right. And I know that you talked with john. Last time we were on about tech goals that discovery can build out that roadmap and say well phase one we need this to get running. And then phase two, we'll plan for that in the next thing and you can really do long range planning through that discovery, because you're right. Yeah, we just relaunched our website in March and I already want to replace it. It's the reality of the pace of change in the world that we're living in. And if you don't think about it in the long term as you're addressing today's issues. Again, you're making an investment that you're going to have to make again sooner than you want to. But if you're thinking long range and you have a vision of where do we want to be in a year or do we want to be in three years. And that technology roadmap accounts for that. Then you're actually just focusing on the delta, the change delta during those period of time and you can actually even think about it in terms of what are the conditions that need to happen for us to then be ready for that next phase, and you do that check in every six months. All right, let's sit down and audit this. Where are we now compared to we were six months ago. Wow, well, you know, every time we have you on, I feel like we're ready to go to the next phase you have been great at giving us some really great ideas, I always appreciate that you're not, you know, a certain product you really are a tech agnostic as we like to say and that has been super cool because you're kind of like the guru of what this whole process can look like and I think that helps us make better decisions and not be so fearful about all of these these impacts that we are inputs that we need to be making. So here's Brian Greenwald's information VP of business development and generate impact. Check out their snazzy website. And it is new, I'm like mortified that you would say you already want to make changes because that like strikes my heart. Yeah, check out generate impact. We're really fortunate. And we've made a commitment with generate impact to get them on every month to kind of talk about what are the latest things that are going on. It's not always about product but sometimes just it's about process. And so this has been really cool for us to get this higher level thinking about what we should be navigating towards when we think about tech in the nonprofit sector. So thank you so much for being here. Again, if you can't remember who we are, we'll tell you one more time. I'm Julia Patrick. I've been with my nonprofit nerd, your nonprofit nerd, the nonprofit nerd Jarrett Ransom, CEO of the Raven group. Again, we want to thank all of our presenting sponsors, a lot who are tech oriented companies. And again, you can get to them at any point on this planet because they are for the most part, so many of them web based.  Okay, Jarrett.  But Brian, you make it so consumable like very easy to digest very easy to understand. So thank you for what you do, you're clearly working in your genius zone, an area of expertise so so grateful to have your knowledge your time and all of your wisdom around technology so thank you for joining us today. Always a pleasure. It's a lot of fun. Hey everybody, as we like to end every episode. We want to remind everyone to stay well. So you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow.


Good morning. This is the Vermont House Transportation Committee and we have a hearing today just for one hour from now until noon and then at one o'clock we meet again until two o'clock. Our agenda can be found on our website. Let's quickly introduce ourselves and I'll try to do it in the proper order. I'm Kurt McCormick. I represent Burlington and I'm chair of the committee, Barbara Murphy. Barbara Murphy, I represent Fairfax vice chair committee Tim. Tim Cork and I represent Bennington District 21. Okay, now it's just going to be the order in the pictures. Representative Savage. Hi, I'm Brian Savage. I represent Swanton and Sheldon. Representative McCoy. Good morning. I'm Patty McCoy. Representative Patty McCoy representing the towns of Poltley and Ira. Representative White. Good morning. I'm Representative White and I serve the town of Hartford. Representative Quimby. I live in Concord. I represent eight towns in Essex, Caledonia. Representative Potter. Dave Potter from Clarendon. I represent Clarendon, West Gretland, Proctor, Wallingford and a little bit of Tindallia. Representative McCarthy. I'm Mike McCarthy and I represent St. Albans City and the southern portion of St. Albans Town. Representative Corkman. Representative Burke. Representative Molly Burke. I represent a part of Brattleboro. Representative Sullivan. Hi. Representative Mary Sullivan, south until the section of Burlington. And Lori, would you introduce yourself? Hi, I'm Lori Morse, the committee assistant. And Anthea, are you still on? Hi, I'm Anthea Dextre Cooper, Office of Legislative Council. And Neil. Neil Schickner, Joint Fiscal Office. And thank you. Our first today is Michelle Boomauer who will introduce herself. And thank you for joining us. Thank you, Karen McCormack. I'm Michelle Boomauer. I'm the director of policy planning and intermodal development for the Vermont agency of transportation. So, my last topic, uh, for me this morning are the updates related to the CARES act, COVID relief funding specific to our Amtrak service as well as our state airports. So I'll start first with the state airports. First, the FAA has advised us that our capital projects, our construction projects for fiscal year 20 will be approved at 100% federal funding for any eligible items in the project, as opposed to 90% federal funding, which is the usual share. And this will include those projects funded through our airport improvement program as well as any supplemental funding we receive for grants. At this point, we are still working with the FAA to confirm exactly which projects this will impact, because some of the awards have not been made yet, but as soon as we have those details, we'll advise you. And unfortunately, there are some projects where portions of the project that were not eligible for federal funding will not be able to receive this CARES Act bump up. An example of that for representatives Murphy and Savage in terms of their interest in the Franklin County Airport and Representative McCarthy is the 401 foot extension of the runway. So I just wanted to highlight that because I know it's an item folks have been watching. The second way that our airports will benefit from this CARES Act funding is we'll be awarded almost $300,000, $299,000. As the airport sponsor, we can use the funds to support keeping the airports open and operational during this pandemic. And we may also choose to use the funds for capital projects by following the standard process used for all capital projects in terms of eligible projects. So I think everybody is aware that the state airports have been operational this entire period and so that will help in that regard. We did ask the FAA if the funding was eligible for use to waive the rent for fixed based operators. These are the folks that we have engagements with to do certain functions at airports as well as other businesses on airports or to reimburse for other expenses. These fixed based operators might be incurring during these times in terms of cleaning supplies, PPE, etc., personal protective equipment. The FAA has advised us that while the FBOs undertake certain duties such as ground maintenance and fueling as part of their land lease agreements with the agency, they are not providing a contracted service and therefore under the FAA guidance are not eligible to receive this funding. So that was a bit of a disappointment. We were hoping to be able to support these folks in a little more robust manner. But that was the determination. So in addition to the funding and the match share coming to the agency, I'd also like to note that the Burlington International Airport will benefit from the match share reduction on their projects as well as receiving $8.7 million in COVID support for their operations. And so that's a significant piece to note in terms of the Burlington Airport. A few other items to update you on related to aviation. The guidance within the governor's executive order, Addendum 10, that was issued last week, you will see many of our team members, staff at the airports beginning our spring work and maintenance operations. And for some of you that where we're doing construction, you'll see some of that construction work beginning in these two person teams for project area activities. There may be some testing happening, a survey, as well as our general safety activities, mowing or today's case, maybe a little plowing of snow. And also, some of the state airports, five of them have been identified and you've probably seen this on the news as local commodity point of distribution locations for the distribution of food in the means of meals ready to eat. And the state airports use as these commodities point of distribution locations was set up over a year ago and we've exercised these deployments in coordination with other federal state and local partners, including FEMA and the state emergency operations center. And so we were well poised when we were called upon to be the distribution center points for these. The first is starting today at the Franklin County airport in Highgate. The Rutland regional airport will be on the 24th of April. Hartness airport in Springfield will be on the 27th. The Morris airport in Bennington will be on the 28th. And then Northeast Kingdom International Airport in Coventry will be on the 29th. We've also been referring our fixed based operators and our airport businesses to the agency of commerce and the small business administration, as well as their regional development corporations for the business support that they would be eligible for through that those particular entities. So that is the aviation cares update and general aviation update. And I'm happy to pause here and take any questions. Questions for myself. I have one just. What did you say Burlington airport was going to get and it's not through the same program as the state efforts, right? So it is through the cares act, which is the same program we're going to be funded through. And there's two ways airports receive support. One is to have their local match share eliminated in this case. And so Burlington airport I'm sure has projects underway that will qualify for that. I just don't have those details. And the second was the 8.7 million in cares act funding that they will get for their operations support. So do we know how much money we get for the projects, not for the operations? We're still analyzing that. Some of the grant awards have not yet been made for FY 20. And so we're we're still assembling that information to see what the savings will be for us. But, you know, it's whatever it is, it'll be helpful given the T fund shortage. Yeah, sure, it'll be helpful when you say for the for the state airports, when you say projects, do you mean projects that have to be have been programmed? Yes, these are construction projects we've received FAA grant awards for or will be receiving this spring. A lot of times, well, in most cases, what happens is we will receive awards after we've done all the permitting, all of the project design, et cetera. And so so those awards still may be pending. And I think there's some supplemental awards that may be pending. So I would say within the next couple of weeks, we'll have more detail on which of the projects benefit from this cares act funding. OK, but will it work like the transit cares act money, which is on top of other federal grants? So the grant award match share going from 9010 federal state to 100% federal will basically just reduce our already planned obligations in those areas. The 300,000 that we're getting for operations support will be on top of what we would have otherwise had to use from our transportation fund, because all of our maintenance activities are funded by state dollars at the airports. And so basically this just helps offset the lost revenues that essentially we won't have to cover those maintenance operations because we've had a downturn in the T fund. And so this 300,000 dollars we received could be used to backfill that that whole. Yeah, like the transit. Yeah. Are there questions on the airports? No questions from your hands up. OK, I'm sorry. I forgot to do that in the hands. Has your hand been up for a while, Patty? Yes. I'm sorry. I've got Patty and then Mike. OK, so I just want to qualify that, Michelle, that you are saying that Burlington gets 8.7 million. But additionally, they will fall under your number one for capital improvement projects at 100 percent. Yeah, do they fall into the second category of the 299,000 as well? That's for them, that's the 8.7 million. OK, so we're getting 300,000. They're getting 8.7 million. All right, good. Thank you very much. I apologize for that big difference. Representative McCarthy. Michelle, I know you said that you still had some projects you weren't that were in question. I really liked the memo that you had done around explaining how the public transit money went out. And I was wondering if you might be willing to prepare something like that, explaining how the FAA money gets doled out. And if you do have a sense of, you know, if we assume that most of the projects sort of a order of magnitude of how big the the whole that that 10 percent not coming from state dollars will fill. Yeah, I can do that. OK, that'd be good. Thanks. Anything else on airports? OK, thank you. Next. OK. So for the I think you all recognize that we invest about eight million dollars annually to pay for Amtrak service that comes to Vermont. That's state fund state transportation fund investment for the Ethan Allen and the Vermonner and Amtrak received a direct CARES Act subsidy under the CARES Act investments. And they were required for to provide some relief to states who pay for state supported service in addition to the money they received for their own relief. This is a little bit more complicated, a investment strategy in terms of how we receive our our relief. But we found out on Tuesday. That the CARES Act will cap our state pay payments for for FY 20 at 80 percent of the state costs that were paid in twenty one, excuse me, 19. It's confusing to even talk about. The just to sort of remind folks, we went to a system whereby we pay Amtrak for actual costs of running the train service and they figure out those actual costs. And then we we for where we have shared service with other states, each state is a split out for their cost share. So in addition to being capping the our costs at 80 percent of our 2019 costs, the total amount of subsidy available for all states was 239 million. And at this time, there's no specific guidance that is printed that I could share with you in a memo. But we are working with Amtrak to ensure that their cost allocations are consistent with prior practice. What we believe to be our benefit in this CARES Act program right now for FY 20, we believe that the savings will be one point nine million dollars. And for FY 21, we are estimating that the savings will be about a million dollars. For a total of total savings across both fiscal years of just under three million dollars. In terms of how we plan to address these savings in terms of how they will apply, the one point nine million and FY 20 will be simply left in the real appropriation at the end of the year as a year end balance of funds that we had planned to expend, but won't be needing to. And similar to how we have done this in past years, year end balances will be used to to basically they'll be swept in this case from any appropriation where we have a year end balance to help us with balancing the forty two million dollar shortfall we have in the T fund this year. So this, again, is another small amount of money to help us with balancing the T fund appropriation shortfall. And while we have guesstimated the FY 21 savings to be about a million dollars, there there is, you know, additional information that will come in that will help us sort of nail that down as we go forward. The the change in ridership that we're experiencing and some of the other elements in terms of service from Amtrak haven't yet all been worked out yet. But right now, that's what we're estimating for a cost savings. OK, questions on Amtrak. Yes, Molly. So I had another session, you said that we were saving four hundred and fifty thousand dollars a month by not running the train. Is that correct? I think Neil actually said that. You said that. OK. Anyway, so I'm just wondering, will that money also go into money that we're not spending with that money? Also go into filling this hole that we have? That's a good question. You know, I think that it would you know, we because, yeah, there are I think we had talked earlier about some of the some of the base costs being reduced because we're not running the train. And while we won't be able to recognize all, you know, absolute savings of all of our costs, because we still have to pay for like equipment that's been purchased and and some of those other things I expect and this is part of why it's difficult to estimate 20. Well, you know, and I would say that that has not been factored in representative Burke. So I think you make a good point that the savings could be a little bit more because of the fact that not only are they giving us the CARES Act service reduction discount, so to speak, but then we're also going to have some actual cost savings when they rectify the actuals versus the estimates. Michelle, any have they mentioned when they think the change to be back? I have not heard any estimate of that at this time. You know, I think that in terms of the eastern corridor that we're all probably on a fairly similar trajectory in terms of where we are with COVID right now. However, what restarting public transportation service like the train will involve and what precautions they'll feel need to be in place. And just even the ridership, I mean, that was really the key thing that caused the shutdown was there just weren't enough riders to make it feasible to run the trains cost effectively. But I anticipate that they are working on a return to business solution and that we'll begin to hear more about that in the next couple of weeks. Anything else for Michelle on Amtrak? No, OK, as soon as I hear more about the restart program, I'll make sure to get an email out to the committee. So that's all I have this morning specific to those two items. All right, so, Michelle, I think we have. You have somebody else ready of the. Of the agency people we had, we have Wanda next. But if it's Wanda, oh, Mike Smith and Wanda, are you ready? Sorry, it takes me a while to find the button. We are we are present and accounted for. But are you ready to speak? What would you like us to speak on? I looked at the agenda. Oh, hold on. I want to turn the video on so you can see us. I can kind of see us. Oh, just a minute. You're at work. We are at work three days a week, well, five days a week, but we are open at six of our branch offices. Not to the public, but for the staff to come in and and process all of the DMV day to day business transactions. So and we're six feet apart. We're a little bit more than that, just so you know. And we do have our masks. Well, do you? OK. Yes, we do. Commissioner, I think we wanted you to tell us about just giving us an update on the driver's ed situation. I know that that board meeting was postponed, right? It no, it's today. Actually, it's this it's this afternoon. So for the record, good morning, Commissioner Manoli, Department of Motor Vehicle and Mike Smith, Director of Operations is with me. The governor's directive, I want to just give a little quick background, if I can, the governor's directive to DMV when we cease doing in person transactions. One of the items that that is pointed out is that I need to develop, among many things, a proposal to bring exams back when we open up. And that's because exams were postponed completely. Some of our other processes that we require, typically for a Vermonter or a new Vermonter to come into our branch office and do business, we were able to find alternatives to continue supporting those services. And an example I'll give you is a VIN verification. Mike and his team have had to find alternative ways to do VIN verifications to assist the Vermont consumer in purchasing that new car when it's used. And so one of the items that we have identified is really how do we bring exams back to Vermonters in a slow, methodical way, you know, as we turn the spigot on slowly as we gradually open up DMV to to the public. And let me interrupt. We just we have a clarification question. OK, Neil, Neil, you're muted. Yeah, it wasn't on that point. OK, so it wasn't the clarification question. OK, so would you like, Mr. would you like to ask the question? Well, yeah, it was it was about your your mail and online receipts for registration and license licenses. Mike mentioned a week or so ago that they were coming in as expected as as normal. I was wondering if you have continued to see that, namely, we're talking about the impact of the suspension. I don't know what Director Smith actually commented on. So I guess I will turn this question over to him. But before I do that, I want to say to the committee we are monitoring our revenues every day and with our alternative schedule in, you know, field taxes coming in online registrations. We just went live with online renewal of your license. And I want to share with the committee, I am so impressed. This week alone, we had over a thousand people renew their licenses online. They renewed them in the evening on Saturdays on Sundays. Yesterday, our deposit for online renewal of licenses was 17 thousand dollars. That's the highest we were tracking this the day before it was 15 thousand. Just with online renewals this past week, we had over a thousand transactions online renewals of licenses. So I can only say to the committee, thank you again for your support of allowing us to modernize DMV's IT system if that's making a difference. But now back to your question. I'll turn it over to Mike. I had to give my little my little kudos on that. Mike, go ahead. So what Neil is referring to is the level of registration renewals coming through as we would normally see. So I spoke with the lady in the quality control department that sees them come through. Last we spoke, she had said that she's not seen anything that would make her say, oh, wow, there's a huge reduction. So I have not been doing an actual number comparison from year to year. We've been kind of racing in all other directions. I just sent her an email and asked her if that still holds true. She's not responded. But when she does, I'll make sure to give that information. OK, Commissioner, is that to say that the twenty three million dollar loss and revenues that you said I think you gave that as the worst case scenario were not likely to lose near that much. So I did not give you that twenty three million dollar loss and revenue. I believe that came from the Joint Fiscal Office and from you know, from from well, from the Joint Fiscal Office. So I I cannot speak specifically specifically to how they're calculating those that would have to be that would have to be Neil. OK, well, Neil, the. Can you? I thought it came from from DNV, but I guess not. So Neil, do you know what is estimated for losses now and. And. Registration, the only thing I've seen is the latest forecast update for 20. I mailed that out there, emailed that to everyone last night. It's still at forty two million. And I don't recall the breakdown of that specifically. I'm not sure if it is broken down in terms of DMV and other things, but I mean, we're hanging in at a forty two million estimate for FY 20 or losses to the T fund. So, Mr. Chair, I would assume in that analysis and Neil can confirm this, you know, the price of gas fuel has gone down. So there's definitely you know, less revenue being brought in on those taxes. But the Vermont businesses that pay those taxes to us are making their payments. Correct. Well, in terms of the gasoline revenue, I think the biggest impact is not the reduction in price because the assessments were at their at their minimum to begin with. It's been the reduction in people buying gas. That's where the impact is going to come. Remind us, Neil, what is that? That level where it cannot go below? The minimum. The since since the gasoline taxes were revised and I think it was FY 14 and FY 15. At that point in time, gasoline was over three dollars a barrel. So they set the minimums. And ever since then, they've been at the minimum. So for both for both the tip and also well, the tip minimum was set a couple of years later. What is that number? Well, I think you're talking about it only goes higher when gasoline, I think, reaches is over three and a quarter dollars a gallon. Recently, we did that. Maybe I change. OK, Commissioner, we had interrupted you. You that's OK. I am. I understand. Are you still with me? So we were talking about you asked for an update on drivers education. So I just gave you that background. So we canceled over 2000 exams back in March. And I shared with you before when I testified that we do not have. We did not have the capability within our our system to automatically reschedule those exams back out there. So we said when we basically to the consumer, we had to say, when we open back up, please contact us and we'll reschedule you. So we have the impact of those exams that need to be rescheduled. And remember, it's everything. It's drivers permits. It's first time drivers. It's medical exams, it's CDL, it's motorcycle. So it's it's everything. It's not just tests for for new students.  So one of the things that we looked at is in partnership with the agency of education because of the change that's going on that has occurred in school districts. How are the students that are currently enrolled in drivers education going to be able to complete the curriculum requirements? And the school districts are moving forward with the online classes and they're delivering that there's a state board rule that says, in addition to the classroom setting, you have to have six hours of concurrent driving with your instructor. The the school districts are not in a position to be able to provide those that particular piece of the training. And after spending a great amount of time with my team and in evaluating, we discussed and have gone to education and with the secretary of education. And there's a proposal before them today to wave the concurrent six hour driving time on the classroom side of the driver education program. And this proposal to wave the six hours is conditioned based on the students that are currently enrolled in drivers education now that are impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. That discussion is scheduled for two 15 this afternoon. We will be participating in that if this waiver is approved. Then the department is ready to move forward with a proposal that extends driver testing to so currently all exams take place by at DMV locations with exception of five private schools have the ability to do exams for us. We have a proposal that we have not finalized because it depends on the state board action that we will then advance and create an opportunity with certified driving instructors of public school and with our private businesses if they choose. And that's really important to go through a very quick online training and to be able to test their students or other students that are currently in this they're caught in this this this awkward place where if the waiver passes then we sit here and we say how are we going to be able to administer all of these tests. And Mike I don't know but I think they're based on our conversation and I could be wrong committed but I thought they said they probably have over 500 students enrolled right now. So yeah and so that's going to be a demand on us. So we are trying to find with this waiver accomplish two things. An alternative for students be tested by their teachers or other educators and an alternative that if they pass their driver's education program and they choose to come into the Department of Motor Vehicle that we will test them without this six hour concurrent driving experience in the classroom. It does not change the current requirements that a student must have documented 40 hours of driving time 40 or more and that a minimum of that be 10 hours of driving in the evening. So that's driver's education and I tried to summarize it and where we are. Do you have questions? Questions for the commissioner. Yeah. Amali please use the electronic. OK, well you sometimes don't see the electronics. So anyway, thank you commissioner. This will be very good news to my 16 year old grandson who's taking driver's ed right now and has been driving forever because his uncle has farm. So I just want to double check. So the the six hour there's the 40 hours of driving, you know, documented driving time and then there's taking the driver's ed test and then the six hours would be administered by the driver's ed teacher in a sort of simulated situation or. Closing representative burn that we waive it that we don't require. You don't require it at all. OK. That is the proposal for school crisis. That is the proposal for the state board of education. And that is for the students and I use semester and I could be wrong. But really it's where the students that started drivers that in around January of this year and are going through to the end of the school year. It is most likely. I think all of you know that our public schools will probably not reopen. It's hard to say anything could change. And so school districts don't even have a way to deliver that. Yeah. Yeah. OK. Great. Thank you. Thanks. So last month I received a letter in the mail that my license was going to be coming up for renewal in May, filled it out and got my new license in the mail. And I know now you've gone to online. I'm wondering with the online license renewal if our constituents are similarly going to get notified ahead of time so that they get a heads up that they should go ahead and renew online. So what we are first of all, I just need to tell you the painting behind you is absolutely beautiful. So I need to say that thank you. You're welcome. The the notices that are going out we have changed our renewal notice letters that go out to Vermonters and it actually directs them to the choice of doing online online renewal. And and it's working. I you know, I think the outreach that we've done it's front and center on our home page and and and, you know, so the new batch and I always get this mixed up. So everyone that's due for May, we do their mailing in April and all of those notifications included the online. Is that correct, Mike? Correct. Correct. And going forward, there'll be 60 days in advance. But we had that little intern period. So that's why someone in April or May we're going forward. It'll be 60 days out. That was really helpful for me. And I think people really appreciate that. So while things are still up in the air, that 60 day notice, I think it's going to mean that we continue to get people renewing. If you make it easy for people, then they can keep doing it. I really, really appreciate you all getting innovative there. And the painting behind me is by a St. Albans artist, John Young, and he has painted stuff all over town and is becoming at least regionally famous. So hopefully it'll, you know, appreciate. But if you want to support local art, John Young is wonderful. Thank you for getting a commission on that, Mike. I actually, the painting was a commission. He I had a bunch of his art displayed when I back when I owned the cafe and we sold seven or eight of his pieces. And so he gave me this one as sort of a reward. For a commission. Representative Murphy. Thank you. This question isn't on this particular topic, but it is for Wanda. So our commissioner, Manoli. So if you want me to hold it for another moment, I'd be happy to. I leave it to you.  It's a question about a Senate bill that was passed S 114. And just a section that speaks to the suspension of licenses, driver's licenses, not being not not occurring until the hearing on merits is held. So I just clarification that it's not saying that they can't take away people's licenses, but with hearings being a little challenging, they can't do it until they have the hearing. So we did provide testimony on this yesterday and you are referencing, I think, section five of that bill. My understanding of the bill, it is a legislative action in accordance with the administrative bulletin that judiciary put out on how they're going to conduct business during the the COVID crisis. There is and I don't have my notes in front of me, but I should do a fairly good job remembering, if not, Mike's here. The there's a section in the bill that talks about that the Superior Courts or the Supreme Courts cannot suspend anyone's license. And this is about the whole the whole agreement. And then it references Vermont Statute 23 1205 G&H, which is specific to DUIs. Right. So I will let you know that we have testified. I understand that the legislature needs to move things forward. And I respect that we have testified. So, first of all, D&B is the one that on your third. So our concern is public safety, especially around the third and fourth violation of a DUI. These are these are serious acts, and we consider those to be. I mean, any DUI is concerning, but the process for DUI threes and fours, they have their civil hearing. Then they go to criminal, if I if I understand correctly, the way the language is written, sorry, the way the language is written is to state that the courts cannot suspend the licenses. The way the statute is written is we suspend them automatically in 11 days. And so we see a conflict if the intent of the legislature is that you do not want us to suspend anybody's driving license during this time. We believe the language should be written differently. We didn't propose any language for that. I do think that House judiciary and you can talk with the Ledge Council. They think they do understand our concern and they may be looking at an alternative. It is my understanding that the the intent is not to suspend anyone's license. Again, I can just say to you, we think that is that's very concerning. We are very concerned about about DUIs, but specifically threes and fours. When you get a DUI one, you're not suspended immediately until your court proceeding, correct, Mike? And then your DUI, your subsequent, I'll fit in a few different categories. So I mean, that's what I can offer you about the language. We did not we were not asked on the Senate, you know, any questions about that. I, you know, again, our data shows we have one to four. Three and four convictions a month. And or not, we have one to four individuals that are are stopped and charged with in fours a month. Did that answer your question? Thank you. We don't have to ask our legislative council because she's been trying to jump in on this for the last five minutes. So, please. I was just going to provide a little bit of an update of what happened with S 114 and House Judiciary yesterday. Judge Greerson and I can circulate the link to his testimony provided sort of some insight into where the language came from and the origination of the not requiring of the hearings, which under statute are required to happen after 21 days and 42 days for the preliminary hearing and the final hearing. A memorandum that was circulated from Judge Greerson and Patricia Gable said that in this was in early March, these hearings are not going to necessarily be able to happen within the statutory time frames, which means that they could be dismissed. And these are for the civil suspensions when someone gets a DUI, not the criminal proceeding that sort of is going along in tandem. Administrative order 49, which was the declaration of judicial emergency in paragraph three lists the hearings that will be required to take place. They're usually related to emergencies and these sorts of civil suspension hearings weren't included. So quite likely courts are not going to be having these hearings during the pendency of the judicial emergency, which I believe goes until the end of May. The second piece of section five, subdivision three, which talks about how suspensions will not happen during the pendency of the judicial emergency until there can be a hearing, that was a recommendation from the defender general. There is an ambiguity there with regards to the fact that it says the court shall not suspend. Section 1205 and Title 23 uses a lot of shall suspend and shall not resume the suspension without saying who is doing it. The Department of Motor Vehicles or the court. I believe House Judiciary's plan is to pass the language or to recommend that the House pass the language as is in S114 as it came over from the Senate with that ambiguity. Write a letter indicating that the intent is that no one, the Department of Motor Vehicles nor the court suspend licenses until there can be a hearing and then at some point in the future in a different bill provide a clarification to actually amend that section of S114 to say that it's the Department of Motor Vehicles that shall not suspend licenses. From a policy perspective, I do not think that House Judiciary is making a recommendation to say that licenses should be suspended without a hearing. So for example, if the hearing wasn't going to get held for several months, but that the automatic suspension should still go forward in 11 days for the DUI second and subsequent, I don't think that's the direction that they're planning on going. And now just fixing that ambiguity as to who does the suspension. So this bill passed the Senate and has been assigned to House Judiciary. Correct. It was or it will be referred to House Judiciary, I believe tomorrow when you're on the floor. And I think it is one of the bills that is being taken up in the second block when you're on the floor tomorrow. OK, so it's a fairly low number. When did it when would it have passed the Senate? This was an unrelated bill that I think just got a lot of COVID-19 piggyback onto it. The bulk of S114 is dealing with recommendations that came from the judiciary in terms of how they are needing to change their operations given COVID-19. Got it. OK. All right. I think that's one we have to definitely take a look at. Barbara, did you have any other questions about that one? Or OK, thank you for bringing it up. No, this is I'm waving to you. I don't know if you can see. Sorry, I do want to say on the record that the Department of Motor Vehicle believes that licenses and violations such as these, those licenses should be suspended and we should be able to move forward as it is outlined in statute. And I understand that the judiciary administrative agreement goes to the end of May and that it connects to hearings. But we have great concern that we will not be suspending individual licenses due to DUIs, especially DUI 3s and 4s. So thank you. So you're against this amendment? We do not support the I want to say the amendment of the bill. There it's the way it's written. I don't it's it's the intent. And I believe that it's my understanding if I understand correctly that it is the intent of the legislature to suspend the allowed to stop us from suspending DUIs during this COVID crisis. And we do not support that. I concur. Yeah. Yeah. OK, well, I do as well. I think I do as well. But we're not going to have a vote on that right now, I don't think. But yeah, Barbara, thank you for alerting us to this one. And so it's just about lunchtime. But, Anthea, we had you next to give us an update. Excuse me, Commissioner, was there anything else that you wanted to tell us? The one thing I quickly wanted to share with the committee, because I know some of you have also had these questions back to drivers education, where we originally started, as well as looking at alternatives to test this unique group of new drivers. Well, we could partner with with the businesses on others, too, if needed. We are also looking at an alternative way to provide driver educate driver permitting testing to new drivers. We had hoped we were going to be able to connect to our current system and be able to do this online. Unfortunately, that is a long term vision and we can't do it. But Mike and his team have come up with some creative solutions that we haven't implemented yet on providing the driver permit written test in alternatives instead of having to come into a DMV location. And so we're still working on that. Yeah, I was going to ask you of those two thousand exams that got canceled. And you said there were different types of exams for different licenses and permits. Can any of them be done online? I would think that the written test was already available online. There's none currently on online. That's kind of what we're trying to look for for the permit for the permits.  How do you know who it is that's taking the test? You know, we're working through all those pieces, you know, utilizing the state of Florida does some of this already. So, you know, don't tell them, but we're copying a lot of what they're doing because it's working, you know. So we're just trying to work through the process and find a way to make sure that the the applicant is is taking the exam, making sure that the parents, given their permission or guardian to take the exam, you know, and then just moving through the process. So good answer. Anything else, Commissioner? No, I'll just share with you all that the protest expected to take place. I don't know if you saw it on the news. We've been watching it. It's very it's it's been very low key here in front of the state house. The protesters who want the governor to open up businesses quickly. So we're keeping an eye on your building for you. Twenty six people out there right now next. OK, they're in here. That's actually good to hear. We're all set. OK. And I I want to thank you for for making it more clear on your website that the car inspections are I'm sorry. There's a cat attacking my chickens. I have to go. My apologies. OK, go, go. I hope there's out of status watching this, that was just great. That is one to be remembered. I just want to thank you for for fixing up the website so that it was clear that that people do not have to have their car inspection inspected until July. So yeah, actually, the dunes, they'll start in June. They're April's got extended to June, just so I want to make sure we're good on that. Oh, yeah, I see even numbers. Yes. Yes, even numbers. Everyone learned a lot about inspections. But yeah, thank you for your support and thank you for bringing that concern to us and your constituents' concerns. So I appreciate it. OK. All right. Thank you, Commissioner. And if we could make you wait until one o'clock at this point, I think. And I actually don't have anything. I think Lori put Neil and me on the agenda just in case we were asked to speak to something. But what I will do is send the testimony from House Judiciary yesterday so that the committee can be up to speed on what's happening with us. One more. Yes, that would be good. Yeah. And so will you be with us at one o'clock? Yes. OK, so maybe we could talk about that if we have time. I think we will. Sure. Because I have two items, it's afternoon. It was I who asked Lori to put you guys on the agenda. OK. So let's.


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Good afternoon everyone. This is Melissa with the stockswish.com and welcome. Welcome to a QQQ update I thought I would do this. I've been doing market updates on the spy But the Q's has been more bearish than the spy all along meaning that the pull-in and the Q's has been More significant and the pull in the spies the spies had some red bars But it keeps making new highs not the Q's. Is that the reason for this today? No Market had economic data today. Just you know reacted negatively to everything it heard of and This though is very unexpected. This is the first day. I'm actually gonna say This is heavy Doesn't mean we're changing trends doesn't mean the markets not enough trend doesn't mean any of that at all It just means the market sold off immensely hard today out of the sky out of nowhere in a day that it shouldn't have done it and It could bounce into the clothes, but low odds 45 minutes left approximately until the close of the bell today and the market has had no letter in selling the entire day today and There were been no reason to short this so this is just selling Okay, market trade and a buy set up yesterday followed through went to a bigger target than expected open as a neutral gap today. This is what I call a neutral gap and Fell fell as soon as it opened should have held but there really wasn't any recent area to hold in here I think that was part of the problem now that I'm seeing this here I'm just looking at one minute That is so tricky We must close with some significant tail here or gap up tomorrow to not fall again tomorrow Otherwise a target in the market is all the way down here at 83 82 50 for the pull-in I'll just go back here at the beginning of the day I I'm shocked at how much we sold off today But we're still bullish in the overall chart. We are still bullish I just want to see if the market open and swushed 87 88 No, it didn't The market did not open and swush today But it should have held right in here right in here by 945 10 o'clock the very very latest and actually by 945 and Detended brook so the market needed to hold right in here quickly quickly quickly quickly and it could do it And that was a sign and around 10 between 10 and 10 15 I said, oh, we're just gonna be read all day now And the interesting thing is it really didn't have any opportunity to short this market If you wanted to if you wanted to take advantage of the short move You didn't really have much of an opportunity to do it There wasn't any rally back to short Marcus gonna make an attempt to hold here into the close. It's weak as I'll get out though This is a weekday in the market and it actually looks bearish to me for a deeper pull-in The pulling could be two dollars away from now It could be even deeper because this is totally unexpected and the market should have held better than this And the market still isn't an uptrend. Okay a mark the market does not change trends And neither do stocks by the way until they gap and do a bearish gappas of significance This is not a bearish gap today. It is a gap up But the red bar in the day the way it broke the way it fell and did not hold the bicep of the trigger Yesterday is bearish for the temporary time frame It could last just till tomorrow and we can bounce into next week or it could last I don't know for the next week or two. Who knows? I mean the next level that's realistic for the market to come down to is here and then here and Gosh only knows But for now, we're still bullish in the overall trend bearish though intraday today and tomorrow We have to close strong and we have to get up tomorrow significantly Or we're gonna gap down tomorrow or train down tomorrow in a neutral gap or small gap up to a bigger number We can have two red bars here in a row tomorrow because if we get down tonight Well, it depends how much we get down if the gap downs tomorrow morning is big then we're gonna hold Tomorrow's gonna be a pretty significant date of its market to tell what it's gonna do I'm just shocked here in the bearishness of this and and I love to short But this is just pure selling here today. Look mark is gonna try to close but 45 minutes It's it's gonna have to bounce here more if it's gonna hold This is Melissa with the stocks wish comm is the first day since I can't even remember I don't even remember. I don't remember the last time I said the market actually looks Heavy and again not changing the overall trend which is bullish But looks heavy for the short-term time frame here And I actually feel like the market was heavy today because it should have health and it did not hold and it didn't Okay, so tomorrow would be a good tell-tale sign not for what where we go next but just for the short term How far we're gonna pull in are we gonna pull in down to the next number at 84? Or are we gonna pull into 83? Are we gonna break and go fall all the way down and break 80? I don't know again We're still an uptrend and I still think the uptrend of the market holds this year But this is a deep sell-off today, and it can't be a north because it shouldn't have happened shouldn't happen as far as I'm concerned I don't see the reason why it happened so aggressively But it did and again, it's a great thing about trading a real-life time You make decisions on the fly you see it and you see it for what it is and you read it And you see it and that's it look at this. This is a crazy weak attempt to bounce We have to close above We'll just see here We have to gap up or close above or gap up tomorrow above 86 50 to recover from this crazy bar today. I Don't know if we can do it or not. It's more than a dollar from here. Here's the bounce. It's gonna try It's gonna try to bounce here into the close, but this was a very weak day in the market This is Melissa with the stocks wish.com. I feel like more information Email me at Melissa at the stocks wish.com red day today reds my favorite color Beautiful beautiful red. I would never have shorted this market though because this is unexpected I just do my gap shorts, but it's real people for now at least for the temporary time frame again This does not change your overall trend in the market Which is still strong the minute I see the market doing something where I think the trend is gonna change I will say it that's not here But for the temporary time being markets not done pulling in and the pull-in could be deep tomorrow is gonna tell a lot Anyways, have a great day everybody. See you tomorrow


So there's a new version of FreeNAS for a new update for FreeNAS. It's 11.1U6. It's a minor update But there's some security patches in here. We're gonna talk about a couple of them. There's a short video about them So I've loaded my test machine with it. I've loaded a few other machines with it. None of them have had any problems I have not had time to load our system with it here at our office, but it's quickly on my to-do list So there's a few changes in here. I'll leave the link to this right here This is all the details you can click and dig into the bugs themselves But a couple of my thought were interesting is they use 4k jumbo cluster pool for all jumbo frames until Elicator problem is fixed for the 9k jumbo cluster and let's talk about what that is So this is my 10 gigabit connection on my machine And I'm not having any of the problems are talking about here, but apparently some people are So I've got the framing because this is a direct connection between my 10 gigabit card and the 10 gigabit card in my Zen server and I've got an MTU of 9,000 which allows more bits essentially to be put in each frame of the network that's sent Now what they said it becomes a problem is you should end up seeing a bunch of delayed or denied clusters When it's running this is up and running. I just ran this tool It is not saying and until I ran was net status M. So to give you some statistics on The network itself so I haven't seen this problem But apparently some people have and it causes under high load a Lot of performance issues and degradation like I said, I have not seen this a few people actually asked me specifically if I'd seen it I have not my system even though it's still u5 is not experienced this but this is one of the things that they Added as a update so you can follow this if you're experiencing that problem Well, this is probably one of those pulling your hair up moments for slow reads And I may have experience on the NFS side I've not seen it on the ice because he said it all but I know on NFS. I've seen some issues When you're storing things on NFS from other Linux machines, so maybe it'll fix that in the future I don't usually run it. I've only run NFS as a some testing and when I'm dumping files I did notice a little slower Samba seems to work better than NFS for dumping file shares across when you're connecting Linux boxes to Freenast that's just my experience. I believe it has something to do with the synchronous right I've looked into the issue a long time ago But I haven't experienced this problem, but they're working on a fix for it if you are trying to sort that out So that's an interesting bug This one is a little bit interesting As I've actually seen this before now. This has been observed when two customers who accidentally turned on DC role while joined active directory when the DC role name service switches to 1 2 7 oh 1 turning off domain controller services To does not restore to a proper state the reason I don't see this very often, but I have seen it is Mostly when we join things to an active directory server We don't remove them from it But I do know I have seen when our testing server when I tried to remove from active directory It caused all kinds of errors and the machine got broken and we were playing with the DC and like I said We were doing some of the testing so it's kind of an edge case But if you're removing and taking things off or in this case, it seems like making the machine itself a DC It does not properly rebuild resolve.com. So that's not our fix that they have in there, which is definitely good Use Freenast specific fork of IO cage IO cage is something I've been learning a lot more about. It's the jail system within Freenast It's very similar to like a container system and they've been doing a lot of updates to it I'm gonna be working on a video on how it works But it's once you learn kind of the basics of IO cage It is a very powerful tool to allow your Freenast and some of those extra CPU cycles You may not be using or in the case of myself like I use it to run syncing directly on Freenast You put things in these cages for both security and importability to make them easy to manage As their own system and not interfere directly with the Freenast operating system because they're running in a jail in there Very similar to virtualization, but a little bit different You can go Google the difference between jails and containers and you'll get the same idea that it's it's very Different in terms of compared to virtualization jails are very lightweight very simple It's just like containers are jails and containers being very similar But virtualization being very different because you're virtualizing time operating system So go ahead and if you're interested in digging more in there But they are I am going to be doing some more videos on IO cage And this was a problem in the beta versions of the 11 to Understanding which version of IO cage it was using so that's I'm glad that they're working a lot towards that This one's a little odd to me encrypt cloud credentials Apparently if I understood this properly from the command line You were able to get an unencrypted copy of the cloud credentials I mean I receive someone's at root level of your system. You have some other issues, but It's important To encrypt these so I Probably thought that was interesting that if you access the dv file directly You would be able to see the secret key that connects your cloud credentials to the buckets and it's not been fixed and encrypted So yeah, there's definitely an issue Why they chose to store it that way but you know mistakes sometimes get made and now they're being stored now This does not like I said represent some it's not exposed to the public internet But it is exposing it for people who have access to your database But at the same time if they have root level access to the database that controls your free NAS You probably have some other issues as well Make sure you encrypt all that and I'm glad that this database is getting encrypted Finally an update to samba to address all the august cvs This brings us up to date with the version of samba so we can close out some of the Issues on there is there's been some interesting denial of service attacks Against the samba protocol. So it's important that these updates get loaded Most of them don't result in in terms of with free NAS like they do in windows leading to an exposure, but they do Create a lot of denial service and denial of service or causing some of the crash is The particular bug that is the catalyst often for getting into the systems and Going that step further into actually turning into a real exploit But they did have they covered quite a few of these cvs right here with the latest version samba So it's a really good reason to update to the latest version if you're using samba at all to the u6 Well, I'll leave a link below to the entire list because maybe there's other things in here that are really important to you There's all kinds of other Things they did which is great. They're always progressing always working further If you do find a bug starting a forums issue a bug. This is how they get fixed Don't just complain about them, you know, be active and engaging with the community with these open source projects. All right, thanks Thanks for watching. If you like this video, go ahead and click the thumbs up Leave us some feedback below to let us know any details what you like and didn't like as well because we love hearing a feedback Or if you just want to say thanks, leave a comment If you want them to be notified of new videos as they come out go ahead and subscribe and the bell icon that lets YouTube know that you're interested in notifications. Hopefully they send them As we've learned with you too Anyways, if you want to contract us for consulting services You go ahead and hit laurance systems dot com and you can reach out to us for all the projects that we can do and help You we work with a lot of uh small businesses it companies even some large companies And you can farm different workout to us or just hire us as a consultant to help design your network Also, if you want to help the channel in other ways, we have a patreon We have affiliate links. You'll find them in the description You'll also find recommendations to other affiliate links and things you can sign up for on laurance systems dot com Once again, thanks for watching and i'll see you in the next video