The Minister of Information and Culture, Lam Mohamed, says Twitter has shown little enthusiasm towards the dialogue it initiated to resolve issues leading to suspension of its operations. The Minister said this on Friday when he featured other Nigerian television authorities program, Good Morning Nigeria. The Minister reiterated the position operations of Twitter were suspended indefinitely because the platform was being used to promote the views of those who want the country to be divided. He said the action taken by the government was neither because Twitter deleted President Mohamed Bahri's message nor it shows Ghana above Nigeria as a preferred location for its regional headquarters.


I'm sorry to interrupt the member who will have the opportunity another time to continue his debate. It is time for member statements. I recognize the member from Windsor West. Thank You Madam Speaker. I rise to speak to a profoundly serious issue that is currently happening in my riding of Windsor West. The two largest shelters for people experiencing food and security and homelessness are facing massive COVID-19 outbreaks. Between the Salvation Army in the downtown mission there are 65 COVID-19 cases among guests and staff with more test pending. The City of Windsor's isolation and recovery center is full as of Tuesday this week. The downtown missions executive director Reverend Ron Dunn was left scrambling to find a temporary space shelter space for our most vulnerable in the face of a wicked winter storm that swept through our region Monday night. The mission receives no sustained funding from the province or the city. They raised four million from the community but this is not a sustainable practice especially during the pandemic. Shelters must be given the proper support to help vulnerable people survive during this pandemic. Many Ontarians have been left without any additional supports during the COVID-19 pandemic often living with food insecurity, precarious housing, chronic illness or a disability. Social assistance rates remain well below poverty level and recipients aren't receiving any additional support from this government to buy what is needed to keep them safe. Social assistance rates must be increased to reflect the rising housing and living costs across the province. Instead this conservative government is enabling evictions at record speed pushing more people into homelessness. We need an eviction ban. We must invest in helping and protecting those that are being left behind in this pandemic. Member statements. I recognize a member from Mississauga East Cooksville. Thank you very much speaker. This Valentine's Day Mississauga's very own Hazel McAllian turned 100 years young. Hurricane Hazel even at 100 years old remained an unstoppable force and an engaged contributor in her community. From her earliest days in in the office Hazel was a remarkable leader. In 1979 the newly elected Mayor McAllian led the city of Mississauga through the events of the shocking derailment of a CP train and corresponding explosions that released deadly liquid chlorine requiring 200,000 homes to be evacuated but resulted in no casualties. She has had and continues to have a lasting impact on what makes Mississauga such a great place to live and work. Hazel's leadership is apparent through her ongoing mentorship of new parliamentarians such as myself inspiring me to be a better leader communicator and public servant for the people of Mississauga and Ontario. I am privileged to have had many great talks with Hazel who is always happy to share her wisdom and experience. I'm certain and I speak not only myself when I wish one of Ontario's finest a very happy birthday and many happy returns of the of the day. Thank you. Thank you very much. Member statements? The member for Windsor to come see. Thank you Speaker. When I get back to my office this week I had a number of Christmas cards in my mailbox and they came in after we broke for the holidays. Now I sent cards to the Premier and key cabinet ministers back in December and those cards I wrote all I want for Christmas is funding for the next planning phase for a new regional hospital in Windsor and Essex County. Speaker in case those Christmas cards were never passed along to the Premier and key cabinet ministers from their constituency offices I'll put the issue back on the table again this morning. About 10 years ago we saw the need and began the planning for a new regional hospital. We knew the band-aids and temporary fixes we kept paying for wouldn't do for the long term. Committees were struck, a location was chosen, the Health Ministry approved funding for phase one. In December of 2017 the previous Liberal government approved moving us to phase two but didn't allocate the funding. Speaker since the Ford government was elected we've answered a ton of questions but have yet to receive the funding and hasn't been approved. The ask is simple ten million dollars to move ahead with the essential hospital planning process. Speaker since there are no public consultations on the spring budget this is as public as it gets I call in the government to finally recognize the need and commit the necessary funding for this in Ontario's spring budget. Thank you the next member statement the member for Ottawa West Nippian. Well thank you speaker it's an honour to rise today for my first statement of 2021 to share a truly heartwarming story from my riding of Ottawa West Nippian that displays the Ontario spirit. Debbie Abfalter owner of senior solutions in Ottawa started the seniors in isolation Facebook group encouraging members to write to seniors in the area that are feeling increasingly isolated during the pandemic. Everyone loves receiving a surprise letter and that was certainly the case for some of my constituents at Stirling Park Retirement Community. Bob Ford was one of those residents. Before long Mr Ford was writing back and even sent flowers to the family that had let him know that although they had never met they were thinking of him and doing what they could to keep him safe. He told CTV News Ottawa I didn't realize the significance of it and how much I enjoyed it. More than 6000 Ottawa area seniors have received cards so far. Let's keep it going. I encourage everyone who sees this to reach out to a senior in their community and let them know that you care. If you'd like to send a card you can get in touch with Debbie and cards etc for seniors in isolation through her email Debbie at seniors dash solution dot com. Thank you for your work demonstrating the Ontario spirit. Thank you very much. Member statements number for London North Centre. Speaker this government sluggish vaccine rollout has left seniors and their families in my riding feeling anxious uncertain and confused about when they will be able to access their vaccine. Some seniors have gone months without seeing their grandkids or loved ones. They've sacrificed followed public health advice and now they deserve answers. This government talks about protecting the vulnerable and yet seniors are finding it impossible to obtain basic information such as when will they be eligible for the vaccine. How will they be contacted and where will they get their shot. Too many of these questions remain unanswered. One of my constituents Myrna asked me to think about how seniors suffer from many ailments that make them even more susceptible to COVID and others have pointed out the seniors with mobility issues are being forgotten. How will seniors with mobility issues obtain the vaccine. Will all vaccination centres be wheelchair accessible. Ben and Judy Goldberg who are 90 and 91 asked Jane Sims from the London Free Press how are they going to find us. Are we supposed to put a flag out front. Judy said they wonder if their age groups last minute addition to phase one was made just to shut down the criticism. On behalf of London seniors. I'm asking this government to finally release answers to these essential questions about the vaccine after months of enduring this pandemic often in isolation is the least this government can do for them. Thank you. Thank you very much. Member statements. The member for Ottawa South. Thank you very much. Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker.  Virtually everyone in this province medical officers of health municipal councils doctors nurses public health experts and even the government's own experts say paid sick days will save lives. That's the message they're sending. The majority of low wage workers workers with precarious work don't get paid sick days. So in 2018 when this government came in one of the first thing they did was take away a race minimum wage and take away equal pay for equal work and then they took away. Wait for it. Paid sick days. That was a mistake and we can now so see how clearly that was a mistake in this pandemic. It was a big mistake. People are struggling to make ends meet. They shouldn't have to decide between putting food on the table. And going to work sick on this side of the legislature. We're all agreed. We're all agreed that Ontarians need paid sick days. All of us. It's fair to workers. And most importantly it's going to save lives. Especially as we're heading into a third wave. My colleague from Don Valley East has put forward a bill just yesterday and I'm so proud to support that and I encourage all members of the legislature to support that. And I encourage the government to reverse its opposition to paid sick days for Ontarians. Thank you speaker. Thank you very much. The next member statement. The member for flamboral land. Thank you Mr. Speaker. This morning I want to recognize the incredible women nominated for the 2021 YWCA Hamilton's women of distinction awards. This year's awards are particularly significant because they shine a light on the extraordinary efforts of women who have shown courage throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Women have been disproportionately impacted by COVID. Women have been on the front lines of care and contact throughout the pandemic. The YWCA of Hamilton reimagined the award categories this year to acknowledge individuals on the front line of this battle. The awards recognize the courage of frontline workers, innovators, advocates, change makers, community champions, young trail blazers and everyday heroes. There is also a lifetime achievement award. There are 97 nominees this year representing a wide range of ages backgrounds and experiences. They are women who have shown courage and leadership on the front lines. They have improved and enriched the lives of others. The 2020 award ceremony was held a year ago just before our world was turned upside down by COVID. The event was one of the last large gatherings in the city before everything was shut down. But this year in keeping with COVID protocols the awards are going online. All of the nominees deserve recognition for their contributions to their communities and their courage in the face of challenges caused by the pandemic. Thank you very much. Member for Algoma Manitoulin. Thank you Speaker and to the good people of Algoma Manitoulin. I left Algoma Manitoulin on Sunday and left with a list of priorities. Some of the priorities that my leader Andrew Horvath and our caucus had been coming forward. Some of them included paid sick days, the time to CARAC, more than a visitor, a return to school plan and surprisingly this was the priority of the government to present legislative reform, a non-substantive motion which catch this which means it enables the standing committee to sit while the legislature is recess or adjourn. It gives the government house leader the chance to start on Wednesdays from 3 p.m. to 1 p.m. and for the deferral slips to be delivered from where I stand to the clerk's table. God forbid there was a tripping hazard there that would happen. Those are the priorities of this government. We didn't talk about the real priorities that you have been relaying to me in regards to small businesses and tourism, them losing 95% of their clientele in their business. We didn't talk about a PSW recruitment program. We didn't talk about northern shortages in regards to doctors. We didn't talk about the pandemic and long-term care homes. We didn't talk about the northern highways and the fact that people are dying on the roads. We didn't talk about broadband. We didn't talk about autism services. We didn't talk about the mental health or opioid crisis or disability, WSIB, ODSP and OW workers. It's all about priorities folks. This government doesn't have them. Thank you. The next statement, the member for Peterborough Co-Ortham. Thank you, Speaker. With all the focus we've had on COVID-19, it would be very easy for us to forget about some of the random acts of kindness that still occur. On January 14th of this year, one such act of kindness occurred in a hamlet in my riding. A neighbor spotted a deer that had wandered out onto the ice on Lower Bacorn Lake. And as I'm sure you can guess, the deer fell through. Rob, a local resident, grabbed his kayak and a rope and ventured out onto the ice and eventually into open water to rescue the deer. Rob was able to rope the deer and pull her alongside his kayak and paddle back to the ice. After repeatedly struggling to get onto the ice on her own for almost an hour, Rob decided he needed to lift her out himself. So he climbed out of his kayak, laid down on the ice to distribute his weight and pulled the deer up. Of course, the deer was exhausted because it had been in cold water for that long struggling to get out. So he picked her up and carried her to shore, dried her with towels, and his wife wrapped the deer in warm blankets. After resting for about three hours, the deer stood up and was on her way. It's nice to know that throughout all of this stress of a pandemic, there are still people like Rob willing to help simply because they can. Thank you. The next member's statement. The member for Perth Wellington. Thank you, Speaker. Speaker, last fall I recognized Ontario Agriculture Week. I thank farmers and agri-food workers for growing some of the best food in the world. This morning, I want to acknowledge that many are struggling. There's a growing conversation around mental health and agriculture. As someone who farmed for a number of years, I can say that mental health is not always a familiar conversation. However, mental health affects every one of us and National Survey of Farmer Mental Health found 35% of farmers surveyed met the criteria for depression. 45% reported high levels of stress. 58% met the criteria for anxiety. But Speaker, many organizations are supporting them. They include the Perth County Federation of Agriculture, the Wellington County Federation of Agriculture, and the Ontario Federation of Agriculture. Just to name a few, I also want to acknowledge the tremendous work of CHMA here in Perth and CHMA Waterloo Wellington. These organizations are working around the clock to help those who are in crisis. Our government is also supporting them and I want to thank the Associate Minister of Mental Health and Addictions for his leadership on this issue. Last year, the Listerol Agriculture Society launched the Farmers Toolbox. It's an online resource created to connect farmers through local mental health resources. I would encourage anyone who is struggling to visit their website, thefarmerstoolbox.com. I want to thank everyone who made this project possible, including Elana Connybear and Steve Goulson and others. To every farmer in Ontario who is struggling, please know that you are not alone. We hear you, we support you, we thank you, and we want the best for you. Thank you, Speaker. That concludes our member statements this morning. I recognize the leader of the opposition on a point of... Thanks very much, Speaker. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent for the House to observe a moment of silence to pay tribute to the hundreds of Ontarians who have come to COVID-19 since December the 3rd the last time we were in the legislature. Leader of the opposition is seeking the unanimous consent of the House to observe a moment of silence to pay tribute to the hundreds of Ontarians who have succumbed to COVID-19 since December 3rd. Agreed? Agreed. I'll ask the members to rise. Thank you. Members may take their seats. Member for Don Valley East has a point of order. Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to move a motion regarding the immediate passage of Bill 247, the paid personal emergency now act. Member for Don Valley East is seeking the unanimous consent of the House for the immediate passage of his private members Bill 247. Agreed? No. Point of order, the member for Kitchener's Centre. Thank you Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to move a motion regarding the immediate passage of Bill 196, the senior's advocate act, to help better protect Ontario seniors from COVID-19. Member for Kitchener's Centre is seeking the unanimous consent of the House to move a motion regarding the immediate passage of Bill 196, the senior's advocate act to help better protect Ontario seniors from COVID-19. Agreed? No. Heard and all. Member for Essex. Thank you Speaker on a point of order. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to immediately pass private members motion 136, calling on the Ford Government to provide assistance for small businesses not eligible for other supports. Member for Essex is seeking unanimous consent of the House to immediately pass private members motion 136, calling on the Ford Government to provide assistance for small businesses not eligible for other supports. Agreed? No. Heard and all. Member for Brampton Centre has a point of order. Speaker, seeking a point of order here, I seek unanimous consent to immediately pass private members motion 139, calling on the Ford Government to address inadequate pay for PSWs and other healthcare sector workers. Member for Brampton Centre is seeking unanimous consent of the House to immediately pass private members motion 139, calling on the Ford Government to address inadequate pay for PSWs and other health sector workers. Agreed? No. Heard and all.


give us better energy. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech. It's the five o'clock block on a Thursday. And we have our old friend Guillermo Sabate. He joins us from Florida. Hi, Guillermo. Hi, Jay. And thank you for having me. Absolutely. Let's talk about training. Let's talk about electrical infrastructure, grids and the like. And particularly in the shadow of what's going on in Ukraine and Russia, where our friend Putin has, you know, he's unleashed a huge, may I say, Blitzkrieg into Eastern Ukraine and killing people now. But in exchange of messages today with Joe Biden, he essentially threatened nuclear war. He said, don't mess with me. I'm a powerful and nuclear country. That's not comforting. But at the same time, you know, before he gets to nuclear, he does a lot of cyber attacks. He knows how to do it. He's got, you know, he's got his whole Internet Research Agency over there, which have been, you know, spreading misinformation during elections and otherwise. And they are responsible for a lot of the misinformation that's on social media and in the election rhetoric. So it's very troublesome and he will do that. Furthermore, I want to add, Guillermo, before we get started on this, that there was a story on 60 Minutes on Sunday about electric, electronic microwaves. It's the Havana syndrome. And up till now, we weren't sure that it was actually happening to American officials, State Department, Foreign Service and the like. But now it seems clear with a number of cases, reports and examination by medical as well as Foreign Service personnel and their families that our people have been attacked with microwaves. And that's just another way you can cross borders. It's another way you can do, you know, under the hood type attacks on American personnel, American institutions. So that means that our utilities should be concerned because they are, I don't want to say vulnerable, but their position in the economy, their position in the way our society works is so important. And without them, we are in terrible shape. So we have to be very careful. We have to develop sustainability and resilience to deal with all manner of things, especially including aggressive cyber attacks. So I assume you agree, but tell me your thoughts about that. Well, it's reflecting on what happened years back when the Ukraine, when they had those two cyber attacks, right? Those were deeply studied by our industry here and by Idaho National Labs. And the Ukraine at some point even asked for our help to go over there and be able to do forensics to understand what happened to them. And they were doing a lot of things that we stopped doing more than a decade ago. And a lot of that is as a result of the NERC, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. It's that regulating body in our industry. And in there, they have a lot of standards, but some of them specifically address critical infrastructure protection. And in there has to do with cybersecurity. So there is a very resilient, robust work practices when it comes to maintaining cybersecurity for those assets, right? And along with that is it's not just strong regulations and standards, but there's also auditing in place and there's also a lot of training that goes on. So thankfully, I can say that we're a lot better positioned than, say, Ukraine was back then. Ukraine has, the Ukraine has definitely strengthened their cybersecurity tactics. And that's why you see it, they have not fallen victim to another attack in their power grid anyway. And that's because they implemented a lot of the same work practices that we've had here already. And which are still developing and improving. Now here, it's a constant never-ending battle to deal with a moving dynamic threat, right? One thing I do know is that every utility is right now at a heightened state of awareness and alert for any kind of cyber attack. We're being very careful with not just the utilities, but also all of these supporting businesses like us, for example. Very hyper aware of any kind of phishing attack. And that's usually where they get in. It's usually a phishing attack. Well, you have to be careful about that. So tell me about your support of the utilities. Was it HSI? And you have industrial skills and training and compliance. Tell me what you do and what the effort would be to make yourself hardened against cyber attacks. That's a great question actually. And we have a few examples. There are a few companies, specifically a smaller municipalities or smaller co-ops. The ones tend to be a little bit more vulnerable. Those larger utilities like the Duke Energy and the next era, they're pretty buttoned up, right? And they've done a great job of maintaining their cybersecurity and some standards. But those smaller munis and those co-ops are the ones usually need help as a contra-IP consultant. And we provide a lot of advisory services when it comes to helping them, for example, comply with a lot of those standards. Ultimately, we don't do the IT work for them. We just kind of help guide them towards that direction and then it's up to them to then go ahead and apply those IT standards and meet that compliance. So that's one example, right? Just in the IT realm. And the other one is also preparing personnel, specifically system operations personnel, the ones that operate the control rooms, just to be more aware and be better prepared to be able to identify a threat or even manage or mitigate, you know, and a type that's already been, you know, law and stress already happening. Yeah. Well, you know, it's different than it was. I mean, I remember, gee, it must be 10 years ago, but the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum took a trip to the various unions that were involved in training their members to install solar. So they had all built these solar training facilities and hired people to teach the young journeymen how to install solar. And that was interesting because, you know, we saw, I guess you would say it was the cutting edge of solar installation, but we're not talking about that now. We're talking about software. We're talking about much more sophisticated training and equipment and analyses. And my question to you is, who's available? You know, this is the time of the great resignation. This is the time of people leaving the jobs for reasons that are not exactly clear. We're in a, you know, what do you want to call it? We're in a kind of strange moment in terms of the jobs, the job market, the applicants for the jobs and so forth, and for that matter, for going to college and learning. So my question is, if I said to you, if I'm Joe Biden and I called you up one day and I said, Guillermo, I need your help. I want to train a generation of people that will harden our utilities, our energy systems all over the country. And I want to start right now. I want to finish it as soon as possible. I want to get all the recruits I can get. I want to take them to the institutions that can train them best. I want to expose them to the best teachers in the country. And I want to teach them all kinds of sophisticated software and hardware issues. What would you say? Two different approaches, right? Right now, and funny enough, my wife works for Florida International University. She's an executive director of development, right, for the foundation. And one of the things you're noticing is that there is definitely a gap in that type of like personnel in the workforce, that type of experience. The other issue is that IT professionals in the cybersecurity side, they're not even finishing school. They're getting recruited right in the middle of the program. So the need is so dire that they're offering them jobs before they even get to graduate. So that's one definite. The pipeline of graduates is not at capacity. And we really need to recruit more people to do that kind of work. And what they're paying these kids, because you know, tell me they're kids, I'm an old guy now, my 50s. But these kids don't feel bad. Don't feel bad. Wait till you get to be my age and you can feel bad. Stuff already hurts. But they are, they are, they're recruiting these kids and they're giving these amazing starting salaries, right? So they haven't gotten their undergrad degree yet, but they're putting them to work. They're even getting to the point where they're beginning some programs in high school, a vocational program in high school. It's almost like a trade, right? Like they have, they say like a line worker, for example. So that's really one place to address the cap. We have a lot of professionals, right? Information management system professionals that do go to school, get their degrees, get their certifications. You know, those usually need the major project efforts. But the ones that do a lot of the hard work is where we're sort of short on. And as far as the training opportunity there, you know, it's, it's, it's quite big. Not just for universities, but for other, for example, office like mine and then even, even community colleges can get in on that all the way down to vocational programs in high schools. Well, what kind of pay are we talking about? You know, used to be, you know, you graduated from a local high school here in Hawaii and you got a job as a lineman. And that was the kind of job you could get. It was, it was a job that was coveted. But I don't think, I don't think that really covers the bases right now. We need more, we need somebody who is really akamai about, about software hardware, the like, and who is very creative, who can wear the black hat and the white hat and all the hats and go anywhere and sit there at three o'clock in the morning and figure it out. What's it worth? What kind of pay can I get? Well, I was hearing, I was hearing for professionals with a master's degree, they're well into those six fairs, just starting salary. Well, about 125, 140, 160 and that's in Miami numbers, right? So it is an expensive place to live. Some of the undergrads are starting up and anywhere between 50s to 90. I mean, and those numbers vary, right? Depending on where they work and what their skill set is and what they're going to be doing. So funny enough, because this week I was looking at a paid apprenticeship as a line worker for my oldest stepson. And he wants to get into the electric utility on the union side and a paid internship right now is starts you off in the mid to high 50s. So you're working and that's in a local contracting company here in Florida. It's not even the utilities, a contractor for the utility. So any of these jobs in the utilities are definitely coveted and they're still a shortage. They're just being very selective on who they hire, right? But they're there, their jobs are there and the need is there. Now, the other thing is that over the past 10 years, my observation, the utility companies have merged and consolidated. Their executives are moved around more than they were before. It's very corporate and very avant garde in many ways. And so if I get a job like this, I can expect to have many options and many moves from one part of the country to another from one company to another.  And I expect that would happen to these fellows and girls who are getting this high pay. It's not a matter of sitting at home. Well, the bizarre thing is that now they can actually sit at home and work for any company in the country. There may be requirements that force them to be somewhere physically because of the whole cybersecurity aspect that they have to be within that six wall perimeter, which they call it. And those are some cases, but the majority of these jobs, they're mostly remote, so they can really work from anywhere. So it's interesting how times have changed and how the challenges are changing, but how we're also meeting those challenges is rather fascinating. I like a great career. Now, up to this point, we've been talking about hardening the system from cyber attack and all that, making it more efficient, more what's the word, invulnerable. But there's other things too that strike me. I mean, for example, it's the old story of you can't rely on infrastructure that's older than you are. I have to keep on building, especially when we're talking about electrical generation and distribution. So for example, it seems to me that there's a lot of opportunity, or should be, a lot of opportunity for engineering and design, where a utility company comes to me and says, look, we need to put a new facility in somewhere. We need to build out a new grid somewhere. We need to design and install some kind of distributed system, and we need you to come in here, use your skill, use your design training, design capacity, in engineering, maybe architecture, in creative ways. And that's not necessarily dealing with hardening against cyber attack. That's just building out a system. Am I right? Well, right. Building out the system is the beginning. So usually with the design part of the project, usually you have a certain number of engineers that are involved in that. But for the one or two engineers, maybe three engineers that are involved in designing that particular piece of that one asset, you're going to employ maybe 20, 30 field personnel for the duration of that project. So really the need is in the actual labor that does the work of installing all this equipment, from the construction portion of it to the commissioning, and then you have the job I used to have, which was commissioning substations and figuring out all the relay protection settings and then testing it and then putting it in service and troubleshooting and maintaining it. That's the ongoing work. So it's a whole body of people, a whole army of people that are employed to just use all this. Now, when they install these devices, these facilities, even these stations, they themselves have a cybersecurity perimeter, which has, for example, badge and credential access. So it's very regulated and highly secure from a cybersecurity and even a physical security access, especially these transmission substations. And that's really in the main in Hawaii. I remember they had the same thing going on. I mean, no, whatever. No, they do. They do. You really have to have credentials. Let me go a step further though, Guillermo. And that is, we were talking before the show began about how jobs and manufacturing and entrepreneurship is coming back, because China is outpricing itself and transportation is so expensive. And we still have a trade war, unless we forget that trade war that Donald Trump started is still going on. Those tariffs are still in place. And so there's a tension. It affects trade. It affects import, export. So you were mentioning that there are companies that are being established, entrepreneurial activities in this country. There's R&D happening. There's the design and manufacture of new devices. And when you think of energy, you maybe don't think of it right away. You think of a huge facility, but no, there's all kinds of little stuff too. High tech stuff. There's only that big little black boxes, inverters, for example. That's just one small example. And so it seems to me that there's a whole new area of study, of training, of opportunity for creative design, invention, manufacture of these high tech pieces of gear. Right. And outfits like Schreiter labs or GE, for example, they manufacture most of these hardware, usually in the US. And there were cyber security standards that looked into the whole threat of actually having chipsets that would already have malicious code or malicious access built into them. So that already was a concern, which was addressed. I mean, I'm sure there's equipment out there that got through that was bought somewhere and now it's in service somewhere. But usually that may get caught during one of the audits and it's removed. But yeah, there's definitely opportunities here, especially as a lot of better minds of mind suspect that manufacturing, and that's sort of like even from raw goods all the way down to distribution, it's going to get more likely you'll see more than happening in the US, at least in Canada and the US. The thing about, yeah, I mean, if you put these two subjects together, there's a real benefit in doing it in the US for a point of view of national security. I remember a 60 minutes show a few years ago, where this utility, I think it was in the state of Texas, ordered some circuit boards from China. They gave them specifications and everybody knew what was requested and what supposed to be manufactured and the circuit boards arrived. And there was a little piggyback thing on the circuit board. And the guy who ordered it said, wait a minute, wait a minute, why is this piggyback? We didn't order this little piggyback chip that we now see on the circuit board. And you know, the problem is they could never figure out exactly what it was supposed to do. They only knew they didn't order it. So it could have been something really tricky and dangerous. So if we manufacture that in this country, we're not likely to have that experience. Or we may have better control over that, right? And that's really what we'll ultimately look at. And then it just used to be a function of cost, right? Manufacturing overseas was just a function of cost. And now that's becoming the difference between doing it there and doing it here, becoming smaller and smaller. So it's going to come to a point that it's not going to be worth it. And so you may see more of that built here. So that's really what drives it, right? I mean, but ultimately, I mean, we saw what happened during the whole the beginnings of the pandemic just by just getting masks, or it was almost impossible, getting materials, getting all these supplies. And we saw how hard that was and none of it was made here. So a lot of companies sprung up and they began to manufacture their own stuff here, right? And quickly, you know, they met the need. But as soon as they met the need, you know, production in China picked up and then, you know, they were they were competing with China at some point and they held their own for a while. But you can't compete with that kind of scale, I guess. Well, we've got to learn to find those places in the market where we can compete. And we've got to incentivize kids. May I use that term to compete? And when I say incentivize, I think the government has the power to incentivize. It has the power to encourage kids to study a particular subject, like energy, for example, or software. It can do that with scholarships and with all kinds of incentives. And that's what it needs to do. You know, and one thing we've been discussing, and this is something that I've been bothering me for like the last decade, right? It seems that a lot of the legislators that are legislating policies on energy, whether it's renewable or not, it sometimes seems like they don't have the comprehensive knowledge of what it is that they're doing. They don't have to know the details, but they at least need to know an overall picture. So, and maybe I'm naive when I say that, but it seems sometimes that they haven't consulted with the engineers running the system, right, that to figure out how it actually works before they legislate some of these mandates, some of these laws, some of these goals, right? I think that applies.  No, no, and they've gotten better. They've gotten more educated and they understand how the grid works. But sometimes, you know, that's like a reaction to fail policies in most occasions, right? That's what I've seen. So I really hope that changes. Well, we certainly have that in Hawaii. I mean, you can have people who are, they've spread very thin over policy issues and they don't know the technology and they don't know how to learn the technology and yet they're responsible to implement, to design and implement policy. And so, at the very least, they have to go out and find brain trusts that will help them. They have to be able to pick up the phone and get, you know, advice in a more complex world. This is more of a challenge, but it's also more of an obligation. You can't make policy without knowing what you're doing. Absolutely. So the other thing I want to mention to you is troubleshooting. In our studio, in our broadcast experience, the most important thing is troubleshooting. What happens when something goes wrong?  You have to be hardened against, you know, weather and natural disasters and we can expect more bad weather with climate change. So that's a whole different area of training, isn't it? Troubleshooting actually requires more than some of the other areas we've been talking about. Well, I did quite a bit of troubleshooting when I was a field engineer, right? You usually got called at two or three in the morning to go fix something. Stations in the dark is because some sort of critter, poor critter got up in the bus work and, you know, and you had a fault and a thing blacked out, right? So, and then a lot of times I had to go out there and figure out what happened and hopefully under an hour you're restored. Now, from a grid perspective and in a greater scale, a lot of the training that we do involves the philosophy of operating to an n minus one contingency. What that usually means, that means basically you need to be able to withstand your most severe single contingency, meaning that the worst-case scenario happens, you need to be ready to be able to write through that and operate seamlessly and be able to sustain that kind of impact. And that's how the whole grid works, right? They have a system that actually runs a contingency analysis every five minutes and what it does, it takes an entire model of the system and it takes one element out of the time, runs a power flow and then it sees what happens, okay, what gets overloaded if I take this one out and it does it to every element in their system. So it's pretty extensive computing, right, that goes on and that's from a greater scale, right, when it comes to the grid. Now, of course, coming down to the scenario, the studio, right, I mean, one of the things, if I were an engineer, I would just have like backup systems because a lot of times you may not be able to fix a problem quickly enough on the fly while you're broadcasting. So having a hot standby backup system is usually the way I would do it and that's kind of what we train a lot of as well, right, as many different philosophies and but those philosophies are things that we train on a bit in the industry and also as companies that support the industry. Yeah, and it gets more complicated as we go forward because, you know, the curve during the day, the demand curve during the day can change, it doesn't have to be the same hours every day or week and you've got to be prepared. Yeah, we do. But it is fascinating work and I could spend hours talking about this because everybody enjoys it. Well, I want you to, you know, we fashion this as, you know, training for better energy and I hope you can do a regular series of shows and breaking everything we talked about down to component parts and make it educational for these, may I say kids again, these kids who may want to study this and make big bucks and help the country remain, you know, secure. Well, I'm grateful and I certainly welcome the opportunity and again, thank you for presenting me, presenting us with that opportunity so we happily do it. Well, you know, I was going to say that what we are talking about is national. It certainly goes beyond the shores of Hawaii, it's national, but it's more than that too. It's global. I mean, for example, if I have a generating system, some of them in this country are really old and hopefully the infrastructure money will come and help those systems, you know. But if I have a system that's really old, it might have been made in Germany, you know, 50 or 60 years ago. And we want spare parts, say again. No, it's like some of your units don't run on diesel, bunkers, oil and that sort of thing. So I see that. So the question is if, you know, the the SJ67 ball bearing unit breaks, okay, where are you going to get a replacement? Well, I've seen that done with a manufacturer on site and they had a whole machine shop with some of these older power plants before they finally got the commission where they had their job was to just manufacture parts. Well, I think that's useful and, you know, some people were, yeah, well, why not? I mean, in fact, it's kind of encouraging to find that they have a shop that can do that. And why do I imagine that the people in that shop have had lots of experience in engineering in the service and the military, where they may have learned how to use that equipment. And one thing I had noticed though, and some of these power plants, right, especially those older fossil fuel power plants, they they're not like the combined cycle plants, which are more modern, right? And we'll get into more of that in other segments. But they were usually just they weren't young, young machinists that they tended to be up closer to retirement. So once once we're gone, it's you're going to be hard pressed to find somebody that's going to replace them. So that's another thing. So again, we're also sort of lacking in the traits really are as an industry and and also as an overall workforce. Really are lacking in the traits. Let's go. Strikes me that you have a whole generation. I mean, it's it may not be easy to rope them in, but a whole generation of these machinists, these engineers who understand, you know, the equipment, the materials, the design of equipment that ranges over decades and decades. And if when they retire, they're a tremendous force, right? Because yeah, well, you know, Guillermo, you can call them get pick up the phone and say, look, we're establishing a unit to train you to train them. Come on around and we'll give you an opportunity you never had before. Some of them I want to do it, but others have done really well with the 401k and pensions and they'll be like, no, I'm done. And I try to hire some of the retirees. And and I'm telling you, like more often than not that I thank you, but no, I'm going to cruise. And you know, that's, you know, they work really hard to retire and a lot of them just don't want to come back. So no, it's really, it is a matter of national security because as time goes by, the war, if you will, between cyber attack and cyber attack will grow. The equipment will get older. The demand will get more will increase and get more sophisticated. The use of electrical energy in the country will increase in every way. And it will be more and more difficult to figure out how to do it efficiently. And that that once again, this reinforces that reinforces the expectation that we need to have more investment in STEM fields, right? Science, technology, engineering and math. And it's, it's, it's we've, we are possibly falling behind, right? And so we need to get re sharp on our focus on that particular aspect of education. And I think it's really interesting that you could have a company centered anywhere or centered nowhere, you know, a distributed Zoom connection company of experts anywhere or nowhere in the country that that is trading on its expertise. And they could service utilities and companies like HSI from anywhere in the country or for that matter of the world. The United States could become the center for this worldwide. Oh yeah. And, and especially now where there's, there's the bandwidth reach is getting everywhere, right? Even in developing nations, you still get good bandwidth in most places. So, so the availability is to be able to deliver that training is there, much like you and I are doing right now, right? And even in the virtual space, I mean, eventually we'll get to the virtual space where, where it'll be a whole different world. It'll be like you're then think of it as telepresence and you're there viewing the facility like if you're there. One day we'll get there soon. Yeah, no, it's true. I mean, we have a company that has a show with us which does medicine that way. And you know, that was fits and starts for a long time, but now it's pretty much established. You can talk to a doctor anytime and the doctor can say let me see that show it to me, show it to me. The same thing, you know, with maybe the technology has to move a little more, but so he's out of generator set and somebody is looking at the generator set through his camera and saying, okay, turn that wrench a little more to the right and maybe you'll have it or put those wires together. Let me get a close up. And so you can do maintenance and you can do the repair from anywhere to anywhere. That's coming. Right. There's certain tasks that you're going to have to have hands on and boots on the ground, but when it comes to the leadership and advisement, you may not need a person there at every site. You may have one person managing different sites remotely. And just following up with the labor that's there, the skilled labor at Sir and the and the and the experts that are there, but the manager doesn't really have to be there anymore. So, so they're, you know, they, they can be, they can be deployed, you know, remotely for different places and have a greater scope without actually physically happening to be there.  What's your advice to them? Where do you start? What foot do you put out first? How do you get into this? What can you expect and why? Okay. So if they're looking at it from a cybersecurity IT perspective, right, it, it's trying to get into that early, even as early as high school, right, start, start, start working on that, start nurturing that knowledge and interest in high school. College is still a good viable or no route and option. I mean, it's, it's getting a four-year degree in information management or computer science and even specific training on cybersecurity is available. And it's there, right? Also, if on the trade side, on the trade side, there's definitely opportunities, right, for associate of science degrees, all in the same, also in the IBEW, SC Union side, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which now includes sisters too. They, you know, that, that is a definite avenue that they can also pursue because that also includes a cybersecurity aspect of it when it comes to physical security. And then ultimately, right, just something as simple as a vocational aspect, right? And, and, and that ties into the first point I made about high school. I mean, it really, there is a vocational side to all this. Of course, that all depends on their individual schools in the school district, right? So they may have to work with either a magnet program or work with the administration and their schools to see that type of program and funding is available, right? But the opportunities are there. Now, on, on a different side of this industry, there is a definite need for, for the skilled labor on like the line workers, the technicians, the electricians, the, the sub station journeymen, that all of that is, is, is there is a shortage. And, and, but right now also competition again, it's fierce because of the fact that they're, they're trying to hire the best people. And, and, and they, they often get really, really, really selective, right? What, in that whole interview process. So that's something to keep in mind. So just my advice to them was to be prepared for, for that, that sort of interview and that sort of a work up towards just getting that interview or, or that apprenticeship really for the, for the skilled labor side. Yeah. And the unions have a role to play here. You know, where when I made my, my trip with the energy policy forum 10, 15 years ago, they were really focused on the plumbing end and the electrician end of installing, you know, solar and water heaters and that, but they can go much further and they can train, train these kids to do anything and they can encourage them. They can give them classes. They can give them remote classes, you know, courses online and all that. Yeah. And you don't need a computer science degree to, to, to understand how, how some of these systems work, right? And, and so, so the opportunities are there, right? And they, a lot of them don't require a four-year degree, right? So, so that can easily be had as a, as an AS degree, associate of science or even vocational programs. So, so that's all within reach, right? And there's different tiers of employment and demands for labor all over the place when it comes to this particular industry. There are many opportunities and there's a place for everyone, you know, in that hierarchy of, of management and labor. Okay. I hope you'll drill down on, on these things one by one and get into the substance of them and, and actually do a little training on the show, so to speak. Sure. Sure. Sure. I would welcome that. Yeah. I'd be happy to. Guillermo Sabotier, HSI, who is into both training and compliance in the energy industry. I look forward to more with you and I really appreciate you coming on the show, Guillermo. Oh, thank you and I appreciate you inviting me and having me on the show. As they say, alohan. Alohan. Thank you again.


Hello and welcome to This Week in the City. Highlights brought to you by the Public Relations, Media and Marketing Department with the City of Columbia. I'm your host, Alicia Utsi. This week in the City, the Planning Commission will meet on Monday, April 1st at 5.15 pm at City Hall. For agenda items, visit our website at columbiasc.net. On Tuesday, April 2nd, Columbia City Council will hold a work session at 2pm and a City Council evening meeting at 6pm. For agenda items, please visit our website at columbiasc.net and you can also watch the meeting live streaming on our website on April 2nd. As we move through the week on Thursday, the Office of Business Opportunities will host a workshop overcoming the challenges of business growth. The workshop will begin at 6pm and end at 8pm and it will be held at 1509 Lady Street at the Lady Street Suites. For information about the workshop and how you can participate, contact the Office of Business Opportunities at 545-3960. On Friday, join us for Coffee with a Cop at the Hardee's on Rosewood Drive. Come out Friday morning to Hardee's and have a cup of coffee with a local police officer. And as we roll into the weekend, on Saturday, Columbia Water along with partners will host a one-hour spring sale for rain barrels and compost bins from 11am to 12pm at 1914 Wiley Street. Well, that wraps up this week. We hope you have a great week in the city.


The next phase in the construction management system design and development is system monitoring and updating. For every objective, there must be a way to measure accomplishment of the objective. The work monitoring method provides for evaluating work performance, staffing and construction progress and for making staffing adjustments when necessary. It also provides data for updating standards. Construction management performance on each contract should be monitored and controlled by the engineer in charge. Higher levels of management should monitor manpower usage and work accomplishment through exception reports and summaries. A work monitoring procedure should provide only needed, timely information appropriate to each level of management. Excessive reporting should be avoided. Monitoring of construction management usage requires a comparison of planned manpower with that actually used. Proper data collection is important. Assigning qualified individuals and developing well-organized data collection is critical. The most effective work monitoring can be done at the engineer in charge level. Control by higher levels will generally be too late. Summaries and exception reports should be furnished to the district's and central office. Detailed reports are available at the contract office if district or central office personnel have questions. Work monitoring reports should be prepared at time intervals that facilitate effective management. For example, a monthly report will be of little value for controlling manpower usage for minor contracts that last only 30 to 90 days. Manpower reports must be timely. The time lapse between the close of the reporting period and completion of the report for review by the engineer in charge is critical. A week or less is ideal. The selected frequency should also coincide with that of other construction reports. If current construction reports are prepared on a four-week period basis, then the frequency of manpower usage reports should be compatible. The work reporting process should be compatible with existing documentation. The contract status information, such as contractor's earnings and contract time, is already available in current construction reports. The only additional information required is actual manpower usage. The actual man hours used may be reported by individual planning activity. Alternatives include reporting by planning activities, staffing activities, or one activity per contract. The use of planning activities provides more detailed information but requires more effort than the other methods. The level of detail could be reduced even further by reporting by contract. On larger contracts, the lack of detail will make identifying staffing problems difficult. On small contracts, the inspector will be doing a wider variety of tasks, making reporting to a number of activities difficult. The use of only one reporting activity on minor contracts is recommended. Monitoring requires evaluation of the man hours used and the work accomplished. One method includes comparing the actual man hours used versus the total planned. Another involves comparing the contractor earnings versus the total contract cost. A third method involves comparing the percent of contract time used. Man hours comparisons may be tabulated by planning activity, staffing activity, contract, or a group of contracts. In the reporting and monitoring procedure, manpower data are tabulated to provide for evaluation and control of manpower usage and work performance. Procedures and forms for work reporting and monitoring must be developed. Procedures must be developed for controlling by activity or contractor operation and monitoring and controlling at the engineer in charge level. Man hours used on each contract must be reported accurately. Reports may be daily or weekly, but the man hours used on each activity should be recorded daily for accuracy. Existing timesheets may be modified to collect the man hour information. The man hours used must be tabulated to prepare the manpower status report for the engineer in charge. The activity ledger is a worksheet for summarizing the man hours. A manpower status report provides the engineer in charge with a summary of the man hours used. The level of detail in the reports depends on the number of activities selected. Two procedures have been developed. One is for staffing activities. The other covers the use of planning activities. In both instances, key bid items are used. The district should be alerted to potential overruns or underruns. Exception reports are submitted only when man hour usage varies from contractor progress by more than a pre-selected percentage, such as plus or minus 15% on each contractor's operation and 10% on the contract total. Only those operations where an exception occurs need be shown on the report. The type and number of contracts to be used can change in future years. Contract types should be reviewed annually to determine their continuing effectiveness. The relative importance of the types of contracts in the work program will most likely change. The contract types used for planning should be reviewed annually by the project staff and technical panel. Data from the final manpower status reports for contracts completed during the last year should be used to determine the number of contracts by type, the number of man hours used by contract type, and the total construction costs of each contract type. The anticipated work program should also be reviewed by contract type. The tabulation should show the number of contracts in each type to be let, and total estimated construction cost of each contract type. Contract types are used to group contracts according to their similarity of staffing needs. The relationships between the man hours used, the number of contracts completed, and the cost of those contracts will help to determine which types are significant. Work method improvements affect the planning activities and their units of measure. Planning activities should be reviewed annually to determine which activities require significant amounts of manpower and therefore should be used for planning purposes. Units of measure should be examined to see if each unit adequately relates the construction management work requirements to the scope and characteristics of each contract type. All procedures that will be used in the construction management system should be completed before developing updating procedures. The procedure for updating contract types should be completed before developing a procedure for updating planning activities and units of measure. Planning activities are used to define construction management work that must be performed by field construction personnel. Planning units of measure are used to relate the field construction management work requirements to the scope and characteristics of the contracts. Changes in the work program, specifications, and bid items may change the need for activities or units of measure. Planning activities and units of measure should be reviewed annually to ensure that current needs are met. The updating procedure should provide for evaluation of planning activities and units of measure by the project staff and the technical panel. Final manpower status reports should be used in evaluating activities. These reports can be from all contracts completed during the past year or a sampling of those contracts. The detail of data from the manpower status record will depend on the activities selected for monitoring. If planning activities were used, a tabulation of the data will identify the significant activities. If staffing activities or some other activity group were used for reporting, then the evaluation will be more subjective. Standard planning values must be reviewed periodically to ensure that they are valid for the current work program. Construction management requirements defined by standard planning values will not remain constant. Changes that may revise manpower requirements include changed work programs, improved work methods, and changed responsibilities of field construction personnel. The actual man hours used are available on the final manpower status reports. The level of detail will depend on the activities selected for monitoring. These data will be available for all completed contracts. Average data will be of little use without appropriate evaluation. In making this evaluation, you should consider a number of things. Were good management practices used? Was the contract completed on time? Was the contract staffed properly? The best way to evaluate the standard planning values is to review the current standard planning value computation sheets. Evaluate all of the assumptions and computations on each sheet. Review the standards of the modifiers at the same time. Methods for collecting information for use in the evaluation include actual man hours used from the final manpower status reports for all completed contracts, selective reporting, and work sampling. Obtaining data by planning activity can be done by selecting a number of typical contracts of each type. This simplifies reporting for the majority of contracts, but allows for collecting data for updating the standard planning values. If reporting of man hours used is by staffing activities or other activity groups rather than by planning activity, comparing the man hours used with the standard planning values would be more subjective. The variation in man hours used per activity will also occur on the selected contracts. The range should not be as wide on these carefully selected contracts as it would be on all contracts. Actual staffing and productivity can be checked by sampling. Observations of the numbers of department personnel and the work accomplished on comparable contracts with fairly identical contractor operations are underway can be made. Post-construction reviews can be held on selected contracts to evaluate staffing, the standards, and anything which affected the manpower requirements. Participants in the review could include the engineer in charge, the designer, and the contractor. Standard costs must be updated annually to allow for changes. Inflation, pay raises, and increases in fringe benefits all affect the standard costs. The same procedure used in developing standard costs may be used for updating. Review the computations and revise the data as required. Skill-level guidelines should also be updated periodically. Only significant changes need be considered. Skill-level guidelines should be reviewed when changes are made. Such changes include new work methods, new responsibilities, and new equipment. In this course, we have covered the procedures for system monitoring and updating. For every objective, there must be a way to measure accomplishment of the objective. The work monitoring method provides for evaluating work performance, staffing, and construction progress, and for making staffing adjustments when necessary. A work monitoring procedure should provide only needed, timely information. Excessive reporting and paperwork should be avoided. Proper data collection is important. Assign qualified individuals. Work monitoring and manpower reports should be prepared at time intervals that facilitate effective management. The selected frequency must be considered carefully. Also, planning activities and units of measure should be reviewed annually to ensure that current needs are being met. For more information on this or other IRF videotapes, write to the International Road Federation or call the numbers on your screen.


Welcome to Amsterdam and KubeCon CloudNativeCon 2023. Join John Furrier, Savannah Peterson, Rob Streche, and UPSconn as the Cube covers the largest conference on Kubernetes, CloudNative, and open source technologies together with developers, engineers, and IT leaders from around the globe. Live coverage of KubeCon CloudNativeCon 2023 is made possible by the support of Red Hat, the CNCF, and its ecosystem partners. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome back to fabulous Amsterdam. We're here at KubeCon EU. And I am super excited about this panel, low key, just like the last one. I may have pulled some strings to make this magic happen. Thankfully, these brilliant women surrounding me were willing to jump in on the fly. And I am just, I'm just really excited. I'm pumped. I've got Ishelle next to me. Ishelle, welcome. Hello, how you doing? Thank you very much for having me here. I'm super excited. I can tell. You're actually giving me that day two mid-afternoon energy that I think we all need. I like low key, want to like take an IV off you and just under the table, stick it in my arm. Aparna, thank you so much for being here. How you doing today? Happy to be here. I'm doing great, thank you. This is kind of your moment. Is that how it feel? Yeah, I mean, it feels great. This is my first time being a co-chair for KubeCon. And, you know, first time attending a KubeCon in Europe. Amazing. Second time attending of KubeCon, Cloud NativeCon in North America. So, super excited to be here. Yeah. And, Kasselin, how you feeling? Welcome. Feeling pretty great. This is my people. This is, I think, my 11th KubeCon. These are our people. I know. It really does feel like that. And you, I'm going to give you the award today. You have the best earrings. Thank you. For going pear accessory. Also, like, between your shirt and your earrings, which is really... Thank you. Ashley Willis made the earrings. Handmade. Love that. A little shout out. That's like a little designer shout out. This is going to be awesome. Ashley is in the tech community, and she just likes to do this stuff. I know, it looks like fun laser cut. I just work in 3D printing, and I'm like, oh yeah, I can see what she did there. They're amazing. That's very exciting.  Kasselin, I'm going to keep it on you for a second. In case the audience doesn't recognize your beautiful face, what is it that you do? I am a developer advocate at Google, where I focus on GKE, their managed Kubernetes product, Google Kubernetes Engine, and open source Kubernetes. I've been a part of open source for quite some time, though I really started contributing in 2020, and I was recently nominated to become one of the new co-chairs of Sig Contrubex. Whoa, congratulations. That's very exciting. Thank you. You feeling good? You having all the positive vibes from that? Yes, though it's a little intimidating, but I've got a lot of support, so. I love that. I think you're going to crush it. Thank you. We'll talk a little bit about allyship in our panel. Aparna, you mentioned your role here at KubeCon CNCF. You wear a lot of hats and have about eight jobs, just like all the other women on the panel. Can you tell us a little bit more about your background and what you're doing? Yeah, I'm director of production engineering at Shopify, and I'm responsible for the platform engineering team there. Within the community, I'm also co-chair of the CNCF end user developer experiencing, where I have the opportunity to work with the amazing group of end users of CNCF, and we get together and discuss all things related to building and operating a Kubernetes platform. So this community has really helped me learn so much and do my job better. Love that. The community is so helpful. I think that's one of the real magic things. You can feel the energy being here. You're obviously helpful in joining me on this panel last minute, but it is a different culture. I mean, I've lived in the Silicon Valley forever. I'll just say it. It's not the most helpful ecosystem. There aren't a lot of people who are reaching out. Hey, how are you doing? What's going on? You want to learn about this new technology or this new complicated thing like Kubernetes and really lifting you up in this open-source community? It's just different. Michelle, you're really repping the brand strong here. Tell us what you do for the Frog. Well, actually, I'm a CNCF developer. I also develop for Advocate, but I like you wearing a lot of hats. Quite literally. Literally. So punny. Yes, yes, of course. No, yes, I help organize conferences and conferences. I work a lot in open-source. I'm part of different foundations. Right now, I'm part of the OSSF Foundation, the CDF Foundation. I'm an ambassador. I sit down in so many working groups that sometimes I'm like, where am I? Where are we? Yes. Yes, sometimes it's like that's my stage. You know, you know what, I'm just going to have a next. But I'm really passionate about open-source, about developers, like how to make our lives easier. Like for crying out loud. That's the objective here. All the snaps for that. I think making things easy and decreasing complexity. Big themes of the show. Big themes with Kubernetes in general, by and honestly. And KubeCon's kind of a celebration of the whole ecosystem that does make those things easier. I love that. Just before U3, we had wonderful Cassandra, the 19-year-old woman who teaches at Kids Day, which is extraordinarily impressive. She's a little bit of a gateway for folks, for young people to get into tech. And as she says, we don't even talk about Kubernetes. She just shows them how to make cool stuff. Which I really loved. We are here to at least discuss a little bit about diversity. And this isn't going to be your average women in tech panel because we're all old enough to know what those have been like. And that no men watch them. So we're going to go ahead and make sure this is a different dialogue. When I asked Cassandra, I thought this was really interesting. So Cassandra started teaching when she was 12. That was, which is casual, right? Yeah, I mean us too, right? All of us. And when I asked her, what's her goal? What does she hope happens seven years from now? She's 19 now. When she's 26, what's the conversation we're having here? And it actually kind of broke my heart, but it's true. She said, well, I hope we're not doing women in tech and with diversity panels anymore.  I'm curious about your hot tick, but I've been in the industry for 15 years and it's not a lot's changed. I would say, I mean, it's wonderful to be around three women in positions of power and leadership here within our community. And I do think there's a lot of reasons to give hope and we're certainly all our allies for each other. But what, I mean, do you agree? Do you feel like we're, do you feel like things are getting better? Aparna, what's your opinion? You're looking at the whole community, quite literally. And you probably have some data. I mean, I think the key is really to think about it as like, okay, what, what, even if it's small, what can I do to make a difference, right? Because like you said, I've been in so many women in tech panels and I'm like, I got into this last minute. I'm like, what, what are we going to talk about? Like, is it going to be the same old, you know? Not with this girl. Heck no, we don't do that. We don't do same old everything. Yeah, so, yeah, I think it's really important to think about, you know, no matter what, like how can I make the ecosystem, the, you know, the micro environment around me better? And I've had the opportunity to work with some amazing women who I've learned from and who have helped me build that network and, you know, get those connections and advance in my own career and, you know, community as well. So I think it's important to think about it as, what, what can I do? And not just women, right? Everybody has to think about it. No, I love that. And the little things, I mean even just saying, one of my company values that my company is to say the nice things out loud.  You know, we all like sheepish about it. Cass, when you're in a role of extreme advocacy, you're looking at developers, what's your opinion? Yeah, I 100% agree with that take. I would love to see in seven years, I don't know if that might be a little ambitious, unfortunately, I'm moving with Cassandra. Maybe we're moving as fast as, you know, quantum. Maybe we are. But I would love to see us stop doing those. And I think issue of women in diversity in general, in technology is a very difficult one to solve as we've all talked about before. I think something that's challenging about it is that there is some nuance to it. You can't just throw out there, oh, we're going to talk about women in technology. We're going to talk about how to protect our officer, like everything's going to be fine now. That doesn't help, it actually hurts a lot of the time. Not even close. Not even close. Because when we're calling out, we need to do this special thing because there is a problem. We're calling out that there is a problem to begin with. So there's always this fine balance of we need to fix the problem, so we need to talk about it, but we also need to not make it worse by making it feel more real by doing, I don't know, things that exacerbate the issue. So we have to be careful. I love that.  Yes, so I am a volunteer for Ada Academy, which is a program for training gender diverse people who are working their way into technology from other fields. And I volunteer with them as an industry mentor. So folks in this program get two mentors. They get one person who's been through the program before and then they get an industry mentor who can be anyone from the industry, someone who is going to help them understand what this industry is and what they're getting themselves into. And I talk to a lot of- I think it's actually a big part of the barrier too. Yes, so true. And I talk to a lot of men actually who want to help out with these kinds of things. And they're like, oh, but can I? Is my voice one of the ones that's welcome in this space? Would I just be getting in the way of these people that we're trying to get in? I'm always like, no, we need to support them. We need mentorship and we need the folks who are there to share their knowledge. And have you seen some folks come through that program and go on to be super successful? Oh, absolutely, yeah. The folks that I have worked with coming through that program. I've been a mentor for like six or seven mentees now and they are so driven. They do such amazing things. It's awesome. I tangentially find the underdog sometimes has a little extra drive, a little extra fight. I've even seen some of them present at KeepCon. Love to hear that full circle on your stage coming out of your program. That's fantastic. Yeah. Isha, what do you think? Oh, so many thoughts. First of all- I can't wait to hear them all. I had bad news. We are actually moving sometimes in the last three years. We moved in the wrong direction. Went in the wrong direction? Yes. No, I can't say. Yes, we had more women living and not returning after the pandemic. So we did go- Are those the ones that teach the kids at home? Yes. So we are still moving in the right direction but not as fast as possible. So that's, that's impresses me a little bit because I know other community. It impresses me a lot. I have seen other communities where they have this ratio that it's like, how did you do it? Like, I honestly go and ask, how did you manage? Like, what is the secret sauce? What, what should we be doing? Because in the Java community where I'm from, we are actually worse than this one. Let me tell you that you are teaching us some things that the Java community doesn't have. Our ratio is even lower. So I'm the one that is like- You should be the face of Java then. Feel like- We should be doing something here. Like, well, anyway. What do you think is the resistance in that? Why do you think, why do you think we're not changing? Why do you think it's not getting better? So many reasons. First of all, people do not recognize that we have a problem. I sit down with a lot of men- They think we solved it when we put- Yes, exactly. Three women in power and- Like, what you said. We already have an officer. We have a program. That's it, isn't it? Like, that's the only thing- Right, it's all times. Women feel empowered at the organization, right? Yes, no, no, no. And for example, you still have these confusing ideas. Like, this is a women in tech breakfast and men shouldn't go. I'm like, no, you should go because we need allies. You need to be a mentor. Of course, I also part of the mentorship program online. Not for like a little bit like that, but it's for refugees, for example. People that really want to go into technology and they are like learning hours of the day. So that's an interesting one. So, I think that's actually a great point. Yes, yes it is because they need, like, they are- Schedule flexibility. Exactly. It's so simple, but some companies are so rigid about stuff like that. Exactly. Being fully async or having flexible hours, it makes a big difference. Totally, and totally. And the learning process can be at different hours. Of course. And everyone's brain is more excited at different times of the day. You know, we don't know what we're doing. We're all jet-lagged. Nobody even knows what day it is at the time when we go to shows like this. So, I mean, we're all just doing our best.  And I am the first person to admit I would not be sitting where I am today or doing what I do if it weren't for a flock of middle-aged white men who have gone out of their way, identified what they saw as potential. I won't put words in their mouth, but they weren't wrong. And helped elevate me or helped coach me through certain moments or empower me. And what I don't like about some of the conversations that we've been having and even through some of the last few years is to your point, men feel scared to be a part of that conversation. They don't know if they can attend. They don't know if they're welcome. You know, they're just trying to get out of our way. It can't just be a conversation we're having in the ladies' room, which is what it feels like half the time and what it's been for a really long time. And it really, I mean, it deeply disappoints me. One of my friends did something actually extraordinarily clever. Matt, I'm giving you a big shout out right now. In the UK, he had a, he did a college, they call it Silicon Beach over there. I'm not exactly sure he's going to the beach in London anyway, we'll just leave that. But he had a, the lineup was all women, but he didn't tell any, he didn't make a big deal out of it. So when people just showed up to the event, all female lineup, and he brought it up at the end. And the gender ratio is 50-50 pretty much in the room, which was cool, because the women will bring, we do bring out the other women at least to come see us. But on the flip side, what I really loved about that, when I asked him, I was like, you didn't want to advertise? Cause for him, it would have been a good advertisement, right? I've got this whole power pack, female lineup, blah, blah, blah. Because if I did, the men wouldn't come. And it totally broke my heart because how many times have we been on an all-male lineup forever? So true. But I think, yeah, I mean, I think it's really, I don't know, there's, to your point, we're going sometimes in the wrong direction. And I don't think we're as far along the path as we might think we are. And I think seeing is believing. So I'm hoping that if you're a young woman right now, watching this program, or anyone of any gender diversity, first of all, we celebrate you, we're here to empower you, we're here to be your ally, but more importantly, keep fighting the good fight. We're definitely out here, we're definitely going to try. What, what have been some of the stepping stones? You're all in like, extremely cool. I feel like, I feel cooler sitting at this table right now having you all here. What have been some of the stepping stones that have helped you get to where you are? Parna, I'm going to start with you. This is your show. Yeah, sounds good. And I'll start with the example of like, how CNCF does it, right? Like, when we do the review the proposals and invite, decide who to invite to speak in the conference, we are really intentional about gender diversity. We are very intentional about giving the opportunity to first-time conference speakers, right? Because like, you apply to speak at any conference, they're like, give me the video of your previous conference talk, but I don't have one. So what do I do, right? And then also being intentional about like, this is Amsterdam, so we really prioritize European speakers so that they are able to speak within their own community and share ideas among themselves. And bring their community in. Yeah, bring to this community. Yeah, exactly. So I think it's really about like, being objective about things. And I'll give you an example, like when there's a really important project at work and you want to identify your leader to drive the project, the obvious choice would be like, the loudest person in the room. And more often than not, it's not the woman who's the loudest voice in the room. So again, it's about coming up with like a very objective criteria. Like, okay, what do we want this leader to do? And what are the qualifications of this leader? And then cast a wide net. Look at all the leaders in the organization. Look at the women, because they are probably not going to raise their hand and be the loudest voice in the room. So I think just turning everything objective and being intentional about things really helps. What are, so you mentioned, you know, really being strict in criteria for speaking, I love that, because holy, I became a host and a speaker because I saw too many boring guys on stage. And I literally just sat there one day and I was like, I can do better than they can. Forget this, like I'm just going to make a career out of this. Oh my God. Yeah, go ahead. I feel like you just had a moment. No, you say something because usually one of the critiques, and let me tell you that at the beginning, it affected a lot of my career.  I'm like. Oh my God. You just felt that in my soul. Yeah. And I'm like, oh my God.  We are not loud, but we are damn good. And if you see a woman in technology, like listen to her because she's flourishing in an environment that is totally against. The entire time. Okay.  So if you want somebody that knows how to solve problems, that's her. Do you know someone that is enduring and knows how to continue? Resilience. And it's passionate because you require passionate. You require intelligence. You require love for technology and to give out to the community because if you see all ourselves, we're giving back to the community. Yeah. So I'm with you. You have to be objective. You just nailed it. You have to be objective because the place that we are having here is not because we have something, the friend here. Yeah. It's because we are good from here to here. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's it. I just got goosebumps. First of all, that was like, whoa. But you're absolutely spot on. It was actually a theme of KubeCon. I was there in October, 2021 in LA. Totally different vibes. Sidebar, we've come a long way since then. But the theme was resilience realized, I think, or something like that. And it really, as you were thinking about that, I'm like, wow, how appropriate is that? Because you're right.  You know what they say about that? Yeah. Oh, how'd you get here? Yeah, I'm sure.  I thought I could use my mind. And believe it or not, that's the most powerful thing that all of us have here. And I hate that like, that phone call, I'm sure all of us have gotten that phone call. Well, I guess you kind of got that phone call yesterday. This is different, as I'm sure you can tell. But get that phone call, you know, they're like, oh, there's three men on a panel. Can you join us to be the woman? Oh, but we don't have any more speaker budget, or we don't have any more or whatever, but well, you know, like, you can just come up and do it. I should have a day since calendar. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. Seriously though, it's one of those things, like don't do that if you're an organizer. Start with the right people. For the stage. So just quickly, what was, was there a lot of diversity? I've been sitting here on our stage, unfortunately, and so not getting to see a lot of your stage. What was the diversity like for the lineup this year? The foundation will publish a transparency report, like shortly after. I always look forward to that. Yeah. I read them. But again, I don't remember the numbers top of my head, but we had specific goals, like numbers to meet, and we met or exceeded like all of those goals this year. So yeah. Oh, that makes me feel really good. Yeah. And I think the other thing I would like to highlight is, when we are selecting the talks, we are very intentional and try to avoid groupthink. Like, you know, all three co-chairs, we individually review all of the talks and we say yes, no, or maybe independently. So we're not getting biased by each other and we're not going like, oh, like, you know, this baker, like, yeah, he's great. Yeah, of course you should have it.  Oh yeah, we always have so. We all know the same 10 men who speak it all. Yeah, yeah. They're so named, they're smart and lovely too, but they're also like... Yeah, and I think I learned. Yeah. Yeah. Try the yes. Yeah, and I learned that, you know, that's a great thing, right? Because like, you know, in an interview panel, what happens is like, everybody gets together and then the loudest person influences the group. So I think it's about being intentional and, you know, countering bias. It really is. It really is. Wow, I don't want to end this panel.  Had to do it, baby, that was just for you. But I know we're really, really sad to do this. Ishelle, Aparna, Kasselin, seriously, thank you. Genuinely, both as a human being and as a host, we're really grateful that you were able to make the time, bring your energy. And I love the realness, the rawness, the authentic opinions. We need more of it on theCUBE. John Furrier, I hope you're listening. And thank you, the audience, for coming along this ride. I hope you learned something fun and new from all of us. You should definitely follow these ladies, follow their work, follow their leadership, and know that we're rooting for you in whatever journey you're trying to be resilient in your current life. My name's Savannah Peterson, coming to you live here from KubeCon EU and Amsterdam where theCUBE, the leading source for emerging tech news.


What is going on guys welcome back to the channel critical overlord here since I'm a halloween ends in this video here again today And when we talk about this recent interview or exclusive report that came out from screen ran after they had a sit down I guess with Jason Blum who went into some details as to I guess I'll describe it as what it means when halloween ends for this Current entity continuity wise for the Michael Myers that we've been getting for the past four or five years at this point From David Gordon Green Danny McBride in the whole Blum house, you know the department So when it relates to halloween ends he was he was asked about you know this being the end and he responded with I didn't say It's gonna be the last halloween movie. It's our last halloween movie. We have no more rights to make Any more halloween movies after this so it goes back to Malika card and what he does only he knows But we are done. This is our last one. I think people will be very happy now Of course, I think many of you had like a Obvious idea in your head that I also think this was public knowledge that they had like a three-picture deal And after the third one, of course, the rights will revert back to who had them before Blum house is not gonna have them anymore It doesn't mean that Blum house won't then get rights to do more halloween movies in the future But they might just be done for now what Malika card wants to do with it again Like Jason Blum said it's up to Malika card So as far as what you guys would like to see I know a lot of you again have talked about wanting to see a Jamie Lloyd timeline revisited I know I've talked about them doing a new storyline all together if they decide to remake halloween once again You don't have to set it in 1978 you could set it in the modern times you don't have to Necessarily put it in the current modern times But like you could set it in the early 2000s or something for whatever reason and do some alterations to Michael Myers to of course Have him still be young in the 2000s There's some different things you could do there to shake it up Introduce new characters. You don't have to have Michael Myers stalking Laurie strolled or anything like that You don't have to bring in Jamie Lee Curtis again You don't have to do any of that you could just start a complete new batch of stories to be told Give us new heroines to get attached to new final girls new final boys New lineages and new backstories to Michael Myers if somebody decides to go into another backstory explanation again, that's up to them There's so many different things you could do with Michael Myers going into future halloween movies after what I hope is going to be a Break between halloween ends or whatever we get in the future now There is a chance that again if halloween ends is very successful That There's already because there could be some things going on Where somebody has an idea within Blumhouse on what they would like to do next with this series And like I said before that is this contract or the rights ending for them doesn't mean they can't get rights again to keep making More they could always turn right back around and say hey, we're actually doing another one But it would just be years from now Once they secure rights and maybe Malik is actually taking pitches and the Blumhouse stuff is just the stuff That's always connecting with him in terms of what he wants to bring the life So he goes back to Blumhouse and Blumhouse is right back make making more halloween movies I'm not gonna expect James Duke Horton to be back as the shape I'm assuming we would then pass the baton to a new actor who can do their own thing with the character And we'll just get to see What I would hope to be a new iteration of Michael Myers new characters I'm not against Danielle Harris being back as Jamie Lloyd if they can somehow come up with a narrative that is good enough to Bring her back.  Let's say she is playing Jamie That's not the same Jamie because this Jamie doesn't have the recollection of the things you're thinking of when you see her you're thinking about Halloween 4 and 5 and This Jamie has nothing to do with Halloween 4 and 5 because it's not gonna be connected to those timelines This will be a completely new iteration of Jamie that doesn't have the same memories that you have of Jamie It doesn't matter what they've done with Lori because Lori always has at least the memories of that original movie that we all Have every time they brought her back Jamie if she was brought back in the 2018 film that'll race Halloween 4 and 5 So there's really no connection that we have with this version of Jamie So it's like okay. I don't want a version like that I'd rather have a Jamie that has all the memories of Halloween 4 and 5 brought back in to the series If they decided to do that because I know there was actually a a script or something out there.  It's just going to take a very brief hiatus and by brief I'm guessing this will be a five-year max hiatus if it extends beyond five years I'll be impressed. I don't think that Michael Myers will be gone beyond five years But you know stranger things have happened. He was gone for more than five years in the past before this current Wave of movies we've been getting so we'll see what ends up happening But Jason Blum gave those comments to kind of address what it is that Halloween ends is meaning from the Blumhouse perspective It all it is is that this is their last movie This is their Halloween ends that no pun intended because that's the actual title But the the series in the the ip itself of course can still go on they don't solely own this ip It's going to revert back to malik akkad and whatever happens will be up to him I know a lot of you have some probably other unique ideas You want to see like some people don't even want more Michael Myers movies They want to see the anthology stuff happen, which I think could still work I think if anything that'll probably be more more beneficial today, uh If anything though, I do I do think that you might have that backlash of oh You didn't have Michael in this one So I'm not going to go watch this and then you know if they have a poor box office reception Then you're right back in where you were with the original season of the witch They're going to bring back Michael and you know, it's like okay Michael is clearly the only cash cow for this ip So don't ever try to do the anthology stuff again If they were to try it again, and it still did not work out for them I don't see them ever doing or trying to do an anthology route ever again But if they try to do it, I would support it and I would first be open to seeing What the narrative is that they want to tell in an anthology Story in the halloween universe because you could actually set it in the same universe too as michael myers It just wouldn't be a michael myers story It could just be set in the same universe where michael myers is a person all this stuff happened He is real. He's just not the thing that's terrorizing everyone anymore Uh, and you could just do individual stories with each new Entry if the halloween series were to go in the anthology route But what do you guys want to see from the future of the series? What do you think about jason blum's recent comments again? This is probably just common knowledge to a lot of you like me But many of you probably were expecting The movie series is just in overall Uh, let me know what you guys think about this down in the comment section below if you haven't already, of course Make sure you subscribe turn on postification that you never miss a video in the description I have links for social media accounts on facebook, twitter and instagram You can message me there, of course So let me see any movies or reviews I'm going to cover in the future with all that in mind guys I will see you in the next video