y would have to submit all the rest. Just to clarify, so there would be, we were saying that by four years, we would have three plots submitted, three of the six lots because the I think the first phase is anticipated to be two buildings. I think is what the text is saying. Mark said, I thought the text said that if you file the first two buildings at the same time, you would extend up to six years for the second phase. Only three buildings remain to be filed for final plot by the fourth year. So oh, if it contains more than two buildings, got it. OK, all right. So within four years, you'll build three, you'll file for three buildings. And then they're remaining in the last remaining three, the last two last two. Yep. I mean, I think that that timing is a little bit in recognition that our first phase is is the majority of the the unit counts. You know, our first planned phase is about 13 and 15 as one project. You know, if the preliminary plot, I don't have all the unit numbers memorized, but I think that was two hundred and twenty one of the. Three hundred and ninety or so units. Right. Can I say it one more time? Does that make it a little longer? Wait, wait, wait, wait. Can only hear one person at a time. Marla, go ahead. I just want to say it one more time because I want to be really precise. So what the proposal is, is to submit at least one building, one lot's final application within six months. And then within four years to have only four buildings remaining, right? Got me if I'm wrong. And then within six years have submitted the final plots for all of them. Andrew, is that correct? You're smiling. So what does that mean? You're muted, Andrew. No, I'm not muted. Sorry, I'm just looking at the way that I wrote this and trying to think of whether I could have written it a little bit clearer. I think that the confusion is that we're currently contemplating our first phase to be two buildings. I think we're going to say and we're OK with that changing. Yeah, I think what we're trying to say is that if our first phase is two buildings, then our next phase within four years would be another building. But if our first phase was only was only one building, that we would be our next phase would happen in the fourth year could just be one more. I don't think I think it's confusing. So, you know, maybe there's a way to simplify it to just say that the first phase will happen within 12 months will be at least one lot and that the second phase would happen by the fourth year and that by year four, we would have filed at least two more buildings, something along. So by year four, you'll have three lots worth of final plots submitted. And by year six, you'll have six lots worth of final. Yes. OK, got it. Thank you. That's more straightforward. OK, so now that we understand what the question is, what is to think about it? It makes sense to me. But I'm not an expert in this. So what do the rest of you think? I'm OK with it. I mean, you're talking about a lot of construction and, you know, it sounds like a long period of time.   And I think six buildings over six years is reasonable. And just for clarity, Marla, help me out. So within within that four years, we have three of the six lot, but they're also still governed by. They would have to file or final plot within 12 months of. Within 12 months of what were if we were to approve what's currently on the table, right? No, so they're requesting a modification to that timeline. The zoning permit after final plot timeline would remain. Well, you wouldn't be getting a final design for each of these buildings until the final final plot, right? Right. Comments from the board. OK, Marla, do you think you have what you need? You think you have what we need? Yes, I think that if the board has any concerns about this, you know, I think that generally the sense of getting from the board is they are OK with this exact or a similar scheme. And if the board chooses in their deliberative wisdom to slightly modify the scheme, I think we can do that without additional testimony. Great. Great. Any other comments from the board before we move on? This is Jim, I'm comfortable with it. OK, thanks, Jim. OK. Thank you for scrolling down. OK, now we're going to the next one. Comment two, could you there? Could you scroll a little bit more, please, Delilah? Thank you. Now, scroll up, please. Perfect. OK. Staff reached out to the Affordable Housing Committee for suggestions on how to ensure compliance with this criterion. The Affordable Housing Committee reviewed the question at their regular meeting on April 27th and recommended that the board require the applicant to commit to having an average number of bedrooms in the building on not 12 to be two. This recommendation is based on the assumption that the market rate units are unlikely to have more than two bedrooms. Staff recommends the board discuss what condition to include to ensure compliance with this criterion. Evan and Andrew, what are your thoughts? I will I can just fill in a little bit on the sort of, you know, the background. So the, you know, the text there in bold is the text of the inclusionary ordinance. We talked a lot about the inclusionary requirements at this preliminary plat. The preliminary plat decision that was issued, it allowed for the inclusionary requirement to be placed in a single building on not 12. So this this point by staff, I think it's a good question. It's saying essentially, you know, the regulations require that the the main number of bedrooms of inclusionary units be I think it's no fewer than the mean number of bedrooms of the market units. And so the question is, if you're proposing the market rate units in pieces, but you're segregating the inclusionary units to one building, you know, if we build the inclusionary building in the first phase, how do you know what the mean number of bedrooms is for the market rate units that haven't been built or pushed through to final plat yet? I think it's a good question. You know, we had talked a little bit internally about it and we, you know, our feeling is that rather than push forward with the affordable housing committee's recommendation of the two bedroom requirement, what we would say is that if the affordable building were built first and the number of bedrooms, the mean number of bedrooms is 1.5 or 2 or whatever it is that the market rate project would be designed to meet that to match that mean or that if it were a higher, if we were required to increase the number of affordable bedrooms, that those future final flats would just be required to produce additional inclusionary bedrooms so that the mean would end up being correct in the end. We feel pretty confident that we can design the market rate units to meet the mean of the affordable units if they're built first or vice versa. Right. Affordable units are built at the time that they're planned that we can do that and we can compensate for it on the on the market rate side needed. Yeah, we're comfortable being held accountable to that down the road. If it if there's differentiation. OK, thank you. Ford, what are your thoughts? Does it make sense? Can I could I ask a clarifying question first? Again, it's kind of playing catch up on this project. How many total inclusionary units are there in the end? And are they if I'm reading this correctly, are they all proposed to be in one building? They are proposed to be in one building and the number of units is how many Andrew. I think that well, it depends on how many total market rates are proposed. You know, eventually, but it was between 48 and 52, I believe. Is that sort of range we were looking at? Of affordable or I think the inclusionary required inclusion. Does that mean that in one building, almost all the units would be inclusionary? As the as approved in the preliminary plat, yes. And just so you know, at 12. Dan, we did talk about that a lot and because of their partnership with Champlain Housing Trust and the complex financing, they had to put all these units together in one building. OK, on one thing to comment on in that regards. The staff comments do note that the applicant no longer intends to contract with Champlain Housing Trust. Oh, I. Oh, really? Comment number two. And also just to note, Sandy Dooley is online and she'd like to testify and she's a member of the Affordable Housing Committee. Sure. OK, I'm not sure when you want to bring her in. I'm just letting you know. I just I just want to say presumably the because I thought it was sort of a principle of planning. And again, I'm not I'm a regional planner. I'm not a practicing land use planner all the time, like Marla and others. So was this this putting them all in the one building seems to violate a principle of segregationist type stuff like, oh, that's the affordable building. That's the subsidized people rather than blending the units within so there isn't that identification of oh, you're the handout people or whatever people might want to label the affordable at. So was this, unfortunately, just the only way it would work? There has been extensive discussion of that exact question. Well, I mean, regulations do explicitly allow them to be in a single building if it meets your criteria. And those are, you know, well integrated and not distinguishable from the exterior, etc., etc. So they are being met in in all ways. OK, all right. It's yeah, it is you have to do what's workable and versus the optimal. So I understand. So that's all if I could provide a little bit of color commentary on how things transpired, which is that we did come before the Development Review Board for a number of months when we were in discussions with Champlain Housing Trust, which was a discussion that took place over the course of a year plus. And the intent was definitely to move forward with Champlain Housing Trust. And we were trying to solidify that relationship. And for various reasons, they were unable to solidify that, I guess, to our satisfaction. And so at some point when we were not able to get the commitments that we needed, we ended up partnering with another developer to fulfill that requirement. So that's that's where things how things transpired. It's not that we had any desire to part ways with Champlain Housing Trust. And I think it's an amicable relationship. It's just that we needed more of a commitment. And so it's it's not really anything different other than there's a different developer providing those units. Thank you for forbearance of the explanation, everybody. Thank you, Evan. And thank you for the question. So does this in any way change the thinking about including having all of these units in one building or do the same issues of financing efficiency or whatever apply here? Our understanding is that the same issues that Champlain Housing Trust has to deal with regarding their financing are the same issues that are at play here. So it's still nothing is changing in terms of, you know, the building that would house the the inclusionary units still has to be commensurate quality and integrated into the overall site. And it's likely or highly likely that there may be market rate units that are also included in the inclusionary buildings as well. There's just the program. It would be more units that are affordable at 80 percent of AMI or below than would be market rate. And you had talked about maybe some market rate units being included in that from the get go. So it's it's a possibility. It really comes down to the financing viability of it. Sure. OK. All right. So I know Sandy is going to want to speak when we open this up for public comment. Any other board questions at this point? Or comments? Marla, do you have anything to add or ask for? I think there was a third public or a third staff comment. No, I know, I know. But before we move on. No. OK. OK, you want us to confirm the assessment that which refers to the roadways drive should both be required with the first final plat application rather than at separate stages as requested by the applicant. Staff considers the applicant may request a phased construction schedule for the roads as part of the final plat application that includes their design, but that the road should be constructed no later than the first building on each. What do people think? I'll confirm this assessment. I think I just had a little bit of trouble understand. I think this is saying that will propose both roadways and the roadway designs simultaneous with the first building. Is that right? I think that's that's in line with what we're thinking and and is is totally fine. Marla. Yes, so the suggestion here, they've indicated that there's sort of this pink road and the brown road and that those could be separate phases. Staff's recommendation here is that both the pink road and the brown road come in with the first final application, though the applicant is free to request that the construction of those roads be phased. The design of the road should be with the first final plot. OK, makes sense and is is perfectly fine. I agree. OK. Any other board comments or questions about the staff comments before we move to public comment hearing none? Sandy, I know you're on the line. Are there any other? I seem to get a different list of people in my chat. So can anyone tell me if there are other people who want to make public comment who have registered? Just Sandy. OK. So we'll have Sandy to speak. And then I'll ask if anyone else wants to. So Sandy, how are you doing? And thank you for staying on until this late hour of the night. Do I need to be sworn in? No. OK, because I was going to say, I think I was sworn in the last time. Yeah, I think Brian Sullivan was chairing and he swore in all the public members, but we don't need to do that. OK. First of all, I just want to clarify the staff comments. And I should have called Marla earlier. The the proposal for two is based on a discussion between Chris Trauma, the committee chair and myself. It was not something that was discussed at our meeting. We we had a full agenda. And I think Chris and I were comfortable with with proposal. I won't get into any detail, but there there seems to be a little disconnect between the information I've gotten from CHT and what I've heard from the O'Brien's. But I won't go into that. That's not necessary. Our I'd like to know more about and with CHT, they do several multiple more bedrooms than two, three bedrooms and four. And that also, although that means fewer inclusionaries are required, that's that's a goal. And of course, it's not required. But and and so I guess I'm. Is this another nonprofit developer or is are you going to develop them all? I'm I'd be interested in the flexibility if there's flexibility to actually scatter the inclusionary units if if there's not going to be a separate developer that has all these, you know, getting the money from the Housing and Conservation Board and and everybody else who has a million requirements. And and one of the reasons why it sort of almost makes it necessary for the CHT to put their units in one building. I will mention they virtually always have some market rate units because people that are in affordable units don't always continue to be eligible and they their funding requirements require annual screening for income eligibility and people get raises and that kinds of things. And so sometimes people become ineligible and so they can reclassify the apartment as market rate and still meet their their requirements to their funders. So I'd like to have a sense of is there more flexibility given you have a different partner or do you not have a partner? Are you doing this all on your own and do you expect them all to be? No, none of the larger apartment and number of bedrooms. And and so that's that's sort of I just like to know a little bit more about how this changes the end of the relationship with and this particular project with CHT, how this changes, how this may sugar off to use the seasonal term. I I guess that's a variety of questions. I mean, I guess what I would say is that there are still ongoing negotiations. So and I can't really speak to what the unit mix will end up playing out to be the same way CHT could never stipulate as to what their unit mix was going to be. So there there was a lot of ambiguity. What I would say is that the reason why we have you know moved forward in the direction we are is because we want to be front loading these units we want to earlier in the process. And that was one of the challenges that we were having a hard time on CHT. And I don't think that they would say anything differently on that. OK, it was it was a timing thing as much as anything and an inability for them to commit in a reasonable period of time. And I thought we had productive conversations. And again, it was it kind of came down to, you know, we needed to move forward. We needed some level of certainty. And so that's really kind of where where a thing can sugar it out. Use the seasonal term. What I would suggest in terms of the unit mix is that, you know, we we're going to have to adhere to the ordinance, whether they have, you know, a number of three bedrooms that would then dictate that there's less units brought online because of the way the ordinance is written. I I can't stipulate that right now. To say that we have to adhere to the ordinance and we fully intend to and that the the partner that we're working with right now in negotiations with his reputable developer, the local developer and, you know, they have a longstanding positive reputation, I would say, in this community of delivering high quality units and managing them well. I wasn't and well, and the other thing is I might say that explanation is is helpful about the situation with the HG because my conversation was with a board member. And and so it wasn't firsthand with a staffer. But you can't say whether or not perhaps you can't. This would be a non-profit developer that would have all those strings attached that that CHT would have. Or I was just thinking if it weren't. They are using, I believe, similar or the exact same funding sources that CHT would be using. Oh, OK. OK. Those I think, you know, while I can't say that with 100 percent certainty, I'm very confident that that would be the case. They may have other other levels of other sources of equity that go into it, but they have similar strings attached. And they're you're the same. I'm sorry. You're expecting to do the and the building with the inclusionaries early is what you're saying. We'd like to. We'd like to be bringing those online as soon as possible. Uh huh. Well, that's really that's really good news. That's really good news. Yeah. And I think I think that, again, plays into part of this decision making, which is, you know, a queue that's two, three years down the road. And our perspective is not as beneficial to both the community and to us. Well, it's all servingly as having something come online sooner that's adhering to the ordinance. And we were very clear in that that discussion with CHT. And again, we it was not to say to CHT, we don't want to work with you. And in fact, what we said is we're happy to continue to have discussions about other lots on site. So there was no like, hey, this relationship has ended. It was just no, no, no, I was I didn't mean to imply that. So as I heard you say, or wasn't Andrew one way or the other, you will meet the requirements of the average. Yes, 100 percent. And we are comfortable being held accountable to that. So if we if for whatever reason, we ended up on the marker rate building larger bedroom units and the affordable units have been delivered front loaded and they had a lower bedroom count. We would have to make up for that down the road on the marker units. OK, I'm I'm I cannot speak for the committee, but I'm satisfied and I would recommend to the committee that that they support your plan. Thank you, Sandy. Thank you, Sandy. Are there any other members of the public who would like to make comments? Any board members? We just had a comment on site plan review parking in page seven of seven and the staff comment. Um, I wonder if the applicant can talk a little bit more. I know that the minimum spaces is four sixty five and we're up to six twenty five by granted, some of those are on street spaces. But I'm wondering or as the board talked about this before, I don't know, I'm just somebody who deals with stormwater management and regional water quality issues and stuff like that. And I realize you'll you'll meet this the specs that Tom DiPetro and Dave Wheeler have set. But I don't know, I'm just it seems like a lot of that sauce. I just wanted to educate me on how we came up with that number in the end. We did we did talk quite a bit about the parking during that case process. I honestly haven't reviewed the numbers in in a little while. Um, I think that what is there appears to be correct. You know, we basically figure about one and a half parking spaces per apartment. That's a pretty common metric used across the board. We proposed about four hundred apartments and we have about six hundred parking spaces. So I think that that's generally in line with sort of industry standards.  And so the service parking is actually fairly limited in that sense. Yeah, and I want to have a sense of like. And I know the sort of with the standard, I'm just sort of like I'm curious about, you know, especially with the apartment newer apartment buildings on Shelburne Road, which I'm pretty familiar with, because that's where I live off of Shelburne Road. And and I just want to see from a more not so much from what is permitted or what's actually built, but what do you see in terms of the actual use? So we and this would be a question for staff to we see a development. Permitted at roughly one and a half. Cars per unit, let's call it. What do we see when actually people move in? Is it more or less than that? Are we seeing that that parking is right about right? Or are we seeing less cars actually using? What is that? What is the use data actually showing? Well, the cities a couple of years ago got out of the parking game. You know, there's a lot of news and that decision was made because. Nobody knows their parking needs better than developers. And so what is used? I believe it's highly dependent on the setting. And if this neighborhood is built out in a way that it has great connectivity and there are some, you know, grocery stores and there's some industrial employers and maybe there will be significantly less car usage. And as this development builds out, they may find that they are over parked in certain areas and under parked in other areas and then, you know, adjust accordingly. But I think that we don't really have an expectation because each neighborhood kind of drives with the demand is rather than the use of our non answer. And that helps. And again, I'm just trying to get caught up on things. I appreciate the explanation and having a lot of it as underground. And yeah, it is it is a little bit different. It's a changing neighborhood, as opposed to one like Shepard Road, which is changing, but also has a lot of preexisting development of Woodluston Road, et cetera. So yeah, we, you know, we continue to look at parking and we continue to talk with building operators about those requirements. And we're continuing to sort of refine those plans. So I don't I don't think that these are necessarily final proposals. And, you know, we certainly are looking to and you guys are reviewing the the next phase of this project, which is essentially connected and shares some of that parking that is being built currently. I know that that was a topic of conversation at the preliminary plan at any rate.  But but we do, you know, we at this point, our best information is that the space metric is correct. And we have left the on-street spaces out of that calculation because they wouldn't be available in winter during, you know, snow storms and things, which is so I think at that point, the off-street spaces are 583, which is actually a little bit less than the or close to the one and a half per unit metric. OK, thank you. So I think that's it for staff comments. Am I correct, Delilah? Yes. OK. So for having lost his Internet, so I guess you just stuck with me. No problem. So it sounds to me, Marla, like we can take a vote on closing the preliminary plat. Please remember to entertain public comment. And then I would agree. Well, I guess you're right. Sandy, Sandy commented and no one else wanted to. OK, great. Sorry, I got distracted this week. No, that's OK. Back notes. Who would like to move that we close this hearing? I'll make a motion that we close SD 2013. Thank you, Mark. Do I hear a second? Second. Thanks, Dan. All in favor of closing SD 2113, say aye. Twenty thirteen. Isn't it twenty one? Twenty one. Wait a minute. I was reading the top of the thing. It says twenty twenty thirteen. Sorry. Tablets, sorry. So twenty one twenty one thirteen. OK, good. Say aye. Aye. Aye. Chair votes aye. Any opposed? OK, so the motion is carried and we will see you at the next step, if not before, Evan and Andrew. Yes, we appreciate it. We hope to be in with the final plat soon. OK, good. Thank you. Good night. Trying to keep you guys busy. Yeah, yeah. Thanks for your time and for staying. Pat, it's so late to get us through. Appreciate it. Thank you. OK, board. It's late. Let's look at the minutes of April 6th and April 20th, twenty twenty one. Has everyone had a chance to look at them? Only the April 6th minutes were available by the time the packet was published. Oh, I busted them. I thought I read. OK. So April 6th, all in favor of approving the minutes from April 6th, say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? No. So the minutes are approved. So any other back on the line? Just just for the record, Stephanie, back on. Oh, Stephanie. Yeah, other business. Any other business? Just just a short comment. I just like to thank Marla for staff comments. It's this ridiculously complex project. And she helps to organize everything very, very well. So I'm going to give my compliments to her. Thank you, Dan. I am always blown away by Marla's work and it's a lot of work, a lot of analysis. And we are very lucky to have you, Marla. Well, thank you. It is my full time job. I don't fit it in on this. No, I know, but still a lot. OK. Any other business? All right. I think we're adjourned. Good night, everybody. This conference is no longer being recorded. Night, everybody.


So I'm Corey and I'm Justin And so so I write Ruby and I'm interested in JavaScript, but I want to apply the same sort of processes and level of craftsmanship to my JavaScript code that I do With my Ruby code Right, and I had a hard time with that. I found it to not be a very easy process And so I talked to Justin and We worked on some stuff We started talking around this idea that you know in Ruby. We're really focused on craftsmanship and in JavaScript, you know the equivalent is Something else and I'm fortunate enough to not really be gonna turn me down maybe a little bit I'm not really in the Rails community as much as I'd like to be I'm working in a lot of other environments But a year and a half ago I had a client who needed some really complex JavaScript and I was scared because I hated JavaScript So I started testing it and I started learning JavaScript and I started liking it and I started building really cool complex things So I'm just kind of here today to share some of the insights that I've learned and and hopefully will be able to Help show you guys some actionable steps that you can take to start testing your JavaScript But first we want to talk about why people aren't Testing their JavaScript Why aren't you testing your JavaScript? Well, I'll tell you I'm not testing mine because I'm really really good at like convincing myself That these things are valid reasons, right? It's a bunch of really weak rationalizations But I'm just the type of self-deceived individual who will buy into my own nonsense So these are all things that you know I had a lot of conversations with people in this room today and other Rubyists that I know one of them that Hit home with me was the reason I hadn't been doing it till that project demanded I do was no one else expects me to do it the craftsmanship community I think a lot of it's professionalism and peer pressure, you know that that drives us to Figure out which practices are really important So so if I submit Ruby code without a spec, right? I can pretty much expect a certain result, right? I'm gonna submit a pull request and somebody's gonna say Where's your spec? But if I submit a pull request for your JavaScript project and I don't have any test coverage I'm so used to that now. I'll just look at it. I'll say thank you I'll write some specs and then I'll re-implement what you did for me, but I won't Yeah, I think that that's terrible and You know, we all know why right craftsmanship is craftsmanship code is code We should apply the same level of diligence and care To every part of our system. Yeah, and so when we hear things like that, you know TDD for JavaScript isn't worth it or it's just glue code It's disappointing because I think it has real consequences which are Well, one of the conferences consequences I think is that The browser can do really cool things now and JavaScript is the only language that runs there So if you want to build a quality user experience, I think you just have to be able to grapple with JavaScript You can't really run from it Well, so what I usually do is you know, I'll just push this logic somewhere else, right? I'll push this functionality into a controller or into a view or a helper somewhere that it's easy to test With our spec and like the rest of my Ruby app. Yeah, what's so what's so bad about that? Well, I think that You know Chris Nelson wrote a blog post recently where he said that this is the late Cambrian age for server-side MVC frameworks And I like that image because rail solved the real special problem in 2005 where Dynamic content wasn't easy to do and now we're in a stage where dynamic interaction isn't really easy to do And so I think applying the same Practices that made a successful with our server-side code could really serve as well and get offer us a competitive advantage Especially as a voice in the community to start applying those same practices to our clients I'd craft man Why so serious? Why so serious, right? So Cory, I've seen application.js is where I've heard tell of application.js files that look a little like this You think that's fair. I thought I made this repo private Yeah, yeah, that looks about right big ball of mud Chris Powers would probably call it tangled. Yeah. Yeah a lot of anonymous stuff You know code that rewrite yesterday Anthony told us all the code you write as an API But if it doesn't even have a name, I don't know if that's true if you just have anonymous functions and event holding Yeah, so so so naming your methods is usually step one to testing. It's like the the API equivalent of no sequel like no Oh Holy smokes. Okay, so when you don't have tests, yeah, one of the things that I've I've been taught now You know, I embrace this is that a ton of comments in your code is kind of like not the way to go When I try to apply that sort of line of reasoning to this We pull out all the comments and I have a really really tough time looking at that and like Immediately intuiting what it does and anybody else my loan here. Is that like obvious and I'm missing it Yeah, so if all the code in the code base looks like that or if you're used to fighting with JavaScript Do you want to be doing it every day?  What what's so bad about that? Yeah, and so Maybe maybe ultimately, it's true. Maybe JavaScript isn't right for you But but I think that at least giving it a shot giving it the old college try and trying to build enough experience to make an informed decision is is Really a commitment that we can all make This week. There was a blog post that I think was very apt Blog post by Jay Fields and in there I grabbed the most provocative looking quote. I could find I basically never pair So Jay Fields, I mean he's pretty well regarded, right? He must know what he's talking about So I guess it's safe for me to assume then pairing has no value, right? I don't I don't need to do it Is that well my takeaway? I may have taken it slightly out of context cuz I didn't really say that he more said I've got all this experience with pairing and here's all the context of my current situation And it's not necessarily really providing me a lot of return on investment right now And here's some caveats, and I had Michael Feathers look at it first Before I posted it. Well, that makes more sense. This makes more sense like But You know so saying I don't do JavaScript. I Should probably have that same sort of informed perspective And I don't mind when I hear it as long as people have given it a shot and realize it's not for them But but I used to say this a year and a half ago, and I can't believe how much I've learned since So showed hands not including Justin who has the context in the experience and has decided not to do JavaScript or not to test JavaScript anybody Wow good on you. All right, cool. So I'm with you so far Make some compelling points So at this point we just want to say, you know No one raise their hand.  Thank you. We can make that commit. Thank you. All right. Goodbye. Oh Oh Yeah So, all right, so so I'm gonna start testing my JavaScript, right?  I Looked all over the place and I couldn't find that So let's let's just make a quick pivot here with Dave Caruso and start talking about Some real codes and just talk about first steps So first let's talk about our spec. Nobody got that I Thought that that was like gonna be the best thing that we had. I'm a little disappointed I'm sorry. We've let you down disappointed you in crowd So show of hands, who knows our spec this better be everybody Thank you sweet. We didn't ask whether you like our spec or prefer it over anything else, but we're just talking about familiarity Just look familiar Yes, yes, we lost this guy over you sleeping. Yeah, so well, sorry, what if I told you that this was Jasmine That looks like our spec and and actually having this this looks really familiar Yes, congratulations everybody. All right. It was a good time. Hey, thank you very much everybody. Oh So so so it wouldn't I Think we should at least take a stab at that one problem that we saw of unnamed anonymous functions, but I know Jasmine So let's take a real-world example of some real code of yours Okay, and then just try to see what it would be look like what it would look like if we wrote some specs for it Can you please stop pulling examples for my crappy untested JavaScript code? Sorry, can you explain what this is trying to do for us Corey? Yeah, I mean it's two lines. It looks pretty simple, right? We're doing something. We're clicking. We're running some code new task Step three profit Yeah, so when I when I see code like this and I'm sure that a lot of you have seen jQuery But if you work with jQuery event bindings that look a little like this My question is yeah Well, what's the concern? Well, what's the concern with this chunk of code? JavaScript You are the finding TLA's Or is it that app behavior that's occurring right there? Or is it maybe like the gluing of that event and that behavior? So you can see there's there's several things kind of going on at once even though it's only a few lines That gives me the uh-oh feeling And when you when you don't separate concerns is that Wayne So when you don't separate concerns one thing that it seems like it can lead to in a lot of cases is stuff like this Yeah, yeah, so that one wasn't so bad, but I'm not a big fan of the neighbors here.  I hope okay So so how let's just start with that application behavior If you didn't see what it does it just looks at this and then gets a jQuery results object of it And it adds a new div that says new tasks. It's not easy enough sure. So let's look at a Jasmine spec of that code Hey, that looks like ours, but oh we did that one Pretty straightforward. We're adding a task. We have some setup. We have some behavior. We have some assertions Okay, I'm with you. Yeah, sweet So and one of the questions that I get right off the bat when I first start talking to people about Testing the JavaScript is they'll say well, how would I test that jQuery or that DOM interaction? And there's a lot of tools out there and helpers to Jasmine that can really help you do that The one that we used here is called Jasmine jQuery and you can use that URL to be find it But it provides a lot of custom matchers that are really really powerful For instance that container is a jQuery results object So I get the matcher to contain you know and then a jQuery selector and it'll go and you know verify that one Is there so you should have taken our JavaScript craftsmanship Ruby craftsmanship like idea and done that with Jasmine jQuery and our spec rails Right because it seems like they're doing similar things providing matches, right? So it's not that different What else you got? Well, so so so that spec drove out a new function that's named and more focused I mean this looks good to me because I can tell what it does by looking at the name And it's a one-line method where I come from You know, that's smiles times. You know, this this is good. We like this. I like this. Do you like this? Well, it's not the whole story Cory, right the event binding is the hard part but is there anybody at this point who wants to go back to the Four-line method with all the crazy stuff going on Because there's the door a total straw man. That's no fair Okay So we'll continue now now no one no one be scared of this one Describing some stuff doing some setup talking about behavior trigger an event handler buying Prevent that's kind of long I'll say dude that is way scarier on this great big screen and it was on your monitor Okay, so what can we do to fix this? So there's a lot of visual cruft to start off with right if you do a lot of nesting You're typing the word function so fast that you can just hammer it out Lots of semicolons and curlies. I mean, that's how we roll in JavaScript land, right? You're supposed to have like function function function. Didn't we see that in an earlier story? No bad. Okay So what happens we take this out? Yeah, so earlier today It was mentioned that Rails 3.1 with the asset pipeline includes coffee Support out of the box and even if you don't choose to use coffee script for your production code right away for whatever reason There's nothing stopping you from using it for your test code So Jasmine, I think looks a lot better a lot cleaner. I mean you can look at this and tell that we're talking about a clicker You know, we're setting things up and we're clicking a button Triggering our handler binding to the result Preventing the default behavior. It's doing the same thing, but this is less long I'll say there's a little bit. So that spec drove out a more reusable function And this one we can just you know, we called it clicker you give it any jQuery selector you give it any success callback and It prevents default for you. It sets up the live handle. I Think it's an improvement so what we started with up there was we had you know all these combined concerns that was probably gonna lead to some Duplication and it just became an easy little one-liner that's hopefully readable maintainable And if we change how we do our click event binding, you know, then We only have to do it in one place. I Like that. I like that a lot. What else you got? So let's talk about just like next steps. We don't have very much time left but but there's We'd be remiss if we just finished here and then didn't point you in the direction of some new stuff to do Sink or swim Rubyists. Yeah, so so I've been spending a lot of the last year if you follow me on github or anything Half of my repos are about little Jasmine toys and demos. I built a little Web app that lets you just try Jasmine out in your browser without any downloads or any setup at this URL on Heroku What does it look like? It looks a little like this So it's hopefully not too threatening You just type some specs in here and some source down here and hit the button or the keyboard shortcut to fill it out Kind of looks familiar. Is that Yeah, so so it uses the the ace boxes here to draw out Yeah, so so github recently is using the same really really slick editor with the syntax highlighting And I was proud that I was there first, so let's take that Tim Clem That's all we have on Tim So what else can I do? I tried jasmine. You got me. So how do I add it to my rails project? Cory and I had trouble coming up with good slides at first and so we just spent the day hacking on a rails gem Jasmine rails is a real simple gem that wraps up a couple other tools We like one of them is Jasmine headless webkit and the other one is The core Jasmine gem just a new runner that respects the new asset pipeline so that you can use coffee script Asset pipeline and head the specs tell me more. Yeah, so you you can run it headlessly With a real, you know, the wet the Nokia webkit widget that looks like our spec Or you can run it in your browser and this is especially helpful for debugging and they both drive off the same jasmine Yeah, we'll config file. So so they should be in sync. It looks like try jasmine So either way Cory prefers it this way. Cool. I prefer it that way anything else one last thing So we actually we were talking about this and wanted to give a little bit more of an in-depth thing Because there's obviously a lot to go into here. There's Dom Interactivity. There's callbacks Ajax There's so much stuff that we're not familiar with in Ruby land It's kind of unique to JavaScript in Jasmine So what we wanted to do was get together with everybody who is either testing JavaScript or wants to test JavaScript Let's all hang out talk about what the issues are that we're having and figure out how to work through them together So we can all learn and grow and get way better at you know improving the quality and the craftsmanship around Our JavaScript code and in addition to loving you so much. We made a gem We also have a coupon code. So definitely take advantage of that. It's in Denver. It's add-on cube CJ If you don't know about that. Yeah, and even if you can't make it next week, especially if you're flying home Find either of us on Twitter and we'll try our best to answer your question Help you with a gist or kick it back up to DW Frank and the awesome guys at the middle labs who made Jasmine for us So big thanks to them, especially because they're sponsoring today Thank all of you for writing crappy JavaScript code and inspiring us to give this talk


Thank you for tuning in to our JSA virtual roundtable shaking down the digital divide, rural broadband access across North America. A couple of housekeeping notes before we begin. Our first 100 registrants today have now received lunch delivered to their door or a gift card, so please go ahead and enjoy. We have well over 330 registrants today, our big roundtable, so very exciting. Go ahead and emoji that. So if you weren't one of our first, that's okay, and that's about two thirds of y'all. So hopefully next time, make sure our hint, these are monthly, check out jsa.net for future topics and register early so we can feed you. I'm an Italian mom, I want to feed you all. So go ahead and register early and we'll get some lunches sent to your door. Also, as you probably noticed, our JSA virtual roundtables got a bit of a facelift this 2021, includes a first in the industry virtual networking lounge before and after our panel discussion. So please stick around once this roundtable concludes to join the tables for a unique opportunity to talk face to face with other event attendees and speakers. And go ahead, table hop, you know, go ahead and keep that conversation going. We really want to see you here from you face to face. Also, during this panel, we also want to hear from you make this experience interactive as possible. So please go ahead and add any questions that you may have for our panelists into the chat, or you can request the mic to come on camera and ask your question to the panelists. So feel free. All right. So let's go ahead and get started. You're not here to hear me talk here to hear the gentlemen that we have lined up here, our topic today incredibly timely, shaking down the digital divide rural broadband access across North America. To introduce our speakers and to please welcome my good friend, my love him, Rob Powell, founder and chief editor of telecom ramblings, the blog you must be reading every morning like I am. Rob, thanks for joining us today, my friend, Laura is yours. Thank you, Jamie. And thank you for the invitation to moderate today's panel. It's no secret that urban and suburban areas get most of our industry's infrastructure love, and it's always been kind of a struggle to balance broadband access needs of rural areas against the cost of deployment. The FCC's rural digital opportunity fund is directing up to 30 billion dollars over 10 years on infrastructure projects that will go through a formal bidding process. These projects must be meticulously planned as they are expected to begin immediately upon approval without delay. So how do you ensure that you have all that you need and ready at a moment's notice? Our panel of experts here will share their valuable expertise and insights as to how you can prepare. But first, let's quickly meet our panelists. We have all introduced each one and give them a chance to tell where they come from and what their point of view is going to be from. We have Rob Custer, the Senior Vice President of Product Management at Consolidated. Rob, tell us a bit about yourself. Hey Rob, thanks for having me today. So work for Consolidated Communications. We're a multi-services telecom operator with 23 states, 23 state service area, residential, commercial enterprise, and carrier space. So Art Doff and Broadband Expansion is kind of in our DNA and what we do. So look at the conversation today. Thanks. We have Scott Bergs, President and CEO of EXquared Technology. Scott. Hi, thanks again for having me on board and welcome to everybody who's joined the panel as well as the audience here. Really excited to hear again Scott Bergs, I'm the CEO of Vavacity in our operating company EXquared Technology and we design, build, operate, and maintain carrier-neutral wholesale access fiber facilities and related assets to help enable the expansion of Broadband in urban and in rural markets. And I've spent the better part of the last embarrassingly 30 plus years building out in those areas, much of that specifically in those tier two and tier three markets that the 96 Communication Act had envisioned would come into parallel with service offered in the metro areas. So excited about this and in the panel here today. Thanks. We have Frank DeJoy, Vice President of Network Development at Render Networks. Frank. Thank you, Rob, and welcome to all the participants and panelists. Again, I'm Frank DeJoy, Vice President Network Deployment at Render Networks. We're a construction management company and our platform streamlines the construction process for major fiber and wireless network deployments. We use digital transformation, automation, geospatial data, and mobile technology for deployment projects, including programs like ARDOF, CAF2, other rural broadband programs. We've been operating for close to nine years in Australia, the United States, now the UK. I've been in the industry 30 years at Executive Network Roles, AT&T, Bellbs, General Dynamics, DICOM, and Quanta. And at Render, I'm responsible for North American Market Development and Deployments. Thank you. Thanks. We have Isak Mian, VP of Sales and Ford Engineering at Redline Communications. Isak. Hi. So thanks for having me and welcome everyone for joining this session. So I'm the VP here at Redline Communication. We're a North American manufacturer of wireless communication systems. Multiple technologies includes private LTE as well as fixed wireless and Zoom 5G. I've been with Redline for about a year or so, but the company has been around for more than two decades, providing reliable low latency communication, wireless communication systems to various industries across the globe. And we do manufacture our products here in North America. I personally come from a telecom background, but providing the service to critical industries have been in the industry for about close to 27, 28 years, 20 years of which has been underground corporations. So working with regulatory bodies and doing that extra due diligence to plan projects like these is a particular four-day of mine. I'm all doctorate candidate at the George Washington University, where the focus of my research is project planning, specifically managing risks in infrastructure projects like these, which is the topic of today. So looking forward to this roundtable discussion. Thanks. And finally, we have Steve Levitt, Vice President of Global Ecosystem Development Connected to Fiber. Steve? Rob, I appreciate the chance to be here. So Connected to Fiber has built the connected world, which is the industry SaaS built specifically for the connectivity engine and has one goal. It's how do we transform the planning, buying, and selling of network amongst a very active ecosystem. So I appreciate the chance to be here and participating in the topic. So let's get into it here. Let's start off with the basics here. What are rural access projects like? Are they all similar? Is there a wide spectrum? What types of opportunities does a program like RDOF enable for you? Can you give us a, if you can, and it's at a specific example of what such a project looks for you? Let's start off with Rob over at Consolidated. Rob? Yeah, Rob, I think in some respects the projects are really similar, but they're also really diverse. So you use our example. I think it's fairly representative for some of the larger operators. We use your 23 states. So the needs of the individual communities and the geographies kind of vary pretty broadly. We see, we saw RDOF really as a jumping off point. We had identified thousands of locations that we would be able to build to and drop fiber off to as we went after specific RDOF census blocks. One example of that, Stonington, Maine. The city of Stonington, Maine is a pretty rural location. It's about a thousand locations to serve the entire town, not only the city core, but also the more rural locations. So we're able to use RDOF to fill in gaps that we can then use to jump off to build the rest of the network. So between public private partnership, private investment, and RDOF all combined, we're going to cover 100% of the locations. And that's one example of many. So as we approached RDOF, it really was, how do we use that to accelerate our larger fiber overbuild plan and as an adjunct to our larger fiber overbuild program to drive more into the rural locations, which again just expands opportunity for us. We've done a lot of public private partnerships over the last two years and we have many, many more of those coming. So we really, even though we look at RDOF as fiber is fiber is fiber, it also gives us the ability to accelerate discussions about public private partnerships to pick up other areas where RDOF is covered. So the more granular we could get in our RDOF planning, the better off we knew we could be at the end of this as we start into the builds. Interesting. Frank, you got something? Yeah, I'd like to, I guess I agree that there are a lot of similarities as well as well as differences. I mean, there's a wide spectrum of broadband funded projects that have a common theme rather of providing connectivity to unserved or underserved communities. RDOF is a rural program paid over 10 years based on census blocks, but other rural programs are more targeted or with even broader objectives. You have, for example, the American Rescue Plan, which allocated $7 billion for schools and libraries through the e-rate program for broadband infrastructure during the pandemic. And then you have the 2020 CARES Act that had billions that states and local and tribal governments could use, including a portion of that for telecom, but those were targeted for completion within the calendar year. So of course, state and the states have many different programs and the hundreds of millions over various time horizons. And there's new legislation in Congress as part of President Biden's multi-trillion dollar American Jobs Plan. So a lot of different programs all with the goal of advancing rural broadband. Of course, RDOF being center stage with a census block proliferation goal for underserved communities. And just that if I look at the winners, such as consolidated, the main goal, what they have in common is getting broadband and future-proof broadband to the communities, but there are different sorts of operators providing that broadband. You've got incumbent telcos or co-ops, fixed wireless operators, and even a new entrant of satellite providers getting into the game. So a different, a diverse mix of operators while providing broadband one way or another, but with a fiber backbone as sort of a common denominator. Ishaq, do you have anything over at Redline? What are you guys working on? Yeah, sure. So as I mentioned, we are a wireless communication system manufacturer. So our engagement in bridging the sort of rural digital divide has been based on that technology. But I, you know, answering this question, I agree with the panel that there are similarities, but that is if we look at it from a needs perspective, you know, so the bridging the digital divide. Yes, each project is similar because that is the end goal. But if you look at it from a project management perspective, or a technology perspective, then each project is unique. You know, we know from a project management perspective that each project has its own budget, its own schedule, you know, and each organization is different, each county, each municipality, any, every stakeholder is going to be different, their capabilities are going to be different. The communication needs are going to be different, and the communication ability available is going to be different. So each project is going to be different from that perspective. Even from technology perspective, you know, we have digital divide in New York City, and then we have digital divide in Tennessee or Missouri or, you know, places like these where topology, the geography is completely different, the population density is completely different. So, you know, I know when it comes to, for example, bandwidth or latency, you know, fiber is the way to go. But then, you know, these are public funds. So we have to do our due diligence and cost effectiveness is a key criteria where, you know, in some cases, a specific technology can become really cost prohibitive, which is where wireless comes into play. And then even in wireless, you know, in some cases, depending on the organization capability and the geography, you know, a private LTE system might make sense, versus in other cases, where to fix wireless system might make sense. So each project is going to be unique. And, you know, I'll sum it up by saying that there is no one solution that is best to bridge digital divide. There's always a best fit solution that is going to bridge this divide for your, for any community out there. Scott, where does the X squared fit in? You're still muted. I just got off. You'd think after nine months, we'd, or a year, we'd be able to figure out the mute button on these. Sorry about that. So I very much want to echo a lot of the things that have been said already, but I won't repeat them. I think the key is we try to take an approach that does look at what's best for individual market and the individual project that we're working on. And that generally speaks to what is the goal. And if the goal on ARDOF specifically is to provide the bandwidth at the minimum speeds available or articulated for the specific census blocks as it has been, the thing that we try to do is do that in the most efficient way possible. So if we're divided, if we're focused on a fiber network, for example, then we might put in a solution that isn't the most efficient for a particular community. So I'll echo what Isak said. I think in the long run, you want to get the most future-proofed facility put into place that you possibly can with the timeline and the budget that's available. And as a result, you've got to be a little bit flexible and you've got to be a little bit specific to each different market. But having the expertise from the design and engineering perspective involved in the planning process that gives you options to be able to pick from that, then I'd say the last piece, you've got to break it down into the different components for each different market. One is the last mile and you might have one technology that's the best technology for last mile. Then you've got to have the durability for the local market connectivity, whether that's a localized ring or a wholesale transport facility. And then ultimately, you've got to have the interconnection to the content. Because without that combination of interconnection and the actual content that's going to be uploaded and downloaded to the end facility, you can have the best facilities at the end that you probably want and they won't be able to be served. So thinking about the specific technology application and the costs required to be able to deploy within the timeline articulated at each of those three layers is just critically important and we hope to help to do that with all the folks that we're working with and partnering with. Okay. So how does one go about winning an ARDOF award to make one of these projects happen? Who do you have to bring into the process? How much effort does it take? Is it like a shotgun approach or a rifle shot at a specific opportunity? How does one go about this? Let's start off with Steve. Sure. So connect to the fibers role in ARDOF is really it's about enablement. How do we deal our carrier partners with a combination of data and technology to inject into that planning process up front? And when you think about technology platforms like the world, you're talking about the elimination of manual processes, data silos, it brings all the information together so that all the different constituents across the organization that are participating in this have the right data elements at their disposal to create, one, identify the right locations to bid on, but two, as you put that bid together, put yourselves in a position to bid on the deals where you have the most opportunity to win. When I think about stack ranking of different markets, being able to do that at scale so you can parallel process multiple markets at the same time, looking at the market opportunity with potential challenges in terms of what may come up of the building process like things like right of way and things, and also triangulating that with your cost basis in terms of per foot cost, the ability to build not only to bid but bid to win. And to me, that gives you the rifle like precision with a shotgun type scale at the same time. Interesting. Issa, you're on mute. Yeah, I apologize for that. Yeah, again, I, you know, from my perspective, the recommendation is always going to be take that very specific, you know, the rifle approach, as you mentioned, you know, look at your specific capabilities needs, as I mentioned earlier, your geography, and then based on that, you go and bid for specific opportunities and you go and, you know, approach it that way. The key thing to remember is, you know, you have to invest in planning upfront. We know that, you know, these are ICT projects, so information and communication technology projects, you know, the failure in these projects is higher than other types of infrastructure projects. So planning, again, research has suggested that planning, specifically planning for this management, for example, improves the channel of success in these projects. So bring in those experts early on, as early as possible, talk to potential vendors, you know, early on, do your due diligence and plan as much as you can early as you can to make sure you plan for that risk management and you have sort of a robust project plan in place when you go after such opportunities. Rob, how about you? What do you guys do? Yeah, I echo a lot of the things that everybody said before. You know, from our perspective, we already had pretty significant fiber projects underway and everything that we that we won in Ardolf was all cyber to the home one gig. So it really was an extension of the existing strategy. It was a really targeted approach on Ardolf specifically because we already had a pretty significant fiber build happening. So we were really focused on where we could go with Ardolf to maximum the total number of passings and get as many rural subscribers turned up as possible. The one thing I would probably add is, you know, you can't underestimate the supplier perspective of this. Anybody that's trying to deploy fiber right now is dealing with delays and enclosures and fiber, you know, all of the pieces and parts that go with that COVID related and also just volume related as the industry, the manufacturing industry tries to catch up with the massive demand. So one of the things that we started early on in our larger fiber builds and just extended the pattern with Ardolf was working with the suppliers early on to give them five, seven, 10 year views into what these build plans look like and, you know, talking about millions of feet of fiber per month. So that's one of the real keys is getting the suppliers and the boat as early as possible, giving them full transparency to the build plan so they can start ramping up production, not just now. We're already ordering fiber in 2022 and 2023 in order to make sure we have those have those facilities for us when they're ready to be used. Scott? Yeah, the thing I'd add is don't be afraid to say this market is not a market where we are designed to be the best or positioned to be the best.  And there are certainly opportunities in Ardolf as we've seen in earlier government funded projects like the BTOP projects where someone found a strategy to win the bid, but once they actually put that into execution and went out and either in the construction process found that the project wasn't as well crafted or designed through the engineering and the design process up front, or they missed a piece of either operations, execution cost or expense, or even just market assumptions about what revenue is going to be able to generate from those markets. So once you get the government dollars, you find, oh shoot, I got something and it isn't quite as attractive as I wanted. And then the worst case scenario is you've got sort of half built or underutilized infrastructure that's stranded out in one of these more rural markets. And now we've wasted time, we've wasted money, and ultimately we haven't achieved the underlying expansion of broadband into those markets that we hoped that we would with those valuable combination of private and public. What about Frank? Yeah, I agree with the focused approach and also especially Rob's comments about thinking about delivery and materials and the team up front. I mean, it's a very competitive and involved process and it's not something to be taken lightly, involves a lot of resources, want to be very, very prepared before the application window opens and have confidence in your solution up front. When you're submitting your bid and be able to prove its viability and your team's ability to deliver, the RDOF program had two stages, short form, long form, each requiring deeper levels of diligence about experience, solvency, capabilities. And even after the second phase, there are challenges happening in the industry about some of the long form winners. So I'd say sort of the keys to success are the focus on preparation, understanding the process and requirements and detail to get through them properly and not missing in on any technicalities, ensuring you have the confidence in your solution ability to deliver, including your team and partners and ability and tools to monitor progress and manage risk and be self-aware, understand what you can and can't do and be able to fill those gaps with the right partners and tools. Great. So once you've won one of these awards or one part of one or whatever, in what ways is the implementation of a project different from the normal course of business? And how do you prepare to hit the ground running and keep things on schedule once you do? Let's try Scott first. Yeah, I mean, obviously we've got RDOF as well as earlier programs that are like it in the CAP2 and before that the BTAP have deployment objectives. And a similar background is in the wireless space. And when you acquire wireless licenses, there's build up requirements. And those are with a good purpose intended to ensure that people aren't just squatting on these dollars and or these rights, and they're ultimately achieving the expansion of the broadband facilities in a timely basis. But at the same time, they're not how you would ordinarily plan them absent that kind of arbitrary outside pressure, where in those cases you might be looking to deploy first on an organic based within a cluster to ensure that you're edging out as opposed to jumping to a location to get things deployed to meet an underlying coverage deadline. And so you have to manage that deployment process to ensure that you live within the deployment requirements of RDOF while at the same time achieving a commercial progression of the network expansion that allows you to get some of those interim returns along the way. The worst thing that can happen again is you get these federal dollars and you think you're off and running and then you find out midstream that you're short because you didn't achieve the commercial scale that you needed to make the project successful long term. And so you just have to balance those up front. They're well-intentioned headlines and deployment requirements, but they just need to be put into more practical. Thanks. Steve, how do you see the implementation of these things? Yeah, just to kind of second one of Scott's, you know, I think being able to try to predict the commercial feasibility of the buildout upfront by looking at, you know, passes in terms of residential versus commercial versus tower infrastructure, etc., is a real key component to pulling the right data together.  And to do that down to the location level, understanding the rule of census block, but ultimately, it's the people in the homes and the buildings that are in the structures that are actually going to be consuming this network. And being able to triangulate that with any potential obstacle, getting into the actual structure and building into the structure, you know, those are the types of level of details. If you can homogenize that data into a single repository, it gives you this system of record to not only manage the planning piece, but the ongoing and building it out to manage any of the lefts and rights that may present themselves throughout the process. Then ultimately, once it's done, how do you present that to the market and really start to monetize it? Isaac, what about you? Any sanitation?  Number one, you know, this is about bridging the rural divide, you know, something that we should never forget. So there's an obligation on every stakeholder to remember that this is about public service. You know, what that does then is sort of take that cost effective, things like cost effectiveness. When we talk about due tins, when we talk about, you know, caring about caring about the people who actually will be using this networks, you know, at the end of the day, public funds, it's all about cost effectiveness. And when I say cost effectiveness, that does not mean low cost. That does not mean cheap. No, it's achieving a balance between system effectiveness, which is the function that we expect the system, whether it's fiber based or wireless communication or whatever connectivity platform we use. It's ensuring that that system performs desired function, you know, the achieving the bandwidth and the latency requirements that have been defined and balancing that against the life cycle cost. And it's important to remember that that's the life cycle cost. This is about initial cost of procurement. It is about the cost of that system across its life cycle. So that includes the planning piece, that includes the network building piece, that includes the network operations, please.  Who has the capability to do it? What kind of investment is needed? Or what kind of technologies should be solid up front to minimize the impact on the operations organizations? These are kinds of the decisions that, you know, take precedence when it comes to planning for these projects. So, you know, that is one way that I'd say it's different than other. The other is, of course, as I alluded to it earlier, is risk management. You know, as I mentioned, when it comes to public private, you know, infrastructure projects, you know, the success rate has been mixed. And what research has shown that, you know, planning for managing risk in these kind of projects significantly improves, improves project success, chances of project success. So that is another area where there needs to be some, you know, thought that need to go into it at the early stages of the project. Interesting. Rob, what about you guys? How do you go about implementing these and, you know, how does it differ? Yeah, you know, for us, the implementation really actually began during the Vidsys. So, I think I referenced before, we've got a pretty significant fiber overbuild that's been going on for a while now, and will go on for the next five or six years. By 2025-ish, we're going to have more than 70% of our 2.8 million passings, fiber to the home one, get capable. So when we bid ARDOF, it really was centered around that specific strategy. So we intentionally picked areas that were the long existing fiber route. So in practice, what that really means for our engineering and planning teams is if I'm laying fiber across this road already, and, you know, in a lot of cases, we're blessed to have a pretty robust and dense fiber network. Backbone fiber network, particularly in our Northern New England markets and in the other markets as well. So cost per passing is relatively pretty low. So what we're able to do is over that overlay ARDOF to that existing plan, and know we're already going down this road and we're going to drop off PON, XGS PON, to each one of the homes and businesses and facilitate cell towers that are there already. Now we have an ARDOF census block. We're going to ladder all out and go build to that ARDOF census block. So for us, it really was, in a lot of cases, business as usual, just extending out the existing fiber build plan. Yeah. And Frank, I'm hearing preparation as everything. Is it for you guys too? Can you see that? Yeah. I mean, as I have said, I mean, I'm thinking about implementation and schedule with ARDOF differences with ARDOF, for example, are there are specific requirements for getting the number of locations in the census block deployed within certain periods of time, 40% of the locations in three years, for example, than 20% in successive years. So those need to be important fundamental milestones in the build plan that would be balanced against an operator's other deployment milestones. That objective may not be balancing, may not be driving a build plan in other densely populated areas where you're looking to get maximum return on investment. ARDOF also has very specific and comprehensive reporting requirements in the hub tool about different milestones and dashboard data that's needed both during and after the build. And failure to meet these requirements could result in even increased reporting obligation and possible withholding of support.  Consider your reporting requirements upfront so that you can automate as much as possible and focus on your deployment and operation and streamline and automate as much the construction management as you can with a digital deployment approach with tools such as that which Render could provide, and I'd be glad to discuss that offline. Great. All right. For all the panel, what are the pitfalls that you see companies fall into on this type of project? When things go wrong, what goes wrong? Let's start with Rob. Where to start the list? I'm reminded that the more things change, the more they stay the same. I'm sure that if there are operators that are listening in this, we all get the same questions. I got one earlier today at a customer saying, hey, I have fiber. Your fiber is running in my backyard. How do I get fiber to the home? Well, it's not that simple. And I think that the masses don't understand that building fiber networks is really hard, and it's terribly expensive, and maintaining them to the previous comment is just as hard and just as expensive. I think there are all kinds of pitfalls. Number one is planning. You've heard that word over and over and over and over again. We've got seven to 10 years with the milestones to build these projects, but if you haven't started already, you need to start now. Like today, it is not too late to start planning all of your art off builds from suppliers and getting fiber in, getting enclosures to in home, right? CPE to get ONTs and gateways. There are so many pieces and parts, and that completely is separate from construction planning, permitting right away. There is not too early of a time to start. So again, I think it kind of goes down to planning eliminates a lot of the risk. It's impossible to completely de-risk fiber builds of these natures or of this nature. The pitfalls are out there, but it's all about planning. If you know your network and you know your geography, you're really, you have a big leg up, but it still does not obviate the need to have all of the plan in place now. Issa, what problems do you see people running to? I'll start with saying exactly the same. Even though the technology that we deal with is different, wireless communication as opposed to wireline or fiber, but it's exactly the same in Western planning. If you haven't started already, start today. I'll give you a couple of specific examples. We've had projects strictly to bridge to divide in US and even here in Canada as well. Where one common theme when it comes to that lack of planning comes, that is evident. Things like RF design, so radio frequency design, radio frequency or wireless communication. Of course, just the physics of the technology is such that every single tree, every single building, anything in that geography makes a difference. It impacts the design. What we've seen a lot of times is our clients coming to us with this understanding that it's just a matter of just like at home, I buy a Wi-Fi router and I install it and that's it. It's plug-and-play. Well, modern technology is plug-and-play, but if you've planned properly for it. The specific example would be that of not thinking about investing in RF planning, which has a cost associated to it. You need to invest in it. At times, depending on the geography, high-resolution data might be required and there is a cost associated. These costs needs to be budgeted for or whatever budget you have available. You have to allocate a part of it to these services. Another is at times we've seen this reluctance of investing in project management and coordination. There has to be a specific individual who needs to own the project and the team and identifying the need for expertise. Overall, when it comes to pitfalls, things like these, I'd say a good place to look at is the program. There was a program Smart Grid Investment Ground funded by the DOE, the Department of Energy under Obama Administration. That program finished I think around 2016-2017 and there were a number of reports that were provided. In the final report, the DOE has actually accumulated the lessons and categorized them into eight different categories. The pitfalls that the various stakeholders fell into when they were doing these projects. I'd say that's a good place to start because it's very similar infrastructure. A lot of it was smart metering, so building these communication infrastructure, a very similar concept. That I believe is a very good start. The final report is available on DOE's website. If you want the link, approach me and I'll share the link with you. That report has a very detailed, sort of over the seven years, there were a hundred projects, 238 utilities and all the pitfalls that they experience in those projects are listed there. It's a good place to start with when you're doing your planning for these projects. It sounds like a good resource. Steve, what do you see as pitfalls that people run into? I don't want to keep hammering the planning thing, but planning is really, really important. It seems to be the theme. The additive piece that I would bring to the table is don't be afraid to invest in technology and automation to help manage the ongoing process. Not only to determine or identify the right data upfront, but think about looking at things like a place to store and have a system of record for a line of site data for parcel and building level boundary layers. All this information is going to be super important for you to manage, but it's not a one-time thing. You need to have the ongoing persistence in terms of how you're managing that asset. That would say don't be afraid to invest in the technology and automation to support it. Frank? Reflecting on the broadband projects over the last decades, some things that jump out at me and that were sort of mentioned by the panel. Again, Phil, I think one is to make sure you understand any gaps that you might have in your technical or operational model, especially if your core business is not telecom deployment or operations. Bring in partners who can fill gaps. Another thing is be sure to focus on engineering and permitting in your project upfront. One or two missed permits can cause significant cost or milestone delays, especially for example if you're building a fiber extension or ring out to a rural area that's going to be served with a wireless distribution and then similar to the more recent comments about automation and technology. Begin with the end in mind. Have the right tools, processes, and for to measure progress in a timely fashion. Don't wait a month before your SOC hub reports do to understand you might have some risks and deployment challenges. Have as much of that automated with leading indicators and risk management programs in place as ahead of time so that you're well ahead of schedule and managing risk along the way. Scott, your questions. Yeah, thanks. I think obviously the planning and the execution risks that have been identified here are clearly important, but there's a couple of things that I'd like to point out that I think are even bigger risks when you have this wonderful government funding available. And I'll start with saying we as folks who live and work in the United States should be very, very thankful that our office, we should also be thankful that the proposed programs and the existing programs through the American Recovery Act and the American Jobs Act are potential additional public funding dollars to support and partner with those private funding dollars that are available out there to meet the demand for that broadband infrastructure. But at the same time, if we look back at historical projects and those similar government funding sources, they can create other problems. You can build in an area that isn't built purely because it just didn't have the commercial demand to justify an individual infrastructure expenditure. And while the government funding can help that, it doesn't change the math. And in fact, it can create the opportunity to make the math worse by raising the cost of raw materials, as Rob pointed out, at least in the short term as you increase demand for, you know, right now just getting the core materials to put in duct is getting more expensive and it's getting more delayed. The cost of labor continues to go up. There's a good side to that, right? We're increasing the overall payable jobs out there, but there's a difficulty because you can't deploy if you can't find affordable labor to be able to deploy in those markets. And so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But one of the solutions to that, and the reason that we at Vibati and EX Square are so focused on shared infrastructure and open access model is historically, we have built similar infrastructure along the exact same corridors to fill the needs of two different parallel customers that just weren't willing or able to work together. And we think in it, in particular, as you started to get into these Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets, what using that shared infrastructure makes it more cost-effective, it makes it more time-effective, it preserves the scarce resource of the right away that's available, it reduces operating costs and ultimately provides a better solution for everybody involved, both today and through the entire operational life of the facilities that's being deployed. So I think the coordination of those and being willing to partner with others is a way to avoid that fall that can unintentionally be created by the influx of incremental federal dollars. All right. Well, thank you. And I think we are out of time here. So I'm going to turn it over to Jamie. Jamie. We are. We are so much love them inside of great, great words of wisdom there. Thank you gentlemen. Big thank you of course to my friend, our guest moderator, Rob Powell, founder and chief editor of Telecom Ramblings, keeping us on point as huge. And again, our insightful speaker, Rob Custer, Consolidated Communications, Scott Burgs, EXQR Technology, Frank DeJoyd, Render Networks, Eshaq Mian, Redline Communications, and Steve Levitt, connected to Fiverr. Really great tips and insight. Also, I noticed some of it's my friendly on Markham from Highland. We see your great questions.  Thank you for writing those in. And if you were one of our first 100 registrants, we hope you enjoyed your lunch. Make sure you visit us at jsa.net to register for more upcoming JSA virtual roundtables, including our next one, which is on May 20th, where leaders in our industry were going to talk about disaster recovery and network resiliency right in time for hurricane season. So that is a wrap here. Look out for the playback of today's roundtable coming soon to JSA TV and JSA podcast on YouTube, iHeart, iTunes, Spotify, many more. In the meantime, see you back in the networking lounge. As always, stay safe and happy networking.


We must also realize that the problems of racial injustice and economic injustice cannot be solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power. Unsettling force for liberation and we've got nothing to lose but our chains. We are a warly country and systemic racism and systemic poverty and ecological devastation and finally we have to deal with the moral narrative. And we won't be silent anymore. And we won't be silent anymore. We have fewer voting rights today than we did 50 years ago. Did you know that 23 states have passed racist voter suppression laws since 2010? Did you know that it is over 1800 days since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act? That at least 17 states have voter suppression that has targeted Native American and or Alaskan Native voters? That there are 6 million people whose right to vote has been taken away from them? We demand an end to military aggression and war monitoring. We demand a stop to the privatization of the military budget and any increase in military spending. We demand the demilitarization of our communities on the border and in the interior. And we remind the people in the legislature what Isaiah said 2600 years ago.  As long as the poor are being robbed we're here. As long as the women are being hurt we're here. As long as the children are being hurt we're here and we're not going anywhere.