Live from Atlanta, Georgia. It's theCUBE, covering AnsibleFest 2019. Brought to you by Red Hat. Hey, welcome back everyone. This is theCUBE's live coverage here in Atlanta, Georgia for AnsibleFest, part of Red Hat's big news, Ansible Automation Platform was announced, among other things, they're great products. I'm John Furrier with my co-host Stu Miniman. Got two great guests here to unpack all the Automation Platform features and benefits. Walter Bentley, Senior Manager of Automation Practice at Red Hat, and Vijay Jebolu, Director of Red Hat Consulting. Guys, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having us. So the activity is high. The buzz this year seems to be at an inflection point as this category really aperture grows big time. Seeing automation touching a lot of things, standardization, we heard glue layer, standard substrate, this is what Ansible's becoming. So lots of service opportunities, a lot of happy customers, a lot of customers taking it to the next level. And a lot of customers trying to consolidate, figure out how to make Ansible kind of a standard, other customers coming in.  What's the buzz? What's the main story? What's the top story going on around the services? How to deploy this? What are you guys seeing? So I think what we're seeing now is customers who actually been doing automation for a long time have been looking at it at a very tactical level, which is very departmental, very focused on silo. What they've come to realize is with this modern DevOps and the change in how they actually go to market, they need to bring the different teams together. So they're actually looking at what should my enterprise automation strategy be? How do we actually take what I've learned in one organization and actually roll it across the enterprise? So that now struggling at figuring out how do we scale what we have? How do we change the culture of the organization to kind of collaborate a lot more and actually drive automation across the enterprise? You know, Walter, one of the things we've been, we've talked about all the time on theCUBE and it's become kind of cliche. Digital transformation, okay, we've heard that before. And the three things, people, process, technology. Process and capabilities you guys have done, you mentioned siloed having capabilities, that's been there, check. Ansible's done very, very well as a product. Technology, Red Hat and the portfolio, great synergies, we talk about rail integration, all the benefits there. But the interesting thing this year that I've noticed is the people side of the equation is interesting. The people are engaged is changing their role because automation inherently changes their function in the organization. Because it takes away probably the mundane tasks. This is a big part of the equation. You guys are kind of hitting that mark. How are you guys seeing that? How are you accelerating that? How is that changing your job? Right, so customers are now kind of realizing that going after automation in a very tactical manner is not exactly getting them what they want as far as a return on investment in the automation. And what they're realizing is that they need to do more. And they're coming to us and more of an enterprise architecture level and say we want to talk more grander strategy. And what they're coming to realize is that having just one small team of people that we're calling the DevOps team is not going to be able to drive that adoption across their organization. So what we're trying to do is work with customers to show them how they've collaboration. And the culture of peace is huge. It's a huge part of adopting automation. Ansible's no longer considered a emerging tech anymore. And when I say that, I mean, a lot of organizations are using Ansible in many different ways. They're past that point. And now they're moving on to the next part which is what is our holistic strategy at how we're going to approach automation. And we want to leverage Ansible and Ansible Tower to do that. Has that changed how you guys do your, roll out your practices in some of your programs? Well, we did have to make some adjustments in the sense of recognizing that the cultural piece is a pivotal part of it. And we can go in and we can write playbooks and roles and we can do all those things really great. But now we need to go in and help them structure themselves in a way where they can foster that collaboration and keep it going. And I'll actually add on to that. So we actually launched Open Innovation Labs three years ago. And what we actually learned doing that is using labs and the lab's practices to actually help customers embrace new culture and change how they actually operate has actually helped us take those practices and bring it into our programs and kind of drive that to our customers. So we actually run our automation adoption program and the journey for customers through those practices that we actually learned in Open Innovation Labs, like Open Practice Library, even storming priority sliders and all of those modern techniques. So the goal is to help our customers understand those practices and actually embrace them and bring them into the organization to drive the change that that's looking for within the organization. Fiji, is there anything particular for those adoption practices when you're talking about cloud? Because the communication amongst teams, silos, making things simpler is something that we absolutely do need for cloud. So I'm just curious how you connect kind of the cloud journey with the automation journey. So all of the journey programs that we actually created, whether it's our content adoption program or the automation adoption program, we actually follow the same practices. So whether you're actually focused on a specific automation tool like Ansible or actually embarking on a hybrid multi-cloud journey, we actually use the same practices. So the customers don't have to learn new things every time you actually go from one product to another. So that actually brings a consistent experience to customers in driving change within their organization. So irrespective of whether it is focused on automation, focused on cloud, migrating to the cloud, the practices remain the same and the focus is about not trying to boil the ocean on day one, try to break it into manageable chunks that give return back to the business quickly, learn from the mistakes that you make in each of the way and actually build upon it and actually be successful. All right, so Walter, I always love when we get to talk to the people that are working straight with the customers because you come here to the conference, it's like, oh, it's really easy to get started. It doesn't matter what role or what team you're in, everybody can be part of it. But when you get to the actual customer environment, they're stumbling blocks, you know? What are some of those things? What are some of the key things that stop people from taking advantage of all the wonderful things that all the users here are doing? Well, one of the things that I've identified and we've identified as a team is a lot of organizations always want to boil the ocean and when it comes down to automation, they feel that if they are not doing this grand transformation and doing this huge project, then they're not doing automation. And the reality is is that we're showing them that you can break things up into smaller chunks as VZ alluded to and even if you fail, you fail fast and you can start over again because you're dealing with things in a smaller chunk. And we've also noticed that by doing that, we're able to show them the return on investment faster so they can show their leadership and their leadership can stand behind that and want to do more. So that's one of the areas. And then I kind of alluded to the other area which is you have to have everybody involved.  You don't want that just being one silo team. You want to have everybody involved and collaborate as much as possible. Yeah, maybe can you give us any examples about the ROI? How fast do people get the results and prove to scale this out? So with the automation adoption journey, what we were able to do is that we come in and sit down with our customers and walk them through how to properly document their use cases. What are the dependencies? What are the integration points? Possibly even determining well, what is the ROI ranking for that use case? And then we move them very quickly in the next increment and in the next increment, we actually step them through taking those use cases, breaking them down into minimum viable products and then actually putting those in place. So within a 90 day or maybe a little bit more than a 90 day window, we're able to show the customer in many different parts of the organization how they're able to take advantage of automation and how they return on investment with hopes of obviously reducing either man hours or being able to handle something that is no mundane task that you have to do manually over and over again. What are some of the things that people get confused about when they look at the breadth of what's going on with the automation platform? I mean, obviously tool to platform transitions are natural, we've seen that many times in the industry and then you guys have had product success, got great community, the customers are active and now you got an ecosystem developing. So kind of things are popping on all cylinders here. So the biggest challenge that we've actually been seeing customers is they actually now come to realize that it's very difficult to change the culture of the organization, right? They're actually embarking on this journey and the biggest confusion they have is how do we actually go make those changes? How do we bring some of the open practice and some of the open source collaboration that Red Hat has had into their organization so they actually can operate in a more open source collaborative way? And what we've actually learned is we actually have what we call as Communities of Practice within Red Hat. It is actually a community of consultants, engineers and business owners. They actually all collaborate and work together on offering solutions to the market. So we are taking those experiences back to our customers and enabling them to create those communities of practice and automation community that everybody can be a part of. They can share experiences and actually learn from each other much easier than kind of being a fly on the wall or kind of throwing something over the fence to see what sticks and what does not. You know, it's interesting about the boiling in the ocean comment you mentioned, Walter and Vijay, your point there is is that the boiling ocean is very aspirational. We need change, right? So it's more of the outcome that they're looking for. But to get there is really about taking those first steps. And the folks on the front lines have either applications they're trying to solve or manage, getting those wins is key. So one of the things I'm interested in is the analytics piece. Showing the victories, showing the wins early is super important because that kind of shows the roadmap of what the outcome may look like versus the throw of the kitchen sink at it and boil the ocean over which we know is the failed strategy. Take us through those analytics. What are some of the things that people tend to knock down first? What are some of the analytical points that people look at for KPIs? Can you share some insight into that? Sure, sure. So we always encourage our customers to go after the platform first. And I know that may sound the obvious, but the platform is something that is pretty straightforward. Every organization has it. Every organization struggles with provisioning, whether of a private cloud, public cloud, virtualization, you name it. So we have the customer kind of go after their platform first and look at some of their day two operations. And we're finding that that's where the heaviest return on investment really sits. And then once you get past that, we can start looking at end-to-end workflows. Can they tie service now to tower to be able to make a complete workflow? Someone that's maybe requesting a VM and they can actually go through that whole workflow by leveraging tower and an integration point like service now. Those are where we're finding that the operators of these systems getting the fastest benefit and also of course benefits the business at the end of the day because they get what they need a lot faster. It's like a best practice then for you guys. You've seen that. Yes, sir. We document that out. Vijay, what's your comment on all this? So going back to the question on metrics, automation is great, but it does not provide any value to the business unless you actually show what was the impact. Whether it's from a people standpoint, cost standpoint or anything else. So what we try to drive is enable customers to kind of build the baseline as to where they are today. And as they're going through the incremental journey towards automation, measure the success of that automation against that baseline. And that actually adds the ROI back to the customer. As a business, you then get to see I was creating a storage line. I was doing it probably 15 times a month. Take it out of here. I've now automated it.  I saved myself probably half a person that can be doing something else better. So building those metrics and with the automation analytics that actually came in the platform, tying those baselines to the number of executions actually is a huge value to our customers. They'll actually be able to realize the benefits of automation and measure the success of it within the enterprise better. So if I'm a customer or a prospect, I want to get a win. I don't want to get fired. I want to get promoted, right? I say, okay, I got to get a baseline and knock down some playbooks. Knock that down first. That's what you're getting at. That's a good starting point. That's a good starting point. Understand your baseline today. Yes. Plan your backlog as to what you want to knock down. And once you knock them down, build a dashboard as to what the benefits were, what the impact was, and actually build upon it. You actually will see an incremental growth in your success with automation. And then you go to the workflow end to end. That's your selling point for the next level. Absolutely. Good playbook. Is that the automation programs in a nutshell or is that more of a best practice? Well, those are components of the automation adoption journey. We allow the customer to kind of decide how they want their journey to be crafted. Of course, we have a very specific way of going about and walking them through it. But we allow them to kind of craft that journey and that is, those are two components that make up the automation journey. Well, I got to put you guys on the spot as to the tough question we heard from JP Morgan yesterday on the keynote, which I thought was very compelling. You know, days, hours, to minutes, all this is great stuff. And it's real impact. Other customers validate that. So congratulations. Can you guys share any anecdotal stories? You know, the name customers, you can just talk about situations where customers gone from this to this. Old way, new way, and throw some numbers around. Share some anecdotes. This is not a public reference, but I'll actually give you a customer. It's actually a retail company. When we first actually went and ran a discovery session, it took them 72 days to provision an instance. And the whole point was not because it took that long, it because every task had an SLA. We'd actually wait for the SLA manually to do the task. We actually went in with- How many hours? 72 hours? 72 days. 72 days. We actually go in with the automation. We actually drive automation. It was, everybody was working on the SLA. We actually brought it down to less than a day. So you just gave the developer who's looking to code 71 days back for him to start writing code. So that's the impact that we see automation bringing back to the customers, right? And you'll probably find those use cases across everywhere, whether it's JPMorgan Chase, you actually had the British Army and everybody on stage talking about it. It is powerful, but it is powerful if you can measure and learn from it. That's the baseline point. Right. Give some other examples because that's 72 days. Is that mostly delay? It's delay. Purocracy? It's not so much time. It's manual task. And when it's a manual task, you're actually waiting for the person to do the task. Waterfall, pass things on. Well, there are any examples you can give. Yes. So the one example that always stands out to me, and again, it's a pretty trivial and straightforward, is Citrix Patching. So we worked with an organization, they were an energy company, and they wanted to automate patching their Citrix environment. Patching their Citrix environment took six weekends, and it took at least five or six engineers. And we're talking about bringing in application owners, the folks who are handling the bare metal, all of that whole window. And by automating most of that patching process, we were able to bring it down to one weekend and one engineer who can do it from home and basically monitor the process instead of having to be interactive and active with it. And to me, that was a huge win, even though it's, you know, it's Citrix patching. That's the marketing plan, get your weekends back. Absolutely. Throw some shrimp on the barbecue, you know. Absolutely. Great job. Guys, thanks for the insight, thanks for coming on theCUBE, really appreciate it. Congratulations. Thank you. Thanks for sharing. This is theCUBE, here live coverage, Ansible Fest, where the big news is the Ansible Automation Platform, breaking it down here on theCUBE. I'm John Furrier, it's Stu Miniman. We'll be back with more coverage after this short break.


What is going on guys welcome back to the channel critical overload here, so we're gonna talk about saw 11 in this video here today We're gonna talk about the potential delays that could be up upcoming for the film We're also gonna talk about the scrap TV show that we likely never will get at least not in this format for Mark Patrick Melton and Marcus Dustin the two writers responsible for saw six I believe whoever turned for saw 11 viewer non put out this tweet a Few days ago saying dear saw producers when you guys call all the shots We get saw four saw five 3d and jigsaw when you let Kevin Gruder be in charge We get saw six and saw X please trust Gruder because numerous people involved with 11 have reached out concerned about your decisions It's literally a 180 flip from what I heard during pre-production and filming of saw X where everyone was confident They had something that was going to surprise people I didn't know if I would make this post but we're getting to a crisis point and more and more people every week Some old sources some new or in my DMs talking about how worried they are and there's a consensus mark and orn are the problems With saw 11 now that tweet from viewer non Let to Josh Stolberg who we know stepped away from saw 11 as a writer with his co-writer None of them are involved with the writing process again. It's Patrick and Marcus back Josh put out a tweet and obviously it seems like in response to the madness and concern surrounding saw 11 now Saying everybody should slow the F down with the gossip on saw 11 I have nothing to do with the film But I also know that the people involved really loved the franchise and wanted to work I don't know what's up But having lived in the sausage factory for close to a decade take a deep breath I mean obviously they wanted to work because they want the IP to be profitable so they can keep enriching themselves That's the first and foremost thing for a lot of these people Creatively the creatives involved with it. They just want to put out a quality film I would imagine so if what viewer non has put it out is true Obviously and I got a lot of DMs from you guys This is not bold Well for anyone that was going into saw 11 with a lot of excitement and this makes you concerned because it does make me Concerned I wasn't necessarily going into saw X with a lot of excitement, but I was Excited going off of what we were slowly learning and now if we're slowly learning Negativity surrounding saw 11 and I'm engaging with that negativity.  So if the producers are causing an issue I'm a little bit concerned now about the quality of what we get with saw 11 Which would be unfortunate to come off of such a high and then go back down to such a low that fast When it seemed like saw X was setting you up perfectly to just come back put out a series of quality films two or two or three more One or two actually you can stop it saw Saw 12. I don't care put out a trilogy a silent trilogy of quality saw films and then dip call it call it a wrap But then hearing this I am a little bit concerned about what we could be getting potentially with saw 11 And it'd be unfortunate if the film again just takes one of the biggest nose dives after such a complete high Especially when you have a character like Cecilia likely involved in the mix again, everyone loves Cecilia Obviously a lot of that was due to the tremendous performance from the actress But then to have these characters that we loved coming out of saw X back for saw 11 and the quality is suddenly Flipped upside down. It's gonna be very frustrating to endure such a film because it's gonna be like How did we go from this to this and is with the same creatives because of the influence apparently from the producers? I would hate to see something happen where we get another apprentice twist and it's like here we go again what we had in saw X I think was very Fun and unique in a way for the franchise We had never seen a film mostly told from the perspective of John Kramer the way that saw X did and it didn't rely on a bunch of Twist with accomplices and other things it was just taking a deep dive into the character of John Kramer So I would like to see saw 11 somehow do another deep dive into another character The way saw X did if it's more of a deep dive into John Kramer than so be it. I'm not against that But tossing in apprentices again and all these other things. I don't want to see any of that I'm not saying it couldn't come off. Well if they do it But the stuff we've seen in the past with jigsaw and Even with some of the execution in spiral while I do again prefer spiral over jigsaw. I don't want any more apprentices Not to say that the guy in Jigsaw or spiral wasn't accomplice or an apprentice of John Kramer more like an admirer more than anything But I hope saw 11 can get its feet get back on its feet If it actually is having some issues creatively because then here's the other thing saw space official On reddit who's one of the trusted insiders said I have a duty not to comment publicly But I will say we can probably expect a release delay and announcement on that soon I'm not confirming or supporting viewer not comments It's just that ducks all need to be in a row and filming would need to commence within the next two weeks to meet a September date They actually haven't even started filming apparently Shooting protocols have changed since the pandemic and things such as paperwork permits and safety measures take a lot longer post COVID I've not heard anything says to suggest it will be delayed to 2025 yet See it being late till maybe late October maybe November if they still want to actually get it out this year But I wouldn't be against them putting it out in 2025 if it maximizes the quality of film we get Then vink 360 started talking about the TV show that was scrapped recently over on saw over on the saw subreddit Who is another trusted insider? Vink 360 shed some light on the scrap jigsaw TV show titled jigsaw's twisted tales Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan's lost TV show will be covered in an upcoming book It was pitched by the two notable saw writers and it was an anthology So essentially with each episode being a different jigsaw game I would assume episodes were designed to be 30 minutes All of this is going to be uncovered in an upcoming book titled phantom limbs dissecting the horrors lost sequels in remakes What do you guys think about that? Do you like how that TV show idea sounds about an anthology show where you each episode you would have a new saw jigsaw game Which honestly, that's the appropriate format I think most fans of this of the franchise would prefer an anthology show a new game each episode It's pretty simple Don't need to be overly complex and it's a shame. We're not gonna get it If we ever do get a TV show it at least won't be in that form But I recall talking about also in the past how there was this rumbling of a TV show being worked on at the same time as saw x that also came from vink 360 and The TV show was gonna be from the perspective of the victims It's also said in between saw and saw 3 so was that something that was also pitched But ultimately they went with this anthology show or do those two poorly We'll just have to wait and see what this book sheds light on But let me know what you guys think about all this down the comment section below if you haven't already of course Make sure you subscribe turn on post notification. There is a video in the description. I'll have links to all of my social media accounts I'm on Facebook Twitter and Instagram. You can message me there to let me know if there's any movies news or reviews You'll let me to cover in the future and with all that in mind guys. I will see you in the next video


Good morning everybody. I always feel after lunch is hard, after a minister is always interesting. And I said to Andrew as he left, I don't think the ACNC is dead just yet. So hopefully we can still keep some of the reforms that have benefited the sector. I want to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land where we meet. I want to thank Natalie and Robert and others for today. I think this is a pretty important kind of meeting because not many jurisdictions are actually engaging in the way that I see happening here. And although some of the conversations can be a bit uncomfortable at some level, I think it's very important to have those conversations. Because one of the things I find is that as a sector we tend to be so busy achieving our goals, serving our clients and our community that we really don't put our future and our intray to the degree that perhaps we should. So I'm going to run very quickly through the CCA some trends and talk to you about where I think we're going and what that means. So let me start very quickly by, does this work? Am I going to go backwards? Okay, so that's where I work. The Community Council for Australia. It's a peak body. It represents the not-for-profit sector. It's the first time we've had a peak body across the sector. And that's my board just to give you a sense of who's involved in that organisation. I'd encourage you all to join, become part of it in the discussions and things that we have. But I think one of the things we as a sector need to recognise is that we haven't operated much as a sector. So despite where we are and our role in our community, I don't think we've taken a very effective position and strengthened our sector. So having done the CCA stuff really quickly, let me go into where we are. We've been very fortunate in some ways as a sector. We've been growing faster than any other sector except the mining industry over the past decade. And in fact, our turnover has gone from about 46 billion to around 100 billion in less than six years.  And generally we've had a pretty good time of it. In some ways that's a real problem and we'll get to that in a minute. But I remember when I first took over the role at CCA, we tried to get a senate inquiry. We actually got up a senate inquiry into future funding of the not-for-profit sector. And because we thought that was one of the most important agendas, we helped write the terms of reference, had the senate setup inquiry. If this had been the future financing of an industry a quarter of our size, like the tourism industry or communications or primary industry, you would have had hundreds if not thousands of submissions. Guess how many we had? 27. And three of those were from me. One as CCA and two in my, I'd written articles for the Canberra Times and the Secretary of the Committee wanted to quote from them. So, despite our size and our incredible economic footprint and our impact on the community, we really haven't been a very effective or strong advocacy group. We've already heard a lot about government trends and I think Andrew's laid them out pretty clearly. But I just thought I'd very quickly talk about some of the implications for that happening around Australia. Obviously, people want to not just have government money going to things, but we're possible attract other sorts of money and look at paying a dividend on the savings to government back to investors. And that kind of model is starting to be rolled out in a number of places in a number of different ways. The whole concept of attracting new money is usually associated with scale, with size, with people being able to join together. It's very hard to get sponsorship for one school, but getting sponsorship for 30 schools is a bit easier because of the way scale works in terms of investment thinking. There's a lot of place-based, you know, what's happening in this area. I was talking to Natalie before about the growing impact of geomapping where people look at given areas and say, look, what's happening here? And they overlay all these variables. The most impressive one I saw recently was they overlaid how far people had to walk to get to a grocery store in a part of the US. They overlaid that against diabetes and obesity and found a very strong correlation. I think it was Arkansas government actually sponsored a few supermarkets to open and very significantly reduced obesity, diabetes and increased school attendance by making walkability, how far they had to walk to get to fresh food, a different measure. So people are looking more at how do we get a return on our investment? What's actually happening with this population group?  People are injecting on the street out here. We should do something about that. Let's have an anti-injecting in front of the press club program. You know, we would lobby government to get it up and then, you know, we have the anti-injecting in front of the press club grant program of 100 grand a year. We all write submissions. Whoever writes the prettiest submission with the most references gets the 100 grand. You run the program for a while and then you write the project epita. Here lies that we did good program. It did good for a while and then it exists no more, but it was good while it lasted. And, you know, there's a lot of that kind of pattern in our history. There's going to be less of that kind of pattern in our future because of these reasons. Governments have left some money. That kind of responding to issues in that way. You know, now governments would say, well, who else? Who invests in those people? What other programs do we have? Why aren't they at school? Why aren't they in the various treatment programs or whatever they should be in? I don't know that I did that, but it came up. Can we stop that? I'm not actually touching this, but... Should I quit? I wanted to... What am I doing wrong? It's upside down. Okay, that helps. But I still wasn't touching it. I wanted to talk about what I see is really important for us to understand about who we are. And I don't know.  You know, there's people hugging each other and it's a health or people learning to play the piano and it's a bank. You know, it makes no sense to me what they were doing and I'd be looking at these ads and thinking, what are they doing? And then I realise what they're actually doing is trying to lay out a set of values that we can align ourselves to. And this has gone to what I consider to be extraordinary lengths. And I could have shown you any number of these. You know, I think the best social inclusion ad I've ever seen is the VB ad, where they say what banner do you march under and they have all these different banners, half of which I think I qualify for.  And it's, we all belong because we're all having a beer.  There's a set of values associated with that sense of irreverence, fun, relax, don't take yourself too seriously. It's not an accident. That happens around that product. Because that's part of what we've created. But this whole notion of values, I think, has gone to an extreme level. I'd give you just one example. Now, let's see if this works. There's no sound. Doesn't matter. We don't, we don't really need the sound. But there's creepy music. I should really play something, but there's no, well, I want you to try and think about who might have made this ad. So, so he's come home late, he's been out graffiting, the music's all sad. He's got this sister that's really sick. So the mother says, thank you. Pfizer. Who got that? And you gotta imagine there was swelling music and beautiful emotional stuff. Hopefully the next day we can get the sound to work on.  And they're doing this, it takes more than, you know, if I look at some of these ads, I'm just, I can't believe that the people making the ads are actually the companies that they are. So why are they doing it? These are the best minds in our world creating this kind of communication. The skill in that's phenomenal. They're doing it for the same reason that when you and I walk into any service, what do we do? When we look around, what are we doing? We're reading it. And what are we reading? If I walk into a primary school, it doesn't matter what, but if I walk into a primary school and I look around, what am I reading? I'm looking at how people are interacting.  Do the kids come closer or move away? Do the kids look as though they're in trouble when the teacher starts to talk to them? Or do they gather around and think it's fantastic? I'm reading it. I'm reading the values that are being enacted. Is there these kinds of things? So yeah, that's just, yeah, maybe it's a delay. When I walk into any service, whether it's aged care or mental health or alcohol and drugs and, you know, I run programs in all those areas, run agencies in those areas, I look at what's happening. And what's happening for me is about, are these values there? And the reason I work in this sector and the reason I believe in this sector is not because it makes money or employs people. It's because I believe in those values. And I want to see those values enacted. You know, I would worry Andrew, if serve court gets a lot of your contracts because I'm not sure about the values that are being enacted in some of the services. I look for values in organisations. And I see values as part of what we should be measuring and talking about. Often we don't. Too often we don't. It's already there. I didn't do that. Who said that? Oh, hi. I didn't know you were doing it. You should have told me. I'll wave to you. Okay. What worries me about our sector is this, that as we've grown, we've grown quite quickly remember, many of us have grown in a way that most businesses would see as remarkable. We've started to take on some of these kinds of traits in some organisations. So I could talk about some of the organisations I've been because Rosemary mentioned Odyssey House in Melbourne. Odyssey is a very big treatment service over 100 staff, major programs in the community over 40 residential places in the community, 100 bed residential longer term treatment program, a farm and all these other things. When I got there, I did what all new CEOs do, you know, I did a kind of review where we were. And when I got the senior staff and some of the board together to talk about the outcome of my review, this was 2000 when I first got there. But 350 heroin deaths in Melbourne that year, we were meant to be dealing with most of the heroin treatment in Victoria. And quite a few of those heroin deaths were Asian young men in their 20s. We didn't have one Asian client in the 5000 clients that I checked, not one. And I said to them, how come we don't have any Asian clients? Now, it wasn't the only thing I raised, but it was one of the points I made. How come we don't have any Asian clients? And you know what they said? They don't come.  They're awaiting this for all our programs. Why would we go out trying to get extra people in?  What are we going to do? And the whole notion that they were there to serve a community and respond to an issue had been lost in the notion that they will stand and deliver program providers. This is what we do. They come or they don't. Are we serving our community? Well, why would you ask that question? Our programs are full, we get money. Increasingly what I see is people are disconnected from their purpose, from their core values. I won't go through what we did about that, but suffice to say, we out based the quick summaries, we out based some staff in places where there were large populations of Asian people, including the Buddhist temple in Footscray and ended up with a lot of Asian clients. But what I see too often in our sector is a kind of stand and deliver mentality. What do we do? We run our programs. That's what we do. And we've got to get more money to run our programs. Why? Because people benefit from our programs. How are you serving your community? How could it be done better? If someone took away all that program funding, all of it, and said to you, I want you to address this issue, would you do what you do now? Would you do it the way you do it? Or would you do it differently? Would you start at a different point? If you didn't have to have a unit price or a unit cost, it's not, I'm not trying to have a go at people because what we've done is respond to the environment in which we're operating. In order to offer new programs and new services when we could see needs, we often had to fit them into boxes of service delivery and unit prices and things like that. But there comes a time, I think, when we have to think, go back to our purpose. So, good. See that? That worked. There's no sound again. So, I don't know why we got no sound. You're fixing it. Okay. There's a guy up there.  It really doesn't matter. I can do the voices. Okay. So, they're going up in Escalator. And then the Escalator stops with a real shout. You should have heard that was a real shout out. And they're upset. She says, this is terrible. I'm going to be late for my meeting. He says, don't worry. Something will happen. Then they're looking for their phones. They realise they're on their desk. What are they going to do? They're calling out help. And he's saying, we're stuck on an Escalator. Will someone come and help us? And she's being really calm. And then she freaks and just screams. And you can see they're showing shots of stairs everywhere. I don't know why they're doing that. And then he's complaining about what it will mean for his day.  And then he says, well, I guess there's not much to do, but wait till help comes. And then help arrives. And he's really happy. He's here to fix it. Isn't this great? I wish I could do his voice, actually fantastic voice. And then, guess what happens? Escalator gets stuck. I think we've been on an Escalator as a sector. And our capacity to think differently about how we move forward is really challenging. And it's something that we haven't had to do, because just doing good work was enough. Doing good work was enough. You got your funding again, write a few submissions. The money came. That time is changing. So next, I probably should stop doing this. When we as CCA went around and talked to CEOs in Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide about where they saw the future and what the issues were, we were thinking, well, if the sector won't put its future in its injury, maybe we need to start looking at how we do that. How do we talk about the future for our sector? And what are the issues in our future? So after quite a bit of consultation, actually supported by Price of What Hours Coopers, or PWC, as we have to call them now, these are the five key things that emerged with all this, some of whom have done remarkable work. As Simon Rosenberg was saying before, government needs to rethink the way it invests in the sector. I mean, it's really interesting to me, if I invest in the stock market, not that I do, very really. I'm not sure that I've actually got any shares my wife has. I'm not sure what they're in. But if we invest in the stock market, what do we do? What do we look at? Well, you look at the kind of management team that they have, their past record. You look at who else is invested. You look at the price earnings return. You look at their business model. Are there potential competitors? What's their unique positioning compared to their competitors? And if all those things are right and the earnings look solid and they're well capitalised, then you might invest. I've never been asked those questions as an offer profit. I've never been asked about my capital reserves. I've never been asked about my management team and their experience. I've never been asked about a forward plan for how our organisation is going to function. I've never been asked if I've done this before in other organisations. We write the pretty submissions or proposals in the government because that's the prettiest one they have. You can have the hundred thousand. You wrote a really nice submission. I don't like that. The government needs to and other funders need to think again about how we invest. Increasingly, we need to look at our access to capital. It has to be outside of government increasingly, whether we like it or not because government is under the pump. Revenue increases because government's had the same thing. It's had an increasing revenue stream. It's levelled out. It hasn't gone backwards but it's levelling out. The increase has stopped. Andrew could probably give us the figures. So where is capital for our sector? Firstly, we have a lot of capital that we don't leverage in our own assets. I know this because at Odyssey we had a $20 million property. 40 acres on the arrow. I couldn't leverage it. I had a head kicking board of business people. The head of Channel 9, RACV, Energy Australia, Mackenzie graduates. On my board, it was a real heavy hitting business board. People who worked with the Packers. When I said, why don't we leverage this property that we have to create some money for us and invest? Oh, no. We spent a long time building up these assets. We don't want to risk them. At the Mental Health Council of Australia, I built up a reserve of over a million dollars, which was where I was immediately prior to this. I wanted to invest the part of that million dollars that wasn't essential for our core operating. And we had a former health minister on our board and other people. And I said, look, I think we need to develop an investment strategy and I bought in investment advisors. You know what we ended up doing? We put it in government bonds. Of course, yeah, we've got to keep it safe, David. We can't afford to think like that. And there's other capital. There's superannuation funds. There's people looking for returns. There's, we're increasingly looking at how we access money that's in the sort of lost money kind of accounts and things like that. We've got to think differently about how we access capital. We need to measure. Don't tell me how many beds you had occupied or how many clients you saw or how many people participated in your program. So what? When I go to the States and talk to Not-for-Prophet See, they have this fantastic narrative about their agencies. They're able to talk about them in meaningful terms about what they achieve in a way that I find is often lacking in Australia. We do not talk about our success very well. We don't measure it very well and we don't talk about it very well. We tend to express our needs in terms of negative values rather than, you know, here's the problem isn't a terrible kind of talk, rather than here's the solution. Look at what we've done. Look at what we can do. I used to run these focus groups at Odyssey, well I didn't. They were run by Sweeney Research, who did at Pro Bono, run these focus groups with people because I wanted to know what the profile of Odyssey House was. I've got to get private funding. I need to know where we're positioned. They'd run these focus groups. I'd sit in another room having a pizza and a beer and watch people in these focus groups and they'd write them up and they'd break down the focus groups and we'd do this every six months to a year and we'd look at our profile, what people thought about our organisation and we'd look about how the messaging around that might or might not be strong or weak. We'd actually do the work and I can tell you that drug treatment wasn't particularly popular but finding people jobs and those achieving that kind of economic outcome, surprisingly it was very important to people at community level more than we thought. So the fact that we created new jobs for people and became an RTO and those kinds of things was much more important than the fact that we provided drug treatment. And you start to think about why that is and the messaging and how you need to communicate it. We raised over a million dollars a year because we were careful about how we did it and we invested in it. But measurement is critical at all levels and without measurement how can you reward success? We've got to stop kidding ourselves that we can all exist as little islands and we need to look at collaboration. We need to look at the kinds of back office mergers. We need to look at merging around our campaigns or around our fundraising or around other things. We're just you know it's just silly not to. You know in business if I see two companies company A and company B and I can see that if we can combine them we'll make a bigger profit. I can make a lot of money. There are a lot of people making a lot of money doing exactly that going around and looking at where they can get this company and that company put them together and create a bigger profit margin and on that basis they can bring these companies together they can buy them both out or present mergers or options or and I'll get a percentage of the increased profit. That's how a lot of people get very rich. In our sector if I see two organisations doing similar work in similar ways with back offices and everything that are unproductive you know and I want to put them together what incentive is there? If I can show they provide better services to that community who are our intermediaries? Intermediaries in the business world make a lot of money. Intermediaries in our world barely exist. It's a handful and I'm not sure that anyone's actually doing that work looking at where organisations are and how they could be more effective not in terms of financial benefit but in terms of better services to the people they're meant to be serving. Remember the original purpose the original values what you're there for. We also need to look at how we develop ourselves our organisations our leadership our capacity some not-for-profit to manage by the last man standing and often is a man you know the person that stayed around the longest knows the programs that might be all right but they need to be invested in so they can become people who understand a kind of forward plan and how to develop it and implement it not just how to run their programs. We go to the next one I'm almost finished so I'm just going to sum up with two quick overheads. I've always thought that what we do is incredibly valuable and that's why I've stayed in the sector all my life really and but I've also felt that we have a responsibility to do more than just do good work because if we do good work it's not enough I learned that very early and I'll tell you one story about time Rosemary tell one story three minutes okay I'll tell it really quickly many years ago I was working with kids who'd been expelled from schools in the western suburbs of Melbourne I was teaching in a school called Williamstown Tech next to the rifle range and I had all these 15-year-old kids about 15 of them and you know they were real pains in the a** kids who'd been kicked out of schools and I was running this program with this old crusty sheet metal worker from the docks who'd become a sheet metal teacher and we'd set up a farm and a kitchen and other things we were making an active learning and we managed to get the kids there every day and because we got the kids there every day the school got paid extra money so they'd pay our salaries so they were happy to have us and I read a book by a guy called Art Pearl American Education Professor I'd read you know always kept reading most of the books about troubled young people about you know redefining the nature of the problem you know you read these books and you know are they school truants are they school refusers are they school you know psychosis people or are they who gives the stuff they don't go to school you know what are you going to do about it and not many books actually focus on the what you do about it they focus on the redefining the problem but this book was all about what you do so I wrote him a little note saying thanks this first book I've read that's actually about solutions for these kinds of kids I work in William Sound I do this it's less than a page the letter he wrote back saying I want to come and watch you teach and I was a bit sort of gum you know he's an American professor I'm coming to Australia I'm going to come and watch you teach and you know there's a long story here but the short story is it became a really big deal you're morning tea comes down to teach I'm not stupid I'd practice my lesson I knew what was going to happen it was going to be really good I start teaching this lesson this little bastard of a kid bursts in he'd just been in Toronto in those days when kids have problems they'd lock you up for three weeks to assess you because you're unstable in your home environment so to assess you they had to lock you up and there weren't many places to lock you up except youth training centers so he'd been locked up in a youth training center where they assessed him after getting into trouble with the police on a stating you know and so the other kids couldn't have given the stuff about what I wanted to talk about or you know my lesson and I could see it just going but being the gifted teacher I thought I was I thought I'll make this kid the centre so I had him I don't know whether you've worked with kids like that they're not very verbal you know if you ask them do something they don't want to do or they think it's unfair they don't say David that's an inappropriate assignment of work tasks they just don't say that they say other things that people might be offended by so but these kids are fantastic at reading environments better than me drug users are better than me at reading environments they go bang and they read it so these kids are really good at context setting so I had him set up this whole children's court because he'd just come from the children's court that morning and he set it up and we had a case and I won't go through all the details but he did it right it was actually a children's court with all the players he directed the more appropriately I thought it was a fantastic lesson because these kids and it might be useful for them had learned about the children's court and how it operates and the roles of all the different people and he'd done it really well you know I thought it was a fantastic educational experience another example of my gifted teaching in a problem situation Art Pearl big American guy stands up in front of them at the end of the lesson and can I have him yeah yeah yeah what'd you learn today nothing we just mucked around with David that's why we come because when you go to school you don't have to do any work you just get to muck around with David said thanks sat down I stood up and said you little bastards if I'd given you a book on the children's court and made you read chapter one and answer 20 questions and read chapter two and answer 20 questions and read would you have done work yes would you have learned something yes but you didn't today no we mucked around as we walked down the corridor Art Pearl says big guys call his arm around my shoulder he um he said to me uh what are those kids doing now I said well they're out in the playground creating bugger even you know said what are they saying said what what do you mean he said what are they saying when people ask them what they've been doing and I thought about it said that they just muck around with David he said okay so what are they saying to other kids said they just muck around with David what are they saying when the teachers come over they just muck around with David what are they saying when they get home they just muck around with David he said you are doing some of the most valuable work I've seen and you are the most vulnerable program I have ever been to you know why no one values you even your clients don't value you they just muck around with David and I'm telling you that story because emotionally it was very difficult for me to learn that and I had to change what I did I had to measure what happened with those kids I had to report and I had to build a support network in my school I created the curriculum initiatives group and I did a whole lot of things to address it I compared the outcomes of those kids to other kids expelled in the region and showed how effective we were and I've never forgotten that because it hurt it really hurt so I'm saying to you doing good work is not enough you have to create values around what you do so my last slide is that the last slide no it's one more isn't it thank you um where things are going to change they've always been changing our sector but they're going to change more now because of the way the external environment is operating um I want you never to forget what you're there for that sense of values and purpose and even if things are going to go bad please make that the purpose because we as a sector will be stronger if we do um and even if we go through ups and downs we want to do it on the basis that we're serving our community not trying to make money or trying to be something that we're really not um and I want you to tell your stories I want you to to have a voice it's not just about whether you support or don't support a government policy position it's about what you achieve and why that's important and how you want to achieve that more I want you to be an advocate for what you do because if you're an advocate for what you do just as if I've been an advocate for those kids those kids would have felt better about what they're doing their families would have felt better about what they're doing I would have felt better about what I was doing my school would have felt better about what I was doing my community would have felt better about what I was doing and because I wasn't doing that those things were not happening I want you to become advocates and I also want you to support advocacy. And most importantly, I want you to make sure that you both do good work and that you have your work value. Thank you. Thanks, David. I think you've talked to us about really important issues, not just of values, but of congruence between values and delivery and people's experience of but also in terms of the dynamic ways in which even in a world where measures are imperfect of the kinds of things that can happen in the social sector, we need to find intelligent and consistent ways of telling the story that are rigorous and that demonstrate the value that is created. I was reminded listening to some of what you said over the speech that Sir Ronald Cohen, with whom I'm privileged to do some work, made just recently at the mansion house in London. Sir Ronald has been leading work in social finance for the last 15 years, following one of the most successful careers in venture capital. And he was reflecting that as he has been leading work in the social finance task force and other forums, that he's come to realise why he thinks we face some predicaments for the social sector. And he says the primary reason is that traditional philanthropy and sources of funding have focused on the act of giving rather than on achieving social outcomes. It's given charitable organisations money for two or three years and then told them as a sanity check they have to raise some more money elsewhere after that. And also reminded them that they shouldn't be wasting any of it on overheads. And yet he said if business entrepreneurs had come to him as a financier at APACS, his company, with business plans that involved investing nothing on overheads and the capacity of their business or on building strong executive teams, he would have shown them the door. That the combination of unpredictable funding and lack of investment capital has prevented many charitable organisations from realising their potential for effectiveness and scale. And I think David is reminding us this morning of that great potential and how beyond thinking about it in terms of business principles, really we're thinking about it in terms of discipline, in terms of value creation and in terms of the fantastic insights and dynamism the community sector can bring with its connection to people in place. Now David's happy to take some questions if there are people who'd like to ask something. We have one to start with. Hi David, Camilla Rowland, CEO of Karalike Programmes, fellow Dragon Alcohol Treatment Organisation. Many of us are looking to the future. We've been attending forums on mutuals and co-ops and learning about alternative business models. And there was one held last Monday here in the ACT sponsored by MECU. And Minister Andrews opened that. And at that opening he said we're going to be abolishing the ACNC and we're going to probably have a centre of innovation. Can you tell me what you believe will happen in terms of red tape? If that occurs? Look, I don't know whether people saw it. We wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister last week on the ACNC. I should declare an interest. I'm on the ACNC advisory board. And certainly my members are very strong supporters of the ACNC and I think the whole sector is. It's much better than the alternative being proposed which is actually the ATO. We don't want to be regulated by the ATO. We've had that and we end up in the high court trying to prove that we're charities over and over again. The ACNC has been doing I think fantastic work for our sector in a number of ways. And because of that, we have the support in the Senate not to have the ACNC abolished. And I expect we will have the support in the next Senate not to have it abolished. So we're continuing to talk to Minister Andrews and his chief of staff, Ted Lappkin. It's not a very fruitful discussion I'd have to say, but we're not prepared to say the ACNC is gone. And I think we as a sector shouldn't be prepared to say the ACNC is gone. I get tired of politicians standing up and saying they want to listen to the sector. And then when the sector speaks saying we disagree, we've got a policy decision, we're going to do what we want to do anyway. So for us, it's a very live issue supporting the ACNC. There's starting to be some concern in the coalition about the level of backlash around the ACNC. And we'll leverage that. When the ACNC legislation gets to the Senate, there'll be an inquiry because the senators can order an inquiry and we'll have a chance to again talk about its benefits for our sector. We all want a one stop shop. And what the minister was talking about in terms of having the ACT align its fundraising and registration and that with the ACNC makes perfect sense and was a good measure, has South Australia agreed to do. I don't know why anyone would want to undo it. Well, I do know. There are two core vested interests. One is the archdiocese of Sydney, who don't want any transparency. And the other is the financial services council of Australia, who are responsible for all the trustee companies that manage charitable trusts, and they don't want any transparency. Because charitable, the trustee companies are managing money of people who died. And often they're the sole trustees. And they're in a position where some of those trustees charge significant fees in perpetuity. So that continues on forever. They have this pool of money they can invest, they pay themselves investment fees, they have this pool of money they account for, they pay themselves accounting fees, their trustees under law and they pay themselves a trustee fee. And sometimes they pay themselves other fees for dispersing the money when they disperse it. And sometimes they don't disperse much. And, you know, this became an issue for us as an organisation, because some of our members who were the sole beneficiary of certain trustees. So the trustee had to give all their money to this particular charity. Found that their income was reduced by over 100,000 in one year when one trustee company decided to put its fees up. And we find it remarkable that they're allowed to get away with that kind of behaviour. So I noticed John Brogdon, the Financial Services Council came out in response to our media last week saying he posed it. And of course, the only other two people that came out were both from the Catholic Church. I don't think they're representing the whole sector would be my view. We've got a couple of other questions down in this part of the room. Things are going to the far side first and then we'll come back to this gentleman. Hi David, Susan Hillier from ACT Council of Social Service. I just had a couple of reflections on the material that you presented. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on those as one was around, we've had 10, 10 years or more of an expectation around not for profits starting to operate more through a market model and to engage more in market driven behaviours. And I think that's you talked about how that then challenges the values of organisations. I think it also sets up these kind of competing imperatives. And I think one of the parts of the conversation that I think needs more visibility is this year around market failure. So there's some real problems with the way markets operate, particularly for the people for whom a lot of our organisations have been established and for whom they operate. And so the assumption that adopting more market based approaches to things will improve our efficiency and our coherence and our strategic sustainability, I think is open to question. I think the other issue is around we've had lots of people who have an enormous amount of market experience. You talked about people that were on your board, heard about Aventure Capitalists, his work for 15 years. We haven't seen a lot of benefit come out of that in terms of really shifting the public's perception around what not for profits ought to be able to do and how they ought to be able to operate. There's a lot of discomfort with not for profits operating in ways and talking about their capital, talking about investment, talking about that. So that creates this tension, I think, in terms of organisations developing and moving on. The other reflection I would give is that I think in the ACT, we've actually worked really hard on setting ourselves up and the not for profit sector has led setting ourselves up for the future. So we've got the Community Sector Leaders Forum that is a self funded learning and development forum for senior executives in our sector and has focused really, certainly in the last 12 months, on looking at things like how do you raise in capital different ways of innovating and setting up business models. ACT cost runs the social impact measurement network. We have quite a lot of work that is done locally through that mechanism and quite a lot of leadership in this sector around measurement. And what we struggle with is a lack of government and funder willingness to engage with this on those areas of development. So I'm just interested to hear your views on those two issues. Well there's three issues. And the first one is no one favours a Darwinian approach to the not for profit sector, you know, survival of the fitters. I don't think the minister's saying that. I don't hear governments around Australia or even investors in the sector saying that. You know, I spent a lot of my time as head of the alcohol and other drugs council of Australia for seven years. You know, it's not a popular sector. People, for some reason, don't seem overly willing to provide funding to guys in tattoos and thongs who've been in prison compared to babies in humid crits. You know, it's not a level playing field in the sense of compassion out there. And, you know, there are a whole range of issues around survival of the fitters and what that means. But what I see is that the sector itself has also not been good at marketing what it achieves. And I think the measurement ties into that very well. We need to do measurement better.  No one ever didn't make any difference. Government gave money to people whether they were effective or ineffective. If you rent 10 beds and everyone got, you know, better or employed or got back with their families, that was great. If you rent 10 beds and none of that happened and all those people came back in two years, bad luck. You got the same money. Like there was no distinction. I remember when I first got to Odyssey and I started a leave as program because I couldn't believe the way people left. It was so bad, I thought. We'd had these people living there for a period of time and we hadn't developed proper reintegration programs. So we developed this leave as program that worked really well. And it meant that no one left for a while. So the department rang me up and said, we're going to cut your funding. I said, but we've been more, we've had more beds full, we've been busier than ever before. They said, no, you haven't had enough separations. None of the people have left. And in those days, they would pay me $10,000 for a residential episode of care, $10,000 per person. Whether they stayed four weeks or four years. I mean, no one stayed four years. We had one woman who had a baby twins there who stayed 18 months. The average length of day was 131 days. So they'd calculated that out, said you get $10,000 for every person. That's it. So I guess what some agencies did, they'd only have people for a certain period of time and then they'd get rid of them because they got the $10,000 that way. The way the system works promotes behaviour in our sector, that is not in our interests often. And so I think we have had to compete in ways that are counterproductive. And we have had that kind of sense of trying to get money through the ways that government and others provide money. But I can tell you that if you lift your sites beyond immediate funding to achieving a better outcome for your community, you will be in a stronger position with government in the future. Because ultimately governments have to respond to communities. And if you can show you're successful with people and that you rebuild communities and rebuild lives and achieve outcomes, regardless of who you're working with, you will get support. And that's been my experience. I think it's great that you've got a leaders forum. I think the more we can bring people in the not-for-profit sector together the better. Far too often we haven't been brought together and we've stayed in our silos. We need to get together more often. We need to develop our skills, share ideas, have arguments. And I do think this notion of competing needs to be not about competing for the money, but competing to achieve better outcomes. And using that as a rationale for decision making by you as an organisation and then presenting that to government rather than the other way around. Just very quickly take the last question of the gentleman who was waiting and then we I'm afraid we will need to move on. Thanks I've been partially presumed by the last questioner in the response. A message I believe you're putting across is that there's a great risk of the process of the product in it. Sorry I'm contetic. The process can become the end in itself. I have an actual revulsion to the use of word marketing in lots of literature relating to this. Marketing surely is oriented towards, not towards the consumer. Pfizer doesn't really care about the people who have taken the drug in Bangkok. It's about the producer. I think that's the wrong word. It leads, as has already been mentioned, to competition and in fact can become a major activity of the NFP is just competing there. Can we not get some other way which is focused on the what should the difference you're making not on the product you're producing and I mean the attitude of saying this is the product you produce you've got to use it. We want to encourage you to use it. Exactly the same as Pfizer or David Jones or Maya. I believe that marketing is not the inappropriate word to be used in any context with you. You can have evaluation of the worth of what someone's doing without having to look at it from a marketing point of view, look at it from the consumers point of view, not the market. Thanks. You look I agreed to a point. You don't have to call it marketing you can call it whatever you want but you want to be valued and if you believe I mean the whole point of me telling that story if I believe those kids are important if I believe that program I'm doing with those kids is important then I have to do more than just do the program. I have to create value around that. I have to have it valued by my peers. I have to have it valued by my clients. I have to have it valued by their parents and others and if you're not going to do that you will not survive. If you're not valued then you're vulnerable. You need to be valued and you should be valued but you've got to create value around what you're doing. You don't like the term marketing. Call it you know evaluation or creating value or whatever you want but you know at some point if people don't know the positive stories about who you are and what you do and they don't share those then you are vulnerable. We will need to hold it there and I'm sure you'll be able to catch catch David in one of the breaks later today. Will you join me please in thanking David?


Welcome to all my God ministries. I am your host on Reverend Anita Morris, and I am actually going to lead us in prayer and Thanksgiving. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the joy of this season of Thanksgiving. We also are concerned about the ones who don't have their loved ones who are not there, who may be childless, widow, or who are experiencing loss in grief. So we keep them in mind close to your heart, God, and we ask for God that your comfort, your love, embrace all those who are mourning and also keep us in Thanksgiving and also to support one another when one's weak, another one is strong to help build each other up during this season and to you, we give you all the glory, all the honor, and all the praise. Thank God. Amen. During this Thanksgiving season, I just want to give you some of the expressions of faith. Some of the expressions of faith in children might be different from that which are in adults. Faith care, which is this book here that I received in 2010 when I was at McAfee School of Theology way back eight years ago. Faith care ministering to all people groups through the ages of life by Daniel O. Elshire. Expressions of faith, he recalls in page 99. He said, I want to comment on children and faith in the context from conversations. It says, I spoke with the David when he was five and then four years later, I spoke with him when he was nine. He had also a brother James who was four and then at age eight. So this is the expression of faith at their age group, how people develop in different stages from an adolescent to their preteens. Okay, so this is when they were younger at age four. Okay, here is about the question. What are you doing when you pray? James answers, James answer is at age four. Well, you thank God when you pray. Another question, what else do you do when you pray? James answered, thank Jesus and God too. Okay, another question, what do you think God is like at age four? He replied, I think God is the world. Okay, and then the next question was, what else do you know about God? He helps us. The next question, what kinds of things would Jesus help you with? The little boy James answered at four years old, mold the grass. Another question presented itself when James was eight years old. Now he's four years older. What do you think that it means for you, for us today to pray at eight years old? Thank God for the things he gave us and the things he created. So just a little extra, more verbiage there. Another question, if you were to say a prayer tonight, what are some of the things you would say? So this is the things that you can ask your family members around holiday season. What do they think about faith? Who is God? You know, this will help nurture your family, nurture your faith, nurture your development practices for your family and to share each other's faith in that regards. The question asked to James at eight years old, if you were to say a prayer tonight, what are some of the things you would say? He replied, the things that are on the table that God created and some of the things in the day that I needed. What is God like at age eight? How would you describe God? He replies, God is helpful. He made our world for us and He helps people in many ways and that's all I have to say. He just cuts it short. He's not really verbal. He doesn't go into the effective side or emotional as some are, you know, Philly touchy, sensu. He's just, you know, very cut and dry. He's, God is the creator of God, so he's acknowledging that. The other question, he says, do you think God is a man or a woman? Okay. James replies at eight years old, no one can see God, so there is no telling. Isn't that a beautiful thing? The purity of our children at the same token, they still experience life and and they do acknowledge their environmental influences as well as their cultural influences as well as their faith tradition and how it points to God. Another question asked of this a young man whose name is David when he was age nine. What do you think what it means to pray? David replies, well, I think it's like a way of letting God know how we feel without just talking to him. So he's the more the effective person, meaning I want to share some of the emotions. What's going on in my heart and my soul? Another question, what would you say in prayer if it were tonight or if you were going to then? David replies, most of my prayers, I thank God for the good life I have and for not anything bad happening to me or my family and the things like that.  David replies, well, I would describe God as a loving person, very loving, very kind. I think things like that. Another question, what does God look like at age nine? Well, he replies, I think he looks like practically everything. So very colorful. Question, the final question, what do you mean by that? So he's asking him to elaborate and David replies, I mean like he isn't like a man. He's like everything, a woman, a child, everything. So to say the least, Old Shire closes out in this discourse, children do express faith through words, but their verbal expressions may not be the most accurate ones. Verbal descriptions sometimes invite adults to evaluate children's faith. In terms of cognitive abilities, children do not yet have instead of the effective imaginative abilities they do possess. Children express their faith in actions and feelings and frequently these provide more accurate cues to their experiences of faith than do their verbalizations. Given these precautions, it is still possible to explore a part of James and David's experience of faith through words. Their words are not enough, however, much of who they are as believing persons is best expressed in how they feel and what they do. So continue to cultivate your family and your faith tradition and allow it to continue to develop externally and internally inside out. And I'm just going to read a minor scripture of James and then also in 2 Corinthians 9 of charity and of giving during this Thanksgiving season and holiday season when you have people to come visit you, just don't allow them to go away empty handed. Okay, so in James, the book of James chapter 2, in reason verse 15, if a brother or a sister is poor or lacks food for each day and one of you say to him or her, goodbye, keep yourself warm like scat, you know, without giving him or her the necessities for their body or for their food for nourishment, what good does that do? That's the question. So also faith, if it does not have works, these and actions of obedience to back it up by itself, it is powerless and operative and it is dead. But someone will say to you then, you have faith and I have good works. Now show me your faith apart from any good works if you can and I by my good works of obedience will show you my faith. So our faith sometimes have to provide evidence in our actions and that's what the meat of that is. Faith without works of action is dead. So I challenge you to exercise your faith, labor of love, labor of action and ability. If you have no family visiting with you, if you are not taking up a charitable cause, I'm sure you have a neighbor to show beloveds to loving kindness to with your faith and action and faith works by love. So do that. And second Corinthians nine, it also reads as Apostle Paul was ministering to the Corinthians by letter, but he also sent his ministers to help and collect and giving. And this reads, I really don't need, this is in second Corinthians nine, I really don't need to write you about this ministry of giving for the believers in Jerusalem. For I know how eager you are to help and I have been boasting to the churches in Macedonia, or you could say Macedonia, that you in Greece were ready to send an offering a year ago. So play it as if it's your congregation that people are preparing a gifts, a tithes to your church or to your organization, or what have you your outreach ministry or preparing a charitable gift for those who are salvation army who are given to people overseas, and they're eager waiting for your gift. And as this is happening, the congregation as you preparing your gifts, you have a heart that's genuinely giving out of an attitude of generosity. Okay. And this is what Apostle Apostle Paul was mentioning that they their hearts were ready. They were in preparation to give, and they had a right attitude. Okay. And verse three, it reads, but I am sending these brothers to be sure you really are ready, as I have been telling them and that your money is all collected. I don't want to be wrong in boasting about you. We would be embarrassed not to mention your own embarrassment. If some in Macedonian believers came with me and I found that you weren't ready after all I told them. So I thought I should send these brothers ahead of me to make sure the gift you promised is ready. But I want it to be willing, a willing gift, not one given grudgingly. So having the attitude of gratitude, attitude of generosity to give. Over the summer, I was advertising for chaplain for at risk women of valor scholarships. And I was, I was the forerunner and it says send letters to advocate to make announcements at several churches or NAACPs or you'll yield English Fish and Chip in Rhode Island, different restaurants and agencies to give to a certain cause, but also to make collections to send by mail to go and pick it up, but to make sure they were ready to give and not to be an embarrassment as if not to be empty handed. Those that committed to, they did give and those that couldn't give, they didn't commit. So again, those that did give, they gave willingly and they gave cheerfully. So to God be all the glory. And that's how God wants our hearts in preparation to give during this season of Thanksgiving. And as we are ministering our hearts, our attitudes and services to others to be happy and be a cheerful giver, whether you're serving in the soup kitchen or whether you're at home serving your family members and and to be of a help and to walk in charity, walk in love. Okay. Charity is not just a token of money. Charity is love and action. Okay. So in verse six of chapter nine of second Corinthians chapter nine, verse six, remember this, and this is just like an example, a farmer who plants only a few seeds will get a small crop, but the one who plants generously will get a generous crop. So are you given generously to get a generous crop? You must each decide in your heart how much to give. Oftentimes people make up a pledge before the beginning or after the beginning of the year, January, February of how much they want to give for that whole entire year. Some people will give 2000. Some people will give their to their church a grand or 700 dollars, whatever it might be for the year, whatever your child will give, they said, set it up, you must decide in your heart how to give and how much you are going to give. So oftentimes we might budget for how much, how much we're going to choose in our expenses, just like how you go grocery shopping. You have family that are coming. You don't want to go under a certain amount. So you make budget, you know exactly how much you are going to spend. So if you go over that, you're not exercising and being bitter about it. You're not grudging about what you're doing because you already had preparation how your expenditures of how much you were going to release. So he's trying to prepare the congregation, prepare the assemblies to how to give in the right attitude of right heart and then follow through with commitment in their actions. It says don't give reluctantly or in response to pressure. Don't ever let somebody box you in a corner to give because then it's not fitting and it's not good because you are under pressure. You didn't want to give and then it's just so discord and then you'll remember that a couple of you know a couple of months later and or years later and then you might you know that wasn't really a gift then was it. It wasn't really charitable and love. It was out of a necessity and pressure or coerced being coerced to do it. So you don't want to give in those type of attitudes of that type of heart. It says for God loves a person who gives cheerfully amen. So give cheerfully and God will generously provide all you need as in a Philippians. It says my God will provide all your needs according to his riches and glory in Christ Jesus and this is what Paul is articulating and God will generously provide all you need then you will always have everything you need and plenty left over to share with others as the scriptures say they share they share freely and give generously to the poor as we mentioned in James chapter three that you don't just send your sister or your brother and say scat and you see they lack food and clothing but you provide for them and stuff their bags and make sure they have sufficiency of all things because they were in need that everybody has things in common. So being a helper and being attentive to people's needs it says they share freely and give generously to the poor their good deeds will be remembered forever. So when you are given generously out of a heart like that as a heart of gratitude and having the right heart before God in a right attitude in your heart in your spirit God is seeing that your charitable gift that you're given will last and it's like a memorial before God forever it reads in verse 10 of 2 Corinthians 9 for God is the one who provides seed so he's allowing you to have the means to give you the good health to provide for you and he's placed seed for you to plant as he did for the farmer and he's giving you bread to eat just like the children when we said what do you think who is God and what does he do the child replied well he puts food on my table he's creator of everything he's in everything so just like you have child like faith even Jesus said if a child has if you have childlike faith that's when you can come on to Jesus and pray you know it doesn't mean you have to have all this theology all these different um big words to express your gratitude or to pray and make supplications before God God hears you even as you have a childlike faith as did those children okay but God is the one who provides seed for the farmer and then bread to eat and the same way he will provide and increase your resources and then produce a great harvest of generosity in you isn't that beautiful so it comes back to you we used to sing this song at Canaan Baptist Church in North Carolina outside of Seymour Johnson Air Force Base when I was in the enlisted corps of the Air Force it says give and it will be given back to you good measures pressed down shaken together and run in over give and it will be back to you good measure pressed down shaken together and run in over give and it will come back to you good measure pressed down shaken together and run in over when you give on to the Lord so oftentimes we see our materialized gifts giving to persons in need but in fact it also is contributing to our faith in what we believe about who and what God is as we as those children as I read to you earlier God if God is seen in everything that means when you're giving your allowing God's causes to be prospered to give on to what you allow your seed to go ahead and grow to the poor to those different agencies to those resources and then you'll have a right attitude in full of the generosity filled in your heart filled with faith given and and God will express that in your walk with God and it's just awesome if you ever felt that awesomeness when you have given and a right spirit and it's just overjoyed but it's not for you to show off but it's about some people feel like it's an intrinsic thing something that can't it can't materialize it's just something in you that feels really good the right thing to do okay and that is what God has given you an expression of joy of generosity that cannot be taken from you it says yes you will be enriched in every way in every way so that you can always be generous amen some people have those generous hearts out there and he wants to continually to stir up the gift of faith of generosity in you okay and it reads when you take your gifts to those who need them they will thank God so two good things will result from ministry of giving the needs of the believers and then also their needs will be met and then again they will joyfully express their thanks to God as a result of your ministry they will give glory to God for your generosity to them until all the believers will prove that you are obedient to the good news of Christ and they will pray for you with deep affection not that they are asking you to pray but by the gratitude in which you had given to those times and those times of resources when they were in need they had a thanksgiving to God that worked out for your benefit and praying to God on on on their behalf for you and it reads because of the oboe flow of God's grace oftentimes we see God's grace happening God is full of grace and he's full of mercy he acts he moves upon all his creation as the children had mentioned earlier that God's grace is working in his creation and within the people within the community within individuals and this is overflowing a grace of God he has given to you amen and it says thank God for this gift that is too wonderful for words that is an awesome appeal to give to the Lord do unto his name give unto the Lord glory due to his name and you your seed your resources will not run out when you give unto God amen it's not again even though you're given to people or those in need or your soul and sees a charity even those people who may not be in need but you're still helping in it it is working generosity in your own human heart God is allowing you to continue to pour more generosity into others because it's working righteousness of generosity in your heart that actions of faith and love working together in you and God said I'm going to increase more generosity when you do it so it's like a multiple multiplying and multiplying and multiplying of your resources and God first and then to people and then back to you amen God and people and back to you God and people and back to you so it may not happen instantly when you receive those results but again God is allowing you to practice generosity and you're given and he wants to reward a generous giver amen so make sure you utilize your your resources wisely so many seeds it says if you cast your seed upon many waters and you may find them upon many areas of your life where you have sown the seed and people's lives you bless them with a vehicle someone blessed you with a vehicle 10 years later that has happened to me I sowed seeds of blessing people and family and friends life and lo and behold I was blessed later on in life with a new vehicle so we never know how God's will reveal his his his loving kindness his grace to others and to ourselves but we know when we have sown the seed it is it will come back to us as God had held in his word it will come back good measure shaking together running over and may God fulfill all his promises for you this holiday season and may your resources never run out amen I decree it today may your resources never run out and may you have all sufficiency everything provided for you that you need according to God's riches and glory in Christ Jesus and in Jesus my name God bless you God loves you I love you and thank you for joining us for this service again happy Thanksgiving weekend enjoy your family go shopping save and also give amen God bless you amen