chapter 5, first Peter chapter 5 and verse 2, shepherd the flock of God. So the first thing for us to know is that it's the flock of God that the people belong to God. We might be spiritual overseers, we might be, you know, we would be given authority to, to watch over, to teach, instruct, whatever. But the thing is that God looks at them as people who are redeemed by His blood. So, you know, they are His purchased possessions, not our purchased possessions, right? So, a shepherd the flock of God, which is among you, serving as overseers and then says how and how not to, you know, not by compulsion, but willingly, not for dishonest gain, but eagerly. And not as being lords or not being bosses over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. So, we see that, you know, these are how not to do it, right? Saying, not by compulsion, not for dishonest gain, and not as being lords over those entrusted to you. And it's very interesting, you know, we see that first of all, that the people, you know, the church are the flock of God, which means they're not our property, they belong to God.  And for their betterment that you would lead that you would, you know, you would instruct that you would inspire them, motivate them, coach them, and beautify them, and, you know, encourage them, correct them, and bring them to a place of maturity, even as, even as you also go through the same thing. So, so you see a wonderful process here. And you see the reward comes from him, the reward comes from the Lord. It's not people's approval, or it's not anything of that sort, but the reward comes from him, right? So, I was just reminded of that. And even as the Lord places us in, you know, places of, places us in positions of influence, to lead others for his glory, let's keep this in mind, right? So, let's pray, and maybe commit ourselves and align ourselves, you know, to this truth of scripture, to this instruction in scripture. Father, we thank you. And even as we've read right now, Lord, people are your flock. You are the chief shepherd. And, and as the people we see the church, Lord, they are people redeemed by your precious blood and your purchased possessions, and they belong to you. We are yours. And, Lord, we thank you that you counted when we counted a privilege guard that you choose to entrust people, Lord, to us, Lord, to oversee, Lord, to guide and to give oversight, Lord. And Father, we thank you for this awesome privilege, God. And we know that the crown of glory comes from you, and the reward comes from you, God. And just master, we just pray that we will do this. And yes, that we will be careful not to do it out of compulsion, or of dishonest gain, or, or to do it as being lords over them, as being bosses over them, God, but to do it in the right way. Lord, we ask for wisdom. We ask for understanding. We ask for divine guidance, Lord, and how to do this right, and not to do it in a way that compromises allures that compromise that results in Lord, in being detrimental to the flock, and to the leadership guard.  We thank you. We give you all the praise and glory. In Jesus' matchless name, we pray. Amen. Awesome. Okay. So, yeah, that's something that is for that we should, you know, take a firm grasp of, even as we, even as we look to the Lord, as He places us in positions of leadership, and, and this holds good, you know, even, even in other settings, you know, I'm talking about not a church setting, but, or a ministry setting, but even in other settings as, as leaders. Yes, there is a contract or an agreement or a desired set of expectations, right, from the ones who lead. But, but, you know, when you look at it, there are people who are, you know, created in God's image. And, and, and the fact is that the Lord does not, for His disciples, the Lord does not give the servant leadership or, you know, the leadership, the kind of leadership that He wants from His disciples. He doesn't give that as an option, right? We saw that. He said that if you want to be leaders, you must be this. You must do this. So, so while we are in, you know, like, like Daniels and Joseph, in the, I'm talking about people who are out there, you know, in their professions and business and so on, or maybe government who are out there. And in that setting, in the courts of Nebuchadnezzar, you know, like, so to speak, among magicians, among sorcerers, among those who dabble in the black, you know, in the dark arts, that we would still consider this, that Lord Jesus has given us that example. And so it's a walk of wisdom, right? It's a walk of wisdom. It's a walk. It's a daily walk of, you know, what being led by His Spirit. And, and we will see that the wisdom of hand, the wisdom of the God of Daniel is far superior. And the knowledge and understanding that He gives, you know, Daniel Shedrach, Meshach and Abed Naga is far superior, head and shoulders above the wisdom of the world, right? Which is, which is, you know, or any of those, the wisdom that comes from above is far superior, right? So, and it is, it is to redeem, right? To reconcile, to stop the works of darkness, to advance the work of the kingdom of God, right? So maybe we see that. Okay, so let's continue with where we stopped last class. So we were looking at, you know, as, while considering the whole aspect of leadership and the Christian leader, so it's Christian leader is not just a tag, you know, like, okay, I'm a leader and a Christian, and this is how it is. But the fact is that as a Christ follower, our leadership changes, right? And we looked at how, as leaders, we, we are called to raise up other leaders. And, and that's part of the calling of a leader to raise up other leaders and nurture other leaders. And we saw, you know, the stage or some stages that the people go through, or that we can, we can identify and we can take people through when we nurture others as leaders, right? The six stages, you know, the preparatory stage growth, and then ending at the transition stage. We also saw towards the end that while we create opportunities for creating opportunities, develops leaders, creating opportunities for others, and opening the doors for them to step in to serve, you know, that's one way of creating leaders. And also will really enable the, you know, or like a catalyst, which will speed up the nurturing the leader is the, you know, the, the three, three aspects that is feedback and encouragement and correction, right? So feedback without encouragement can be very, you know, it'll be like finding fault over and over again. But feedback and encouragement without correction is also it will also not serve the purpose, right? Because you're not actually, you're leaving out the truth aspect, which is there needs to be change, there needs to be correction. So that will also develop the leader, because without correction, the weak weakness goes unchecked, unaddressed. But when there is correction, then whatever is a weakness is brought to the light. And, and hopefully, the person will work on it. And, and so therefore, you know, that changes and, and becomes instead of a weakness, it is it becomes a area of strength itself, right? It changed, there's a change. Okay. So let's look at, yeah, we're going to look at decision making within the organization. So we, we looked at organizing people organizing ministry, organizing finances, and so on. And, you know, we're going to look at what will enable us to make good decisions, you know, fruitful decisions within the organization. Some helpful tips for that. But before that, I just thought it'd be good if we can look at, you know, as leaders, some important areas for us to grow in, you know, personally as leaders, as influencers, right, people with influence. So for us. So this is something which John C. Maxwell shares in, I think it's million leaders mandate. I think that's the resource. Let me just check. Yeah, million leaders mandate by John C. Maxwell. So it's, it's quite helpful. And it's easy to remember. It's the four C's like, so let me just share the thoughts with you. Okay. Okay. So for, okay, you have it on the screen. So four C's to, you know, to grow in leadership. So these, these are, you know, things easy to remember. So these are foundational things as well. So while we remember to do this, we also can, you know, can develop this in others. You know, we looked at several, you know, there's an entire checklist, what we can develop in others, right, bring strength in others. So, you know, it could be summed up in four, you know, broad categories. So the first one is competence, okay, or ability, or knowledge. So competent when we say competent competence, it's addressing the area of knowledge, you know, what we have learned. It's also addressing skill, what we can do. And third area of experience, in a sense, what we have, what we have picked up along our, you know, professional journey or ministry journey, like experience. So competence would encompass all these three areas, right, to what we have learned, what we do, and what we have experienced. And so for us to grow in competence, right, it's quite important that we do this, and not stay at the same level, right. So to continue to grow and growth becomes kind of automatic when we are continuing to receive from the Lord. And when we continue to receive and when we are, and we are, you know, intentional, right, about it, when we make that our mindset, right. Well, it will it make us uncomfortable? Yes, it will. Because we are stepping out of what of the familiar and the known. And like all learnings, we have to, you know, go through that phase of, you know, grappling with maybe new things, grappling with new skills. But this is something that we need to, you know, it's a continuous thing in our life, continuous process in our life, which will make life so interesting, which will make life, you know, I mean, something very, very interesting and something to look forward to as well, as we grow in years also, right. And it's a very important mindset to have, you know, like if you read 2nd Peter, and which is 2nd Peter and the last verse, 2nd Peter chapter 3 and verse 18, the last verse in that episode, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ to him be the glory both now and forever. Amen. So Peter says, grow in the grace, you know, in, and whatever grace involves, you know, growing the experience of unmerited favor, growing the, you know, the grace of God with regarding, you know, regard to gifts and what is freely extending, grow with the grace of God, which we're just talking about divine empowerment and, and, and divine virtue and so on. So grow in that grace and says and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, you know, growing this is experiential knowledge of him. Don't stay in the same place. Grow. Okay. There's so much more. So therefore, grow. And so in, in growing, you know, we, we, we come to a place of being even more effective and, and it, you know, growth, spiritual growth is, is essential. You know, we don't, we, there's no staying in the same place actually, you know, it's either we, we slide down or we, we continue to grow. Right. So, so that's the, that's how we are designed. That's how God is designed. So, okay. So this is the instruction that we have, which means that for every believer, you know, for every one who is a believer, who's a child of God, every child of God, this is the exhortation that we grow in the grace, grow in the knowledge of our Lord. Okay. So, so when we talk about competence, we talk about all that knowledge and skill and experience and so on, grow in the, in the gifting. Right. You know, how do you use your gifts in this whole leadership function?  How do you, how can I grow in that? Right. So, so many aspects, right. Communication. You know, yesterday we were looking at, you know, in office, we're talking about communication and effective communication and how it's so important and what are the filters, you know, what, what blocks effective communication and so, and all that, you know, as leaders. So, you know, how can we grow in that? Right. So, so don't look at growing in competence or growth itself as something that's intimidating as something that is tiresome, you know, take, take small steps, you know, that's all there is, right. If we can be, if we can learn something new, if we can, you know, and it can be some piece of information, it's, it can be a new skill, it can be, you know, something that we reflected and upon and we're saying, okay, this is part of my experience now and, you know, we leverage that. Well, that's good. Right. So, Peter doesn't say, okay, now you need to, you know, make a quantum leap now, you know, you knew only so many books now, you need to know this by heart. No, it is grow in the knowledge, grow in the experiential knowledge of God. Right. And, you know, and, and as our spirit, you know, as our spirit becomes stronger, right, in the sense, as we increase in our capacity to receive from the Lord, you know, the more, the time that we spend with him, we see that we are changed. You know, there is change, there is transformation and in all aspects, there is change. Right. But Moses, it was a physical change, you know, his face was lit up because of the glory of God. So, we see that there cannot be but change when we, when we are in the, you know, drawing from the presence of God and we see that in 2nd Corinthians 3, right, beholding as in a mirror, 2nd Corinthians 3 in the last verse, are being transformed, you know, there is change, deep change, drastic change, transformation into the same image from glory to glory. So, you know, there again, we are being changed and it's a glory to glory, you know, it's something that's growing. So, don't be, let's not be intimidated by change, let's not be, you know, tired because of, because of the need or the expectation to change, right. It can be in a small measure and this will continue to grow and, you know, gain momentum, right. Okay. 2nd Timothy, to us, to what you have heard from me through many witnesses, entrust to faithful people who will be able to teach others also, teach others as well, so that able, that ability is again, competence, right. So, be effective and grow in it and do that, right. And there's no need for comparison. When it comes to competence, there's a natural tendency to compare, you know, as human beings we compare and say, okay, I'm not as, you know, I'm not growing as fast or I'm not, you know, I'm not doing as well as this person, but the thing is only comparison that we can compare to learn. I can compare to see, oh, that's great. I can be that way. Now, that's a healthy comparison. But we don't compare to put the brakes on our growth, right. We don't compare to stifle our growth. We don't compare to just come to a standstill, right, regarding our desires and our expectations, you know, for growth. So, so healthy comparison is always good. But we know the moment we cross the line, the Holy Spirit gives us a check. It's not a healthy comparison anymore, we stop it. Okay. Okay, the second area is for us as leaders to grow in confidence, right. So when we are, you know, confidence, when we say confidence, we're not talking about self-reliance, right. But it's a healthy confidence where we realize who we are, right. We realize, we come to that understanding of our identity, our position in Christ, what we have received from Him, and what we can be in Him, and all that we have already become in Him. Now, that's a healthy realization, right. Not realizing that is unhealthy, right. So, now that's a healthy thing. We come to the place of understanding, realizing, okay, I have so much in me because of Christ. I have become this because of Christ, right. He has taken me out and He's lifted me up and He has placed this. He is, and you know, what we've been studying on Sundays, these days in church, about authority, you know, all that we have been given because of Christ, because of, we are one spirit within and all that, right. So, now that's a healthy Christ confidence, right. It's not arrogance, it's not pride, it's not boastfulness, it's confidence, right. So, don't, when you see a confident person, you know, confident in Christ, you know, let's not equate that to arrogance, right, or pride. So, in ourselves also that, you know, underestimating or lowering our self-esteem and saying that, you know, anything that is saying, you know, something contrary to what we have become in Christ, now that is not humility, right. That is not, that is actually false humility, that is not, that's fleshly humility. And which is actually, you know, if you say, you look at it, it's pride because you're saying that, who or what you have become in Christ, you're nullifying that and saying that I'm not that, right, saying which is actually pride. So, confidence. So, confidence is, you know, is being able to take that step of faith, you know, and moving ahead in faith, right. Not afraid of the outcome, you know, that's confidence. So, without confidence, you know, we can do this, nothing much we can accomplish, right, without confidence because we're not able to take that step and see that the water's part, right. Take that step and watch God move on our behalf, right. Take that step and experience the favor of God. So, we're not able to do that, right, because of lack of confidence. So, yeah, so confidence, when we, when you're talking about confidence, it comes from positive experiences, right. Take small steps and when you take those steps and when you have, you know, when the results are positive, then it gives a boost to our confidence. These are some practical things, right. Okay, in terms of ministry, in terms of communicating, sharing, you know, simplicity in sharing, keeping it simple to the people. Okay, confidence is again built through faith in God. Okay, well, there are different ways by which we can, okay, I think Savya video is on. So, the different ways by which we, you know, we, sorry, I think, yeah, different ways by which we, you know, we are built in confidence, right. We see faith in God, we have our faith in God and, you know, when it comes to, you know, when it comes to problems, right, especially there, we might have a perspective about problems, you might have, you know, when we look at problems and we want to maybe run away from problems, right. Problems of, you know, things that are challenges, let's say, work ministry. But we would, if we would have a perspective of, you know, challenges as something that, something to be solved, and as these being an opportunity for us to put our faith to the test, to exercise our spiritual gifts, to, you know, to bring our skill and to exercise our skill, our abilities and our, you know, knowledge and learning, then to solve the problem, then it becomes an opportunity rather than something that, that is, you know, stopping us or hindering us, and it becomes an opportunity rather than an hindrance, right. So, so that's, so confidence helps us to come to that place and saying, okay, let me do this now, right, let me, let me put the gifts to test, or let me put my faith in God to the test, let me apply this principle here, right, so it becomes an opportunity to, to grow rather than looking at it as a hindrance, right, and that also builds confidence and also encouragement, you know, when people encourage us, when people recognize and encourage, meaning, you know, it's not just saying things, for the sake, it's not flattery, it's not being sincere, it's not being insincere, sorry, saying some things just to, you know, just to make you feel, make us feel good, but really, you know, when it's, when it's sincere and when it's an encouragement, mixed with, of course, feedback and, and when it's in truth, then that also builds our confidence, right, so grow in confidence, take those small steps, so grow in competence, grow in confidence, grow in compassion, you know, this is another thing, you know, we can get all technical, we can get, learn all the processes and we can learn all the methods, but if we lose the compassion that, the kind of compassion that the Lord Jesus had for the people, we see over and over again, that He was moved with compassion and He reached out and touched them and He healed them, right, so, you know, with compassion, we, our hearts are aligned to God's heart, right, God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that talks about love, that talks about, you know, the kind of heart that He had for the lost, right, for people, for the lost who, who are rebelling, for the lost who are ignorant, for the lost who are willfully disobedient, right, so for us to have God's perspective is to grow in compassion, right, not to lose out on that, well, we, you know, I think it's, yeah, let me just look at that verse, well, Romans 5 and verse 5, the latter part of it says, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts, poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit was given for us, so we have, we have been given, and we have an ever-ending supply of agape, God's, God kind of love, because we are connected to the vine, okay, let's never forget that, we, we, we can come to a place of saying, you know, I, temperamentally, I'm, this is how I am, you know, take it or leave it, so we can say, this is how I am, you know, God, this ticks me off, and this is, this is how I am, you know, rather than, you know, making such a statement, why don't we look at the truth of God's word, yeah, temperamentally, this is how I am, this is how, you know, my ancestors, my forefathers have been, but me, having come to a place of receiving from Christ, the spiritual reality is that the love of God has been poured out into my hearts by the Holy Spirit, into my heart by the Holy Spirit was given for me, and I'm connected to the vine, I'm the branch who's connected to the wine, the life that flows in the vine, the zoe, the God kind of life that flows in the vine flows in me, the branch, and I bear fruit, right, the Holy Spirit is at work in me, and I bear fruit, the outcome of the Holy Spirit working in me and leading me, that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy and peace and long suffering and all that, faithfulness and goodness, so, you know, this is, this is the reality of it, right, now it needs to find expression through my soul, through my mind, my will and all that, and that's a choice that I have to make, right, and the more my mind is renewed, the more my soul is renewed to the truth, then the better it is for the spiritual reality to find expression in everyday life, right, otherwise it will not find expression, right, the reality is something, something great and it becomes a frustration because my soul is not renewed, my mind is not renewed to the truth of God, so there is no alignment, you know, there's no acceptance and there's no release of what is, what is in my spirit, right, but the minute my mind is renewed, renovated, my thinking is changed, then it's like opening the floodgates, right, it's like opening the floodgates for the river to flow, the river of God to flow, just think of it, you know, that choice that you make, the decision that you make, the river flows out, you know, that willingness, well, the ability comes through, right, so compassion, without compassion it becomes a burden, ministry becomes a burden, leadership becomes a burden, right, because leadership is, I mean, it involves people, right, ministry becomes, ministry involves people, so, well, if you don't have compassion, if you don't have the heart of God for people, then people become irritants, everywhere you turn because your leadership is going to be, you know, with people, all kinds of people, maybe difficult people, you know, so it's going to be a irritant and day in and day out, it's going to be a path of frustration rather than, you know, something that we can enjoy and walk in, right, and how did God have so much love, how did the Lord have so much love for those who are lost, those who had his enemies, you know, it's because he saw the Father, he and the Father were one and are one, right, so, and he has given this to us, so we can, you know, have the same perspective, right, okay, so, so growing in compassion, you know, that's something that we can ask God, we can, we know, we need to ask God as, as leaders, right, then collaboration, right, the ability to work with others, it's again very important, you know, because it involves people because we are placed and in the body and there are people whom we receive from, the people to whom we give to, so to be able to collaborate, right, to come alongside, to meet, to interact, to network, you know, whatever words we use, but basically to work together, right, with people, right, and we also understand that God places us, there's divine connections that God, you know, places us in, you know, I'm sure that, you know, all of us here, we're not here by chance, right, there's a divine purpose, right, why you said yes to doing this, maybe it's just for one cause, maybe it's just for one subject, maybe it's just for a few months, maybe it's for the entire, you know, the entire course, but you're in the will and purpose of God, you said yes, right, and there's something happening, there's something happening in you, so God brings divine connections in the same manner with other people, with maybe people who are like-minded, maybe people who will sharpen us, maybe people who will, you know, maybe take us further, people whom we can give to, and so, you know, that happens, God does that strategically, right, He did that, you know, but Philip, Philip was, he told Philip, Philip, go here, you know, this is desert, go there, he went, and he was able to, you know, it was a very strategic move, it seemed foolish, but Philip obeyed, and therefore impacted the life of this Ethiopian eunuch, right, so, and when we over and over again, Book of Acts, we see those things happening, Peter, you know, obeying, Peter having that vision, Peter obeying, God setting up things, you know, they've already started their journey, they're coming at that very moment, Peter has this vision, Peter sees this, and then there is this knock on the door, and then he goes, right, God setting up, and God, in his wisdom, it beats our human understanding and thinking how he does that, right, and so, so many times, so many divine, and which cause changes the cause of our lives, you know, personally, you know, looking back, I see that, so many divine connections, so many of those moments, and which changes the cause, you know, of one's destiny, what we could be doing, so, and that involves, you know, people saying yes to God, and the connections that he places in our lives, okay, okay, so, thinking about people that God has placed in our lives as a potential source of encouragement, support, and strength, well, this is important, you know, no one person will be a channel for all the things that are necessary and required for us to grow, and so, so God will, you know, bring a multitude of, you know, a lot of counselors, and bring in his wise counsel, okay, right, and similarly also, you know, for us to give to others as well, okay, so this is, you know, from John C. Maxwell's book, Million Leaders Mandate, and I think it's quite helpful for us to remember and to, you know, work with others, okay, and also I think this you may know, but I just want to go through so that we understand, you know, the five levels of leadership, or the steps, you know, of leadership. Well, John C. Maxwell talks about this, and he talks about, you know, the first level or the step, the first step being one of position, in the sense you are given a formal title, you're placed in a formal leadership position, right, and so this, what happens is that, yes, as leaders, when we are given a formal title and a position, it could be, okay, people saying that, okay, the organization or the ministry appointing you and saying, okay, you are a leader for this particular function, for you are the one who gives oversight for this particular ministry, or you are in charge of this team, okay, so now it's a position, it's the authority that has been given now, the influence part, okay, that's the important aspect of leadership, right, the influence. Now, it may not extend beyond our job description in such a, in such a, in that step of leadership, or in that phase of leadership, right, so we need to move on to another step from the position or the title position of leadership, we need to move on to the next step where people give us the permission or people follow because they want to, they are, they give that permission, so it's more of a relationship, right, so then that's the next step, so here, and one thing to understand is that we never outgrow or do away with the previous step, okay, so yes, there is the position and then you move to the next step which is relationship, and here it work becomes fun, people are willing to be influenced beyond our stated authority, beyond our realm of authority that the title holds, right, and then, so in this step also, we need to move beyond that which is production in the sense what we bring or the kind of success, the kind of fruitfulness that we bring to the organization, ministry, team, right, that's the next step, so we see that, okay, there's a solving of problems, there is a reaching of goals, and all that would influence in this level of leadership, we need to come to that, we cannot stay in that previous step, so we come to that third step, which is production or results, right, and then the fourth step is where we are developing leaders, we looked at that, we are as leaders, we are developing leaders, so people follow because of what we have done for them, there is, we are developing leaders, we are developing the skills of others, we are developing the, maybe people are recognizing the call of God, maybe leading people to recognizing the gifts and then, and we are kind of pushing them to opening up their lives to using their gifts and so on, so it's development, people development, then another stage would be personhood or where there is respect for who you are, what you have become and what you stand for, now that's over a period of time, all this is over a period of time, but as we, as leaders, as we grow, as we work on those areas and as we intentionally grow in our leadership ability, this is something that we can look at as those steps, as a pathway, in our growth, in our growing as leaders, personally as leaders. Okay, so those are some things that I just wanted to share as we look at personally growing as leaders, so we see that it's exciting, it's ongoing, it's ongoing, it's exciting, it's revolutionary, it's very different from how the world looks at leadership and it's producing life because you are allowing the river to flow through you, the river of God to flow through you, so it's bringing life, bringing restoration, bringing change, creating a place for people to experience God, encounter God in ministry and also in a secular leadership setting, as a Christian leader in a secular leadership setting, we are constantly, we are exposing the team or even one-on-one to the wisdom of God, to the manifold wisdom of God, the character of God and that draws them, that opens the door for people to begin to give permission for you to have an influence in their lives, to be led, so it moves beyond the formal title and endears you as a leader whom people would look forward to and they are excited about following, so we'll move on to the next topic which is making decisions, it's a shift from leadership and into making decisions within the organization, so before we go into that, so maybe if anyone has any questions or anything that you would like to share on this topic, we could talk about this before we move on, any doubts, any questions, anything that you would like to add to, so you see, the more and more we see what leadership is and who a leader is, you see that it's very enriching, it's very different, it's not like the word would see a leader, it's not self-serving, but it's serving of others, at the same time, solutions, direction, guidance, which is very, very necessary, so terms like overseer, it's not a bad word, you're overseeing something and overseeing people who are probably more an experience, older, like Timothy was doing in the church at Ephesus and all that is a reality, but you see that, well it's not something negative, it's not something to endure, but it's something to really enjoy, because you're being led by the greatest leader of all and you have the greatest leader of all inside of you, the Holy Spirit who wants to lead, so that changes, there's a shift in the way we look at leadership itself, I hope that shift happens or has happened for you, yeah, so any questions, anything that you might have to share, we all have different experiences with leadership, with leadership and as leaders and not all experiences are positive, not all experiences are good and so we might have a leadership itself might have a very bad connotation in our lives, so yeah, so I don't know what your experience has been, like I've had some terrible bosses and I worked for different organizations, terrible bosses, but through it all it was a learning, through it all it was amazing, so very different from what we have discussed, and that's how the world is, so what happens is we also work the same way, because that is how it was done to us, that is how we were led in the organization, and that is how you're saying, okay that's the expectation, okay let me lead this way, so yeah, so how easy is it, how difficult is it, you know all those things we have I think probably a minute, so if anyone wants to share, yeah Sam go ahead please, thank you pastor, just like the levels of leadership, I think there are different styles also of leadership, like some, but I think it's something to do with your own personality, because each of us have such different personalities which are shaped by so many things, our circumstances are upbringing, etc, so when people go in the leadership place, what I've experienced, I've experienced diverse styles of leadership, even though now when you put the five levels of leadership by John Max, when you put them, and as I was looking at them, I've had two leaders probably you know, and the same maybe permission leaders, like leaders whom you want to follow, but then both of them leading in different styles, so that's something that I wanted to so different styles in the sense, can you just elaborate on that Sam? Like, so someone, a leader who, so a leader probably someone who is, like I have two people in my mind and both of them are so diverse, especially in terms of a person, like one leader who is, like who focuses mostly on the big picture, I mean, both of these leaders, I think what makes them permission leaders is, for me, why I like to work with them is because they believe a lot in capacity building, meaning they seem to be in a hurry to get me up, and they themselves move out, so the trainings, everyone who works on them, they're constantly like, okay, I'm going to do it the first time, but you know, as soon as I've done the first and the expectation second time, you do it, and that's how they've set up a certain culture of bringing people constantly, and both of them, but one person is, he is so focused on the bigger picture, he's like, I'm bringing you up, but the big picture is this, like, you know, what you need to keep in mind is this, and how you'd get there, like the nitty gritties, I'll just leave it to you, like, I don't, you know, I don't, and the other person is, again, same time building it up, but then this other person is the big picture you decide, I mean, eventually the goal is there, but you can somehow, as long as you're going in the right direction, you know, you're headed to that direction, that's fine, but this is how, like, the small, small steps, like, you know, this other person who lives in, for lack of a different person, like the devil in the details, she is most like, you know, this is how you do this, so that's just one, so I was thinking of, you know, while they might, like, depending on, so this leadership style, so I don't, so that was the one thing. Yeah, yeah, and also I think leaders also use different methods for different processes and different outcomes, you know, so that is also there, you know, for certain, I mean, certain functions or certain decisions, maybe a different method, yeah. Say, I see your hand that's one more thing. Yeah, sure, go ahead. So the other thing that I've been thinking about is, which, you know, in the previous section where you were sharing the four scenes, and while I completely agree with those four, but something that I find lacking and constantly, I think probably this skill was not required so much 20, 30 years back, but I think it's required more now is for leaders to really have the capacity to listen or even create that space to listen to others and then adjust or adapt or even modify accordingly, because I think 20, 30 years back, it made sense where leaders were looked as, you know, the source of knowledge, the source of direction. There were lesser people who were more educated, more experienced, and you needed some answers. We didn't have Google, we didn't have books, so, you know, you could rely on one person to give you direction and show and this is how it's done. But now with, you know, with information and our fingertips, it's, I think the style of where relying on one person to know everything. And I think that's something that's been very revolutionary for me also is when people take up leadership roles, normally the assumption is like, I have to be the person who knows it all. I have to be the person who's got it figured out. And so that's an immense burden for the leader, as well as, you know, if he carries on with that trend, which has been set before us, which is, you know, the leader is someone who has all the solutions. But more and more, I don't think that's the case anymore. And new skill that I think is more valuable is where the leader listens. And sometimes the leader just says like, you guys seem to know what you're doing. Let me get out of the way. I'll just make sure you guys get coffee. We need to do what you what you have to do and support. I think that's right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think what you're saying is right in the sense that a leader is not I think it's not a good expectation to say the leader will have all the answers, but the leader has the wisdom to, you know, look in the right place or consult with the right people to, you know, to bring the answers to the best possible solution, you know, in a consultative manner. But the decision making, you know, of course, because accountability rests with him or her. That goes, you know, with the job, right? Say, can we come back after the break and then we'll hear you out? Yeah, if you don't mind. Okay. Yes, it's 1055. So we'll just take 10 minutes. We'll come back at 11.05. And then we'll have say, share. Okay. Okay. Thank you. We'll take a break now.


Hello. Good afternoon, everyone. I hope lunch was good. It's very good time to digest. Meanwhile, we'll be speaking about what's the stack. And we're going to be starting by introducing who we are. So first of all, we both, you don't know our name yet, work for Inovance, a small company that started in 2008 in France that is spreading like a virus, some would say, or like a successful company, like I would say. We've been opening an office in Montreal, Bangalore, and very soon in San Francisco. We have 120 employees. We have lots of customers. We are making a little bit of money that's helpful to pay the employees. And we have been constantly in the top 10 contributed list for OpenStack for the past four releases. So today with me, there is Christian Schwed, Christian. Yeah, thanks, Nick. Yeah, my name is Christian Schwede. I'm a developer working at Inovance. I've been working on OpenStack since the end of 2012. And last year, October 2013, I joined Inovance. I just recently became Swift Core Developer. So I'm mostly focusing on Swift. But I'm also doing a lot of testing and automation stuff in and outside of OpenStack. And if you want to contact me, write me an email, or you can also find me on IRC and sometimes on Twitter. And I'm Nick Barsett. I'm VP of products and pre-sales at Inovance. I've been working on OpenStack since OpenStack had a name. I founded the OpenStack telemetry project a while back with a few other people. I've been traveling around the world helping people deploy OpenStack in various fashions. And if you want to complain about my poor French accent or anything else during this presentation, I invite you to use my Twitter account at Nijaba. So a little while ago, I had a conversation with my customer that told me, hey, what you guys are doing is great, but how do I know we are done? How can I tell whether the deployment you've delivered to me is actually doing what it is supposed to be doing? How are we going to be able to verify that we haven't forgotten something? There is so many pieces in OpenStack. This is a very complex thing. I need a progress bar. That was literally his word. I need some way to measure how far we are into the deployment. And of course, I immediately jumped to the whiteboard and wrote his progress bar. Look, we are at 80% of the project, but he didn't trust me. So we had to figure out something else. That's when I started talking with Christian about, hey, isn't there something we could do with Tempest to verify on a regular basis that everything is going well? But Tempest at this trouble, you need to be an experienced admin in order to run it. And you even need, in order to run some of the tests, quite a bunch, actually, admin rights on the cloud. And Tempest leaves resources a little bit everywhere after running. So we couldn't really use Tempest directly. So the idea of making a web app came to mind. And Christian, by the time we had the idea of a web app, Christian had already developed a proof of concept. And when I saw the web app, I say, hey, this is way too cool. We shouldn't keep that for ourselves. Why don't we actually make a website so that other people can use it? I'm sure other people will find it useful to be able to measure from an external resource how the cloud they are going to be using behaves. Is it compliant with Tempest? Does it expose the services correctly? Provide them with a clear outlook of what they were going to be dealing with. So why do you want to do that? Well, first of all, you want to make sure that, functionally, your cloud works correctly. That means looking into as many API calls, verifying that these API calls are working. And by doing so, you'll suddenly detect whether you've forgotten to configure Cinder, because you can have a very well-functioning NOVA with a very poorly working Cinder. Or you can have a very well-working glance without any NOVA to deploy it to. Well, that's a little bit hard to miss, but you see the picture. And also, you can know if your goal is to deploy all of OpenSack, that you are done once all of the Tempest report passes. Well, that's in an ideal world. Of course, the coverage of Tempest is not 100%. We all know that. But we've been slowly working at improving that, jointly at the community. Another thing that came to mind is, lots of people are very excited about the idea of doing hybrid deployment. I want to move my workload from Cloud A to Cloud B. How am I going to make sure this is possible? Because even though A and B uses OpenSack, well, we all know that all OpenSack may not be exactly the same. So taking the point of view of an external user of the cloud seemed to be the best approach to solve this user of the cloud question. One may or may not trust a vendor to report on this feature directly. A vendor may care more about what's happening underneath than what's happening in front. The user experience is what we will be focusing on, giving non-developer, non-admin the possibility to verify what's going on. And of course, if the person that is executing the test is independent, that also gives a little bit more credibility. Eventually, you may even want to be able to share the results of the test you've asked to be executed. And this is also a feature that we built in. So on this, because I was only the product owner on this great adventure, I let Christian walk you through the exact process, the architecture of what the stack. OK, thanks, Nick. So let's talk a little bit about using Tempest for testing. There are some challenges if you want to use Tempest for testing. Nick already said it. Maybe you want to test your deployment as a non-administrator only with her user permissions. And in that case, you might not be allowed to upload any images. So for example, your Sarah's image is missing. And this is a little bit problematic because normally you use a Sarah's image, which is a very small image to test, for example, Nova. So what should we do now? Well, we decided to select simply the smallest available image. And in many ways, it's most likely it's a Debian image because Debian is the second-next smallest image. There are also some problems with API changes between different open stack releases. So for example, there was a change in a transaction ID of some logging inside Swift a while ago. And the stranger action ID is no different than before. So all the Tempest tests for Swift were failing. But Swift itself run fine without any problems. It was just this log line entry that made some problems. Actually, there's a discussion within the Tempest community. And there's a session also right after this about branchless Tempest. So the problem was that Tempest had a branch which was tied to another branch, for example, to Nova. So with branchless Tempest, I think we are going to solve a lot of these issues. And there might be some customized back ends.  Or you might have some, for example, SSL termination in front of Keystone, removing some heaters or adding some other heaters. And your test might fail because of this. So we had to think about that. I already said it, your image service might make problems. So maybe it's announced as public. And if you do a Keystone discovery, you see the image service, but you're not able to access it. Then the next step is you need to select some tests. So we were focusing first on user executable tests that gives you the chance as a non-administrator to run tests. And this is a special useful if you're a developer and want to try a different cloud and a different vendor and see if this vendor supports all the things that you need. We are also skipping some tests. So there are a lot of tests that are executed as JSON and as an XML test. But behind the scenes, they're doing the same. And we are skipping negative tests for now. So we are focusing on the core functionalities. And what does it mean? For example, for Keystone, we need some authentications. This is obvious, I think. For Novel, it maybe means that you want to create a booted server, assign floating IPs to it, or they're using different flavors. And for Swift, it might mean that you want to create a container, upload some objects, download some objects, and similar things. Or in glance, that you are able to select different images that are available to you. So for this, we first started with a command line interface. And we called it TempestReport. And TempestReport simply executes a Keystone discovery with your credentials, selects the smallest available Nova image, the smallest available Nova flavor, and the network ID, and creates a simple Tempest configuration file. And after that, it executes a subset of the API tests within Tempest itself. And because the results might be a little bit overwhelming to you, we try to summarize these, so that you don't only have all these log lines, but that you have a summary by a service, what was successful and what not. So TempestReport is part of Tempest? No, TempestReport is not part of Tempest yet. There were some discussions in the community with it. And I think it's going to be very interesting in the next few months, because there are different ways how to do this and what people want to do with Tempest. And, well, it's going to be interesting. It's available on our GitHub account. So it's open to the public. And if you can help out in the community, well, we're open to it. So by the way, I'm asking a question, but you can ask a question at any time. Feel free to get up and go behind this microphone. And if you ask a good question, I'll give you candy. So as I said, we have a part that is discovering your settings. And it's included in TempestReport. So if you run it, for example, on a DevStack installation, you simply set your Keystone credentials to the environment. There's a small file within DevStack called OpenRC that does exactly this. And you simply run Tempest Discover afterwards. So that creates a Tempest configuration file. And now you can set some other environment variables to tell Tempest, okay, we want to use that configuration file. And if you have done this, you can use your favorite tester. You can use NOS test or a tester or whatever else you want to use and simply call the Tempest test itself. And in that case, I just use the test for Swift. And as you can see, it succeeded. Okay, it's only a example, but you get it, I think. So TempestReport uses this discovery of the Tempest configuration file and gives afterwards, after you run all these tests, you have, or you get a nice summary about the failed tests first, then the successful tests and finally a summary grouped by each of the services that you tested. Because the slide is a little bit limited, I simply select it Swift for this case and for the slide. But I think, well, you have, for example, then object store Swift and Nova and similar things. What we also try to do, but this is more like an educated guess that we are doing is to detect the version you're running. So let's take Swift as an example because I'm most familiar with it. We have some services and some middlewares that might be introduced in Grizzly or in Havana or now in Icehouse. And if we see a test that passed, for example, a middleware that was introduced in Grizzly, then we can assume that we have at least a Grizzly release here and later on. And well, it's an educated guess, but it might be useful for some of you and I think it's a nice way. Swift itself got lately an addition called slash info that exposes a lot of your Swift environment Swift deployment information. And I think there are some discussions with another projects to do the same. So that would be a nice way to get a, well, better estimation of what is running. So the command line interface was only a first step for us, but it's not for everyone. As Nick already said, you might be someone, a manager who wants to verify your deployment and you're not familiar with the command line at all. So what are we doing now? We created a simple web application and we're doing the same with the app web application now. We add, you enter your Keystone credentials, just click on start test, wait until all these tests are finished and at the end you can use or you can view the summary of these tests. And then Nick came to me and said, well, let's open it to the public. Doesn't make sense to keep it for ourselves. And that became what's-a-stack. So what is what's-a-stack? What's-a-stack is basically a tempest as a service. Let's call it like this. And now we have another acronym, AAS acronym. It's a website that runs tempest report and tempest in the background. So it's open to the public since a few days and you can just create an account for your own and enter some of your information about your deployments and start using these and execute tests on it. So how does it look like? We have a configuration editor where you just put your username and your password and your Keystone URL into it. In many cases you have only a single tenant within your, for your username. So we simply select that tenant, but in case you have more than one tenant and want to use a different one you can also specify the tenant that you want to use for these tests. And after you save this configuration you can start a new test. And hopefully, well, if you use a DevStack you should see something like that where all the tests passed. Well, this is no surprise. We're doing this or the people from the QA are doing this a thousand times or even more every day on the gate. But this is happening on your deployment now. As you can see, the tests are summarized and grouped by services. And you can have a look at the detail for each of these services. So let's take Swift again. And we have some basic services running here, basic tests, for example, object and container actions. And we have some middlewares that are tested. Quota support for containers, versioning or static web. But unfortunately, not every time you see all only green lights. You will see some red lights probably. So in this case, we also have a Swift installation but now only the basic tests have passed and we are verified successfully. There's a second tab that shows a small red fall with the errors. And if you look into the errors, you see that these tests failed on your deployment. So you might want to be, you might be interested why these tests failed. So in the background, because we were running Tempest we have all the logging information from Tempest itself that we store for you. And you can just simply click on test logs and see what happened there. That might be not for everyone. So it's more focused, this one is more focused to the developer or administrator. But it's very useful because for example, if you're a manager and we go one step behind, we have some links here on the upper right. Share a public link or download and export it as in PDF. So if you run these tests, you can make it, well, let's call it semi-public because it's only known or only accessible if you know the link. But you have a link that you can share with some of your developers or operators or admins. And these admins can then have a look, oh, what happened there within the Tempest tests? And of course you can also download it as in PDF. So behind? Oh, sorry, we have a question. I noticed that you added some text right at the page before where it seemed that the title of this test are coming from. Oh, the title of the test. Well, we added some titles for the test on our own. So because our idea was if you have something like Tempest API object test, test container static, what does it mean? Nobody knows, well, of course the operators and developers know this. But if you're someone else, you might not know about this. So we try to add some useful title for these tests or test classes that people that are not really aware of what is happening behind the scenes can get an idea what happened there and what is tested there. That's the idea behind this. So you might wonder why should I give you my credentials for my deployment? And well, it's a good question. We try to secure this a little bit. I think you're all aware of the security breaches that are happening to even the biggest services around with database dumps going around the world and broken passwords credentials and things like that. And of course we don't want to have this negative press for us. So behind the scenes we have a web server with a web application itself. It's a Django application. Of course we have a database where we want to store all the configurations and of course also the results from the tests. We have a message queue. So each time you click on start test we send a message into the queue. And finally we have some worker nodes and the worker nodes are running Tempest and executes these tests. So we try to separate it. Of course one thing is to distribute the load over more than one worker node. And we don't want to have a crashing sign because there are a hundred people want to test at the same time. But also for security reasons. So what we are doing is if you submit your password, we use a public key on the web server encrypt that password and store it in the database. And the private key part of this key is only available on the worker. And the worker is not accessible from the outside. So there's no as it's H running or HTTP web server, whatever else. It's just behind our firewall and it's just going to the outside but not coming from the outside again. So what is happening here then is that the worker decrypts your password and creates a configuration file for Tempest and executes a Tempest test. And finally we store the results in the database. And because it might happen that for some logging reasons Tempest stores also your authentication token or your password inside the logs. There might be some lines. We remove these lines. So there's no, should be no security credentials in the log file at all. And if you're really paranoid I would recommend that you change your password after the test is run. Yeah, that's a good idea. And because we were focusing only our first step for unknown user tests that are not executable as admin. If you're just using a regular user you should be well, I think it's a good idea to start like this. If you want to run these tests please make sure that you have a quota that supports testing. So what I've seen lately is that people trying to test their deployments. They have, well let's say they have a limit of 10 compute instances. They already have 10 instances running. And you see a lot of failures of course because Tempest is not able to start a new instance. So what are we going to do next Nick? Well that's really a good question. I think first of all we want to see if that's useful for anyone. I mean it's useful for our customer but if we start maintaining it as a public tool as we decided to do, there is no point if nobody uses it. So we are going to be monitoring the use age from now because we opened the website today, correct? Yes. And if there is some update, well we'll keep on maintaining it and if there are people proposing new features on Git, we'll be happy to merge them if they make sense. And if there is a lot of update then I think it could be a good idea. They become a little small project on Stack Forge. But really we want first to see what's the use you could make of it. And yeah. There is also the Defcore REST stack effort. Maybe what we've done could be useful to that. I mean we don't want to pretend that we have revolutionized the world. We're just making a useful, something we can make useful available, right? Yeah, exactly. Oh, I had one, another question. Yeah, of course. Running the test, does it cost money? Well, it depends. So if you're using a public cloud offering and you have, you put somewhere your credit card data into it, it will probably cost you something because we're running the test, we're starting instances, we are creating objects and Swift for example. So it will consume some resources. And it's just like if you start a, for example, an over instance on your own, it will also cost you something. And we try to ensure that the created instances are stopped after these tests. But still it's an ongoing effort for us and also for the templates community. Just have a look afterwards. Is there no instance still running? Would be a good idea for you. So we don't build anything for this. So this is operated by Inovance and we don't charge you for anything. Yeah. Use the microphone in the middle and you'll get candy. And I'm not kidding, I brought them. You're not forced to meet them. Have you pointed at any of the public clouds? You can see whether it works with them. Yes. Yes. I won't say which one, but we've done it for some public clouds. And that was one of the reasons we tried to modify a little bit of the code and have some small patches on our side because we just saw what I was talking earlier on that for example, you're not able to upload an image or there are some customized authentication backend which is normally failing. So. Yeah. We run it against them and I would say a good amount of tests passed for them. But some of the features are not available maybe yet to everyone or on every open cloud. So yeah, what do we test of that? And there are some things that you need to take into account. For example, there is a vendor that has a tenant name that is made of a single empty space I think. So yeah. So yeah, if you want to test on your own, just register yourself on our website. There's another question I think. Any chance you make available an offline version that can be installed on-premises and used to test private deployments? I think we could recommend to use Tempest report that the command line for now. For now we could recommend that one, yes. Setting up a Django plus a worker just to do one test may take a lot longer than just using Tempest report. Yeah, that might be one reason. There's also a project you thought in the community to something, well, it's a little different but it's called T-Cup I think. And it's a different approach than our approach but yeah, we could think about this also. Making a container, something like a container. Yeah, a container, a Docker container. Yeah, the Docker container would be nice. Hi, right. Yeah, yeah, that would be cool. How did you say that you handle different versions of OpenStack is the point more to follow Trump or go for different tests? Yeah, so for now we try to use the latest Tempest release because you have some API channels or whatever else between recent OpenStack releases. We try to patch these locally on the environment to avoid failing tests because just a lock line changed or something like that. But for the future, there's the branchless Tempest effort. So Tempest is getting branchless and there's, well, there's this talk right after this on this level, I think 301. So that you're able to use Tempest with at least the latest stable releases of OpenStack. So if you have OpenStack in a release, for example, then you might be still able to use a recent Tempest version just for testing. We didn't test Ceph yet. And I need to think about it a moment. I'm not sure if Ceph is yet included in Tempest. No, it's not. But I guess in that case, we generally people using Ceph as the object store, we'll use the compatibility layer through the Rital's gateway to make it look like it is a Swift. So in theory, it should pass. But yeah, we must say that we haven't tested it. No more questions? How about automatic test job scheduling? Job scheduling? Yeah. If you want to, you want to test that? So would you want to have the test operate in a recurring fashion so that you can verify that over time you're... Well, in fact, we were thinking about that a while ago. The feature is at least not public yet. But we were thinking about that. We need to figure out how we want to do this because this is at the moment a completely open service from us so you don't need to pay us for the service. Let's assume you have 1,000 users on now. Let's assume you have a hundred users that want to test their deployments regularly. We're only just serving these users. So we need to balance this a little bit. So what we are doing now is that in the case you start a new test, this test is queued and the next free available worker will execute your tests. Of course you're open to just retest your deployment well, a week later or a month later or something like that. But automated scheduled tests are not yet available at least, yeah. But of course if you want to submit a patch you're very welcome. Yeah. Do the user have ability to choose the test cases or they are predefined? No, not yet. We try to, for the web interface we try to simplify this a lot to focus only first on the first step to make a simple web interface. Of course if you're running Tempest report the command line interface. You're free to edit the list of existing tests and maybe just the tests only were swift on over or what you want to test. So there's no, well, you're just open to it. Christian, have you seen who is going to ask the next question? I think we should run. Yeah, we should skip it. I am a colleague of those guys. But that's a proper question. Did you think about having an API? So you can have an API so you can specify that you want to be able to test. So basically you can automate those things or whenever you did some change in your cloud you can send an API call to here. So you can test? Well, we don't have an API yet. But, well, that comes to Tempest as a service then I think something like that. So to define. So you have a restful interface for it. It's a nice idea, I think. We need to think about that, I think. Might be a good addition to our web service. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. What's the stack has? Sorry? What's the stack as a service? Yeah, what's the stack as a service? Yeah. Yes, sorry. How do you select which test to run? Well, the test we run we were first focusing on, well, it's not the official don't take me wrong. It's not the official core definition but test that we thought of our core for functionality. So to create servers for example and boot servers and stop them and assign different flavors. So we selected a list of tests that can be run as a normal user and tried that on our own deployments. And, but for the future I think we have a close look at what is happening within the community and especially in Dev Core because there are a lot of people thinking about exactly this topic and which tests we need and which tests should be run. So, well, for the moment we selected them on our own but I think we will closely follow the Dev Core definition. We are. Yeah, we are, we are already. I guess that's it. Thank you very much. Yeah.


Think Tech Hawaii. Civil engagement lives here. Aloha. My name is Matt Darnell, host of Hawaii Tech Today. I'm pleased to be here with Greg Jackson. Greg here is a military veteran for 20 years of IT experience. Thank you very much for your service. Appreciate that. He's done phone support, web development, consulting at the sea level, at a very high level with folks. Father of three children, congratulations on that for sure. And he's really got a passion for technology and people. He's got a real technical background and has the ability to bridge the gap between technical discussions and what people actually need. Because as we know, traditional end users don't speak in technical terms. They know what they need, how they want to do that. But yeah, he is very relatable and we're very pleased to have you, Greg. Thanks, Matt. Appreciate it. Absolutely. So today we're going to talk about internet providers in Hawaii and the differences and some things that you will find with that. But we'll start off with some current events. And some of the things I'd seen out there was that, Sheila, do we want one of the main lock providers? And I always thought on my home, you know, we have the code to get in there. But now you can link your Alexa, your Amazon Alexa with your lock. So to get into your house, you just say your password, your private pin, and the door just unlocks. That's amazing. Tell me a little bit more about how it works. Yeah. So when you get the lock, you go ahead and you enable Unique Pin. So it would be if we were living the same household, I would have a pin, you would have a pin. And then to get in, you just stand in front of your door and you can just say the password and the door will open there. And it gets to the point where you think it's 2018, why do I still have keys for my car, for all these different things? It seems to me that more things are going to be tied to cellular phones and have that kind of identification. And I always complain, why do I have to have a key to get in my car? How many different ways are there to identify me from my voice, from my fingerprints, all those kind of things? I'm sure this is a matter of time until cars come that way where it's a fingerprint to go ahead and start the car and stop the car. Yeah. That sounds a little bit like what I saw in Shark Tank. Have you seen that? I have not. So Shark Tank, they had some folks on there where they showed the remote locks. So you've got proximity locks, you've got using the internet. You can send temporary locks. I don't know, I didn't follow the history or what the outcome was, but it's very interesting. It was an app you put on your phone? I think, yeah, I think that's kind of how it worked. Okay. Well, and the opportunities are endless. And Amazon even has that service now where this person, instead of leaving on your doorstep, right? I mean, they will open your door and put it there. And apparently there's a camera on them the whole time. So they literally take two steps inside the house, put the package down, and then, I'm not sure what carrier that works with, and it's possible that's only a trial of the mainland. Cars too, right? Is on cars too? So you could, I think they were doing the Mars will go in the house? No. No. I think they were doing, they would actually deliver it to your vehicle. Really? Yeah. I think that's the last thing I heard. Oh, and put it in the trunk or what have you? Or wherever you allow them. Oh, wow. Okay. So it's just, this internet of things is such a huge, and with all these things connected to the internet, it's just, it's Skynet. Here's the Terminator movie. It's absolutely Skynet. So to get in your car, open the door, and I still remember, this hasn't happened yet, but people, I was reading something, this was 10 years ago, and there was something really visionary that your refrigerator knows you're low on milk. Your refrigerator tells your watch. Your watch tells your car, so as you're driving down the road, your car is interrogating all these stores, trying to figure out who's got the best price on milk. Your car knows what you need, so it's plugged in and those kind of things. So absolutely, it's really going to be a very, very connected world. And the, another thing I was reading about, have you ever used MoviePass? No. MoviePass, it's a subscription that you can buy, and it used to be that you could go to a movie a day, and you had an app on your phone, and you'd walk up to the theater. You had to be within a, use GPS, so you couldn't do it from your home. They wanted you to be there at the theater, and you could go to a movie a day. It was $9, like $10 a month for that, and just amazing how it would work with the app.  But yeah, so if anyone, everybody says they're going downhill now, and it's changed from one a day to, I believe, four a month. I can see why. And unlimited path, but yeah. So those kinds of things really are tough. And even, have you ever, I've never done a Lyft or an Uber. Have you ever ridden in one of those? Yeah. Okay. They're across the board, there's a wide variety of experiences I've had. Okay. Lyft and Uber, or one, both? I think Uber's the one I mainly ride. Yeah, I've never ridden one. But with Lyft, you're going to be able to buy a monthly pass. Similar to, you know, the bike rentals you find around town, you can just have this, and you have this pass, and you pay maybe, I think it's like $400 a month, and you get 60 rides. Wherever you need to go, you know, within this area.  And I can't help but think that cars, you know, when our kids are our age, right, when they're old, a car is not going to be something everybody owns. I'm not old. I am. But it'll be one of those things, it'll be kind of like an ambulance. Right. The very rich people will have, they have their own ambulance.  And you and I, when we need an ambulance, we call for it. Right. If we want to take a plane, we go to the airport to get it.  But the vast majority of people, they're not going to own cars. Why would you own a car? When you need a car, you call for it, and then, and you get that. And it's like a subscription-based, almost. Absolutely. I mean, you have a subscription or it'll be like a short-term rental. You know, where you can go to pick up a car, take it, and drop it off at another place. Oh, yeah, yeah.  So it's really getting that pay-away. And with this, with the self-driving automation, it's, it's, there's no question.  And that kind of kind of thing. So I think Lyft and Uber and, and it's got to be, you know, GM and all those companies, it's got to be going crazy, trying to figure out, what are they going to do to keep people buying cars? And they're all going to be electric and they're going to be, it's like your Roomba. Your Roomba vacuum cleaner knows when it's running low on battery and it goes home to recharge, right? Yeah. Same thing with these cars. They'll just drive around to their low on battery and there'll be three or four tow trucks around, you know, to maintain them. But I really think 20, 30 years, owning a car, you know, is going to be a luxury there. You know, when you factor in like the car payment or the fuel, the insurance, parking fees, you know, four, 600 bucks a month, doesn't sound that bad. Absolutely not.  And the other half of the time you read it's just as bad or even worse. Yeah. And here in Hawaii, the way they're cutting up H1, you know, there's, it's hard for me to know which one is the lane, because they kind of dig in and they take out the old strips, they put in new strips and, you know, I'm trying to figure out which is the lane. And they, they, they get to that point where they talk about with this AI and cars that, you know, for some reason, it's come to the time where a car has got two choices. It's going to run over the lady with the baby carriage or it's going to crash into these school kids. Yeah. And how, how does a machine make those kind of, I mean, that was the only, for whatever reason, it came to that point.   Yeah. And what they'll do now, it's gotten a lot smarter and this is actually, I think it's going to be really cool that if you see something, if you screenshot, like, shoes, it'll automatically look for those shoes for you, say on Amazon and search for that. So just add AI, like, if you, oh, what is this person? You know, you're watching a movie and you screenshot that person, it'll bring you to their IMDb page, that kind of a thing.  So, I could come up in the morning and say, show me the last email from Greg about the contract for customer XYZ. And it's already analyzed and got that, you know, that metadata information out of the email. Right. You know, what we have to do now.  That was a job. You were a computer. Are you? These numbers, I want you to compute them. So, you know, I think that kind of AI, when you bring that into something you do, that makes your life easier, is really, really good. Yeah. And, if anybody here has gotten, been bit by the black dot bug, have you heard about that at all? No, tell me more. Yeah. There's something called Unicode, which is, but you know, we're all used to normal, what are called ASCII characters, the alphabet and the zero and the numbers. And there are special, smiley faces and those kind of characters. But, and that's really good if you speak English and you write, you know, in English. But if, you know, all other languages, you know, that does not work. So Unicode kind of encompasses everything. And there are thousands of Unicode characters and some of them are hidden, like what tells it to go to the next line to back up, to go forward.   If you click it, it freezes your phone instantly.  Yeah. So it's WhatsApp, it's on Android, it's on iOS, it's on Snapchat, all those kind of things.  Right. Exactly. You know, and I've got a little pop quiz for you here. Okay. Okay. Do you know how the Android releases are named? Um, sounds like pastries or things. They're out to desserts. So, C is this, B, you know, all the, okay. So I'm kind of disappointed. So you don't know any of the names of the Android releases? Um, you know what it was? Nope. Oh my goodness. All right. Next. It was Oreo, by the way. Oh. Okay. So, speaking of Uber, I was, I was reading that Uber in 2020, they're going to have a flying car service. So we're beyond just the car, it's a flying car now. And they have these spaceports, and you get an Uber car to take you to the spaceport, and then you catch the Uber plane to the other spaceport, and then you're going to go ahead and catch an Uber car to your final destination. And it's all going to be autonomous. It's like Elon's thing where he's going to go underground with his, his cars. No, that's a choo-choo train. That's like, is that LA to San Francisco, or is that LA to Vegas? I thought he was going to have actual vehicles, but you might be right. It might be more of a rail system. I'm sure I'm right. But, but, yeah.  It was long, a cylinder, yet a little, you know, little putt-putt spaceships going in and out. That just doesn't sound very safe. You know, it, like, like air buses, 99.9% of the time they fly themselves. They take off, they land. You know, I was talking to a pilot one time, and he says, all the money I've ever made in my career, it'll be for five minutes. There'll be five minutes where I need to do something that's really important. If I do the wrong thing, but in this 30 years of flying, there'll be five minutes in his career, kind of like the sully guy when he, you know, flew into the Hudson River, you know, he didn't fly, he landed there, kind of thing. Is it, it's kind of like the Amazon delivery thing where they're doing the drones and their delivering packages? No, this is for people. Yeah, but I mean, imagine the amount of traffic that's coming, right? Now you've, you know, we're talking about I imagine there'll be corridors, you know, different kind of things, and I mean, I doubt you could have that right next to Honolulu Airport, but I could see them something in Honolulu, and maybe something out in the country, something of a couple A, that, you know, or even Kanioi, you know, to go over the Coal Lows. It's interesting. And I'm sure they'll have tourist packages where you just want to go over Yellowstone, you want to look at the Coal Lows, or you know, you're in West Virginia and you want to look at the mountains out there, and another really interesting thing was, was Tesla roof tiles. And, you know, you've heard of Tesla before, they make the cars and they have the Tesla Powerwalls, and now they have, you know, they've announced these, but they've talked about how they're working. They're just roof tiles that look like regular roof tiles. They'll be cheaper than Shingle when you count the electricity you're going to save over the next 20 years, right? But they just produce, there's no panels on your roof. You just put regular tiles, but they're, they're producing electricity and they're all networked in. I want some for my car. I think that's very possible. You know, it's funny, whenever you look at a competition of people, then they're trying to go a long distance with just solar powered. Right.  So what you and I want to drive is very different from what, if economy and saving oil and energy was the most important thing. Forget about comfort, air conditioning, you know, no Bluetooth.  So, yeah, it's really an exciting thing. And I just hope with, you know, with with H.E.I.,   What does oversaturated mean?  I mean, don't we use them? Well, what I've heard is that on the days that there's not sun, they don't have the capacity for the houses because they're used to that. Interesting. Yeah. So again, my name is Matt Darnell with the Hawaii Tech Today. Thank you for joining us and have a great and see you in a little while. Hello. Hey, hello, everybody. Thanks for joining us on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm your host, Andrew Lanning, the security guy. I host a program called Security Matters, Hawaii. And I hope you'll join us on Fridays. We are at 10 a.m. And we're going to be talking about those security things that really should be important to you and, you know, maybe get behind the scenes on some things that you may not know about the industry or about products or even about your habits. Security's all about people, processes and products. And we hope to bring that to you in an informative and hopefully a useful way. So again, 10 a.m. on Fridays, Security Matters, Hawaii, on Think Tech Hawaii. Join me. Thank you. Hello. I'm Dave Stevens, host of the Cyber Underground. This is where we discuss everything that relates to computers that's just going to scare you out of your mind. So come join us every week here on ThinkTechHawai.com, 1 p.m. on Friday afternoons. And then you can go see all our episodes on YouTube. Just look up the Cyber Underground on YouTube. All our shows will show up. And please follow us. We're always giving you current, relevant information to protect you. Keeping you safe. Aloha. Aloha. Again, my name is Matt Darnell. And I am the host for Hawaii Tech Today. And again, I'm joined here by Greg Jackson. Again, very glad to have you here, Greg. So let's talk internet now.  But I can remember when a 56K kilobit circuit, a frame relay, that was considered absolutely, I mean, that was the cat's meow. And obviously, that was probably mid-90s type of thing. And it's changed a lot, you know, since then. But let's talk about different kinds of technology. And right now, we have three prevalent. And one, that's probably a little more on the fringe. And the first one is cable. And that company now is Charter. Charter, Spectrum, Time Warner, Oceanic Roadrunner. I think in reverse order, that is how it was, yeah. And I still call them Charter. I still call them Roadrunner. I still call them all those kind of things. And have that. And they bring you internet over the cable connection. And the same cable connection that brings you your TV and have that. And you use a technology called DOCSIS. That's the protocol. It's a great technology, even to the point that the latest specification lets you get 10 gigabytes down, excuse me, 10 gigabits down and 10 gig up as well. Symmetrical. But the thing that people always say about that is if you've got that one coax going down your street, everybody on your street is using that bandwidth there. So it's not really a dedicated high infrastructure. I mean, you've got some locations that use coax out to a main junction box. And a lot of times what you see in the infrastructure is fiber from the junction box back to the office. So in older infrastructures. When you say office, what does that mean? So for cable companies and phone companies, they centralize it some location. And they use different technologies to manage the traffic. So phone companies might use a C.O. And then they have like a backhaul of data. And then with cable companies, they have coax from the house to the curb. And then maybe to the curb, they have like a junction box.  And then they use like fiber optics from there on back. So if you've got the right capacity, depending on your cable infrastructure, you're not going to see a whole lot of, you know, choking of speed. But in some locations you have coax going all the way back or even further back. And that's when you run into situations like that. And it's kind of synonymous. Let me know if you agree with like roads. You've got H1, which is four or five lanes. And that's your fiber optic cable. So it's the backbone. And then you've got these exits. And maybe from there you exit down to a two lane road. And then from there you exit down to a one lane road. And then from there you exit down to a driveway. So you've got the backbone that's feeding everything has got a lot of bandwidth. And they kind of peel off of that for every stop. Because actually there's only three, I think, three entry points in and out of Hawaii to go to the rest of the world. So everything starts there. And that's a matter of where does it go. We have HawaiiTel, downtown and that that. So with cable, you're able to get your voice on the internet and as well as phone. Triple play, yeah. Yeah, you're able to do that. And TV as well. The triple play. Yeah. And they always talk about the quad play with the video and that type of thing. So yeah. So coax is certainly a great thing. And I think when Charter, the last one Charter, when they bought Spectrum, that was a game changer in Hawaii. What we saw before was maybe for $300 you might get 50 down and 10 up. All of a sudden, they came to town and they brought mainland pricing. That was one good thing about that. When they brought that mainland pricing here, you get like 300 down, 20 up. Those types of, which is a very, very fast connection, you know, for $300. Where before, that would have been incredible. And I think over coax, today, they don't have what's, you know, that symmetric service where the download matches the upload. It's always an asymmetric where is a download faster than what you upload. So what, why is asymmetric okay for most businesses? I'd say most businesses aren't in the business of pushing data out. So a lot of businesses need to gather information. And there's a small handshake in the data connection that requires a little bit of data to go up.  And now it's even more interesting with cloud computing.  And then from there, you can use internet connections that you have available there. And, and absolutely, because what you see when you're, when you're working with a cloud computer, you're just seeing a picture of what's happening. So if you're downloading a 10 gigabyte file, that's not coming down your computer, that's coming to the cloud. And all you're seeing is that picture. And likewise, just, you know, when you're watching the YouTube video, all you send up to the internet is the click that says show me that video. That's real, yeah. The high depth stream coming down. That's why we need the more download. But if you're, let's say like a think tech here, they have a live feed going out to, out to the internet people to watch. That's when you would might need a long, a lot of upload. Telemedicine's big like that.  Absolutely. I mean, because when a doctor wants to see, you know, 45 x-rays and the x-rays were taken at St. Francis West, Queens West, is that what it's called? Or, yeah, out there, but they're downtown. That's a lot of data to pull out there. Okay. So cable is certainly an option there. In addition, we have Hawaii tell, you know, and they are soon to be Cincinnati Belle. I doubt they'll be, they will change their name, but again, another kind of consolidation, I hope, what Spectrum did on the cable side, they'll do that on the Hawaii tell side. And we are seeing parts of that. You know, I work from home, excuse me, and I have a Hawaii tell fiber and I have oceanic F4, oceanic, excuse me, I have spectrum, I have spectrum as well. And for redundancy. And it's gotten to the point now where before, if you didn't buy at least two of the services from either company, if you only wanted internet, it was very expensive, where they wanted to add on and layer things on, but now it kind of peeled those back. So, tell us about fiber with Hawaii tell. Is fiber the best, the only way you should be going into your home or your business? I think fiber's been really growing a lot throughout the country. We saw different things happen with the quality of fiber, being able to manage the fiber. There's a lot of infrastructure that needs to get built out when you're implementing fiber, the cost of the equipment, the training for the technicians. So, getting fiber to the curb, it's been moving from say the east coast and the Midwest, west. And when you do that, you're able to jump from gig, 10 gig, to possibly 100 gig. And when you lay out those cables, it's so costly to do that, you've got a future profit and that's where fiber really matters. Yeah. And in Kailua, we're not worried about fiber to the curb. We want our power to come to the curb. I mean, and, because like the power is overhead, everything's overhead there, right? So, in the newer communities, I mean Millani's a little bit older for that, but I hope in Kapolei and all those new developments there, they're taking fiber all the way through the condo, all the way to the home.  So, yeah, HawaiianTel is very competitive with their fiber. But again, there's a lot more cable. Cable is almost to every house. Yeah, the infrastructure's already there. Every business. Yep. HawaiianTel, fiber is in particular area. If they're in your area, then it's, it's great, great news. So definitely, you know, I would definitely talk to both of those, whether you're home to go ahead and do those.  And they have to go through wireless. And about ten years ago, Clearwire was kind of making a foothold. And I think they had a three meg down service and 768 up or, you know, very, very, very, by today's standards, very, very slow. But it was mobile. And I know you, for a fact, how often do you work off tethering so your mobile phone becomes a hotspot and your laptop connects to your, your phone through Wi-Fi and then you use your mobile data. How I mean, and that works that well for you? Yeah, I mean, I use CDMA and and GSMA. CDMA? Yeah. Is that like soup? That's a, so you have Verizon and Sprint CDMA and you've got T-Mobile and AT&T that's using their network. So, what I'm hearing is that the networks are starting to use very similar technology. But I carry two phones because I need to be able to hop on one network versus the other depending on the coverage in the area. So, speeds are great. I mean, get 20, 30 megs down from my phone. That's fantastic. And you want to do a per byte kind of plan or are you? All you can eat. All you can eat. Fantastic. So, and with Revision 5, LTE, the Generation 5 coming out and they're starting to roll that out and I don't know why Europe always kind of seems they seem to be a little ahead of us. But yeah, so I think in the end run, whether you just want to go off-net and do mobile because you can buy routers and just put a SIM card in there and do that and if you want cable, if you want fiber, definitely call around and do some research because, you know, there are times we'll have promos where you can easily get 10 times the speed for half the cost. Oh, that's a very important point. You got to call and ask. And now there's no, don't sign a contract for internet service. I don't know anyone unless they have to trench and like you mentioned build to your business. If you're downtown or in any kind of established building, there's no reason for you to sign a contract. I totally agree. Everything should be month to month and if you see someone on the news, you know, and you're commercial for something and they'll tell you sometimes, oh, well, you've got to be a new customer to get this. Well, okay. Well, maybe next time I buy internet, you know, I'll be a new customer because I'm going to switch to this provider and he'll give it to me and guess what? Chances are you're going to get that. So, thank you so much, Greg for having coming on the show. Pleasure having you. Again, my name is Matt Darnell with the Hawaii Tech Today. Hope you enjoy what you're saying. Feel free to leave those in the comments and Greg and I will be watching that and we'd love to get back to you. We'd love both to have a passion for helping small business and that type of thing. So, thank you so much and hope you have a wonderful day. Hello.


Now, we were talking about the lightning early. You mentioned that the avalanche kind of pulled away and separated from the pack. And that's reflected in the Stanley cup odds right now. They're plus two seventy at Vanduul Sportsbook. The Bruins are five to one. Toronto plus five fifty. No one else shorter than that. Do you think there is value on Colorado at plus two seventy or anybody else standing out or are you just staying away from this market right now? I bet Colorado before the playoffs started because I thought even at plus four fifty, it was still really short. I thought the first round was a freebie for them. I had them at like eighty eight percent to beat St. Louis. And it was like one of the highest it was the highest first round probability I've ever had. And I just think their head and shoulders above everyone else. And that's also given them the highest probability I've ever had as well. I think I started at thirty seven percent, which is way higher than what the market even currently has them at now where they're all they've already won a round. So that's probably the only team I would bet on. I think there's still value. And usually I don't say that about the number one favorite. But I think Colorado's on such a high level right now. They have the highest expected goal percentage of any team since expected goals has been a thing. And it's not just like by like point one or point two. It was by like three percentage points. Right. It was insane. So I don't think we've seen a five on five team like Colorado. And I think the reason the market is maybe pricing them the way they are is the expectation that they have to get through Vegas. And maybe the market viewing Vegas a little closer to Colorado than I do. I don't think Vegas is that close to them, to be honest.


Hey everyone, it's Gabrielle and I'm here at Oxmer Toyota for our pre-owned vehicles of the week. We have three vehicles that we are going to go over some details on. Let's go ahead and start with this one. This is a 2020 Chevy Traverse High Country. That exterior color is called Mosaic Black Metallic. Now those vehicles going to have alloy wheels. You are going to have a power sunroof. Does have the Skyscape. Now there's going to be a power liftgate. There's navigation. You're going to have 10 speakers throughout this vehicle. You do have Bose premium sound system and there's going to be the Chevy MyLink. Now the interior is a jet black leather. Myla John here is 29,104. The price is 47,910. Our second vehicle is a 2017 Buick Enclave. Does have the leather group and it's all wheel drive. So the exterior color is called Quicksilver Metallic. You are going to have alloy wheels. There is going to be a power driver seat. You're going to have a power liftgate. That interior color is in a light titanium. Now the Myla John this one is $50,250. The price is $34,594. Our last vehicle is a 2017 Lincoln MKC Reserve. That exterior color is called Midnight Sapphire Blue Metallic. Now for this vehicle you are going to have a power sunroof. There is going to be a power liftgate. You will have navigation. There is 10 speakers throughout this vehicle. That interior color is in a cappuccino with premium heated leather seating. Myla just $59,092. The price is $30,778. If you all have any questions feel free to let us know. All of our contact info is listed right here. Thanks you all for watching. I'll see you soon. Bye.


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