So I'm going to call to order this meeting of the Montpelier Public Schools Board of School Commissioners. If you have an agenda, I'm going to change the order of the items on the agenda. So first off, I just want to one thing I want to quickly clarify is this is the Montpelier Public Schools Board. We're meeting until 6.30 at 6.30 in comes the Montpelier Rocksbury Public School Board meeting. So the first item is going to be consent agenda. The next is going to be a discussion of the Vermont State Employees' Credit Union lease agreement. The next agenda is going to be to ratify the vote from the March 29th meeting. Then I will have a statement to make about the recent settlement agreement with the superintendent and then we will have public comment at the end of the meeting. All right. Did you speak a little louder, please? Sure. I can try. So first item in this new order is the consent agenda. Could I add approval of teacher contracts for FY19 to the consent agenda, please? Yes. So we're going to add teacher contracts to the consent agenda so it will include the FY19 teacher contracts, approval of minutes of the April 4th school board meeting, and approval of warrants for payroll and accounts payable for April 27th, 2018. I move to approve the consent agenda. All second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. Thank you. So next we have Steve Avery. Do you want to come to this? I'm going to come over. Okay. Sure. All right. I'm Tom Wood of the director of facilities for the Montclair Public School District. And with me is Steve Avery of the Montclair Public School District. We wanted to come tonight just to give the board a little bit more information about an ongoing conversation we've been having for a couple of years now with the credit union about structuring agreement to allow them to have temporary parking access to our, what we call our mud lot, which is the parking area immediately adjacent to the auditorium. It's really the land that's between the auditorium and Bailey Ave, which is where the credit union is. And so over the last couple of years, we've had back and forth conversations about how could we do it? What would it look like? How big would it be? You know, the terms of the lease and things of that nature. And what we wanted to bring to the board this morning was just, or this afternoon was just an update in regards to trying to formalize a current agreement which allows them to have temporary access to the way that the mud lot is currently structured today, which is in its existing state, no improvements. But the credit union is looking for temporary parking relief for their own facility. They'd like to have permission to allow employees to park there. And we'd like to structure a lease agreement to formalize that to allow them to have up to, I think, 50 parking spaces in that area. As we continue discussion about trying to make it a longer, longer-term lasting parking structure and agreement. So there's going to be a two-phase discussion here. The first phase tonight is just to allow a lease to be able to get permission for them to use the yard area the way that it is currently. And then from there, there will be a further discussion in the next couple of months about what improvements could be made to that, and how it might look, and how that would translate into a change in the lease agreement. But if there's any other information you want to add, I'm here to kind of just give the information board, see if the board may have questions. Try to answer that. But what we're looking for is just an approval to enter into the first lease agreement, which is to allow the credit union to temporarily reuse the parking area the way it is today, that they have casually used it on and off over the last couple of years. So we're just looking to try to get some endorsement of that from the board. I'd also like to add this is an attempt for the schools to continue to be a good community partner and a good neighbor in town. The Vermont State Employees Credit Union approached us about this because they are expanding in this location. And in order to continue with that expansion, they are in need of more spaces. And while I know that parking is certainly a very sensitive issue in town, I take very seriously the notion that the schools are a part of this community and a welcoming part of this community and want to work as good neighbors. And if there's a way that we can help the Vermont State Employees Credit Union continue their expansion and allow them to stay in Montpelier, I think it is in the best interest of the school district to do that work and to work with them accordingly. I will also say I'm incredibly proud of this. As I mentioned in the memo, Steve and I first started having this conversation three years ago. And so through a lot of patience and a lot of diligence and a lot of lawyers, we're really proud to have this agreement before you tonight. Does anyone have Tina? I have a question. You've answered the first part. I was going to say, who's going to pay this lot? And then you said, as it is. So let me get this in my mind. Fifty cars out there during spring, month of season and summer. What will that do to that front part? And although I'd like to be a good neighbor, I'd like to be a good neighbor and have you not sink into my front yard. So I'm thinking, what is your plan for this? Well, from a practical point of view, we're hoping we're through this current flood season a lot.  I hope that we would actually be able to get through a design process and go through the regulatory view board here in the city to get a site plan approval to actually do the construction later this summer to get it in place before next month's season is a promise. So that paying for that would be the Montpelier Roxbury School Board's responsibility? The concept that we're talking about now is that we're talking about a simple land lease agreement and the lease holder as a lease holder improvement would pay for any improvements that are eventually done to the lawn. So they would not end up coming out of any capital improvement monies for the district. And that would include any, if the parking lot is structured, what we know we need to get into in terms of the regulatory board that we have to address stormwater issues and have to address site lighting, landscaping, in addition to payment and the structure and the parking. All that will come out of the review process for the city in terms of getting a design review board approval and site plan approval. And all that will eventually get tied into a more formal agreement that will be a lease holder improvement all paid for by the lease holder. Thank you. You're doing a good job, Tom. I'm not offending. On this, we are talking about two separate projects, if I will. The first one is the short-term lease that Tom had mentioned allowing us to use a lot as is. And I know he mentioned 50 spaces. The agreement that we have proposed includes the minimum of 20 spaces. In all reality, that's what we anticipate having to use in the immediate future. So I didn't want you to get the idea of cars being out there immediately. That's not our intent. The other thing I would add is maybe a little background for the board, if you don't know this already. Dr. Rick had mentioned we were expanding in the area. We've been expanding in the area for the past 20 years. And it's always been a problem for a sort of challenge. We currently have 12 employees who have no parking. So if someone comes to work for us today, we're going to find your own parking. And we'd like to try and get away from that and provide parking for all of our staff. So this would help. And I appreciate you considering it. Thank you. So two questions. One, I'm assuming all the parking is for staff and not customers. And the second is with the paving. Are there any stormwater issues that arise? The short answer is yes. There's a stormwater criteria that we have to meet. So there is going to be a need to collect the stormwater, filter it before we discharge it off the property. Those types of solutions, we haven't determined what they're going to be until we decide on the size of the lot, whether it's how many square feet it is and the actual process that we go through. Another aspect of this that I want to make sure we mention is that we're looking at it as a shared-use parking lot. The credit unions use, because it is just employees, is really restricted to business hours. The advantage of the district is that that parking lot would then be available for co-use late in the evening or on weekends when we tend to have events in the auditorium or the gymnasium when we're looking for overflow parking. So it's really seen as, from my perspective, when we're in business day, the school day, we have had a good parking for our faculty and staff now in our parking lot. And that during the day, we don't envision that we would have a need for it at all. And it's really on those Friday evenings, Saturday evenings where we have large events in the gym or the auditorium where it would be wonderful if we had a better parking facility on that side of the property. On the number of spaces, because as Steve mentioned, the lease says at least 20. You've mentioned up to 50, but there's not a limit set in the lease. No, we've, for now, set aside a square foot area. And they're going to look to develop that. It is approximately 20 spaces for this first phase now. I'm just concerned that we have only a minimum of not a maximum. I mean, I know you guys don't have 400. Well, we put in a maximum square footage area of about 15,000 square feet just to try to give some parameters to the area that they're going to look to develop. And we'll stake that out somehow. We'll eventually stake that out. Once we can determine the exact size and the shape of it, we'll be able to come back with a more formal plan on what it looks like to be able to let the board know specifically what we're proposing when we know specifically what it is. It's my understanding that if we're going to do a lease of three years or longer, we need a public vote. We would need a vote of the electorate, which is why this is a short-term lease to start the conversation. It was really to get the ball rolling. So once we do a year-to-year, and as future needs dictate, if it went to a longer-type situation, that would need to be a vote of the electorate. I have a question. Thank you. Currently, we have a lot of state employees that park behind Green Mountain Power and that take a shuttle up to the state housing and around town. They take the circulate. How would we know it was your employees, the credit union employees that are actually parking there and not large numbers of state employees or the public? Do you want to go first on that one? No. No. It probably comes down to policing or monitoring the parking lot, not policing necessarily, but we could work with you on that as far as the parking ID tag. Okay. Yeah, I guess so. Okay, good. Yes, we have a very similar informal process here at the high school. We visually monitor it. Because of the issue, we kind of know whose cars on the basis are not ours. We talk them individually. I'll give credit to Genwell Howard for that. She has an eye for... She's such a good eye. As NICO needs smiling, so I know I'm right. Genwell Howard has an eye for the cars that don't belong. Gotcha. So we're going to continue to work it that way. Yes. Okay. We're very used to that. I bet you are. We're a very popular spot for the lifetime. Yes, you are. Thank you. All right. Any further questions? We need a motion to approve. Please. I'll make a motion to approve the short-term lease with the BCCU. I'll second. Any further discussion? All those in favor? All right. Any opposed? All right. Thank you. We'd like to thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks, Tom. Nice to see you. All right. So that brings us to our new item number four in which we ratify the vote taken at the March 29th meeting. And I'm going to turn Bridget for... Yes. To talk about that. Right. I wanted to apologize to the public for the fact that the meeting was not properly warned last week. That was not consistent with the district's values and which include a very strong desire to maintain community engagement and community communication. It was not... The board members... It was totally unintentional that board members did not know that the posting steps had not taken place. It was not visible to us in the way we received the warning. But nonetheless, it's our responsibility and we take responsibility for it and we apologize to the public. We immediately put in a plan to correct on the advice of council that mistake and that's what we're doing tonight by taking a vote to ratify the action that was taken in that meeting. So I think the motion that we need is to ratify and confirm the action taken at the March 29th meeting. I'll make a motion to ratify and confirm the action taken at the March 29th special meeting. I'll second that. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. So there have been a lot of questions raised in the paper this week. And I want to... I want to provide some answers to some questions. I do also want to note that the board will no longer be responding to questions from the times, Argus. Oops. And I have to step out and take my phone. Okay. We just have to pause for a moment. I'm sorry. So I was starting to say that we are not going to be able to respond to the times Argus questions because their reporting on Brian's contract in the past week has been so inaccurate, including attribution of statements to the board's attorney that we're never made and are not true. The headline in this morning's paper was absolutely false and baseless. Sorry, it's very disappointing to me because I love newspapers. My husband and I have subscribed to the Times Argus for 20 years. I believe what I read in the paper and I'm sure that others in our community rely on it as well. And it's important to me that we have a press that we can count on. And so I'm feeling pretty upset by how false and misleading the reporting on this situation has been. The story that we have here in reality is a board and a superintendent who have worked together diligently and respectfully to come to a mutually acceptable resignation agreement through a process that respected the privacy and dignity of a valued employee. I do have a statement about the contract that I hope answers some of the more complicated legal questions for people. We, the Montpelier Board of School Commissioners believes it's necessary and important to clarify the nature of its legal obligations contained within its employment contract with Superintendent Brian Ricca and to publicly indicate that such considerations influenced its determination to negotiate and execute the resignation and settlement agreement with Superintendent Ricca. The board retained experienced employment counsel who advised the board about its obligations under its contract with the superintendent. The contract was for a stated term of July 1st, 2016 through June 30th, 2018. Under section four of the agreement the superintendent was obligated to notify the board of his intent to seek renewal on or before March 1st, 2018. He did so. On or before April 1st the board was to vote on whether to offer the superintendent an extension of his employment for not less than two years. If however, the board did not offer to renew the superintendent's contract by April 1st the contract gave the superintendent the option to automatically extend the current contract for an additional one year period. Further, the board's counsel advised that under section six of the contract the superintendent was granted the right to a hearing before the board upon request in response to any board decision of non-renewal. Additionally, the contract required that the board demonstrate that its decision to non-renew was supported by just cause. The articles appearing in the Times Argus have suggested that if the board provided notice of non-renewal by April 1st this would automatically cause the superintendent's term of service to end June 30th without any further action required by the board. In the board's view, this is an incomplete and misleading reading of the agreement. Because the contract included a standard of just cause for non-renewal and a right to a hearing on that issue, the board believed that as a matter of prudence it needed to be mindful of the risks time and expense potentially involved. The board came to the unanimous conclusion that the better course of action was to preclude the risk, time delay and expense by reaching a clear and mutually satisfactory agreement with Superintendent Bricka. The board is very hopeful that this explanation will help the public have a better understanding of the board's actions in this matter and the reasons for them. The board is comprised of seven members who work with great integrity on behalf of our district and all members work together to derive mutually acceptable and unanimously supported agreement so that the district can move forward positively. Which is what I'm hearing from the community as opposed to the paper what I hear from members of the community is what they want is to move forward. I think most of our community understands the situation for what it is. It's not an unusual executive contract it's not an unusual executive settlement and what we're hearing from the community is that the new hires for Superintendent Curriculum Director and now Union Elementary School Principal are their top priority and a very thoughtful search process that reflects community values is their priority. I think we'll be hearing that from members of the public this evening. What we're hearing from is people who are looking forward to the future for this district and to having leadership that reflects the values of the community and involves the community in the process of running the district. That is the statement that we have. I realize that was a lot of legal contract stuff to try to follow while somebody is speaking it but that is why we held public comment until after. I could say that. We now have an opportunity for a public comment and if anyone would like to share a comment you can come to the microphone. Jerry Kilkos is the only one who has a mic. We'd like to hear some of your people. Sorry. Jerry Kilkos, do you hear that? Actually the microphones don't amplify in the room. They just run to the TV. Jerry Kilkos, Ridge Street Montpelier. What exactly you said the reporting of the Times Argus was false. What was false? Was there a non-disclosure agreement? Is that false? There's a non-disparagement agreement. Why? Can't say. And it's supposed to be according to the Times Argus McNeil, the lawyer Mr. McNeil will avoid a review which would be expensive. It was something that decided to do the severance pay of $93,000. Is that right? So we made a statement. Michelle made a statement on behalf of the board and we're taking public comment but I don't think it's a question and answer period. The way this was handled that's of course you have questions. The way this was there's no posting on the meeting. Non-disclosure agreements just doesn't seem right. Thank you very much. People are wondering about it and then I asked about the Times Argus article. There's two of them. I'm asking what is false? The headline this morning for one. Again, this public comment is an opportunity for the public to offer comments. We don't typically engage in a question and answer of a comment. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Good evening. I'm Barbara Thompson and I would like to express also my disappointment in the Times Argus coverage of this event. First of all, this is a confidential personnel matter and I think it's really important to keep that in mind. It seems to me that the Times Argus has tried to create a big story where there really is not a story and has confused the issue. The issue is complicated. It's complicated legally. I did not understand it either initially and I still don't understand this kind of a clause in a personnel contract. But I do think it's the duty of the reporting and the editorial of our community newspaper which claims to be focused on community news. That's why I'm paying $57 every three months so that I can get an accurate picture of my community news which affects me and my family. I'm very disappointed in the fact that in this case it seems like the Times Argus has been just trying to create a scandal for additional coverage. Tim Sinett from Montpelier and I was just going to ask if you can release your statement in any other form. I can. Unfortunately, I don't have a paper copy but we will have it available on the website tomorrow. Because I think that there are additional statements that people may have. You mentioned that the community has been supportive and wants to move forward. I didn't think of one person who has said that. I think there is some there are still some questions. I know there's a lot that can't be answered but I think there is some that can be answered. Maybe not for this particular contract but for contracts moving forward. So I think it's important to have this information for us moving forward because we will be hiring a new superintendent and it will be a new contract. I think the public should be as involved as they can be and everything should be as transparent as possible respecting MBAs and such. Thank you. Hello, my name is Matthew Nunley. I have three children in the Montpelier City School system and they say thank you all for your time and efforts. I can't imagine sitting where you are. So thank you. I do feel like and I know a lot of the community feels like we want to know why even though it's not necessarily for us to know why. I do feel like we want to move forward now that we know this has happened. So we want to move forward and we just want to know that there is a possible person for the job. No matter what that means we want the best for our kids. I know you guys all want that. It is difficult to sit back and think about what is what the issue was what is our new superintendent going to bring that Dr. Rika has not brought. So those are my thoughts. Thank you. My name is Lillianne Savard and I'm the mother of four children in the district and I had the honor to work with this school board and the health and wellness policy last year and with Dr. Rika and I'm also a contracted employee as a physical therapist for the district and I would second what you just said. It's just hard for me to not understand I have high regards for each one of you on this board I trust that you had thoughtful discussions about that matter I have seen a lot of rotation in superintendents in the past 10 years about 10 years which have deeply concerned me and I really appreciated having somebody in that role that I could go up to that would return my emails and my calls within 24 hours that felt I could easily talk to responsive at similar values as mine as far as supporting children with special needs in our district I know those are positions that are very demanding and that require a lot of commitment and a lot of stress and Vermont is a special small, teeny little place to live in Montpelier even more maybe and I'm very thankful Dr. Rika for your service I think it was an honor to have you and I I kind of doubt that it's going to be that easy to find somebody who's committed to our community to stay here for the long term when we have like relationships like neighborhood relationships and that like those private relationships that we necessarily need to work on we don't get along with the neighbor push them away of our life and that kind of solves the issue but when we get to know people and at the deeper level and I'm not talking about my personal relationship I'm just saying about when we are in a small community and we need to work through problems I think maybe looking into the future for really building those relationships and working above you know the issues that might rise because school boards there's also a rotation like you guys are not I'm not sure what the term is but so three years I don't know for me it's hard to swallow that we can really have somebody that's going to be more dedicated and committed to our district and that will stay with us for the long term but thank you everybody for your work on this Any other comments? Okay so that is it for we missed a co-curricular that's on people's and it's a pending one and I don't want to have to wait until next I move that we approve the co-curricular recommendations One second All those in favor? Any opposed? Okay and we have a motion to adjourn so we can turn it over to the next board I move we adjourn I'll second that Okay


From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE conversation. As you know by now, Jeff Bezos CEO of Amazon is stepping aside from his CEO role and AWS CEO Andy Jassy is being promoted to head all of Amazon. Bezos of course is going to remain executive chairman. Now 15 years ago next month, Amazon launched it's simple storage service which was the first modern cloud offering and the man who wrote the business plan for AWS was Andy Jassy and he's navigated the meteoric rise and disruption that has seen AWS grown into a $45 billion company that throws off the vast majority of Amazon's operating profits. No one in the media has covered Jassy more intimately and closely than John Furrier, the founder of Silicon Angle. John joins us today to help us understand on theCUBE this move and what we can expect from Jassy in his new role. And importantly what it means for AWS. John, thanks for taking the time to speak with us. Hey, great day, great to see you. We've done a lot of interviews together over the years and we're on our 11th year with theCUBE and Silicon Angle. But I got to be excited that we're simulcast is on Clubhouse which is kind of cool. Love Clubhouse been on since the, in December, it's awesome, it's like, it's like Cube Radio. It's like, so this is like Cube Talk. So we open up a Clubhouse room while we're filming this, we'll do more live hits in studio and syndicate the Clubhouse and then take questions after. This is a huge digital transformation moment. I'm part of the Digital Transformation Club on Clubhouse which has almost 5,000 followers at the moment and also has like 500 members. So if you're not on Clubhouse yet, if you have an iPhone, go check it out and join the Digital Transformation Club. Android users, you'll have to wait until that app is done but it's really a great club. And Jeremiah O. Yang is also doing a lot of stuff on digital transformation as well. Or you could just buy an iPhone and get in. Yeah, that's what people are doing. iPhone sale are up and has all the influences are on there. But you know, to me, digital transformation has always been kind of a cliche, the consumerization of IT, information technology. This has been the boring world of the enterprise over the past, you know, 20 years ago. Enterprise right now is super hot because there's no distinction between enterprise and society. And that's clearly because of the rise of cloud computing and the rise of Amazon web services which was a side project at Amazon that Andy Jassy did. And it wasn't really pleasant at the beginning. It was failed. It failed a lot. And it wasn't as successful as people thought in the early days. And you know, I have a lot of stories with Andy that he told me a lot of the inside baseball and we'll share that here today. But you know, we started covering Amazon since the beginning. I was as an entrepreneur, I used it when it came out and huge fan of them as a company because they just got a superior product and they have always had been. But it was very misunderstood from the beginning. And now everyone's calling it the most important thing. And Andy now is becoming Andy Jassy, the most important executive in the world. So let's get into the, I mean, look at you said to me over the holidays, you thought this might happen, something like this could happen. And you said, you know, Jassy's probably in line to get this. So, you know, tell us, what can you tell us about Jassy? Why is he, you know, qualified for this job? What do you think he brings to the table? Well, the thing to know about Amazon is everyone's been following that the Amazon news is Jeff Bezos has a lot of personal turmoil. They had his marriage failed. He had some issues with the smear campaigns and all the stuff going on. The run-ins with Donald Trump. He bought the Washington Post. He's got a lot of other endeavors outside of Amazon because he's the second richest man in the world competing with Elon Musk at SpaceX versus Blue Origin. So the guy's a billionaire. So Amazon is his baby and he's been running it as best he could. He's got an executive team committee called the S team. He's been grooming people in the company. And that's just been his mode. And the rise of AWS and the business performance that we've been documenting on SiliconANGLE theCUBE has just been absolutely changing the game on Amazon as a company. So clearly Amazon Web Services has become a driving force of the new Amazon that's emerging. And obviously they got all their retail business and they got the gaming challenges and they got studios and all the diversified stuff. So Jassy is just, he's just one of those guys. He's just been an Amazonian from day one. He came out of Harvard Business School, drove across the country. Very similar story to Jeff Bezos. He did that in 1997. And him and Jeff have been collaborating and Jeff tapped him to be his shadow, they call it, which is basically a technical assistant and an heir apparent and groomed him. And then that's how it is. Jassy is not a climber as they call it in corporate America. He's not a person who's looking for a political gain. He's not a territory taker, but he's a micromanager. He loves details and he likes to create customer value. And that's his focus. So he's not a grandstander. In fact, he's been very low profile early days when we started meeting with him. He wouldn't meet with press regularly because they weren't writing the right stories. And he was misunderstood. And that's classic Amazon. So he gave us the time, I think it was 2014 or 15 and he told us a story back then, John. You might want to share it as to how AWS got started. You know, what was the main spring? Amazon's tech wasn't working that great. And Bezos said to Jassy, go figure out why and maybe explain how AWS was born. Yeah, in fact, we were the first ones to get access to do his first public profile. We go to the Google and search Andy Jassy, the trillion dollar baby. We had a post we put out the story of AWS, Andy Jassy's trillion dollar baby. This was in early, this was January 2015, six years ago. And back then we posited that this would be a trillion dollar total addressable market. Okay, people thought we were crazy, but we wrote a story and he gave us very intimate access. We did a full drill down on him and the person, the story of Amazon and that laid out essentially the beginning of the rise of AWS, Andy Jassy. So that's a good story to check out. But really the key here is that he's always been relentless and competitive on creating value in what they call raising the bar outside Amazon. That's a term that they use. They also have another leadership principle called working backwards, which is like go to the customer and work backwards from the customer in a very Steve Jobs kind of way. And that's been kind of jobs mentality as well at Apple that made them successful. Work backwards from the customer and make things easier. And that was Apple. Amazon, their philosophy was work backwards from the customer and Jassy specifically would say to me many times and eliminate the undifferentiated heavy lifting. That was a key principle of what they were doing. So that was a key thesis to their entire business model. And that's the Amazonian way, faster, cheaper, ship it faster, make it less expensive and higher value. Well, when you applied the Amazon shipping concept of cloud computing, it was completely disrupted. They were shipping code and services faster and that became their innovation strategy. More announcements every year. They out-announced their competition by a huge margin. They introduced new services faster and they're less expensive, some say, but in the aggregate, they make more money. But that's kind of a key thing. Well, I was listening on the TV today and there was a debate on whether or not this portends that they'll actually split the company into two. To me, I think it's just the opposite. I think it's less likely. I mean, if you think about Amazon getting into grocery or healthcare, eventually financial services or other industries and the IoT opportunity. To me, what they do, John, is they bring in together the cloud, data and AI and they go attack these new industries. I would think Jassy of all people would want to keep this thing together. Now, whether or not the government allows them to do that, but what are your thoughts? I mean, you've asked Andy this before in your personal interviews about splitting the company. What are your thoughts there? Well, John Ford at CNBC always asks the same question every year. It's almost like the standard question. And I kind of laugh and I ask it now too because I like John Ford, I think he's an awesome dude and I'll ask it just a tongue in cheek, Jassy. He won't answer the question. Amazon, Bezos and Jassy have one thing in common. They're really good at not answering questions. So if you ask the same question, he'll just say, you know, nothing's ever, you know, never say never. That's his classic answer to everything. Never say never. He's always said it to you and I many times. And some say he's flip flopped on things, but he's really customer driven. For example, he said at one point, you know, no one should ever build a data center. Okay, that was a principle. And then they come out and they have now a hybrid strategy. And I called him out on that and said, hey, you know, what are you flip flopping? You said at some point no one should ever data center. He's like, well, we looked at it differently. And what we meant was is that it should all be cloud native. Okay, so that's kind of a revision, but he's cool with that. He says, hey, we'll revise based on what customers are doing. VMware, working with Amazon. No one ever thought that would happen. Okay, so, you know, VMware has some techies, Ragu for instance over there, super top notch. He worked with Jassy directly in his team. Sanjay Poonan, they went to business school together. They cut a deal and now Amazon essentially saved VMware in my opinion. And Pat Gelsinger drove that deal. Now Pat Gelsinger, CEO Intel and Pat told me that directly in candid conversation off the queue. He said, hey, we had to make a decision. Either we're going to be in cloud or we're not going to be in cloud with partner. And I'll see he was Intel. He understood the Intel inside mentality. So that's good for VMware. So Jassy does these kinds of deals. He's not afraid. He's got a good stomach for business and a relentless competitor. So how do you think, as you mentioned, Jassy is a micromanager. He gets deep into the technology. Anybody who's seen his two hour, three hour keynotes know he has a really fine grasp of the technology across the entire stack. How do you think John Hill approached things like antitrust, the big tech lash, the unionization of the workforce at Amazon? How do you think Jassy will approach that? Well, I think one of the things that emerges Jassy, first of all, he's a huge sports fan. And then people don't know that but he's also a progressive person. He's very progressive politically. He's been on the record and off the record saying things like obviously literacy, he's been big on. He's been on basically underrepresented minorities pushing for that and certainly cloud computing and tech. Women in tech, he's been a big proponent. He's been a big supporter of Teresa Carlson who's been a rising star at Amazon. People don't know who Teresa Carlson and they should check out her. She's become one of the biggest leaders inside Amazon. She's turned around public sector from the beginning. She ran that business. She's a global star. He's been a great leader and he's, again, he's a micromanager, he's on top of the details. I mean, the word is that nothing gets approved without Andy seeing it. But he's been progressive. He's been an Amazon original as they call it internally. He's progressive. He's got the business acumen but he's perfect for this pragmatic conversation that needs to happen. And again, because he's so technically strong, having a CEO that's that proficient is going to give Amazon an advantage when they have to go in and change how DC works for instance or how the government geopolitical landscape works because Amazon is now a global company with regions all over the place. So, you know, I think he's pragmatic. He's open to listening and changing. I think that's a huge quality. Well, do you think of this just to set the context here for those who may not know? I mean, Amazon started as I said back in 2006 in March with simple storage service that later that year they announced EC2 which is their compute platform. And that was the majority of their business is still a very large portion of their business. But Amazon, our estimates are that in 2020 Amazon did 45 billion, 45.4 billion in revenue. That's actually an Amazon reported number. And just to give you context, Azure, about 26 billion, GCP, Google, about 6 billion. So you're talking about an industry that Amazon created that's now $78 billion and Amazon at 45 billion, John, they're growing at 30% annually. So it's just a massive growth engine. And another story Jassy told us is they, he and Jeff and the team talked early on about whether or not they should just do an experiment, do a little POC, dip their toe and they decided to go for it. Let's go big or go home as Michael Dell has said to us many times. Be pretty astounding. Yeah, one of the things about Jassy that people should know about, I think it's some compelling relative to the new ascension to the CEO of Amazon is that he's not afraid to do new things. For instance, I'll give you an example. The Amazon web services reinvent their annual conference grew to being thousands and thousands of people and they would have a traditional after party they called a replay. They'd have a band like every tech conference and their conference became so big that essentially it was like setting up a live concert. So they were spending millions of dollars and set up basically a one night concert and they'd bring in great artists. So he said, hey, what's been on this cash? Why don't we just have a festival? So they did a thing called intersect. They got LA involved from creators and they basically built a weekend festival on the back end of reinvent. This was when real life was before COVID and they turned it into an opportunity because that's the way they think. They like to look at the resources. Hey, we're already all in on this. Why don't we just keep up for the weekend and charge some tickets and have a good time? He's not afraid to take chances on the product side. He'll go in and take a chance on a new market. That comes directly from Bezos. They try stuff. They don't mind failing, but they put a tight leash on measurement. They work backwards from the customer and they're not afraid to take chances. So that's going to bode well for him as he tries to figure out how Amazon navigates the contention on the political side when they get challenged for their dominance. And I think he's going to have to apply that pragmatic experimentation to new business models. So John, I want to take on AWS. I mean, despite the large numbers, I talked about 30% growth. Azure's growing at over 50% a year, GCP at 83%. So despite the large numbers and big growth, the growth rates are slowing. Everybody knows that. We've reported it extensively. So the incoming CEO of Amazon Web Services has a TAM expansion challenge. And at some point they've got to decide, okay, how do we keep this growth engine? So do you have any thoughts as to who might be the next CEO and what are some of their challenges as you see it? Well, Amazon's a real product-centric company. So it's going to be very interesting to see who they go with here. Obviously they've been grooming a lot of people. It's been some turnover. You had some really strong executives recently leave. Jeff Wilkes, who was the CEO of the retail business, he retired a couple of months ago or formally announced I think recently. He was probably in line. You had Mike Clayville, who is now the Chief Revenue Officer of Stripe. He ran all commercial business. Theresa Carlson stepped up to his role as well as running public sector. Again, she got more power. You have Matt Garmin, who ran the EC2 business, Stanford grad, great guy, super strong on the product side. He's now running all commercial sales and marketing. And he's also on the, was on Bezos's S team. That's the executive kind of team. Peter DeSantis is also on that S team. He runs all infrastructure he took over for James Hamilton who was the genius behind all the data center work that they've done and all the chip design stuff that they've innovated on. So there's so much technical innovation going on. I think you're still going to see a leadership probably come from, I would say Matt Garmin, in my opinion, is the lead dog at this point. He's the lead horse. You could have an outside person come in depending upon who might be available. And that would probably come from an Andy Jassy network because he's a real fierce competitor, but he's also a loyalist and he likes trust. So if someone comes in from the outside, it's going to be someone Andy trusts. And then the other wild cards are like Theresa Carlson, like I said, she is a great woman in tech who's done amazing work. I've profiled her many times. We've interviewed her many times. She took that public sector business with Amazon and changed the game completely. Obviously the Jedi contract she was in competitive for had the big Trump showdown with the Jedi with the Department of Defense. They had the CIA cloud. Amazon set the standard on public sector and that's directly result of Theresa Carlson. But she's in the field. She's not a product person. She's kind of running that group. So Amazon has that product field kind of structure. So we'll see how they handle that, but those are the top three I think are going to be in line. So the obvious question that people always ask them is a big change like this is, okay, in this case, what is Jassy going to bring in and what's going to change? Maybe the flip side question is somewhat more interesting. What's not going to change in your view? Jassy's been there since nearly the beginning. You know, what are some of the fundamental tenets that he's, you know, that are fossilized that won't change, do you think? I think he's, I think what's not going to change is Amazon's going to continue to grow and develop their platform business and enable more SaaS players. That's a little bit different than what Microsoft's doing. They're more SaaS oriented. Office 365 has become their biggest application in terms of revenue on Microsoft's side. So Amazon's going to still have to compete and enable more ecosystem partners. I think what's not going to change is that Bezos is still going to be in charge because executive chairman is just a code word for not an active CEO. So in the corporate governance world, when you have an executive chairman, that's essentially the person still in charge. And so he'll be in charge. He'll still be the boss of Andy Jassy and Jassy will be running all of Amazon. So I think that's going to be a little bit of the same, but Jassy's going to be more in charge. I think you'll see a team change over. I think you're going to see some new management come in. Andy's management team will expand. I think Amazon will stay the same. Amazon Web Services.  You know, Gerson to the Palmasano, Gates to Bomber, then Bomber to Nadella. One that you were close to, David Packard to John Young and then John Young to Lou Platt, your old company. Ellison to Safra and Mark, Jobs to Cook. We talked about Larry Page to Sundar Pichai. So how do you see this?  East Coast, many computer companies. Edson DeCastro, Ken Olson, An Wang. These were executives who wouldn't let go. So it's kind of interesting to juxtapose that with the modern day executive. How do you see this fitting in to some of those epic transitions that I just mentioned? I think a lot of people are surprised that Chef Bezos is even stepping down. I think he's just been such the face of Amazon. I think some of the poll numbers of people are doing on Twitter. People don't think it's going to make a big difference because he's kind of been that, you know, leader hand on the wheel, but it's been its own ship now. So depending on who's at the helm, it'll be different. I think the Amazon choice of Andy wasn't obvious. And I think a lot of people are asking the questions, who is Andy Jassy? And that's why we're doing this and we're going to be doing more features on Andy Jassy. We've got tons of content that we've had shipped, original content with him. So we'll share more of those key sound bites and who he is. But I think a lot of people are scratching their head like, why Andy Jassy? It's not obvious to the outsiders who don't know cloud computing. If you're in the computing business and the digital transformation side, everyone knows about Amazon Web Services. It's been the most successful company in my opinion since I could remember at many levels, just the way they've completely dominated the business and how they change others to be dominant. So, I mean, they've made Microsoft change, they've made Google change. And even then, he's a leader that accepts conversations. Other companies, their CEOs hide behind their PR wall and they don't talk to people. They won't come on Clubhouse. They won't talk to press. They hide behind their PR and they feed the media. Jassy's not afraid to talk to reporters. He's not afraid to talk to people, but he doesn't like people who don't know what they're talking about. So he doesn't suffer fools.  That's really the way it is.   I mean, these are the hard questions. And he's got a great team. He's got Jay Carney, former Obama, the press secretary working for him. He's been a great leader. So I'm really bullish on this is a good choice. We're going to jump into the Clubhouse here and open it up shortly, John.  I always talk about how they don't really focus on the competition, they focus on the customer, but we know that just observing these folks, Bezos very competitive individual. Jassy, you know him better than I, very competitive individual. So, you know, Jassy's been known to call out Oracle of course it was in response to Larry Ellison's jabs at Amazon regarding database. But how do you see that? Do you see that changing at all?  You know, this is going to sound kind of a weird analogy and I know there's a lot of hero worshiping on Elon Musk but Elon Musk and Andy Jassy have a lot of similarities in the sense of, you know, their brilliance. They got both a brilliant people, different kind of backgrounds, obviously they're running different things. They both are builders, right? If you were listening to Elon Musk on Clubhouse the other night, what was really striking was not only the magic of how it was all orchestrated and what he did and how he interviewed Robin Hood, he basically is about building stuff and he was asked questions like, what advice do you give startups? He's like, if you need advice, you shouldn't be doing startups. That's the kind of mentality that Jassy has, which is, you know, it's not easy. It's not for the faint of heart but Elon Musk is a builder. Jassy builds, he likes to build stuff, right? And so if you look at all the things that he's done with AWS, it's been about enabling people to be successful with the tools that they need, adding more services, creating things that are lower price point. If you're an entrepreneur and you're over the age of 30, you know about AWS because you know what? It's cheaper to start a business on Amazon web services than buying servers. And everyone knows that if you're under the age of 25, you might not know the days when it was like 50 grand to 100,000 just to start something. Today you get your credit card down, you're up and running and you can get Clubhouses up and running all day long. So the next Clubhouse will be on Amazon or a cloud technology. And that's because of Andy Jassy, right? So this is a significant executive and he continued will bring that mindset of building. So I think the digital transformation, we're in the digital transformation club, we're going to see a complete revolution of a new generation. And I think having a new leader like Andy Jassy will enable, in my opinion, next generation talent, whether that's media and technology convergence, media technology and art convergence. And the fact that he digs music, he digs sports, he digs tech, he digs media. It's going to be very interesting to see. I think he's well poised to be. And he's soft-spoken. He doesn't want the glamorous press. He doesn't want the puff pieces. He just wants to do what he does and he lets his game do the talking. He's talking about advice and startups. Just to quick aside, I remember John, you and I were interviewing Scott McNeely, former CEO of Sun Microsystems. And you asked him, you know, advice for startups. He said, move out of California. He's kind of tongue in cheek. I heard this morning that there's a proposal to tax the multi-billionaires one percent annually, not just a one-time tax. And so Jeff Bezos, of course, has a ranch in Texas, no tax there, but places all over that. I don't see Amazon leaving Seattle anytime soon. You know, Jassy. Jeremiah O'Yan did a clubhouse on California. And the basic sentiment is that it's California's not going away.  I think it's a fact. There's some benefits with remote working, no doubt. But, you know, people will stay here in California. The network effects beautiful. I think Silicon Valley is going to continue to be relevant. It's just going to syndicate differently. And I think other hubs like Seattle and around the world will be integrated through remote work. And I think it's going to be much more of a democratizing effect, not a win-lose. So that to me is a huge, huge shift. And look at Amazon, look at Amazon and Microsoft. It's the cloud cities that people call Seattle. You got Google down here and, you know, they're making waves, but still all good stuff. Well, John, thanks so much. Let's wrap and let's jump into the clubhouse and hear from others. Thanks so much for coming on back on theCUBE. Many times we, you and I have done this really was a pleasure, haven't you? Thanks for your perspectives. And thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE. We'll see you next time.


Hello, so this is some work. I did last year what I was doing a contract at the University of Montreal at the group, the Russia Access Information. This is a joint group with Jing, that is over there. And so this is a research challenge. Research challenge, yes. Research challenge is very, very exciting things. Imagine your boss comes to you and says, well, you have a month and a half to program this thing, but you don't really know how to do it. And not only you have to do it, but also do it in a way nobody did it before, so it's interesting and you can publish. So it's a very, very frantic. It really pushed you to write the words called you ever wrote. And one of the things that I have learned with the open source world is, okay, don't be ashamed of your worst code and even like in general, people who write this type of research challenge, they never share the code because it's horrible. So you have it all in GitHub now, you can see it and say, oh my God, this guy Pablo and Beijing is better. But Pablo is like terrible, how can he write this type of stuff? But okay, so the task itself is you take one query that come from real search engine query logs from Microsoft Japan, actually, Microsoft Research Japan, and 200 web pages rank from the real search engine over that query and you have to get all the relevant information in a thousand characters. So you are summarizing 200 pages in a thousand characters. And to simplify the task a little bit, the queries belong only to eight set types. So for example, celebrities, location, how to, things like that, but they don't tell you which type is which for each query. Okay, so here is an little example. The query is Whitney Houston death and the examples they provide as they never give us an output, they give us the evaluation queries. So the way it's evaluated says, well you have to return something that has this good nuggets of information like February 11, 2012 for Suite 434 and you will be evaluated like that. The results haven't come up yet, so we still don't know how bad we did, but we know we didn't do that well. So here are some of the actual queries that came during the evaluation, so you have a little better idea of what the task is about. So for example, Ron Paul Tea Party or Markingay Influence. So you really, it's your guess, my guess what these queries are really about. Yes, I mean, if you talk about Nancy Pelosi, okay, you want a little bio, but if you talk about Ron Paul and the Tea Party, well, do they love each other? Do they have tea every day? I don't know. So our approach is before moving here, I was in IBM Research and helped build the IBM job body system. So the intention here was try to apply the same deep QA architecture to the one-click task. And one of the main things of the deep QA system was not to use type information explicitly. So one of the big changes of normal question answering systems is, okay, if you say who was the president in 1978? So you will start saying, oh, you're asking for a president or you're asking for a person. One of the big things about the job body systems that doesn't do that. That's why it could fail miserably but could also use more evidence. Okay, so the approach on Hunter-Gatherer is a simplification of the deep QA architecture where you hunt for text nuggets and then gather evidence for those nuggets, score them using the evidence and try to assemble a final output using the highly score nuggets. So here is what we mean with hunting text nuggets. You get a passage as returned by a search engine on top of these 200 pages. And then we chunk them in a smart way to find which things could be relevant pieces of information for this query. Then we actually do recursive searches where we take the original query plus the nugget, like Whitney Houston depth suite 434 and gather more extra passages to use as evidence. Then we score these things with a variety of scoring methods and we find the sentences that contain these highly score nuggets. And we wrote all these in a month and a half. And because we wrote all these in a month and a half, the output looks horrible. Yes, so this is for one of our outputs and this was the output that I thought was good enough to show.  So one of the big problems is spam, yes. I know for many people it's not a problem, it's a way of living, but for us that trying to filter these things, it was very, very difficult. So we are looking for Hillary Clinton first lady and we start talking about North America, Turkey, first ladies, visit airport, jeep, blah, blah, blah. So we didn't go in time to include a component that filters things that make no sense and their libraries that do that. But around here it's targeting nice like Clinton was elected to the United States, becoming the first lady elected to public office, et cetera. So we will definitely score points from this one. The other ones looks even worse. Okay, but the important part is why Python? Yes, so I believe that Hunter-Gatherer really goes back to the duct tape language origins of Python. We have two people working very closely together under a tight lead line, integrated in a large number of existing tools and libraries. We use Indrid, there's a research search engine written in C++, NLTK that was presented by one of our speakers, a CCL parser that is a C++ supervised parser, GLPK that is what we're speaking today, mallet that is a Java machine learning library and boilerplate to extract tests, the text from pages plus others. Very, very exploratory coding. And the most important part that I want to bring about the goodness of Python is we have absolutely no documentation. All code, the code was the only documentation we had. And from that perspective, Python was amazingly successful. Besides that, Jing is from China and from Argentina, but we could understand the code much better than we understand speaking each other. So the case study, the thing I wanted to share with you today that I think is very, very nice you could use it for your own work, this library called GLPK. Yes, the state of the art summarization, a state of the art summarization technique uses integer linear programming and express the selection of sentences for a summary as an optimization problem. So if we have N nuggets and M sentences with some sentences containing certain nuggets and we have a score for each nugget, we want to select sentences up to certain length so to maximize the scores of the contained nuggets. And there is this very nice library called GNU Linear Programming Toolkit, GLPK, GLK. And it has a small domain specific language for linear programming. So the problem we have is expressed in GLPK that way. You say, I will have this metrics that tells me which nugget appears in which sentence. I have the length of each sentence and I have the weight, how good is each nugget? And what I'm trying to find is these, which sentence will make the output? Yes, and I'm trying to maximize the sum of the scores of the sentence and make it to the output so that the length of all the sentences is less than the total length and everything, I mean, all the variables are saying. So on the good side of the Python bindings is you don't need to execute the program outside Python but the Python bindings don't do much more than executing the program outside Python. You do have to give a file that contains the whole program inside. So you will need to do a lot of printouts that produce that file. But once you execute them, so you give a file name that contains the file, then you say update solve. And from there, you can read this constraints object. We'll give you back, where are you? Contrains.s contains the array s inside the matrix and you can manipulate it from Python. And some concluding runs. Okay, so the first thing is, if you go to the code and look at line 100 of parser.py has this function called mixed brackets. This is one of the most horrible functions I ever wrote in my life. When the first speaker, talking about LTK, was saying, well, gate lets you do a notation. So around 2000, the NLP community got together and decided that changing the text while you are doing NLP is a bad idea. You want to do standoff annotations. You want to let the text fixed and say, oh, between this offset and this offset, I'm going to put this annotation. And LTK takes us back, I don't know, 15 years and just give you back list of objects, list of strings for many tasks. So when you want to run two tools over the same text, you will have to mix this list of strings. And this list of strings that have a change in subtle ways, like capitalization or a dot attached to it is basically, you have to do a sequence and alignment for biology to solve the mix in the two things. And so that's there in a very ugly format. And the other thing is I really come from more the Java world and Python is not bringing the good out of me. I wrote the whole code with no types. I was a return list of tuples. And then poor Jean has to read it and make sense out of it. I'm really proud of the guy. But it's a little bit of, I still need to get more into really how to write Python in a way that is not noxious for the world. But overall, I'll definitely use it again if I end up in another of these research competitions. This is my six or seven research competitions so far. I always say when I participate one, I'll never do it again. But well, and take a look at the code. This is definitely a non-trivial piece of research code. If you manage to run it, I will be very surprised. Thank you very much.


Hey, anyway, I'm I'm John. So I run a small visual digital media agency We do a lot of WordPress solutions. I'm not going to bore you with that. I'm going to move on. I Do a lot of work for WordPress. I maintain one of the core components and I'm the documentation team lead Yeah, basically if you use WordPress or RG then they are 14 different teams. I'm one of the team leads and So today, I'm going to talk a little bit about the changes to 4.7 and I'm going to focus a little bit on the rest API portion No code in my talk. Just why does it matter to you as a developer? And that's going to lead into a Jack's talk about the rest API in terms of code, right? Yeah, so Yeah, so one of the key things that you see there's actually a moving GF thing It's that the team specific CSS on your team customizer So in the past you would Insult plug-in to actually allow your clients or yourself to put in CSS code if you're not interested in actually altering the file So but the thing is the plug-in itself is going to be there for all your teams So if your client changes team, it works a little bit weird So ideally you should be able to change the CSS or even your client who copies a CSS code online and Paste it right in there because you're thinking hey, how do I change this thing in the 2016 on a 2017 default team And they can just place it in there and it will immediately show so ideally this is All these are things that you use to do separately in terms of using SFTP In terms of using FTP ID and so on or if you have to ask your client to actually Author the file using the file editor. You should not yeah, eventually all this is going to be inside the customizer so That's the team specific CSS One of the cool things that you might see in the future not 4.7 But in all of these things that we do to improve the parts of WordPress. There's always a future plan So the team specific CSS is actually going to have revisions in the future so for example Your client or maybe your new developer who doesn't know a lot about CSS can do some of the changes And then immediately revert to an earlier revision and then with the what a cut at this is the Inline viewing inspection tool. So like the browser's inspection tool, you could see which What a cut at CSS Sorry, which HTML tag you're targeting I think one of this is not a necessary developer base, but I think super cool to have PDF thumbnails in the MediaDark library So equally if you have been doing this WordPress work for a long time. We have seen five six hundred PDFs done there And then when you want to search the final things in the past You can actually search for file names of WordPress files in the media library if you actually change the Name of the what a cut at Tashman inside the attachment name itself So if you changed it without the thumbnail, you're never going to find PDF. They're looking for so now there are thumbnails There's also user-based or cal so if you actually have a multi language website And the front end is easy to see what language you want to change to But if you have say a big remote working team and actually some of your authors or administrators are actually from a different Country, they might be more comfortable with using their own language So this allows that you can change to the Spanish or any other language that WordPress is already hundred percent lead translated on and The back end will actually translate to the language So the things because this is safe in the user meta portion So if you want to use this local what a cut at user-based language setting in your front end as well, it's quite possible Select a post selectable post type template so post type templates has always been possible By actually naming a post type file with us with appropriate post type name But now you will be able to select that for example, you create a customer post type called books But you want to have five different ways of how different books will display you could use the post type template drop down Yeah, so this only used to be able to be done for on pages that you have coded the templates in But now it works for post types as well And all you need to do is add an additional template post type line and you can create a say unifying template for post page products books movies and so on or you could create one Pitched sorry post type template for one post type Next is video haters So I think we're a little bit late into the game But now you could with 4.7 upload a video hater and but this will require a theme that actually supports it But all you need to do is to actually just add team support and then you enable this function Of course you as a developer you have to add a code that actually displays the video Which is basically I can't remember the exact line But at least this control is easily be easily added by one single line Now of course with every Not every every year we have a new default team. So 2017 is a new default team Few cool things is doing one is it allows for content partners.  No, okay, so traditionally we do not allow demo content or default content to be displayed Yeah, because we want the team to work directly for the person's content so now with the advent of What a good at team pen content panels is that you can actually I'm going to play the video Yeah, you can actually put in all this content panel by matching them to a specific page So if you want to match a about ask page to a certain content panel in your home page, you're allowed to do so Yeah, it's going to go through the whole logo selection thing for a while It's gonna Move this ahead Yeah, so you could define as many patterns as you want And then select a page that you want to locate the content to and you actually do that for you so actually 2017 is designed for Businesses, so if you run a business and you want to use a clean team that allows you to map content onto the home page And so on this will allow you to but finally because 2017 was actually developed before the video haters to put in So 2017 doesn't support video haters out of the box. So of course as developers you can put that in Okay, so That's that also it by default is the first default team that actually uses SVG icons So if you are tired of using a non-skillable vector graphics, this is the team that you could learn a little bit from what they do with SVG icons Okay I'm going to skip the rest API endpoint. Sorry. So with 4.7, right? It's not so much with 4.7 We've been actually merging the rest API from version 4.4 until now 4.7, which is going to be released in December 6 So the key point about that is it's not been very usable. Yeah, so Because there was no content endpoints. So right now with 4.7 the content endpoints are being added in and I'm going to skip the definition because Jack is going to do those later. Yeah So the rest API is fully integrated over three versions finally in 4.7 into Into the core and the key thing about this is that with all your say What I call that cloud programs on sorry cloud systems online and so on they more or less use a rest API So we were pressed using a rest API in your other systems Whether it's a HRM system accounting system e-commerce and so on you would be able to communicate with these systems using the rest API So why does it say so important because it's a universal connector? It uses Json, which I guess Jack will explain later and you can communicate and the thing is you might have Legacy system analysis like legacy you might have a system written Java You have another system we return Ruby on rails and so on as long as they all use the rest API Or at least they return Json one way or another what press will be able to communicate with them So what can you do with the rest API? I think one of the things I like to say is you can power multiple front-ends So what does this mean? so You can power IoT devices and draw apps iOS apps Boards you can power smartwatches Desktop apps and of course web apps So all these using WordPress as the content management system as the application framework And then you power different kind of looks on different kind of interfaces So the past it used to be if you wanted the phone app There will be a specific content management system for the phone app and other content management system from the Android app Another content management system for the web application. So in terms of how a company will function. That's actually quite bad You can use it as a data exchange So WordPress with the recipe API So I like to tell this story right so imagine you are running a company and Say you have the logistics stuff now the logistics stuff When to buy a project related materials, so now she says Okay, I've got to claim the money that I spent $500. I go to the HIM system and I submit my claims. So This data is not in a HIM system, but now As the boss or as the accountant, I would like the data to also go to the accounting system So traditionally this would be someone copying the data over to the accounting system But ideally it should be in such a way that the rest API handles this checks periodically This different systems and sends the data to the accounting system. So now as the accountant, I know I've got to pay my staff $500 Next so in the end now that my items are bought and the staff are paid for I need to record that in the project management system So ideally the rest API would be able to do that as well So WordPress with the rest API is the data aggregator It does the exchange your hand does and if you do any if you do any level of data transformation It's all available there I'd like to show you a real-life example called Nomad base so Have anyone seen what this is? Know what Nomad base is it's actually What a mapping system for digital nomads or people like a few of us would go around the world to give talks and so on So if I lend for example, I'm going to the States in a few weeks If I lend that and then in a far away place, I would like to see whether my friends are here So automatically what this thing is does is it connects some of all my social media stuff Guess the data and checks who's there so that we can say hello send the email to them and so on and catch up So the good thing about the interesting thing about this is this is actually entirely Sorry, the back ends entirely built with WordPress. So in the front end, you cannot see that it is actually WordPress The front end is powered by leaflet. I think yeah a leaflet mapping system And the back end uses the rest API and parts of it uses react as well So this is actually my map on where I'll be traveling to So the good thing about the rest API is that you can connect with different Emerging JS technologies and other language technologies and just work with them because in the past when you actually create a WordPress website and you're thinking about creating a mapping site and so on you think oh now I've got to create a team and I've got a quarter header and everything which are essentially useless when you're trying to do a system like Nomad or if you want to do a system like a data analytics system So but by using the rest API, I can get the data that I need and then just power whatever front end that I want So how the Nomad base actually works is that the WordPress is the data aggregator It takes all the data from the different social media apps swam Twitter Facebook tripped And then basically sends it to leaflet as mapping points. Yeah So what does the rest API mean for the developer and I assume that most of you guys here are developers So JavaScript is going to be increasingly important actually it is really really important right now Maybe in the future it's going to be more or if not as important as PHP Web development will become more modularized What I'm saying this is that if you are going to build a web app It's no longer just going to be about WordPress powering the entire thing You might use react you might use other GS components power the front end you might connect to other cloud systems and so on It's never going to be like let me build you a full enterprise system that does all the ERP The counting the point of sales and so on you could be just building a core data aggregator that connects to all these systems Content great integration will be key and become much easier. So increasingly I have seen my clients not want to actually build a big system They just want to continue using the current system. They have and make it easier for others to connect Business intelligence suddenly seems much more related with the WordPress So I spent a lot of time trying to replace the word big data. So which I replaced with business intelligence But basically data aggregation will be very very important And we can then finally deprecate XML RPC finally not that soon, but eventually So if you are if you are not understanding why this is important actually XML RPC Well as a protocol is the most attacked vector in WordPress Actually, it doesn't really do let anything go through but it's the most attacked vector So hosts that don't really understand this sometimes you block it by default Which then doesn't allow the typical WordPress user to use a iOS app and so on to connect Which I think that's going to be replaced by the rest API, right? Or it's really replaced Yeah, so if you are the business owner, so what about this my business? How does the rest API affect me? This is in perspective of a development agency just So we started WordPress as a blogging platform And then it became a content management system So right now the content management system has 70% of the content management market. Yeah, and The thing is in total we power 26% of all websites in the world That's about 450 million I may have I may have gotten that number wrong, but that's not important It is a huge number to power 25% of the Internet Sorry 26% so what is the next step as a development agency because the truth is in terms of content management system We already own the market if you tell people hey I do what press you can use it as a content management system. They have heard it all So the next step is what press must be used as application framework Yeah, so increasingly as I was busy and your clients are not likely going to look for a new website They're going to say we need this new system So how can we do it use WordPress and then how can you convince them tell them? WordPress as the rest API and can be used as application framework So if I'm trusted to see how to use the rest API, this is actually not released yet So you guys get a full early look developer the wordpress.org slash rest API This is the rest API handbook So you can take a look about endpoints and how to connect and so on and then Jack is going to follow up later On on how actually the rest API works So that's all for me You can look for me on Twitter slag WordPress GitHub at at Kenshi no K and SSI and oh and that's all from me Thank you I Have nomad base and I know the creators. Yeah, so that's why I got it Oh, by the way just in case if you're interested in nomad base because it's the invite only I'm gonna skip back Yeah, there's actually invitation code right here. So if you want to use it quickly take it I only get two per month So if you want one next month, let me know and I'll give you the invitation a code invitation code Yes as well yeah So you see like the example how nomad base works is Jack came from the UK, right? Sorry, okay from Greece. So he landed here because we are friends on Facebook. So Technically nomad base is so close to tell me his here and connect with him. Yeah If you have it does it should it should email you Yeah, if it doesn't then you could tell no, I was something's broken But you can actually build for example slag integrations into it to remind you to yeah, okay. Yes any more questions Yeah, so anyway, the the person who built at least the product and product owner of What I could add nomad base was here to answer his question just this month Okay, if today there's no further questions, I'm going to invite Jack who's from automatic from wordpress.com VIP Yeah to give talk about actual development with REST API


Students at Bemidji's Horace May Elementary School celebrated outside this morning for the official opening of their new diversity trail. Students and staff members all attended an official ribbon cutting ceremony. The start of the trail features an amphitheater with a large trail head sign that features information and a map of the trail. Educational signs are located throughout the trail system that covers the school's 40 plus acres of forest giving it a professional look and feeling. And so the curriculum that goes along with these trail signs is really, it'll feel very much like walking into a state park. It'll just be a little bit more petite, which actually kind of offers kind of a nice warm welcoming, not overwhelming situation for kids. The public is welcome to also use the trail system on weekends and during non-school hours. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


you'll be accused of ruining relationships when you set boundaries, but that's not the truth. Any relationships boundaries destroy were not worth having.


What's going on guys got Kyle here relating sports cars and we are riffing one box for Alex F This is 2020 21 prism breakaway World Cup Good luck. Alex. Let's see what you got Numbered messy numbered messy numbered messy him bop a let's get it all Zappé maybe a case hit you can hit those All right, all right. Good luck Alex Is silver rookie Marcelo Flores from Mexico Global reach Fabinho we have new Eric Malmilla rookie Hakimi scores club that is Haraguchi That is a Saudi Arabia team logo there. This is rookie hyper Bruno Guimara's nice one there not numbered on the hyper and Global reach is Indo. This is new era Jonas Vend and rookie red hyper Ali Golisette That is numbered to 99 for Iran and And blue hyper rookie this is Yuta Nakayama for Japan number to 49 Scores club do son of Lehovic and silver connections pull a stitch in Geo at USA game on the 27th here in Orlando Maybe it's like El Salvador. I think We have a wrong or a Rahu That is not numbered and an Australia team logo another connections for the USA Jadon Sancho reach right lock out something last couple packs This is connections de Maria and messy and this is Manuel Neuer Is purple It's a 35 Maybe the goat goalie Maybe definitely had a run Number two is Gabe Martinelli new era and Darwin Nunez All right, and that will do it Alex for your one box of breakaway. Thank you so much, man. We'll get that right out to you