It's theCUBE! Covering the Virtual Vertica Big Data Conference 2020 brought to you by Vertica. Welcome back everybody, my name is Dave Vellante and you're watching theCUBE's coverage of the Vertica Virtual Big Data Conference. theCUBE has been at every BDC and it's our pleasure in these difficult times to be covering BDC as a virtual event. This digital program really excited to have Joy King joining us. Joy is the vice president of product and go-to-market strategy at Vertica. And if that weren't enough, he also runs marketing and education programs.  You've got the technical side and the marketing gene. So welcome to theCUBE, you're always a great guest. Love to have you on. Thank you so much, David, it's a pleasure, it really is. So I want to get in, we'll have some time if we've been talking about the conference and the virtual event, but I really want to dig in to the product stuff, it's a big day for you guys, you announced 10.0, but before we get into the announcements, step back a little bit.  I've said to a number of our guests that Vertica's always been good at riding the wave. Not only the initial MPP, but you embraced HTFS, you embraced data science and analytics and the cloud. So what are the trends that you see, the big waves that you're riding? Well, you're absolutely right, Dave. I mean, what I think is most interesting and important is because Vertica is at its core a true engineering culture founded by, well, a pretty famous guy, right? Dr. Stonebreaker, who embedded that very technical Vertica engineering culture. It means that we don't pretend to know everything that's coming, but we are committed to embracing the technology trends, the innovations, things like that. We don't pretend to know it all, we just do it all. So right now, I think I see three big imminent trends that we are addressing and that are, we have been for a while, but that are particularly relevant right now. The first is a combination of, I guess it's disappointment in what Hadoop was able to deliver. I always feel a little guilty because she's a very reasonably capable elephant. She was designed to be HTFS, highly distributed file store, but she can't be an entire zoo. So there's a lot of disappointment in the market, but a lot of data in HTFS. You combine that with some of the, well, not some, the explosion of cloud object storage. You're talking about even more data, but even more data silos. So data growth and data silos is trend one. Then what I would say trend two is the cloud reality. Cloud brings so many events. There are so many opportunities that public cloud computing delivers, but I think we've learned enough now to know that there's also some realities. The cloud providers themselves, Dave, don't talk about, oh, it's cheaper. Well, because it's not, is it more agile? Can you do things without having to manage your own data center? Of course you can, but the reality is it's a little more pricey than we expected. There are some security and privacy concerns. There's some workloads that can't go to the cloud. So hybrid and also multi-cloud deployments are the next trend that are mandatory. And then maybe the one that is the most exciting in terms of changing the world, we could use a little change right now, is operationalizing machine learning. There's so much potential in the technology, but it somehow has been stuck, for the most part, in science projects and data science labs, and the time is now to operationalize it. Those are the three big trends that Vertica is focusing on right now. That's great. I wonder if I could ask you a couple of questions about that.  And the thing about the Hadoop that was, I think profound was it got people thinking about bringing compute to the data and leaving data in place, and it really got people thinking about data-driven cultures. It didn't solve all the problems, but it collected a lot of data that we can now take your third trend and apply machine intelligence on top of that data. And then the cloud is really the ability to scale, and it gives you that agility, and it's really that cloud experience. It's not just the cloud itself. It's bringing the cloud experience to wherever the data lives. And I think that's what I'm hearing from you. Those are the three big superpowers of innovation today. That's exactly right. So, you know, I have to say, I think we all know that data analytics, machine learning, none of that delivers real value unless the volume of data is there to be able to truly predict and influence the future. So the last seven to 10 years has been correctly about collecting the data, getting the data into a common location, and HDFS was well designed for that. But we live in a capitalist world and some companies stepped in and tried to make HDFS and the broader Hadoop ecosystem be the single solution to big data. It's not true. So now the key is how do we take advantage of all of that data? And now that's exactly what Vertica is focusing on. So as you know, we began our journey with Vertica back in 2007 with our first release and we saw the growth of Hadoop. So we announced many years ago Vertica SQL on Hadoop. The idea to be able to deploy Vertica on Hadoop nodes and query the data in Hadoop. We wanted to help. Now with Vertica 10, we are also introducing Vertica in EON mode. And we can talk more about that, but Vertica in EON mode for HDFS. This is a way to apply an ANSI SQL database management platform to HDFS infrastructure and data in HDFS file storage. And that is a great way to leverage the investment that so many companies have made in HDFS. And I think it's fair to the elephant to treat her well. Okay, well, let's get it to the hard news. 10.0, you've got a mature stack. What are the highlights of 10.0 and then we can drill into some of the particulars? Absolutely. So in, well in 2018, Vertica announced Vertica in EON mode. EON mode is the separation of compute from storage. Now this is a great example of Vertica embracing innovation. Vertica was designed for on-premises data centers and bare metal servers, tightly coupled storage, DL380s from Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Dell, et cetera. But we saw that cloud computing was changing fundamentally data center architectures. And it made sense to separate compute from storage. So you add compute when you need compute, you add storage when you need storage. That's exactly what the clouds introduced, but it was only available on the cloud. So first thing we did was architect Vertica in EON mode, which is not a new product, Dave. This is really important. It's a deployment option. And in 2018, our customers had the opportunity to deploy their Vertica licenses in EON mode on AWS. In September of 2019, we then broke an important record. We brought cloud architecture down to earth and we announced Vertica in EON mode. So Vertica with communal or shared storage, leveraging pure storage FlashBlade. That gave us all the advantages of separating compute from storage. All of the workload isolation, the scale up, scale down, the ability to manage clusters. And we did that with on-premise data centers. And now with Vertica 10, we are announcing Vertica in EON mode on HDFS and Vertica EON mode on Google Cloud. So what we've got here in summary is Vertica in EON mode, multi-cloud and multiple on-premise data storage. And that gives us the opportunity to help our customers, both with the hybrid and multi-cloud strategies they have and unifying their data silence. But Vertica 10 goes farther. Well, so let me stop you there because I just want to mention. So we talked to Joe Gonzalez at MassMutual who essentially he was brought in. And one of his tasks was to lean into EON mode. Why? MassMutual had three separate data silos and they wanted to bring those together. They're investing heavily in technology. Joe's an expert, so that really put data at their core and EON mode was a key part of that because they're using S3 and so, so that was a very important step for those guys. But carry on, what else do we need to know about 10.0? Well, so one of the reasons for example that MassMutual is so excited about EON mode is because of the operational advantages. You think about exactly what Joe told you about multiple clusters serving multiple use cases and maybe multiple divisions. And look, let's be clear, marketing doesn't always get along with finance and finance doesn't necessarily get along with ops. And IT is often caught in the middle. Vertica in EON mode allows workload isolation, meaning allocating the compute resources that different use cases need without allowing them to interfere with other use cases and allowing everybody to access the data. So it's a great way to bring the corporate world together but still protect them from each other. And that's one of the things that MassMutual is going to benefit from as well so many of our other customers. I also wanna mention, so when I saw you last year at the Pure Storage Accelerate Conference, you said, Dave, we are the only company that separates compute from storage that runs on-prem and in the cloud. And I was like, hmm, and I had to think about it. I've researched it. I still can't find anybody else who does it. I want to mention, you beat actually a number of the cloud players with that capability. So, good job, and I think is a differentiator assuming that you're giving me that cloud experience and the licensing and the pricing capability. So I want to talk about that a little bit. Well, you're absolutely right. So let's be clear. There is no question that the public cloud, public clouds introduce the separation of compute storage and these advantages, but they do not have the ability or the interest to replicate that on-premise. For Vertica, we were born to be software only. We make no money on underlying infrastructure. We don't charge as a package for the hardware underneath. So we are totally motivated to be independent of that and also to continuously optimize the software to be as efficient as possible. And we do the exact same thing to your question about licensing. Cloud providers charge per note. It makes sense. That's how they charge for their underlying infrastructure. Well, in some cases, if you're talking about a use case where you have a whole lot of data, but you don't necessarily have a lot of compute for that workload, it may make sense to pay per note. Then it's unlimited data. But what if you have a huge compute need on a relatively small dataset? That's not so good. Vertica offers per note and per terabyte for our customers depending on their use case. We also offer perpetual licenses for customers who want CAPEX, but we also offer subscription for companies that say, nope, I have to have APEX. And while this can certainly cause some complexity for our field organization, we know that it's all about choice, that everybody in today's world wants it personalized, just for me. And that's exactly what we're doing with our pricing and licensing. So just to clarify, you're saying, I can pay by the drink if I want to. You're not going to force me necessarily into a term or I can choose to have a more predictable pricing. Is that correct? Well, so it's partially correct. So first, Vertica subscription licensing is a fixed amount for the period of the subscription. We do that because so many of our customers cannot, and I'm one of them, by the way, cannot tell finance what the budget forecast is going to be for the quarter after I spend. I'm required to say what it's going to be before. So our subscription pricing is a fixed amount for a period of time. However, we do respect the fact that some companies do want usage-based pricing. So on AWS, you can use Vertica by the hour, and you pay by the hour. We are about to launch the very same thing on Google Cloud. So for us, it's about what do you need and we make it happen, natively, directly with us or through AWS and Google Cloud. So I want to understand. So the fixed is some floor, and then if you want to surge above that, you can allow usage pricing if you're on the cloud, correct?  Or you can buy a license from Vertica for a fixed capacity or a fixed number of nodes and deploy it on the cloud. And then if you want to add more nodes or add more capacity, you can. It's not usage-based for the license that you bring to the cloud, but if you purchase through the cloud provider, it is usage-based. Yeah, okay, and you guys are in the marketplace. Is that right? That's right, exactly. So if I want OPEX, I can do that. I can choose to do that. That's awesome. You can choose OPEX usage through the AWS marketplace or OPEX fixed directly from Vertica. Yeah, because every small business who then goes to a Salesforce management system knows this. You're like, okay, great, I can pay by the month. Well, yeah, well, not really. Here's our three-year term, right? And it's very frustrating. Well, and even in the public cloud, you can pay for by the hour or by the minute or whatever, but it becomes pretty obvious that you're better off if you have reserved instance types or committed amounts. And that's why Vertica offers subscription that says, hey, you wanna have 100 terabytes for the next year. Here's what it will cost you. We do interval billing. You wanna do monthly, quarterly, biannual. We'll do that, but we won't charge you for usage that you didn't even know you were using until after you get the bill. And frankly, that's something my finance team does not like. Yeah, I think, I know this is kind of a wonky discussion, but so many people gloss over the licensing and the pricing and I think my takeaway here is optionality, pricing your way. That's great. Thank you for that clarification. Okay, so you got Google Cloud. I wanna talk about storage optionality. If I count them up, I got S3. I got, I'm presuming Google now. You're pure. So Google is an S3 compatible storage, yeah. So pure storage. So the Google object store, right? Like Google object store, Amazon S3 object store, HDFS, pure storage FlashBlade, which is an object store on-prem. And we are continuing on this path because ultimately we know that our customers need the option of having next generation data center architecture, which is sort of shared or communal storage. So all the data is in one place, but workloads can be managed independently on that data. And that's exactly what we're doing, but what we already have in two public clouds and two on-premise deployment options today. And as you said, I did challenge you back when we saw each other at the conference. Today, Vertica is the only analytic data warehouse platform that offers that option on-premise and in multiple public clouds. Okay, let's talk about the innovation cocktail, I'll call it. So it's the data applying machine intelligence to the data and we talked about scaling at cloud and some of the other advantages of cloud. Let's talk about the machine intelligence, the machine learning piece of it. What's your story there? Give us any updates on your embracing of tooling and the like. Well, quite a few years ago, we began building some in-database, native in-database machine learning algorithms into Vertica. And the reason we did that was we knew that the architecture of MPP columnar execution would dramatically improve performance. We also knew that a lot of people speak SQL, but at the time, not so many people spoke R or even Python. And so what if we could give access to machine learning in the database via SQL and deliver that kind of performance? So that's the journey we started on. And then we realized that actually machine learning is a lot more, as everybody knows, than just algorithms. So we then built in the full end-to-end machine learning function from data preparation to model training, model scoring and evaluation all the way through to full deployment. And all of this again, SQL accessible. You speak SQL, you speak to the data. And the other advantage of this approach was we realized that accuracy was compromised if you down sample. If you moved a portion of the data from a database to a special team machine learning platform, you were challenged by accuracy and also what the industry is calling replicability. And that means if a model makes a decision, like let's say credit scoring, and that decision is in any way challenged, well, you have to be able to replicate it to prove that you made the decision correctly. And there was a bit of a, you know, blow up in the media not too long ago about a credit scoring decision that appeared to be gender biased. But unfortunately, because the model could not be replicated, there was no way to disprove that. And that was not a good thing. So all of this is built into Vertica. And with Vertica 10, we've taken the next step. Just like with Hadoop, we know that innovation happens within Vertica but also outside of Vertica. We saw that data scientists really love their preferred language like Python. They love their tools and platforms like TensorFlow. With Vertica 10, we now integrate even more with Python, which we have for a while, but we also integrate with TensorFlow integration and PMML. What does that mean? It means that if you build and train a model external to Vertica, using the machine learning platform that you like, you can import that model into Vertica and run it on the full end-to-end process but run it on all the data. No more accuracy challenges, MPP columnar execution so it's blazing fast. And if somebody wants to know why a model made a decision, you can replicate that model and you can explain why. Those are very powerful. And it's also another cultural unification, Dave. It unifies the business analyst community who speaks SQL with the data scientist community who love their tools like TensorFlow and Python. Well, I think, Joy, that's important because so much of machine intelligence and AI, there's a black box problem that you can't replicate the model. Then you do run into potential like gender, by the example that you're talking about there and there are many, let's say an individual is very wealthy, he goes for a mortgage and his wife goes for some credit, she gets rejected, he gets accepted. It's the same household. But the bias in the model, there may be gender bias, there could be race bias. And so being able to replicate that and open up and make the machine intelligence transparent is very, very important. It really is and that replicability as well as accuracy is critical because if you're down sampling and you're running models on different sets of data, things can get confusing. And yet you don't really have a choice because if you're talking about petabytes of data and you need to export that data to a machine learning platform and then try to put it back and get the next set the next day, you're looking at way too much time. Doing it in the database or training the model and then importing it into the database for production, that's what Vertica allows and our customers are so excited. They, because of course you know, they are the ones that are sort of the trailblazers they've always been and this is the next step in blazing the ML trail. Joy, customers want analytics. They want functional analytics, full function analytics. What are they pushing you for? And what are you delivering? What's your thought on that? Well, I would say the number one thing that our customers are demanding right now is deployment flexibility. What the CIO or the CFO mandated six months ago, thou shalt, whatever that thou shalt is, is different. What I tell them is, it is impossible to know what you're going to be commanded to do or what options you might have in the future. The key is not having to choose and they are very, very committed to that. We have a large telco customer who is multi-cloud as their commit. Why multi-cloud? Well, because they see innovations available in different public clouds. They want to take advantage of all of them. They also admittedly see that there's the risk of lock-in, right, like any vendor. They don't want that either. So they want multi-cloud. We have other customers who say, we have some workloads that make sense for the cloud and some that we absolutely cannot do in the cloud. But we want a unified analytics strategy. So they are adamant in focusing on deployment flexibility. That's what I'd say is first. Second, I would say that the interest in operationalizing machine learning but not necessarily forcing the analytics team to hammer the data science team about which tools are the best tools. That's the probably number two. And then I'd say number three. And it's because when you look at companies like Uber or the trade desk or AT&T or Cerner performance at scale, when they say milliseconds, they think that's low. When they say petabytes, they're like, yeah, that was yesterday. So performance at scale, good enough for Vertica is never good enough. And it's why we're constantly building at the core, the next generation execution engine, database designer, optimization engine, all that stuff. I also want to ask you, when I first started following Vertica, we covered the cube covering the BDC. One of the things I noticed was in talking to customers and people in the community is that you have a community addition. It's a free addition and it's not neutered. Have you maintained that ethos through the transitions into micro focus? And can you talk about that a little bit? Absolutely. Vertica Community Edition is Vertica. It's all of the Vertica functionality. Geospatial, time series, pattern matching, machine learning, all of the Vertica. Vertica in EON mode, Vertica in enterprise mode. All Vertica is the Community Edition. The only limitation is one terabyte of data and three nodes. And it's free. Now, if you want commercial support where you can file a support ticket and things like that, you do have to buy the light, but it's free. And people say, well, free for how long? Like, our field sometimes asks me that. And I say forever. And so what do you mean forever? Because we want people to use Vertica for use cases that are small, that they want to learn, that they want to try. And we see no reason to limit that. And what we look for is when they're ready to grow, when they need the next set of data that goes beyond a terabyte, or they need more compute than three nodes, then we're here for them. And it also brings up an important thing that I should remind you or tell you about, Dave, if you haven't heard it. And that's about the Vertica Academy, academy.vertica.com. Well, what is that? That is all self-paced on demand, as well as Vertica Essential Certification Training. And certification means you have seven days with your hands on a Vertica cluster hosted in the cloud to go through all the certifications. And guess what? All of that is free. Why? Why would you give it for free? Because for us, empowering the market, giving the market the expertise, the learning they need to take advantage of Vertica, just like with Community Edition, is fundamental to our mission. Because we see the advantage that Vertica can bring, and we want to make it possible for every company all around the world to take advantage of it. I love that ethos of Vertica. I mean, it's obviously a great product, but it's not just the product. It's the business practices and really progressive, progressive pricing and embracing of all these trends and sort of not running away from the waves, but really leaning in. Joy, thanks so much. Great interview, really appreciate it. And I wished we could have been face-to-face in Boston, but I think this is the prudent thing to do. I promise you, Dave, we will, because the Vertica BDC in 2021 is already booked. So I will see you there. Awesome, Joy King, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. And thank you for watching. And remember, the CUBE is running this program in conjunction with the virtual Vertica BDC. Go to vertica.com slash BDC 2020 for all the coverage. And keep it right there. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE. We'll be right back.


Kia ora everyone and good evening well today I'm talking about a topic which has not only the certain significance but which has personal relevance for me as well I grew up in a country where the kind of education that I'm talking about I am a product of that education and I have experienced all the conflict that I'm going to mention in this presentation so it's not just a kind of a mental curiosity because of which I am presenting all this but it is something that I have experienced and I have experienced it very recently in 2008 when there was a huge military operation in the in the area after the Taliban took over for a brief time and then they were overthrown so I have I have titled my topic a tug of words because this is what is going on there is a conflict along the educational fault line and I like to put this in perspective by mentioning the highly controversial and best-selling book of Samuel Huntington clash of civilizations in which he claimed that the 21st century will be shaped along battles and clashes would be more along the cultural fault lines instead of being primarily fashioned by national interest and economic interests that gave rise to a lot of headmongering as well as stereotyping in the media in the public Islam and Western countries and Western civilization they were conceptualized as being in clash that was another now Huntington said that the new world order would be characterized by the fact that the greatest division among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be culture and the area of study that I have been interested in for the last 14 years and have been teaching language in a university in my country is language that's my area of interest for the last 14 years as I mentioned and that is closely connected with culture and that's why I am interested to see whether the conflict scenario that Huntington talks about and the increasing conflict conflicts that we see around us in the post 9 11 era can they be conceptualized in terms of language so I want to see what is the relationship between language and culture on the one hand it has been said that language is at the core of a culture and Nietzsche even goes further the German philosopher says we live in a prison house of our language by which he means that our worldview is fashioned by the kind of language that we are born into which affects not only the way we see ourselves but it also affects the way we see others it has both potential as well as potential as well as hazards so relationship between language and culture language is obviously one of the distinguishing feature of our species it is what distinguishing distinguishes us from the non-articulate kingdom language is this is central in giving us our identity and as I mentioned before it is a defining feature of it defines and limits the range of our thinking and worldview and this is indirectly in connection with identity the way we see ourselves the way we see others that is how we form our identity so this brings me to language in education if there is a connection between language and culture and language is place a significant part is the central place a central part in education language in education and culture how can they be understood in terms of its effect upon the identities of those who learn a language that's why I have taken two school systems in Pakistan and I in order to see are we preparing the children in these schools for hatred or accommodation in the future because in the increasing era of mobility international mobility globetrottering globetrottering and global a possibility of flying across continents there is both potential and danger for global harmony as well as global conflict I have taken the dividing line between these two two schools as English which cause the the language the English language it provides a kind of ticket to upward social mobility it's the doorkeeper to upward social mobility and it's because of that apart from identity that the tussle in a society like in my country arises so I have taken these two schools which are situated in my country which is Pakistan and I have conceptualized these two schools is promoting national and Islamic identity on the one on the one hand because the country projects itself as an Islamic country and the nation the state is usually because it is portrayed as synonymous with Islam in the political discourse as well as in the media on the and they are using local textbooks in these schools the government schools in order to instill a local Islamic identity in the children on the other hand there are the elite schools which are giving English medium instructions along the lines of British school systems and they are installing more global identity and liberal identity in the students and they are using books which are Oxford indoors now the education system is Pakistan the education field is a conflict zone and a few glimpses apart from many other can be seen in the case of Malala Yusuf Zayib when she was shot when she was on her way home from her school in 2012 at that time she was only 14 she was going to an English medium private school and she had been advocating universal education for girls and the Taliban threatened her but as she said we realize the importance of our voice when we are silenced and they tried to silence her but she didn't she survived she not only survived but went on to collect the Nobel Prize for P for peace then another event happened in 2014 religious extremists attacked an army run school in the northern city of a shower more than 130 children were killed these are these are tragic but true stories so my question is the national and Islamic identity on the one hand which is promoted by the hundreds and thousands of schools throughout the country and on the other hand the global and western identity which is so blatantly proclaimed and promoted by the private schools which are also if not in hundreds and thousand at least in thousands throughout the country what is it doing to the children where is the voice of the children what do they think they get when they are in a foreign language class so whether it is these children who are studying in a private school sitting in a koogee environment or these children who are sitting on the floor in a government school both of these need to be heard and I think their voices should be put together the two schools have two ideologies as I mentioned before the government schools they have more Islamic ideology their English is taught as a foreign language and the key line the key word is foreign here what are these children getting and what the teachers think that these children should become in the future what is the conception of the teachers about their students and what is the conception of these students about themselves in the future so because of the social and cultural repercussions and importance of this topic I have set my topic in a post-structuralist framework in order to see phenomenon of assimilation and resistance in these two schools and to place it in a post-colonial context by assimilation I mean acceptance of Western culture teaching books to children which has Christmas snowfall Santa Claus and by resistance I mean wiping everything out teaching them about the mosque about prayer about local culture but not telling them anything about the West these are the two extremes now I am using as my method I'm using imagine communities which is a concept which is a construct proposed by Bonnie Norton in order to see what these children want to become in the future and what is the effect of that imaginative flight upon their learning so my methodology would be to take the data from the students and the teachers to interviews analyze it in a critical discourse analysis in order to put it in the broader sociocultural context I would also be using other sources of information by research and broadly are how culture and linguistic identities of the students are shaped in these two schools what are their imagined communities when they are studying English as a foreign language and what effect does it have on learning of English in the meantime Malala turn 18 the previous year she's doing a lot of work in my country as well as another and she opened a school for refugee girls in the Syrian refugee camps while I dream I dream I dream of a just an equal education system for all children in my country thank you because I think that apart from the identity crisis that I'm going to focus on this identity crisis is just a manifestation of a larger socio-economic phenomena which is which is structured along the class system in the in the society so the class system it perpetuates itself in collusion or in agreement with the education system the education system provides very little opportunity of good education to these children and they have very little opportunity of getting quality teaching in English and English in the country in this country is the key to access high pair job high-paid jobs access high high positions in the military in the bureaucracy politicians business everywhere you see so these children they are not they account for 92% of the population the children to your right they account for about four to five percent while there are other schools that are in the middle they account for three to four percent so by just I mean why the education system is not being being being harmonized in a way that every child whether they are born to poor parents or to rich parents they have equal chances thank you the challenges are that on the one hand these the elite schools especially they would not want themselves to be put in the same basket with the with the non-elite schools because they themselves of themselves as you know symbol status so at first I would I had a bit of a challenge in convincing them that I am not a threat to them I'm not going to degrade their their their value in the society I'm not going to degrade their prestige by putting them against a school which to them is like nothing and they would say like oh you're going to place us against them but we train our teachers and and and Oxford certified trainers they come to Islamabad and the trainer teacher and you are placing against those schools so I said no this is not my purpose and I had to do quite some bit of convincing that I am here just as an observer I am not here to judge I'm just trying to find out what is happening and to present it that's that's a key point they all the the proliferation of the private sector in the country it is because of the lack of a clearly defined education policy in the country so the education policy is in place but if you read the document by end of reading the document you read to the last page you get no sense of what they want people to do there is so much school for people to define it in their own way and that is what they are taking advantage of some people are teaching Oxford indoors books other people are printing their own books in the country there is a government school system which is printing its own books there are mother's house which are printing religious books so this is all because of a lake of a clearly defined education policy and this you pointed that very well this is a central concern for my research


We all talk about cities a lot, but do we really understand cities? We need to find a way to better understand cities, and they are where they are really important, where they are really growing. This is why we founded a research lab in Singapore, in the fastest growing region of the world, and we try to combine science, as you see, science, a happy president, happy National Research Foundation, and design, you will see, case Christianza, later. You're looking here at the moment the most sought-after website. If you look at the Future Cities title, you will find this website, number one, number two, all the way down. And it shows that Future Cities design is really a complex way of designing. It's a complex system, and we therefore try to understand the city as a complex system. A city has a metabolism. It's not an organism, but it has a metabolism. And in this metabolism, it can look very simple, like the stocks and the flows of a city can look very simple, like this city from the top in Sudan, where the humans have to adapt to the harsh conditions. On the other side, it can be very sophisticated. Here we have, of course, a supercomputer part, and that sometimes starts to look like a city, because computers are sometimes organized like cities inside. So this dualism between humans and computers, between data and real life, is very important. Let's look into some of the original stocks and flows of the city, which are important. Here a wonderful example from Myanmar. You see the totally balanced between city and landscape, between houses and landscape, in this case of the water. The water has a stock, the lake, and it has a flow, the inflow and outflow. But you can also transport that to modern cities. Here in Zurich, a beautiful new building by Shigel Ban, very headquarters of a media company, and you can see use of wood, a sustainable material, combined with high-tech concrete in a high-tech new building. So this is something we strive at the building level, but also at the level of the city quarter, the next higher level. Here you see how the stocks and flows of energy, for example, on our campus in Zurich, this is the Science City campus, Henkeberg, we store the energy from the summer in the ground and take it out in the winter using the stocks and flows of energy and the storage capacity of the world. In this case, you see the stocks and flows of information, and it starts, the flow of information of communication starts to transform the city, and it takes over some of the visual aspects of the city. This is something we're trying to avoid in many places, but sometimes it's not avoidable. It's an important part of understanding a city. And it can go even further, the stocks and flows of transportation sometimes even destroy almost a fabric of a city, and we have to be very careful in pre-defining the stocks and flows of transportation through measures, as you will see in the next presentations, that it can be done in a way that is more human-scale. And you can use the stocks and flows even on a landscape and on a large territorial scale. This is Singapore, and we use digital maps, of course, old maps and new maps, to show you what is new, which is all black, and what is white, which has been taken from the island to be filled into the land. To do all these things and to store the data that we get with all these applications, we need lots of energy, electricity in this case. You can generate electricity in many different ways. This will be one of the major focus areas in the future cities, where we have the data stores and where we have the electricity sources, here it's in the East Sea, in the North Sea. And we need this to store all these data that we get from these handheld devices, these big data that have been produced.  This is an example from Zurich and we can see how people concentrate in certain areas. Then we can use these big data, bring it down to the level of urban planning and visualize what these big data mean on the urban level, on the model of the urban level. You can see even children can interact with that. So in a city scale model, in a city scale laboratory, we can handle all these things. We can handle the energy which you can see represented here of Singapore, which you're building so much energy they use. We can present it to ministers as in this picture, or we can present it to children and all the people in between. This is the important part that you understand these stocks and flows, the working of the city. And the big data finally come back to very small things, to very haptic things where it designed the city with blocks, but intelligent blocks also again between children and all the shareholders. And you will also see on the right side a simulation, one of the later presentations, how this bridge from the high-tech to the low-tech is done. The big question for us is we can do these things in the lab, in the city now. How can we bring this knowledge, these functioning future scenarios into places where it's really needed? That means in the places around the equator where 90% of the new cities are emerging, not just the big cities but also the small cities.


Armoured Israeli vehicles massed near the border with Gaza and residents of the Hamas hit areas spent the night in shelters on Oct. 10, as Israel said it had reclaimed control of the Gaza border. Israeli strikes pounded the Hamas-ruled enclave with the fiercest air strikes in the 75-year history of its conflict with the Palestinians despite a Hamas threat to execute a captive for each home hit. Israel has vowed to take its mighty revenge since Dunman rampaged through its towns, leaving streets strewn with bodies in by far the deadliest attack in its history. It has called up hundreds of thousands of reservists and placed the Gaza Strip, crowded home to 2.3 million people under a total siege.


The IRs themselves, we put a lot of time and effort and research into an in-house proprietary processing system to generate the best sounding IRs we possibly can. This isn't something that's easily recreatable, it's custom designed in-house. The space itself is fantastic with the huge log wall diffuser, it's giving us that energy back into the room, which is supporting the capture of the floor, especially a forewatch hole really fills the room there. So it's a combination of the the acoustic setup of the space with this cabinet, with the Celestial speakers loaded into it. That's feeling that room for the best capture, a couple of that with the mics in particular, the studio grade mics and the positions of the microphones which have taken a lot of time and effort into finding the best positions from listening tests. The close mics, I mean it's dominated by the response of the speaker itself so it's it's most important the speakers themselves sound top-quality in the cabinet of course because it's it's a collective system together. But there's always some reflection of room in there. We've got the room mics already which are filling in that room response. There's a serious amount of research in the process of creating the IRs both in the positions, the capture, the processing of the recorded data to generate the most effective and top-quality sounding IRs because fundamentally it's a listening process. It's the ones that sound the best that are the best.


The city of Portland is compiling its first comprehensive inventory of the city's trees in 150 years. As city arborist Jeff Tarling told Brian Knoblock, the city is using the latest technology to make this inventory the most complete one in our history. Jeff, we're here on a great summer day in Portland, and we're counting trees. What's going on? Well, we're working on a first phase of the GIS tree inventory that we received a grant from Project Canopy from the Maine Forest Service, and we started here on the eastern prom and we're working our way across the peninsula. We started our first inventory work back in 2000 after the ice storm, and we recorded somewhere around 7,000 records on mostly the east steering and north gearing areas. We never got a chance to do the in-town areas, so this gives us a chance to start in town and give us an idea of what we have for a resource of trees in Portland. This will cover from the eastern prom, Lincoln Park, all the way across the peninsula to the western prom, and then we'll fill in some of the other neighborhoods that we didn't complete before. And you have two interns working out here and they're using some new technology. What are they doing? Well, we looked at a variety of methods to collect the data, and we found that we can use an online version using iPads. We download the city's aerial photographs, so we get an aerial photograph. While they're collecting the data, they actually have a GPS on the iPad so it tells them where they are. It cues up the map. They can look at the tree in front of the house. They'll click a little dot where the tree is, and then they can write down what type of tree it is, what condition, where it's located, and species. So we'll be caught all the data we need to know about each tree, and then we'll keep moving right down the street. And by the time we're in, we'll know how many Norway maples we have versus how many lindens versus how many pinnokes. So we'll know for the first time ever a real accurate resource of what we're taking care of. And why is it important for the city to have this infrastructure? Well, it's really one of our top things that we need, because right now we respond to various citizen requests for tree maintenance. And as we drive around, we also locate what type of tree we have and what kind of work it needs. But this will give us a first snapshot of the whole picture and how many trees we're actually taking care of. And instead of doing reactive maintenance, we'll try to do more program maintenance. We'll come into North Street where we are now and we'll know how many linden trees we're taking care of. And if we have invasive species problems in the future, like the temporal ash borer, we'll know how many ash trees we have and we're going to go look for that. So it's going to be a really important tool for us to manage and take care of a city's resource of trees. And this information will be available to the public online, is that right? It will be. In fact, the map that we've generated so far in the last week, we have probably five or six hundred records on there that's online on the city's map. It's on the city's website where it shows all our maps and it will be on the tree inventory. I'm just trying to remember the offhand, the website, but it's on the city's website. You can click on and see the tree out front.  So it's going to be really helpful for us as a tool to manage the amount of trees we have in the city. This is the first tree survey of the city in many, many years, is that right? Yeah, we had an early tree inventory computerized in the late 80s. It was on one of those little UTS screens. It was a little green screen like you used to have at the banks. It didn't tell us a lot. It was almost more accurate to get in my truck and go drive around and look and see what kind of tree it was. But the new technology using, you know, spatial information systems, satellite imagery, aerial photographs, mixing this all together is really a super way to do this. And there was a tree survey in 1854 and that had 3,300 trees and you're already up to 7,500. So do we have more trees or more city? We have more city. The early survey counted just the Peninsula of Portland, which ended about we're gearing Oaks in backhoe is when in 1898 when gearing got added to the city, it definitely increased the size of Portland. So the early inventory was just a peninsula. And you're sort of charged with keeping the trees healthy, but what can the public do to keep their own trees healthy?  And people can always email us a call about that tree if it needs further work or if they want a tree planted. You know, looking back to 1854 from then to the 148 years, people really care for trees in Portland. I think that's why it's been long called the Forest City. And I think having the public involved is really one of the ideal ways to manage our forests. So we're going to make huge inroads by just getting a better handle on what we have for a resource.


Good afternoon everyone, if everyone's ready what I'd like to do is just read out a few things and and then I'll just open the floor up to questions if that's okay cool with that well ladies and gentlemen as of midnight tonight I will become the 19th Commissioner of the Queensland Police Service only the 19th in 148 years I'm very very proud to have been chosen to take that role on I understand the accountability and the transparency that will come with that role and I'm looking forward to working with the community but more most importantly with all of the members of the Queensland Police Service to provide excellent policing to this state in doing that I'm going to provide three directions to my staff I'm going to challenge them to stop crime to make the community safer and to build relationships across the community and within the Queensland Police Service in doing so I'm going to ask all of our police and our members to strive to be courageous to be fair and to be proud these are important characteristics that I expect my staff will embody and provide to the community every day my support for my staff has been questioned in recent times every day I attend public meetings I attend meetings of our staff at functions all over the state and on every occasion I thank our staff for the work that they do in what is a very very complex environment I hope that all members of our organization will look to my record all of my record in the way that I look to them to provide that service excellence on a daily basis and I do that by providing them with the appropriate training the appropriate equipment and the appropriate support that they need to do that what is a very very complex job I'm happy to take questions from from any of you yeah it's a great it's a great new nickname and I actually like it I'm very grateful to Ian Leavis for it I'm probably cycling would have been better but I'll go with Hurricane at the moment look we've got some rocky days ahead there's no doubt about it Ian's a great friend of mine I've known him for a long time and I've had a very productive and professional working relationship with him as I as I have with all the unions and tomorrow morning I intend to ring Ian I intend to ring John pointing who is the president of the Commissioned Officers Union and I intend to talk to Alex Scott of the Together Union to start that dialogue for me in my new role to talk to them consult with them on issues which I think are important for our organization into the future he made a range of statements that came from comments that I've made over the last couple of weeks in in in media conferences just like this and one of the issues with media conferences is that I have no control over what you print or what you report on even though they may go for some time you choose the issues that you want to get out there and I'm fine with that that's the role of media but I hope that particularly my staff my members of the Queensland Police Service will use their common sense in judging me judging what I stand for and judging the way that I represent a whole range of issues that I want to take forward during the next few years as the Commissioner of this great organization look I think that the Union has a very very vital role to play in representing the issues that are important that they think are important to the membership but again I would just say that I hope that people will use their common sense to make their judgments themselves on how I have behaved and how I have acted over a long period of time I think I've demonstrated that I'm a decisive person I have very very strong standards and and this is not about people who perhaps make mistakes who errors that are minor in nature I actually believe that most discipline issues in this organization could be handled by local bosses right on the spot with the appropriate recording and that's going to be a very important factor for the future in trying to allow people just to perhaps get some counseling or if they're not right for it if they haven't committed it the breach or the error of the complaint then there are processes that we can go through to show that they should be exonerated from any complaint that's made in that regard so there are always two sides to this story but if there has been a mistake and it's an honest mistake let's let's get the counseling let's get the guidance and let's get on with our job at the other end of the spectrum though we do have those who who don't meet the standards I believe are necessary to remain in this organization and I will be talking to the government about my ability through a commissioners confidence to actually be able to quickly and decisively ask people to show cause why they remain now there are checks and balances in in all of that there is administrative law there are appeal processes and I have no problem with that at all because I think that they're the rights when people are talking about their employment but there are definite standards that that I have and I think the community expect of us that people will have to meet every day look we're heading into an eb arrangement I think I'm the new boy on the block and and I think that there's a bit more of this to come yet it's that settling in period and I understand that I accept it I've been in this organization a long time and I've changed jobs numerous times in the organization as you move into a new role you've got to prove yourself and I have to do that comfortable are you with the politics of the role already having to deal with the union the police that came out today and danced around the subject oh well they're entitled there I mean you're a you're a policeman your leader your whole standards but there's politics involved too is there's always politics and the police commissioner's role fundamentally is about keeping politics away from the operational day-to-day work of our organization and I expect that I'll have many of these types of challenges into the future and as I said we're coming up to an eb negotiation for the organization so I suspect there'll be a lot of posturing going on and and I understand that I have no problem with absolutely the government have flagged as they have flagged to every public sector organization that they want to see greater performance greater efficiencies more innovation I think we're up for that as an organization I really do I get a sense that the organization's ready for change we are already doing work on looking at structural reform we've had the same framework and structure for the last almost 25 years ever since Fitzgerald there were there were issues then that drove the plans and the framework and the structure which no longer exist and what I want to be able to go to government with is a very consolidated plan with I hope the unions support for it to look at ways that we can do things better that we can actually get the front line greater number of police back on that front line to do to do the job that the public expect us to do I think one of the greatest things and probably one of the most underestimated roles that we play is simply being visible out there every day so that the criminals know that we're there and that certainly they don't chance their arm they don't commit the offences simply because the police are out on the on the job and of course we use intelligence based policing to achieve that that's my goal to get more police out onto that front line in a way that the government I think has an expectation on behalf of the community what you mean by wanting to have the ability to ask particular officers to show cause at the moment about the only way that a person can leave this organization is either by resigning or through a often very very protracted discipline process I think there are circumstances where the evidence is so clear that I think that the the commissioner should have the right to simply call on that person to show cause why they should remain in other words they have to argue their case about what occurred now please this is not again this is not one-sided I suspect that any any power like that would come with an appeal process of checks and balances and I'm more than comfortable in in talking to the government about that and how that would operate but I do believe that we waste so much time as an organization putting together a brief of evidence which would boggle boggle most people's minds just to simply say to someone you haven't met our standards and I'm talking I'm not talking about officers who turn up late or not wearing a uniform or who who may be accused of being rude to the public I'm not talking about that at all 99% of our people go to work every day just to do the best job that they possibly can but like everyone they're human beings they make mistakes sometimes at the and those mistakes if they're little mistakes they're easily dealt with in my opinion but the high-end stuff the stuff that's quasi-criminal or actually criminal I think that there comes a time where an organization should be able to say you don't meet our standards look there are many examples of this around the country Western Australia and New South Wales have a commissioners confidence some I think the legislation needs to be quite strong legislation because it's more an administrative law it's not actually in the criminal law that this occurs and it would simply be the power to show cause in person in other words ask them to explain why they should stay in the organization when there is evidence of serious misconduct look over time I have actually sacked a range of people in this organization through discipline through the discipline process and that is true of my brother and sister deputies before me I would rather wear the cases very clear instead of waste wasting often months of effort and time to be able to do this very very quickly and you know with some with a level of respect for the organization but also the individuals involved there's always victims in these in these matters taking a person's employment away is a very serious thing and I understand that but I think there comes a time and all of you would have experienced this in your organizations where people cross the line and they don't deserve to be part of the organization because they won't meet the standards I think that's sort of already happened hasn't it I was very interested in that I think what Ian was talking about was the prefit sterile type times where there was a suggestion that senior officers would corrupt senior officers would silence junior officers by simply sending them off to the out to the woods so to speak in other words transferring people to places that weren't as nice as the Gold Coast or the Sunshine Coast I think that's what he's actually talking about but again I think the environment has shifted so far and the accountability and the transparency of our organization has shifted so far since those days I I perhaps don't consider there is a risk of that occurring certainly certainly I would be suggesting if there was a an issue of Commissioner's confidence that there would be checks and balances and it may be as it may actually be that I don't make the decision I simply ask a tribunal to enact that confidence or enact my request for the show cause that's possible to know well yeah I mean I didn't understand and I haven't spoken to Ian he hasn't explained to me exactly what he was talking about so I can't overly comment on that but I think he was talking about those corrupt times where officers would be punished for doing virtually nothing wrong for perhaps being even morally correct and and quite ethical I think as I said I think I'm the new boy on the block and this is a testing time I think the Union probably seeing where how far they can go with me in terms of talking to their members and that's what they did yesterday but of course it also got into the papers I actually think that the best way forward is in a partnership I think the Union have a lot to offer in working with me as the Commissioner to to enhance the the workplace for our people I've talked about a healthy a more healthy police service and I said right from day one that if you do that it would be a longer term process where you would consult with all the unions and you get the backing scientific evidence that was my claim right from day one unfortunately that that information probably wasn't accurately depicted to Ian and he made the claims he did I think he calls it thought bubble policing but if I as the Commissioner and can't float these types of the ideas to the community as well as to my people then I think it'll be a very sorry place I mean part of this is testing the waters across from my perspective as well to see which issues will will gain traction and acceptance and like the rest of the community I think we're all much more focused on our on our health and well-being and I would hope that over time that I can put in place programs and structures to assist our police to motivate our police and all members of the organization to be fitter and healthier I think there are huge benefits for the community if I do that takeover at midnight on Halloween and you've previously some left in the middle of a store driving right do you believe in owners no not at all that was these things happen I've been in many storms throughout my career and I'm really looking forward to the next period but I said earlier there are going to be changes and they're not going to be easy there will always be those who who would prefer it to be the way it's always been but society and the environment in which we work is moving so rapidly now that we actually have to paddle very very hard to keep up and and to get ahead of that and that's what I want to take the organization absolutely I think a leader who's who is a do as I say but not as I do is it is an abject failure and I try every day I work very very hard to maintain the standards I talk about and certainly those characteristics that I talk about in terms of courage and fairness and pride I'm going to need them more than ever in this new role he said enjoy the ride absolutely and great advice amongst other things but that's probably the most important thanks everyone