Hello and welcome to Exchange for Media. With me today are two brightest minds of media industry, Mr. Naveen Kheemka, CEO, S.N.S.Media.com and Ms. Sonali Malveya, Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer, S.N.S.Media.com, S.N.S.Media.com. So, thank you for talking to us after the merger and tell us how has been these nine months because you also must have been experiencing you know all the changes that have come with merger. Yeah I think very exciting I would say I think each one of us in media.com and S.N.S.M. we're really looking forward to this because we really wanted you know so so actually if you look at media.com and if you look at media.com and the way media.com was born and the way media.com scaled up globally and India so I call that the era one of advertising. This is the era one of advertising where scale is important, size is important, you have to have blue chip clients and media.com is done so well in that locally here and globally. Then there is the era two of advertising which is slightly more digital which is where S.N.S.M. got born globally and also in India. Digital clients, Google was a former client and it's so well for Google and set up tools, systems, processes which were so so up there you know so top of class and S.N.S.M. did so well and now what I am saying this merger is actually era three of advertising. The era three is neither scaled nor digitized it is actually becoming very sophisticated. By sophistication what I mean like now is that today it's not the scale not your digital expertise but your ability to be able to holistically understand the complexity in which the consumer is going through with so many platforms emerging. So it's not creative first now, it's platform first and therefore your solutions have to be very platform interesting. So I think given. It's really very interesting way of thinking. Yeah so I would say this era three of advertising is what gives birth to S.N.S.M. in your account and we are really poised now to be able to write this journey for our clients. No other agency I can tell you. In the world now is so well poised to deliver on this. So Nali what how would you like to have to do that? Well for us as well the last nine months have been super exciting and I think all of us because the beauty of our group is that nobody is a stranger to each other so we've all kind of been together anywhere. We've all understood and actually appreciated the complementarity that the two agencies had brought to each other even before the merger officially happened I think there were projects that we were collaborating on working together people and teams knew each other. We both understood and respected each other's strengths and we came together to support each other's areas of opportunity. So for all of us it has been completely something that we've looked forward to.  So that's been one aspect of it. The second aspect of it is about how the two and like I talked about complementarity how the two really beautifully come together to not just drive scale and a lot of planning efficiencies and effectiveness that Vidakom already had in this table but also to drive outcomes that essence has been really known for and imagine being able to bring them all together in the service of our consumers and our clients and literally move to the third area just like what Navin explained right now in the service of our audiences. Move away from platforms, move away from talking just media output and actually drive outcomes that make clients successful with their consumers and audiences. So yes we've loved it, we've loved the journey and everybody is completely charged about what comes next. Navin how has your role changed from CEO of Vidyakom to now CEO of Essence Vidyakom. Yeah I think pretty much from a job profile point of view I think it remains the same right but how will I tell you suddenly when I met the entire team of Essence Vidyakom it hits you right and suddenly it's such a large agency with about 6,800 people all together we had town halls, years only went to Delhi, Bombay, Bangalore, met all our teams together, lost the agencies across three locations suddenly that evening I went home and I told my wife that I'm feeling a bit pressured I'm feeling very responsible now for so many people in my team to help make their careers grow and then obviously have so many clients and their expectations and to manage everybody. So yeah I'm a bit jittery because I feel a lot of pressure right now a bit more responsible I guess a lot more gray hair on my head. So yeah. But how about you you also plan to have some big chance of that. But I think I'm just super excited about it. My role changes and it changes in a space that I've always loved I am somebody who's always gone after driving up concerning business results I don't think the job is complete until you actually are able to add impact back to client businesses and this gives me that great opportunity alongside that and I think that as Naveen said that this is a really overwhelming responsibility because you have to be true to your clients and true to your people and with both of us taking on very clear roles and of course working very very closely together we actually are able to do a lot more for this and in the service of everything we're expected to do and ultimately not feeling alone that you're actually running alone and you have to take it. So this is a great place where we can come together and two heads are always better than one. So I love the change I love the opportunity to interact deeper with clients and to add a lot more meaning to what is aspiration is to partner them in the most deepest and meaningful ways it's important that we have your focus behind those outcomes as well and I love the opportunity to be able to drive back. So Naveen there is this internal pressure that has come to you now because your team has become much bigger and all but they were also some external pressures last few months you know funding to start off and ride up there were these things that you know India may also have recession there was global slowdown how has all of that impacted addicts and then there is this view from you know you are there. Of course of course so you know I must tell you I mean last year was tough right all of us and if you look at the broadcasters if you look at the digital partners everybody was saying that yes last year given that inflation levels were so high companies had to deliver margins the easiest thing to catch was our marketing and advertising budgets budgets went down it obviously had a trickle down effect on on media start up funding dried up and therefore that kind of trickle down effect on media so before it was almost like a double double by me right high inflation on one end you know listed companies wanted to show profits start up funding that drying down and therefore having an impact on addicts yeah it was tough but let me tell you as a sense we have come even last year we grew we grew huge yeah that's the and that's what that's what Nick also told you right that yes this is my high growth market and let me tell you in the last three to five years we've been the top performing market for globally across all our markets in terms of percentage growth even the even though the base might be small so that's where the as far as the growth is coming from and and the reason for that is we we are always hungry for more we keep going and we keep meeting new clients we keep pitching for new businesses we don't we don't keep you know staying with our existing set of clients we want to keep adding more and more and more so that is one mindset that i think the entire agency is built over the last a couple of years that i've been there and that's really working really well for us is de-risking us also from a slow down eventually that might hit us so uh so yeah so and what was your the other point this i have things started to grow yeah so this year so this year what we are seeing right now is again january was extremely slow um February march onwards we are looking at a lot of summer categories giving us briefs and things are starting to look up startups still slow right now i would say however uh with women's ipel coming up and the men's ipel starting in in april and the men's ipel for the first time in two years coming back to the country with home and away matches with with all the activations possible on the home ground so i think i think it is going to be a sell out and also the other thing to note here is the first time in the last five to seven years that ipel today is going to be sold by two different broadcasters so the television broadcaster and the digital broadcaster each one each one trying to reset for themselves what you could expect from a viewership point of view and that is a very interesting fight that is going on right now in the market it will only help let me tell you it only help unlock the true potential of ipel and that's what i've been telling them that you are now because of the pressure that everybody is on we'll try and get more and more advertisers on board make it much more flexible easier locally possible to be able to advertise on ipel it will not be any more a big daddy's game but i should the success of ipel will depend if you are able to increase it from 100 advertisers to 500 advertisers so yeah so i'm very 100 percent so if the number of feeds that they are investing in if they're opening up their entire feeds so today what stops a local terminal advertiser who's present only in Chennai to be present in a Chennai super teams match nothing stops him today and that's the advertiser you actually worked on board because that's where the ratings are so yeah so so yeah i'm very very hopeful i'm having a lot of chats with them and i'm also guiding them and it's just what to do but yeah but i'm very hopeful if this happens you could really see a new age economy around ipel growing much much bigger and better so now do you tackle many new age clients you know as as a CEO how have the expectations from agencies changed in the last few years you know before i answer that i'll just give you a brief context when how new age clients have also evolved over the last few years growth was always the key driver and these small businesses they were trying to scale up or or the larger ones regardless new age clients have always focused first on growth now that growth manifested itself first as acquisitions and everybody was going after the most efficient acquisitions the next stage came once they started seeing and understanding that there was a lot of churn in their consumers because they weren't really engaging deeply and they were focusing more on acquisitions is when they started to build on say hang on we need to now start focusing on our brands as well because that is what the differentiator is otherwise everybody is on the same playing field and the minute the next person comes they're going to just move so then they started focusing a little bit on brand fast forward to this year everything became more late last year when everything started to become harder when we talked about how funding had started to dry up i don't know if it's good legally dried up or investors have become a lot more cautious because suddenly everybody is looking at the profitability and here comes the challenge now it's about driving growth because that bottom line has to keep moving but also about driving engagement and making sure that you retain those customers that you have acquired so that has become there's a sphere of reference because now it's no longer just about acquisition or about riding the brand it all has to move together fast forward to the expectation from agencies when they started on it was about saying how do we go to agencies who can get us the best deals who can get us most impact who can get us efficiently for us but as they started moving forward they were like okay we need to be partners in our growth and partners in all the expectations that the that our investors and our ecosystem has from us and that is how the role has changed today conversations are not just about media or media deals that you're doing they're about okay hang on help me build my tech stack help me with my content becoming a lot more effective so Nick spoke about how messaging is really important so help us create messaging that's addressable that's that skill that is that makes sense and is actually resonating with our customers and we wanted to make sure that all of it has returned on investment first the other bit is about when you're engaging deeply with your customers how are you building a whole framework around advocacy and that is extremely important as well so all of those are equations where we can't know with our clients and today therefore if we have to be partners to clients they expect us to be on the same plane field understand their business and be responsible for their outcomes just as they are and then drive them in the most effective way possible it's no longer just about efficiency it's a lot more about effectiveness so I think in that we've also grown and we've also evolved our capabilities and our strengths to start driving those are you working more like partners most certainly as consultants but I think our advantages that we're consultants who are responsible for outcomes as well because we're driving them and we're in real time able to optimize and say what's working for us what's not working for us so that we can cause correct change and it becomes a much more virtuous cycle because we're responsible not just for the thinking but also for the implementation and measurement of that so Naveen before we close you already have co-op you have PNG you have Uber you have all you have very big clients from most categories what are some of the new categories that you would like to add to your eating I mean the more the better so that's okay you won't say no to any category I must tell you however yeah there's some so we've done a whole need their entire gap analysis as we call it right and we've done a lot of work in progress on that and so on he's working very closely with all of us on that so I would say I would say the key category I would want to focus on is obviously auto two-wheeler four-wheeler we're not there in that category at all so it's a big category in India a large spending category amongst the top 10 categories in the country we must be there there's no questions around that and we will get there so obviously I can't I can't tell you more on that and outside of that I would say currently within the BFSI sector India is really growing if you look at the new age startups that are coming up it's all in the BFSI if you look at the traditional BFSI companies also now want to create very large brands because of the historical you know the what should I say the historical presence that they have in the country but they haven't done much so I see a lot of action in the BFSI sector which we should be able to target and given especially given our strength in this market in normally in the city right now outside of that I would say within FMCG there are newer categories emerging so yeah there are some open slots there so we definitely want to get into that and outside the categories I would definitely say that at least four markets in my mind within India that we want to expand but two definitely this year so two markets that we are entering right now are Ahmedabad and we are entering Kolkata Kolkata we already won two, three clients, two, three underwears so if that happens then we have a nice 15-20 number team there and Ahmedabad also we just closed our clients hopefully we should be able to service it right now out of Bombay but eventually maybe open an office there and then in the next couple of years then also open Ahmedabad office and Chennai office so yeah so yes apart from clients it's also the your expansion into normal cities is important give us you know to give us huge opportunities for our people internally have to make them grow also and to be relevant to more number of clients we wish you all the best I'll just add to because we keep talking about this as well I think we also want to go after clients who will challenge our defaults and give us an opportunity to partner people who are willing to take a punt on us and that goes for our existing clients as well as our new clients to say that with us you know increasing our scope and our depth of services so much it's really important that we also get those opportunities so every client who's willing to partner and take a chance with us despite all the legacy that media agencies technically have had in the past or traditionally have had in the past I think this is a really amazing option we wish you all the best we really wish you lots of clients you have a big target to meet me yes it calls you to double your billing by next in next five years we do it in three years thank you thank you thank you thank you so much


Hello and welcome to Daily Debrief brought to you by People's Dispatch. I am Pragya. Globally recognized activists including Angela Davis have kickstarted a month-long campaign seeking political activist Mumia Abu Jamal's release from a US prison where he has spent over 41 years. Activists remind that evidence in the case against him has repeatedly fallen apart. Next, the much-anticipated three-day visit of Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi to China concludes with the promise of a return visit. We look at the larger significance of this exchange today. And last, the earthquake in Syria and Turkey sparks serious new concerns in sanctions at Syria, where threats loom of a coming health emergency. One tank Black Panther Party member Mumia Abu Jamal's over 41 years in prison in the United States has prompted prominent global civil rights activists to kickstart a new campaign for his release. Abu Jamal was a young political activist in 1983 when he was convicted for killing a policeman. The evidence against him always seemed to be on shaky ground. Natalia from People's Dispatch joins us on this issue. Hi Natalia, thanks for joining us. Natalia, can you tell me what the campaign is all about? Yeah, so Mumia Abu Jamal, he's a political prisoner in the US. He's been in prison for decades upon decades. You know, he is a fighter for Black liberation and a lot of political prisoners in the US are very similar. They're also fighters for Black liberation in a time when that sort of struggle was heavily repressed. I mean, even today it's very heavily repressed. And so people who, like Mumia Abu Jamal, like Rochelle McGee, like Mutulu Shakur, were imprisoned, you know, in the previous century for struggling for Black freedom in the US. And the FBI essentially targeted them, right? So right now, after decades upon decades of Mumia Abu Jamal being in prison in Pennsylvania, new evidence has been discovered that appears to show that one of the key witnesses was paid for his testimony. And also that there was racism involved in the jury selection. And so because of this new evidence, within the next month or so, up until March 16th, the judge in Pennsylvania is going to decide on his case whether or not he could be free. And many are overjoyed. Many of his supporters are very, very thrilled that this is possible. This has been a very, very long struggle. Mumia Abu Jamal, former Black Panther, was originally charged with murdering a police officer, which in the US is a very, very, very high crime.  Mumia did originally get the death penalty. There was a campaign to reduce his sentence to life in prison and free him. Eventually they, in the 90s, I believe they did reduce his sentence to life in prison as a result of the struggle. And ever since then, it's been a fight to release him from prison, because his supporters argue that he did not kill this police officer, that there the evidence isn't sufficient. And now with this new evidence coming in, it seems like they'll finally get a chance to prove this to be true in court and get a fair trial for Mumia. Right.  Can you sort of describe why he's considered a political prisoner? Yeah, well, the United States government, as we all know, likes to point fingers at other countries and say, Russia, China, Cuba, they have political prisoners. They're oppressive governments. But, you know, the United States also has prisoners that have been accused of other crimes, but are really in prison because they struggled politically on different issues, right? So, Anabel and Montez is an example, I believe, a recently released political prisoner who was a spy for Cuba and was in prison for a very long time in the U.S. And, you know, I think the most notable examples of this are people who in the 60s and 70s fought for black liberation in the Black Panther Party or other organizations. So, Motul Shakur, he was recently released with six months to live, but he had been in prison for a very long time. And he, you know, was accused also of something that he didn't commit. He's a very famous health worker and acupuncturist. Rochelle McGee, who was part of a raid in a U.S. courthouse, who did not kill anyone, but he has been the longest-serving political prisoner in the U.S., in prison for 60-plus years, I believe, for his involvement in that courthouse holdup, which was also an event that was heavily linked with the Black Panther Party and, again, the Black Liberation struggle at the time. And many, many more. Julia Montequim, also in this boat, someone who was released a few years ago, who I got to interview, who also struggled for black liberation in the 60s and 70s. So, you know, there's a, there are quite a few political prisoners who are often, like Mumia Bajamal and Asad Shakur, accused of killing a police officer because that's a crime that you can get a very severe penalty for. But there's very little to no evidence that he actually did, that Mumia actually did kill this police officer.  I mean, the fraternal order of police really makes a point to fight for Mumia to stay in prison for the rest of his life, while his supporters are starting for his release. And so, yes, the U.S. does not really admit that it has political prisoners, but there are many people in prison because the FBI targeted them while they were fighting for black liberation in the 60s, 70s, 80s. And now they are in prison on charges of something that they did not commit or have been recently released after decades. Thanks a lot for joining us, Natalia. Yeah, no problem. Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi's three-day visit to China ended in numerous bilateral agreements, but the visit is most significant for its context and for what China and Iran emphasize the most, solidarity and cooperation beyond the shadow of the West and lifting these sanctions against Iran. Abdul from People's Dispatch has been following his visit. Abdul, thanks for joining us. So, Abdul, this visit was much anticipated. Can you tell us what the key points of their interaction was now that the visit is over? Well, Raisi visited China for three days and he met, apart from President Xi Jinping, he also met other officials. And both the countries have signed more than a dozen of bilateral agreements related to energy cooperation, finance, technology, and so on and so forth. There was also a joint statement. There was a joint statement at the end of the meeting, which basically talks about the common perspective with which this particular visit was undertaken, in which, of course, apart from both the countries giving a call for the lifting of all the sanctions imposed on Iran since the US unilateral withdrawal from the nuclear deal in 2018, claiming that such kind of sanctions hamper the global agreements and goes against the international principles of cooperation and stability. Apart from that, it also talks about how both the countries will carry forward their future relations. In particular, there is already a strategic agreement between China and Iran signed in 2021 for 25 years. Apart from that, there was also a talk of China, there is prospect of Iran joining BRICS plus countries. Sorry, Iran is already a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. So these are the major points. Apart from that, of course, G. Zingping also agreed to visit Iran in near future. There were agreements or a common ground over the need of regional peace in the Persian Gulf. As you all know, Iran has certain issues with the Gulf countries, there are issues with Israel. Israel has tried to take various kinds of violent action against Iranians. So all those things have been mentioned directly or indirectly. Apart from that, a very important point was also mentioned in the agreement, sorry, in the statement, which talks about the Iranian perspective. It seems China concurs that there is an attempt to politicize international atomic energy agency by certain countries. Of course, the names of those countries are not mentioned, but it is common knowledge that it is talking about the US and Israel's push to basically of IAEA to investigate certain issues about Iran. So both the countries agree that such attempts are basically not good for the NPT for the larger global, the reputation of the IAEA and such things need to be avoided. So in a nutshell, this is what was the basic assist of a three-day visit of Raisi to China. Tell us about what the implications are. I know that the Chinese side did say that it's a complex global environment. So what was that reference to and what are the regional and international implications? Well, that is a very important point of this visit. The joint statement talks about a common commitment to multilateralism. And it is again a common knowledge that when China and Iran are talking about multilateralism, they are basically trying to question the hegemonic presence of one country in the global politics and that is the United States. So as we have recently seen that there is a kind of a trilateral understanding emerging between China, Iran and Russia, particularly following the war in Ukraine and the sanctions imposed on Russia. There is a West's attempt to fight a proxy war in Ukraine against Russia and all these basically have led to coming of all these countries together, sanctions against Iran, sanctions against Russia, and now increased targeting of Chinese by the US. We have seen this ridiculous issue related to balloons being targeted, the Taiwan issue being raised. There is a deliberate provocation as China thinks on the issue by the US and then there are sanctions imposed on Chinese tech companies and so forth, Chinese and other companies as well. So this basically has led to a larger realignment in the global politics and Iran, China and Russia seems to be coming together as a kind of an alternative pole to the unipolar US-centered world politics. And this visit basically confirms that particular realignment in the global politics. It also basically addresses certain basic issues which were there between China and Iran all this while. For example, the three island issues in the Persian Gulf, which became an issue when Xi Jinping was in Saudi Arabia last year. That it seems that there is a some kind of attempt to address that also and there is a push by the China that Iran should kind of create much more favorable condition in the larger West Asia region. It means mending its relationship with Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries. So all these things basically lead to emergence of a kind of global politics in which China along with Iran and Russia basically emerged as a group of countries which increasingly cooperate in global for us, on global for us and kind of try to create a much more as they say, just an egalitarian global politics. Right, Abdul and thanks a lot for joining us with that update. Thousands are displaced, injured and homeless in Syria after the 6th February earthquake. But there is a new crisis afoot as Western sanctions and years of armed conflict hamper relief. There are warnings of a cholera outbreak amid checkpoints and active discrimination in parts of Syria. We spoke to Anna Rekha from the People's Health Movement who has been talking to health workers in Syria and Turkey. Anna, thank you for joining us. Anna, there were these reports which came right after the earthquake very soon after the earthquake where it was said that the sanctions are being lifted etc etc. But what is the real situation on the ground that you have been able to find out? So essentially what we are hearing from activists on the ground is that for now only UN convoys are being able to enter Syria while the other organizations like for example the Kurdish Red Crescent and other humanitarian organizations are still experiencing problems in reaching the points which they are supposed to reach. So some of these convoys are very small convoys, they have been put together in a very short time with the idea of reinforcements coming up after them. But at the moment it's still very unclear how they're going to be able to pass and it depends a lot on how they are treated at the checkpoints and what's the actual approach of the people at the checkpoints to what they do. So when it comes to northwest Syria it's definitely still what is necessary to actually address the scale of the experience that people have gone through recently. Right Anna, can you just give us sort of idea of what people have told you about the health infrastructure, how it has been affected in Syria, there are long-term effects and also the immediate devastation of the earthquake. Can you give us a look at what's the situation there? Yes so I think one of the most striking things that I've heard for now is that you know activists who have worked in especially in the north of the country have said that while the earthquake definitely did shake the things, the health system was in such a bad shape from the beginning that you know it's very difficult to talk about changes. So to begin with the health system had a shortage and difficulties in accessing both medicines, both health equipment but also health workers. So essentially the situation there was so bad that right now they're still having trouble in mapping things out. It's very unclear still it was a couple of days ago so activists from and coordinators from the Kurdish Red Crescent warned that you know they had troubles in actually estimating the numbers of for example cholera cases that are expected to go up after the earthquake both because there are not enough health workers but also because there are not enough testing kits and other equipment that are needed to to carry this true. But of course you know if we look at the health system itself it's been under tremendous strain and today we have seen news of it being overwhelmed by people seeking care after the earthquake. It also has to be said that a lot of people you know they're still outside of the health system and it's still unclear how they're going to receive care in this context. Here we're talking both about people who are going through mental distress who are having mental health issues because of the earthquake they're either in shock they're too scared to go home they don't have a home to return to which of course increases the danger of both contagious diseases but also of falling quality of mental health let's put it that way. And then a third group which is at particular risk and which activists have warned about that should receive particular care in the days to come are children who are unaccompanied at the moment and who have been moving after the earthquake. So it's a very difficult time for the people in Syria and in the context where essentially no function in health system has been there for years because of the sanctions because of the inaccessibility of the materials that they need to actually have a function in health system is really terrible. Right Anna and Anna we spoke just a while back and you said you also have an update from Turkey what was it that you have found out? Yes so of course you know Turkey at least when it comes to how the western countries reacted got a lot more attention than Syria and organized relief was much easier and much quicker to move in but as we have heard from the Turkish Medical Association the situation there might also be very under reported from what we have been hearing from the mainstream so the official numbers now have crossed 30 000 of that in the areas hit by the earthquake but the TMA warns that you know essentially these earthquakes have essentially destroyed four major cities so by the end of the rescue missions by the end of the efforts to to save as many people as they can their estimates going up to 100 000 that's by the end of this process so it's an incredible number and what is also coming from the activists in Turkey is that since the government response was staggered it was delayed for for quite a bit of time it was up to self-organizing of people and to essentially of how they managed to get volunteers in the areas hit and how they managed to organize provide the provision of care there the Turkish Medical Association has sent its own volunteers to the areas hit I believe it was about 300 people from the TMA who went there in a situation where the TMA is actually under you know under stress of its own because of the political process going against the the organization so it still depends you know to it still depends what's going to happen and how the response is going to pick up in the in the next days but it's it's a very large number of people who are who have been affected there and who are also moving right now so thousands of people on the move which again makes it possible makes it more likely that the contagious diseases the communicable diseases that we have witnessed over the past year might spread even more right Anna sounds like a unfolding tragedy in both countries for a variety of reasons and thanks a lot for joining us with that update and that is all we have for you today thank you for watching daily debrief do come back to us tomorrow you can find more such stories on our website peoplesdispatch.org and our regular updates on facebook twitter and instagram


Hey, it's Bridget. Welcome to Above Life Channel. The purpose here is to inspire your spirit and to fill you with hope. Today's video is going to be a little bit different. I am going to share with you. If you don't know, if you don't follow me on Bridget inspired on social media, Facebook and Instagram, or you don't follow me on fairy grasshopper YouTube, you might not know yet, but my grandma passed away. She went into the afterlife about a week ago or just had her funeral on Friday in the memorial service. And she's in California. She was in California. So it's on my mom's side and she lived a long time. She was almost 98 this year. In June, she would have been 98. So when my mom transitioned into the, or my mom, whoa, my grandma transitioned into the afterlife. My mom was with her and there was some things that have come up for me personally because when someone leaves the human plane and goes into the afterlife, you get grief comes up naturally. A sense of loss or a passing of the torch to another maybe generation or something. So like my mom's level, now is all that's left because my grandma, my grandma and grandpa on their side have passed away. And so there's kind of like this lineage piece, this ancestral piece and this opportunity for another level of grief to be processed. And so for me, my grandma passing away on my mom's side was something that triggered a release for me for more healing opportunity with my dad's death. And you may know this if you've watched the video about my life story here on Above Life Channel, or if you've watched it on Fairy Grasshopper YouTube or on my website at abovelifechannel.com. You know that my dad, when my dad died, it was two years after that that I got psychic or recognized that I was psychic and accepted my gifts and worked as a medium for quite some time, specifically focused on mediumship. And so that was a huge profound thing for me, my dad's death, and there's a whole story around that, check it out. And in the videos and when my grandma just left, it opened up some wounding around that because at the time of my dad's death, my dad died of AIDS and he died of AIDS because he was gay, but wasn't living his life as a gay man.  As far as I know, like I don't know if my mom knew or anything like that, he died like, it'll be 20 years ago this year, so it was a long time ago. I was, I think, 29 when he, yeah, 29 when he died and very pregnant with my second child and there was a lot because of the fact that dad had AIDS and how he got it, that created a lot of tension, intensity maybe, intensity, tension, yeah, I'm gonna say tension with my mom's family and not the all of them, just with a few people. My mom, I'm sure, leaned on her family for support, which makes sense because that's what you would do, right? And I don't know how much my mom shared with them at that time. I don't know about all that stuff because I was busy, like I already had a kid, I was having another baby, my husband at the time was in law school and he had just graduated law school and was studying for the bar exam, took the bar exam, and the next morning is when my dad died. So there was a lot going on in my family, my little family, my personal family. And so when my grandma died, it triggered some release of some additional awarenesses of pain and anger that I have about my dad's death because my grandma, my mom's mom, was very strong in her view and opinions about things and express that directly, as did another member of my mom's family, to my sister. I'm the oldest of three kids and my sister's the second in line, like right after me, like a year and a half or super close in age. And because I was all pregnant and busy with like trying to just have a baby and all that, nobody like came at me for anything, but they came at my sister and looking back and she never told me, she did not tell me until like years later, like at least a couple of years later, if not many years later. And I remember when she told me, because I was driving through a neighborhood and it was really narrow streets. And I was like, wait, what? We were talking on the phone. I'm like, wait, what? What? Like I had no idea like the very harsh mean things that were said to her and also kind of passive-aggressive way to choose the target. And because the idea was is that we weren't taking care of my mom enough or we weren't like standing by my mom or something. That's kids. Excuse me. Excuse me. What? Like during that time, we were losing our dad. We were still in our 20s. We had little kids of our own. And my mom was quite capable of taking care of herself.  She can handle herself. She can handle herself. And I'm sure as a mama bear protector, my grandma was probably like just doing what she felt was right or best or sticking up for my mom and really she didn't need to do that because we were not the enemy of the children. So yeah, I'm gonna share with you my personal stuff today. And yeah, I might have family members that watch this and yeah, won't that be interesting? It's part of my healing process. And this is what happens when people transition and move into the afterlife. You get the opportunity to relieve some of the pain that you've been carrying your whole life or some of the blame for stuff that isn't even yours. And turns out that sometimes anger that you have shows up where it's like, if I would have known that at the time, people, let me tell you, I would have been all up in that. I would have been right there protecting my siblings from that energy.  She can handle herself. She didn't take care of herself. We were the children losing our dad. The fact that we weren't supporting our mom enough is shocking to hear that. I don't know how my sister did it all these years still like trying to be kind and nice and get along with, you know, grandma and stuff and just, you know, like that's just what's expected.  When that whole scenario with my mom and dad and their marriage, like that's between them, not us, not her family, not what, that's between those two grown adults, right? And the focus should have been on the fact that we were losing a parent. A parent was dying, but there was not compassion for that. So had I known that, I would have been. So, I mean, I wish I, I mean, it's probably really, it's really good that I didn't. Let's just say that, because I would have definitely made things worse. I just would have. Come on, you guys. Come on.  I would have so said something. Everybody's on Facebook. I gotta do something on Facebook and oh my god, people are up in arms and nobody will come to you directly. In your family of origin, if they're like way older people, nobody ever talks directly to you. They can't talk behind your back and stuff. Or on your posts, like publicly, they might say something like, wow, that's not what happened. I'm like, oh, really? I'm sure as heck is how it feels. My point is, death is dramatic, as much as it is traumatic, but it gives the opportunity for a new layer of grief to come up and you rip that band-aid off and I'm like, my dad and my grandma are having conversation in the afterlife and that's whatever is between them and that's just an opportunity then for me to set this down and not even have to carry it anymore or think about it, you know.  It might not be directly to your face, but you're like, you're the black sheep of the family or that would be me probably.   I just, whatever, I'll accept that. That's fine. I don't really have an issue with that.  Social norms are weird anyway, so what of. But you probably have had some kind of experience like this too, and it's not just to make you nuts and make you angry and upset and and hurt because it was hard because we grew up going to California and visiting relatives there and loving people who, when we were in a time of like the worst experience of our lives, losing our parent was really, really hard. At that point, it wasn't about choosing sides, one parent over the other. How do you do that? Like, that's not what it's about. That's not what it was about. The heart has the capacity, tremendous capacity to love many at once and in different ways. If you have more than one child, you understand this. You love them all, but in different ways, right? That's just normal, you guys. Don't feel bad. Don't let other people's stories or their own lack or misunderstanding or misguided, good intentions, whatever that might be. Don't let that be your story. Don't let it be your story. That's what we learn here on Above Life Channel week after week after week, don't we? We learn insights from the afterlife. We get inspired in our spirit. We focus on hope. And sometimes the way to the hope is through that pain that shows up for you to spend some time with that, maybe to get a counselor to talk. I talked this week to my counselor about it and maybe, you know, journal about it or talk to your life coach about it or maybe do a shaman journey, talk to a healer, get some energy work done or body work done so you're not holding it inside you because that stuff can make you sick. It can make you physically sick when it manifests. You don't want that. I know it's hard. It's not easy when this stuff comes up. It brings you right back to that place in your life that you do not want to be and you don't want to remember and you don't want to figure out. But now it's like, finally I feel like, wow, my cousins and stuff, people that I just love and adore. Maybe now we'll understand why I didn't go to all the picnics when grandma was making her rounds because it's just hard to like rally behind a matriarch when there's a lot of hurt there too underneath, you know. So now I have to work on forgiveness. And it wasn't even directly to me, you know, but there's a lot of other stuff. It's not just this one issue thing, but there's this opportunity that this opens up for me, much like with you, to heal. To heal again in a more beautiful way, in a way of love. And I've been working on energy of compassion. I actually have a beautiful pink rose here that I got because I, if you follow me on a fairy grasshopper, you know that I work with divine feminine energies a lot, and I'm working with an essential oil and doing some anointing practices things with the Rosamistica temple. Priestess presence with Elaine Kalila Dauti and Diana Duboro, who created the Emerald Temple Oils as well, these beautiful oils. Emerald Temple dot com, Emerald Temple Oils dot com, Emerald Temple Oils dot com. Very connected to divine feminine, but it's also about, it's about being willing to work in the shadow with the pain. And it's not for punishment. It's not because life is supposed to be hard. It's because we get the opportunity to shed old versions of ourselves and step into the new. That's what Above Life Channel is about. And this energy of this hot pink this week, we were started in our compassion oil and focusing on compassion. And this hot pink, that's what it reminds me of. That's what it's a symbol of. Compassion. So I gifted to you today to be willing to address a place in your life with compassion for you, not about other people, just for you. Where you might find your way to a level of forgiveness or a peaceful understanding so that you can feel better. So you can understand that the situation didn't happen because you're bad or you did something wrong necessarily. That's not helpful to focus on things you can't change now at this point. But to integrate the compassionate energy, the energy of compassion for your heart space, for you as an empath as you walk through this world, this life. So I actually am going to have a clearing with a very trusted friend of mine who's an incredible healer-cleer. She actually has a shop in New Hampshire in Dover, New Hampshire. So if you're in Dover, New Hampshire, nearby there, stop at Earth Harmony Wellness Center and the Oasis Shop. The Oasis Shop, she's got a rock shop, right? I get my rocks from her. I purchase my rocks from her and like my grids. If you want to know more about this kind of cool stuff that I do and work with, you got to follow Fairy Grasshopper YouTube, you guys. You just got to follow it. Just got to follow it because that's what's up. I'm looking for this beautiful, I got this when I was there too on one of my trips there too. Look at that. An obelisk, yes. Black tourmaline, thank you very much. Yes. So I'm going to have a clearing. Reset my energetic grids and it's a distance kind of healing session. And work that I do for people from time to time, by request usually. I don't have it as a service. You have to request that and then we'll have a conversation about what that would entail. But I'm going to receive that to help me on my path too as a person, as a human. So you need that kind of support too and you deserve that kind of support too. Yes, you do. Yes, you do. We all do. So this week, the video on Above Life Channel is literally about me experiencing grief and addressing a hurt or pain. How to clear away that past. How to recognize and honor the feelings and emotions. And how to find compassion for myself in the process of that. Because I'm in the process. I'm not at the end of that. I'm by no means a master of that whole scenario situation. But I'm willing to be in the process and I'm willing to sit with the trauma of it. And it's not easy to do that. And I know it's not easy for many of you. And I know our grief and our losses are different. But there's no better or no worse than each other. That's not what it is. It's not like your grief is worse than my grief.  No! Grief is grief. A wound is wound and pain is pain. Pain is pain. And it has a purpose. It's part of the process. So there you go above life channelers. Thanks so much for being here this week. No channeling video officially today. Just not. I'm just not in a place to do it right now. I'm just not. I'm working on my stuff, you know. But isn't that what you want? A psychic. A medium. An intuitive life coach that actually walks the talk. And does her work. That's what I am. Gotta do it. Thanks for watching if you're still watching. Thanks for being here. Your spirit inspires me. Doing this work fills me with hope. It's encouragement for both of us to live our lives. It is your life after all. And you get to live it. Just live it. Thanks for being here.


Welcome to Queers to Success, which is live on the ThinkTech live streaming network series weekly on Thursdays at 11am. We are your hosts. My name is Danelia, D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo, John Newman, welcome to today's show. The goal of this show is to provide professional and personal development tools and profound insights on how to achieve success in life, career and or business. Vanessa Perez, CEO of S3 Career Consulting, was our guest on our last show and her words of wisdom can be accessed on Newman Consulting Services website, NewmanConsultingServices.com or our landing page, Danelia.org. Joining us today in the studio as our guest is Mr. Burton Richardson, founder and president of Jet Kundo Unlimited, abbreviated JKD Unlimited. Mahalo for joining us today. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Good to see you. Good to see you. What are you talking about? Thank you. Well, we only have a limited amount of time, so we want to give our viewers and listeners all of the time we have with you. They can have with you. All right. Share with them if you will a little about JKD Unlimited and what prompted you to start the business? Well, Jet Kundo is what Bruce Lee started and it was not just a martial art, but it was also philosophy. It's really a philosophy of success because Bruce Lee's whole idea was how can we do this martial arts and make it as effective as possible, only using what works, testing everything to see what really, really works instead of everything being theoretical. And so taking that in the martial realm, the physical realm, and then changing that over and using the same principles, say, oh, if we can figure out how to make this work against someone who's trying to knock you out, then you can take that in everyday life. Because if you think about it really, martial arts is the art of overcoming obstacles. That's it. And what are we doing in everyday life? Overcoming obstacles. That's it. That's what it's all about, right? So it's an art of constantly looking and trying to develop ourselves and figure out what is it that we need to do, what kind of training, how can we develop ourselves physically in martial arts and also most importantly mentally to think better. So what you're saying is that the martial art is just not learning how to punch people, it's learning to think and digest situations and responding versus reacting. That is correct. Responding instead of reacting. Reacting means they are in charge because you're just reacting to what's happening. Responding is making an intelligent decision and choice depending on that situation, that obstacle that's presented. All right. Very relevant for this show. So we've got a lot to talk about. Yes. You're widely considered by the media commentators and other martial artists to be one of the world's leading proponents of functional self-defense. So what led you to actually get involved initially in martial arts? I grew up in a place called Carson, California, which is a great place to grow up because you grow up without blinders on it. Because a lot of, like many places, a lot of really wonderful people, but then you have that certain percentage that are really, really bad. So I grew up, I just got to see some bad things and unfortunately I experienced some very horrific things myself. And so that really got me to be able to defend myself. And so that's what really started it. And fortunately, as I went on, I had an opportunity to go to my instructor for a long time, for 37 years, to his school. And I saw it. And I was just like, oh, this is it. This is what I want to do. Well, you know, it's interesting because a lot of us have childhoods that were challenging. And you can either use that, you understand that that determines your course in life, whether you use it for positive or whether you do it for negative. Thanks, absolutely. The Darren Hardy says our adversity is our advantage. If we use it for that, right? We can also take our adversity and say, oh, I'm a victim. Poor me. Look at what happened to me. But you can also say, you know, that made me stronger. Yeah, that's absolutely true. OK, Burton, your devotion to the martial art is absolute. And your credentials are impeccable. What was the pivoting moment in your life to say that you wanted to make martial art your life's work? And what are your goals? OK, well, as far as making martial arts my life work, kind of interesting how it worked because I was suffering from this thing called ulcerative colitis. So it's a very, very rigorous, terrible, makes you really sick digestive system. I didn't actually know what it was. And when I finished college, I went to USC and I was a biology major and writing and literature honors program, finished that as well. And when I was finished, I was so sick.  And then a couple of my friends that were a year ahead of me were already in medical school, which was where I was headed. And they told me this is so much harder. And I thought, you know what? Because the stress really took this, I said, I'm going to die. So give me, I'm just going to take one year and I'm going to do whatever I feel like. And that was martial arts. Well, 37 years later, I'm still doing it. But yeah, so it's been a, it was a great thing. Somehow I was so rock bottom and I was depressed. I was just, I was a mess, right? I was living in just abject poverty. I was living in a little camper trailer that was about the size of where we're sitting right now, just this table and out of a dog and cat hospital in downtown LA. And I lived there for five years. I took care of the dogs and cats at night. And there was a time, I say this because it's relevant to people who are trying to make their way there. I remember sitting there and thinking of my future one night after being there a couple of years, I could not visualize a way out of that trailer. I thought I was going to be there the rest of my life. But fortunately, I had my mentor, Dan Inosanto, who was Bruce Lee's best friend and training partner, and just being around him, the positivity, and he got me reading books, reading Bruce Lee's philosophy, reading other people's success philosophy, and little by little, and chunk, chunk, and wow. That just tells you how important it is to have a great mentor. Great mentors, that word mentor, when I think of it, there are so many people who can have mentors.  No, just unbelievable. We were on this great path, we were having great fun, and we were doing this, right? Living in a nice place in Nuanu, and they invited us up to their place one day and they're great, all of a sudden they said, okay, let's have a talk. And they opened our eyes, they showed us, we were, no. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. These people are wonderful, right? Well, blessings and gratitude, because you are as well. And it takes good people, you know, and giving and giving unconditionally and having that attitude of, I'd like to be a person that gives.  And the other thing with mentors is you have to actually take what they say. Yes. And do it, because that was the hard part, like, oh my gosh, you were there right. We never thought of that, all right? But thanks to them, we're really well off. Because most people look at philanthropy as, well, I want to have enough money to do things. No, it's about doing whatever you can do to help and unconditional help, giving unconditionally. And that's what you do as well.  Many, that's the idea. We try to make people's lives better, that's it. So you're the book author of several publications. You've been inducted into the Black Belt Magazine Hall of Fame and Inside Kung Fu Magazine Hall of Fame. You're also a Black Belt Magazine's 2015 self-defense instructor of the year. And you're also awarded the best right choreography at the Action on Film Festival. So, you know, through all of this, you talked a little bit about the challenges, but what are some of the challenges that you encountered in your quest to be the best you can be? There are constant challenges. And again, back to that simple concept, if people can take away the art of overcoming obstacles, it's what, you know, the obstacles are coming. It doesn't matter, you know. It's like this, have you ever seen this thing where here's my plan. I start here and I go to my goal. This is what actually happens. Exactly, exactly right. Exactly right. Where is it going? But we just have to keep going. You know, just keep going. I've had the health, some health issues, which just auto me. I eat very well, I really take care of my body and that's that, but you know, even with all that, bang! You know, I'm in the hospital last year for a long time. But we just have to just keep going. And have the faith. That is going to be alright. Because it's going to be alright. Whatever's supposed to happen will happen. And through every adversities you've said, you grow stronger. And as long as you don't let it bring you down. I mean, all of us have our moments where we just kind of lose that faith for a fraction of a second, but you've got to get that back. As soon as you recognize it, find somebody you can talk to, where you were, so that you can keep on that path. That's the discipline. When we talk about discipline in martial arts, a lot of times people think discipline is standing in a stance, not moving. Discipline is the mental discipline. That's right. When you feel yourself going into the wrong thinking mode, it's the discipline to say, oh, it's easy to just go feel sorry for yourself. That's the easy thing to do.  I don't deserve it. No, this is time to get to work and get out of here. That's right. That's what's not true. Absolutely. Talking about mentors and mentorships, I want to ask you and to share with our audience, who was the most, who were some of the most influential figures that inspired you in the martial artistry? Yes. So Bruce Lee was one of my first people who inspired me. It turns out he was Kato in the Green Hornet way back when. And I love that TV show. I remember that show. People were like, what are you talking about? Millenians? Right, right. I was like Batman and Robin. Right, right. I love that show growing up, but I didn't realize it was Bruce Lee until many, many, many years later. He had a mask on. Oh, yeah, exactly. But then Dan in Osanto is really my main inspiration. I must say, I have so many instructors because I go and try to train with as many people as possible. They all inspire me. But Dan in Osanto, here's a guy who there is nobody in the world that knows more about martial arts than him. Not even close. No one close because he just I mean, he's been at it for 60 years or so. Maybe actually more like 70 years. And he is just such an incredible, incredibly dedicated to learning himself. He's constantly training and learning and taking private lessons himself. And 80 years old, then he goes to somebody in their 30s to learn from them. That's who he is. There's humbleness and understanding that no matter how old you are, you're constantly learning. And behavior is taught. Learning is taught. And you have to be humble enough to let someone teach you. Yes. It's very easy when, for example, when I first became an instructor, after a little while, it was like, oh, you know, hey, I know what I'm doing now and this and that. And then you go through a little while and you go, oh, wait a second, maybe I don't know so much. And then, I think it's really valuable to have that humility because then you just constantly improve. Right. So we're going to take a short break. This is Keys to Success on the Think Tech Live Streaming Network series. We're talking with Burton Richardson, founder of JKD Unlimited, regarding Keys to Success. My name is Danelia D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo, John Newman. We'll be back in a minute, so please stay tuned for more Keys to Success. Aloha, this is Kirsten Baumgart Turner. I host Sustainable Hawaii every Tuesday at noon on Think Tech Hawaii. Live streamed at ThinkTechHawaii.com and we also appear on Olelo. We would love to have you join us for many of the interesting Think Tech shows that we have dealing with really important issues that impact all of us in Hawaii as well as nationally. On Sustainable Hawaii, I try to bring up the issues that are most pertinent to those of us on all of the islands and also to help connect people. I'll give people a chance to look at what people are doing and see how they can plug in and get active. Hi, I'm Tyler Cevota, and I was actually a guest host on Carl Campania's Think Tech Hawaii show, Movers, Shakers, and Reformers. And I think you should tune in every Wednesday to find out more about what it is. That's all. Take care. Welcome back. This is Keys to Success on the Think Tech live streaming network series. We encourage you to call our hotline at<PHONE_NUMBER> to join our conversation or tweet us at ThinkTechHIV if you have any questions or comments. We've been talking with Burton Richardson, founder of JKD Unlimited. My name is Danilia, D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo, John Newman. Welcome back to the show. And I think my other half would like to ask you a question. Yes, I would. So martial arts takes incredible focus. It's not just about fighting, it's about a lifestyle with many components. So how do you align your body, mind, and spirit to create inner peace? Yeah, that is a great question because for me, success, when we talk about success, it's really fulfillment, isn't it? So true. Right? It's not the car or the house or this. It's the fulfillment. And so if we are on the right path and we're doing what we should be doing and we're helping other people, I think for most people you can get that fulfillment. And so through martial arts, at first you're learning and it's a little bit selfish because it's all about you learning and then when you become an instructor and you get to start sharing, or if you're a good training partner and you're helping someone that's a little behind you, now you're starting to give. And I just think it's really about doing the right thing because we know when we start to do something that's really not right we know. Yeah, we know it in here. We know it inside. So we have, that's one of the disciplines of martial arts is doing the right thing. Not just making the right move at the right time but in everyday life, doing the right thing every single time. You never take the shortcut. You never go oh you know, no one's going to know I'm just going to do this. No, you say you know, I will know. So integrity is everything. Integrity, because then internal integrity, what they say integrity is doing the right thing when nobody else is around. That's right. So that's what we strive to do so that you yourself can look at yourself in the mirror and go I'm happy with myself.  Well done. Enjoy life. Okay, share with our viewers the differences in approach when you teach young children versus adults. You know the main difference that's say is attention span. That's number one. Attention span. Don't we know it? Yes we do. Be parents. But I would say that's the same main thing so that's why I keep when I'm teaching children, which I don't do too often I do teach some kids we do it very short periods I have some of my students teach some kids classes as well and they keep it shorter so that keep the attention span. But what's interesting is a lot of times say okay the adults just in there we grind it out and all the kids we have to make it fun for the kids. Like no you have to make it fun for the adults too. You know how to discipline? Make it fun. Instead of willpower. Willpower is finite. You only have a certain reserve of willpower once you use that willpower up off you go. So if you keep it fun so you don't have to keep dipping into that willpower makes it so much easier. When I was younger I did not like running, jogging and then the Walkman came out and I was like how old are we? You go again. Running was fun. I can listen to music while I'm running. So you've had the opportunity to work with some of the masters in martial arts which you've already mentioned. What have you learned from the masters? One common thread. Well first of all I'll say a very high standard of excellence. Very high standard. There's a reason this like wow this is an incredible master. They don't settle for pretty good or very good. They only settle with absolute excellence and we can't ever get perfection but by striving and you know that thing oh that's good enough. No not good enough. Never good enough. And so that is one thing. The second thing that I learned that they all have in common is courage. They really are courageous. And courage as we know is just acting. Doing what we should do when we're afraid. And again John and Denelia really helped us have our mindset and when we were able to buy a second house to do a rental property that was scary. Yes. But I seriously I took your advice and then I went in and I thought like some of the great masters I've trained with I think you know what they would just you have to step in and do it. And trust that it's going to be okay. You're going to figure it out. They're going to be challenged but you will figure it out. It's interesting because fear stops us from moving forward in life so much and we're allowing ourselves and we all experience it at one time and some of us experience constant fear but you know you really have to mentally that's why it's so important to key in mentally with your heart, your spirit, your mind to overcome that fear and just trust that it's going to be okay. So back to courage. Exactly. Courage overcoming fear and one thing when things go bad because things go bad, right? It's very important to understand the difference between disappointment and discouragement. Disappointment means oh I feel bad I wish that would have happened that I didn't know. I'm disappointed. Okay you can be disappointed. Discouragement is when you allow yourself to lose courage. And you need courage to go forward so we cannot allow ourselves to get discouraged. Disappointed? Okay. And what you're saying is allow. You have to do it and that's why that when you talked about the absolute devotion it has to be there. No matter what. You can't allow yourself to back up and to regress if you know it's right and what you need to do. And that's what we teach with our students in class. Some of them have come from books of life. Really had some hard times. We really work with them to get through that mentally and to start believing in themselves and believing that it's going to be okay. It's interesting to see what happens when things start changing for them then there's a whole different level of fear like oh my gosh this stuff works. Now how am I going to deal with this? It's working. It goes back to the point about be careful what you're at. You might get it. I've seen that your question that we asked all of our guests when they come on and you pretty much touched on it but I'd like you to go back to it if you would share with us your three success, most the top success habits if you will. Success habits. One I would say do it now. I have that thing running in my head because we always want to put things off. It's do it now. Can I tell you a quick story? Sarah and I decided years ago we're going to go through Tony Robbins of course. I've done it before, right? We've all done this, right? We're going to do it. So we start listening every morning. We're listening and listening and somehow guess what happened? One day we didn't. That turned into a week. It turned into a few months, six months. So we said okay we're going on a trip. We're going to be in the car. I'm taking the tapes. We've been putting it off. And Tony goes welcome back. Now we're going to talk about procrastination. It's like it was made for you. And that's the way I know it's not true. So do it now. That would be the first thing. And then a little bit every day. Just keep at it. Just keep chipping away at it. Chipping away at it. We have a tendency to go okay I'm going to get in shape. I'm going to go out and lose 20 pounds today. No it's not going to happen. We just have to keep chipping away at it. It's called commitment. Thirdly Thirdly, have fun. We have to make it as fun as possible because we're here having fun. We can go through life with this like I got to do that. Do whatever you can to make it enjoyable. Because life is long. They say life is short. It's the longest thing we know. It's short if you just want to sit in that chair. For those who say it's short aren't getting up moving around doing what they need to do to enjoy their life. Enjoy it. Have fun with it. It's interesting because we've mentioned John and I have been married for many many years. 34 years. Many many years. One of the things that we've talked about the fact that we just really enjoy each other. We laugh a lot. We really have a good time with each other. I truly believe that's one of the reasons why we are where we are because just like you said you have to have fun along the way. Life is meant to be enjoyable. It is. People tend to think that life they have a false sense of what life really is. There's no such thing as perfection. We have to argue. We have to yell a little. We do have to. We have to. That's why I'm sorry. When you punch you exhale. We have to do that. But the thing is you have to go back to why are you together. You have to commit to unconditional devotion. That's what it is. Once you do that and Danil and I just skip off beat just a wee bit we have a rule we can't go to bed mad at each other. Beautiful. Of course he's the one doing the apologizing. We know that. We all know that. You know this Tom it's so quickly. We're out already. We're out of time. We have to wrap it up. Alright. Thanks to the Newman Consulting Services webpage NewmanConsultingServices.com and landing page to nillia.org. Thank you to our viewers and listeners for tuning in. Thanks to our broadcast engineers Daniel and Robert McLean and to our executive director I will get it right. Producer. Thank you for joining us today and sharing to success. Thank you for everything you've done for us. Thank Tech Keys to Success. We'll be back Thursday at 11 a.m. We ask that you tune in again and ask your friends and family to do so as well. My name is Danelia D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo, John Newman. And leaving you today, we'd like to leave you with a quote from Walt Disney, it says, all our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them. Thank you all. Aloy! Aloy, everyone.


Okay, hi everyone. Thanks for joining our contour project update Let's do a couple of quick intros. So my name is Steve Chris. I'm a staff engineer at VMware and I'm a contour maintainer My name is Nigel. I am a senior developer advocate at Intuit and community manager for contour So what is contour? It's an open source ingress controller. It's a control plane for envoy. How many of you all have used contour before? cool If you have used contour and you don't work at VMware, I mean, I'll say all right cool For those of you who are not familiar with what contour does what ingress does in short It helps you get traffic from out into the world From in the world into your Kubernetes clusters. It's not a new project It's been incubating here with the CNCF since 2020 And it is currently used in production at scale at VMware and many other places So it supports HTTP proxy the CRD that was introduced by this project as well as ingress and the Gateway API as that grows. Oh Yeah, a little bit about where it came from. Yeah, so let's let's take a quick look at the timeline of the project So the project was first open-sourced out of Heptio back in 2017. So coming up on six years ago 2019 the V1 of the project was released and this included V1 of the HTTP proxy CRD 2020 was when we were we were donated to the CNCF at the incubate incubating level So we've been a CNCF project for for three years now 2021 we had the the first contour release with Gateway API support So contour maintainers have been involved in in the Gateway API project since the inception of that project and actually one of our Emeritus maintainers Nick Young was a founder a co-founder of Gateway API. So Yeah, 2021 our first release with Gateway API support and we've we've continued to develop that through today Later in 2021 we moved to from a monthly release cycle to a quarterly release cycle. So new releases every three months we also moved to Supporting the the previous three minor releases. So each minor release series now gets nine months of support Which includes critical bug fixes and CVE fixes And then fast forward to today. So coming up in in just another week or two in early May We're gonna have V1.25 out and that will include a bunch of new features that we'll look at in a few minutes So yeah, let's take a take a look at the kind of the typical deployment architecture for contour So contour is an in-cluster ingress controller. It's deployed into your Kubernetes cluster It's comprised of two components, right? So you have the control plane which is really contour itself and then you have the data plane which is Envoy proxy And typically Envoy is deployed into your cluster as a daemon set So you have a replica running on each node. You can also use a deployment for Envoy depending on kind of the scale of your cluster and and your Your needs for your installation there And then the the contour component the control plane component is really responsible for Sitting in the cluster and watching all of your Kubernetes API resources So HDDB proxy gateway API ingress for your routing rules and then also services endpoints secrets For the additional information that's needed to perform routing and then contour is is Translating that information into Envoy configuration into the XDS protocol And sending that out to all the Envoy's in your cluster And then Envoy is really the data plane the data path component of this and so typically it's it's exposed to outside the cluster Through an L4 load balancer you have a single load balancer that's routing traffic from outside of your cluster Into the fleet of Envoy proxies There are a number of other ways that you can expose Envoy to the outside world You can you can use node port services host ports host networking But the most typical way to do this is through a load balancer and then so that that traffic is coming in To the Envoy proxies and then based on the configuration that Contour has provided to Envoy Envoy is making routing decisions and forwarding that traffic to the appropriate back-end I like Nigel said typically based on you know path header query parameter properties and various other things Okay, so why might you choose contour? Well first of all it is based on Envoy how many of you were at the Envoy video yesterday the movie was it good? How was it? Yeah, yeah, awesome. Mostly ringing endorsement the people watching this online. They don't know any different So Envoy proxy is the reverse proxy that console implements as the data path It is a well-established project that came out of Lyft if you went to the video yesterday Then you know quite a lot about it But essentially it is a very widely used cloud native open source Project for doing all of the things that you would need to do for traffic inside of Kubernetes. It's performant. It's observable It's amazing and yeah, you might use contour because it is like this control layer for Envoy and does a really good job of getting ingress and handling networking for your clusters Some of the advanced features Yeah, so contours Over time exposed more and more of the Envoy feature set particularly in the kind of l7 HTTP space so You know if you have simple use cases around just doing path-based routing or or simple routing contours great but if you have more advanced kind of API gateway type features that you require contour can kind of grow in complexity with you as well. So You know any number of things from cookie rewrites to web socket support gRPC and gRPC web support We have support Envoy's local and global rate limiting external authorization so so many different features and I'm not going to go into all of them right now, but But yeah many many different features that you can use and we continue to expose more and more of the Envoy API surface particularly like I said around l7 traffic routing So if you do have a need that contour doesn't already support We'd love to have you show up in the community and and let us know and see if we can get it into the project Yeah, another another great thing about contours that it does support multiple configuration API so You know, we really are able to meet users where they are We know that that everyone has kind of their own preferences and and their own requirements around how to configure routing rules And so, you know first and foremost is contours HTTP proxy CRD and this this one exposes all the features of contour It's it's developed kind of in in collaboration with contour in concert with contour and so exposes all the features It's stable as I mentioned earlier. It's it's v1 And so you have backwards compatibility guarantees, so you don't need to worry about Breaking changes in the API from release to release And yeah, it's great great for simple use cases If you look at some of the basic examples, it's very kind of concise and expressive for for simple use cases But can expand to to give you access to all those advanced features We also support gateway API So as I mentioned, we've been involved with this project for for quite a while and for those of you who aren't familiar I assume most of you are but this is really kind of the next generation upstream service networking API that's been developed out of sig networking and Yeah, it's it's currently in beta most of the core L7 resources are in beta Rapidly approaching GA later this year and so we're looking forward to that and it comes with an ever-growing set of conformance tests so that any implementation of gateway API can run these conformance tests and ensure that they're Implementing the API in the right way. And so we have we've been tracking those conformance tests we've actually been contributing many of those tests as well and We we have a conformant implementation at this point and as the API continues to progress to to GA will will continue to keep up with those conformance tests and Yeah, gateway API is a really great API, you know, it's role-oriented so kind of differentiates between platform operator roles application operator roles and so if that's important to you, it's a it's a great API to use it has a really good breadth of features With extensibility baked into the API. So the core API maybe doesn't have quite all of the features that that HTTP proxy does but there are extension points for implementations to add their own Additional features so definitely a great choice And then contour also supports ingress, right everyone needs to support ingress This isn't something we're putting a lot of Additional development effort into at this point We support the the core spec and some of the common annotations and have some contour specific annotations as well For us, this is you know primarily kind of a migration path if you're using another ingress controller and are interested in contour to be able to easily migrate and then potentially look at a different API from there Yeah, so again, we want to Emphasize that it you can use this right now. It is production ready. People are running it. It is amazing It's used at scale and the last three minor releases I see a lot of the emails come in where folks are reporting Hey, we found a vulnerability and seeing that get patched for your like long-running versions of Contour so yeah, if you are interested, please dig in We also want to emphasize the community for contour the community is In my opinion a big part of what makes the contour community or what makes contour great is like having a community around it So I also want to thank you all for showing up here and being a part of our community If you would like you can pat yourself on the back or give yourself a some applause. No It's not that early. Come on. Give me something. Give me something. Okay. Okay. Yes Thank you all for showing up to this talk for Hearing about us give you updates on contour if you want to connect more with the community There are a lot of ways to do that We have them listed here on the slide including joining us in the Kate's slack workspace We also have this Google group here, which is where we'll be emailing out a lot of the major updates Anything that's coming up when we're having community meetings or we're gonna be rolling out new updates or bug fixes patch releases come out You'll want to join the email list there and then we have various other ways for you to connect with us You can see our amazing metrics of how people are getting involved but We definitely want to emphasize the growth of the community and one of the things that we're working towards is actively seeking more folks to be maintainers on the contour project and it's I think for a lot of people Maintainership sounds like a daunting task and unapproachable at least it did for me And we want to emphasize that it is a path that we are outlining and there are many many ways to get involved We would love for concert to graduate and part of one of the things we're looking for as a health metric is more companies involved in driving the project We have roles outlined in our community slash governance stocks so in the contour github project There's a repo for community and outlined. We have community roles And you can see that one of the biggest things that the easiest ways to get involved involved is by reviewing PRs you Engineers are an opinionated bunch and we would love to hear your opinions in a nice and loving way For all of the features that folks are wanting to add or the issues that people are having You know our golden rule with communities, you know, just try to be the person that you wish you had You know, who would you feel safe coming to with your issues or with your your PRs and be that person for someone else and help them on Their development journey. So right now today you can go review PRs We had a great ContribFest session yesterday or any of you there for that I know Tara was one of our other maintainers anyone else Yeah, well, we had a bunch of new contributors coming and submitting PRs to contour It was amazing to see that community grow and we need you all to help us out with some reviews as well as Community support in the slack channel Benefits of maintenance ship helping to drive the project also helping to see the project be stable longevity grow get bigger And we want to see more folks take an interest in helping to drive the project Our community meeting cadence. We changed up a bit. We found that it was overwhelming What we're going through in the last year and so we took a bit of a break and we're bringing them back And the way they're structured now is to happen a couple weeks after a release to give you time to get hands on As well as to get at the beginning of the release cycle for the next release So if you have ideas that are coming into it that you want to bring in the next contour release You can come to the community meeting give us design docs Give us feedback anything that you're looking for so that we can incorporate those as we are in the engineering cycle For getting the next version of contour out We had a very successful ad hoc meeting in February that came about custom engineers at some places We're like, hey, we haven't seen a community meeting in a while we have things we want to discuss and it ended up being very good lively discussion and Steve is going to talk a bit about some of the Some of the design docs got submitted from the community and some of the features that have been added to contour very recently from community input So yeah, two weeks post release additionally available ad hoc And then we're also starting an initiative to get educational materials for new users as you all aware well aware networking is very hard and People often get lost and so we want to have a place for people to come to learn Networking in a holistic way that's gonna get them from I don't know how ports work to the CNI to now Networking in Kubernetes to configuring Envoy and contour and being networking superstars So as we're developing that educational material we want to hear from you Like what are some of the things that were helpful for you as you were on your learning journey that we can put out as some content for folks to get up to speed on learning Networking and Kubernetes So these are some questions to kind of spur your thinking if you have any feedback. I am open to here I welcome you sharing that with me so that we can work together to make some great material for folks trying to get involved in Networking in the contour all right, so we wanted to highlight some some recent work that has Been merged into contour or as it's soon to be merged and will be in the upcoming release And so I have three features to highlight and what's really exciting about these features is that they were all community driven So these were things that that some of them were in our backlog already some of them were new ideas, but These were things where community members who had a particular need showed up to the community Worked on design docs and then worked on implementation and really saw these features through to completion And so within the span of one release cycle three months. We were able to get these features designed implemented and into the release So the first one we've got here is tracing support with open telemetry So this is a long-standing feature request in contour I think before we close the issue is actually the fourth oldest issue in the repository Number three hundred ninety nine or something like that. So super excited to finally see this come to contour We had been recently kind of waiting for Envoy's open telemetry support to land and to be ready to use We wanted to rally around open telemetry as a standard here And so the contributor who worked on this was yangi 93 They once this supported merged an envoy. They showed up and wrote up a design doc We went through some some rounds of feedback and got that design doc merged and then got an implementation up and So yeah, so you can see here that on the left Tracing is configured within the contour configuration file or a contour configuration CRD if you're using that so you have Kind of a single global tracing configuration for your contour instance You would deploy an open telemetry collector within your cluster and then reference that through an extension service Which if you've used external authorization or rate limiting you're familiar with extension services And then some additional parameters around tags that are added to your traces and various other things and then on the right here I just grabbed an example of a Tracing span that's emitted in kind of the logging format. So You can see that you get the request log to get various information about the host the URL any any sort of headers or parameters and Custom tags are added here as well. So again, super excited to see this land We really appreciate yangi 93 showing up and doing this work and hopefully this is something that that you all can use next up was feature which was external authorization support for HD to be virtual hosts a non TLS terminated virtual hosts. So Contour has supported external authorization for TLS virtual hosts for for quite a while now We've had that support but Because of some technical challenges around how kind of filter chains are configured in Envoy We didn't have support for configuring external auth for for plain HTTP virtual hosts. And so a contributor relatively new contributor Clayton Gonzovis had a need for this feature. They wanted to be able to do external authorization for for for HTTP virtual hosts and so again showed up and Talked with the maintainers about kind of an idea for an implementation path and got a design in place And and was able to get an implementation in in this will ship in 1.25. And so the way this is implemented is that With with TLS virtual hosts, you can configure an external authorization server on the on the root HTTP proxy for the virtual host For plain HTTP virtual hosts What we do is we define a single global external authorization server And so again, this is defined in the contour configuration file or the the contour configuration CRD And so this this global external authorization server then becomes the default server That's used for all of your virtual hosts And so by default it applies both to plain HTTP virtual hosts as well as TLS virtual hosts now If you want to override the external Auth server so use a different server for a particular TLS V host You can still still specify those settings in an individual HTTP proxy and and the proxy level settings will take precedence over the global ones You're also able to disable external auth for any particular root HTTP proxy So yeah, again super excited to have this land it kind of fills a gap in terms of Support for this feature and we're looking forward to to having this be used going forward And then finally we're we're just about to land support for IP allow list and block lists IP filtering and so this work was contributed by E Cordell Again went through the design process This was something we had had in the backlog for quite a while But hadn't been able to to have rise to the top of the priority list But E Cordell had a need for this and so showed up and put the work in and got it got it implemented So this can be configured at either the virtual host or the route level with with route level configuration taking precedence over virtual host You can specify either an allow policy or a deny policy and so an allow policy will allow Only those IPs that are that are specified in the policy Denied policy will deny any IPs that are specified in the policy and so you can you can see on the right here Kind of the envoy configuration for the RBAC filter that's emitted here So yeah, I just wanted to kind of recap and say that we were we were super excited to have all these contributors show up It's this is really kind of what makes contour Great and unique I think is when folks show up who have needs and help us drive the project forward There's only So much that kind of the core maintainer and core contributor team can do but if we have folks show up and kind of help out With their own needs we can get more and more functionality into the project All right, so we want to take a look at the roadmap and and what we have on the docket for the future of the project So first up Is extensibility and this is really around kind of data plane data path extensibility So we have heard for for a long time that folks are interested in having some way to do kind of arbitrary modifications as requests are going through the data path and so we've had requests for Lewis scripting for wasm for Now the external processing filter that Envoy supports And and various other forms of extension of extensibility We've been a little bit hesitant to merge this into the project because it does open open up kind of a whole can of worms and potentially enables users to kind of get themselves into trouble making modifications to requests that They can have adverse impact on the data path But we've heard loud and clear that that folks are really interested in this and need this to be able to support their production use cases So we're taking a New look at this It seems like the community is kind of rallying around the external processing filter that Envoy supports as a good kind of first path to go down for extensibility and that The implementation of it would look very similar to Kind of the extension service and external service Pattern that we use for external off for rate limiting and now for tracing so it's a it's a well established design pattern in contour So we hope that we can get to a design doc get get that in place and At least get some proofs of concept done and and hopefully merge some support for this later in the year Next up we're as I mentioned earlier We're a conformant gateway API implementation and we want to keep up with those those conformance tests and the API spec As it approaches GA this is is definitely important to us to support and so we will we will continue to work on that Next up is is kind of improving our efficiency at scale So contour has already run and at large scale and and probably many of you are running it in large clusters We do think we can make some some additional improvements just in terms of optimizing memory and CPU utilization so that it can be kind of as as efficient as possible, so We have some ideas here for for improvements and we'll look to work on that later in the year Finally we want to Improve the observability of the control plane So Envoy itself has really great observability and and on the data path You are able to take advantage of all the metrics and statistics it emits and contour the control plane has some of that as well But we think we can make some improvements and so when issues pop up having that observability in the control plane itself is Is really helpful for operability? So definitely want to make a push here to to ensure that contour is just kind of as easy to operate as possible and Gives you the most insight into what's going on And finally yeah come come join us and help build out the roadmap. We're definitely open to feature requests ideas for Where to take the project and we would love to get input from folks who are users So yeah, come come join us and help to find the roadmap Yeah, again, please get involved You can go deeper with contour governance and maintenance ship come to our community meetings Keep contributing and let us know how we can support you So for the folks that are users now that want to step up into a more Contributor role want to get back to the community one way to do that is by just letting us know like tell us Hey, I have an interest in this project and I could use a little support I think that one of the things that I wish that Engineers would have told me was that a lot of times features aren't implemented In open-source projects not because they're like super hard, but generally people have different time and priorities So there's a lot of stuff that we can do to support Engineers on their journey to contributing to open source. So please just let us know how we can help you Again, here's how you can find us on the internet like and subscribe And yeah, let us know if you have any questions Yeah, we appreciate you all coming so much. We have a small token of our appreciation here At center stage if you want to come and grab one, but yeah Who has questions? Nobody come on Yes Sorry, I couldn't totally hear the question was do we work together with the w3? We don't work with them. No, we're you know Use Envoy as the data as the data path as the proxy and so we're relying on Envoy's kind of HTTP implementation Another question another question. It's Friday. The conference is almost over. You're about to go home You got an opportunity ask questions put us on the spot You're not gonna take advantage of that for real. It's like that. Okay Okay going one I'm just kidding. Um, well, uh, thank you so much. You can leave feedback for us here on Oh, we have a question. Yes, please my bad back See, I should have kept town. Yeah How are you aligned with the Envoy gateway projects? Yeah, that's a that's a great question. So I think a year ago that project was announced and Contour maintainers the contour team were were part of kind of the founding of that project And so we we help bootstrap it and get it off the ground At this point, you know, we have we have limited capacity as maintainers And so we're primarily focusing on on the needs of our contour users And focus and we see that there's a lot of demand for improvements to the HTTP proxy CRD So that's that's where our focus is right now We think you know long term as the the Envoy gateway project evolves and really reaches kind of a stable mature production state that you know, there's potentially a Possibility to leverage it to kind of replace contours gateway API implementation But I don't think we're there right now You know, we've been we've been working on contours implementation for two years and we feel pretty good about where it is It's stable and we know that we have folks using it in in production environments So I think you know still to be determined exactly how how we end up leveraging that project But we're super excited to see it continue to be developed and to see the community grow around it Thank you Great question y'all gonna make me count again. No, are we good? All right, I'll put the QR code back up. Thank you all so much for coming We'll see you around. Cheers