All the sources reviewed so far, customer international law, treaties, general principles of law, unilateral acts of states and unilateral acts of international organisations, all those sources are clearly binding under international law when the conditions for their coming into legal existence are met. The question to be asked now is whether those formal sources and those formal processes are the only ones by which rules of international law can be created or whether international normativity can also arise through other processes that are probably less formal and less institutionalised but that nevertheless result in instruments having some legal character. The word soft law has been coined to cover this phenomenon. It refers to a wide range of instruments and documents adopted by a great variety of actors. Instruments whose normative status is unclear but which nevertheless carry a certain weight and a certain influence which brings them close to having the status of legal norms. And for instance one can think about technical or industrial standards adopted by associations of certain manufacturers or informal decisions taken by the central bankers of the major economies of the world or tests designed by education professionals in order to rank schools etc. All those instruments, those documents are not legal instruments sensus stricto but they nevertheless exert a great influence across national borders. To a certain extent soft law instruments are complied with and are used as instruments of governance. However the word soft law is ambiguous because it gives the impression that law would exist in various degrees. The law resulting from the processes that we have studied so far would be hard law and the rest all the other documents having some normative pretension would be soft law. The problem is that if law comes in various degrees hard and soft it runs the risk of losing its specificity which is precisely its bindingness. Let me make this clear. There is no doubt that legal obligations can be quite different from each other. For instance an obligation of means is not to be confused with an obligation of result. Despite their variety in terms of what must be done in order to comply with them all those different obligations are nevertheless equally binding in law. The obligation of means is not less binding than an obligation of result if both are for instance to be found in treaties. The problem with soft law is that the notion seems to suggest that there might be some instruments that are less binding as it were than others but that would still be legal instruments and this is problematic and doubtful. Either there is a legal command or there is no legal command. Other obligations are owed as legal obligations or they are not. It cannot really be in between. Sometimes it is very clear that the document at stake is not a legal instrument and this is notably the case when the people drafting the document have no authority to make law. For instance a professional association of manufacturers issuing technical standards for the making and size of bicycle tyres or if they have some authority to make law the drafters have clearly no intention to bind themselves under the law and this is the case for instance when states contract gentlemen's agreements that look like treaties but are on purpose not legally binding or when the G8 heads of states issue a statement or when a world conference makes an action plan to combat poverty in all those cases and despite having eventually a great influence on the conduct of governments those instruments are clearly not legally binding and they do not appartent to any category of law be it hard or soft. But what happens when things are not as clear as that? Should one presume some legal force until and unless it is established that the instrument the document is not binding or should one presume the opposite not legal until proven legal? Well, let me submit that legal certainty requires the latter international law is presumed to come into existence through the formal processes that we have studied while it should be presumed that any other process does not result in the creation of new rules of international law unless otherwise established. This being said some documents that are clearly not legal instruments can not only have a great bearing on the behavior of a variety of actors but they can also be used as benchmarks for the purpose of establishing whether an international law obligation has been duly complied with or not. And let me take an example to make that clear. Under a treaty the riparian states of a river agree that they have an obligation to prevent the pollution of the river and in particular they agree that industrial plants under their control that are discharging effluence in the river should always use the best available technologies. In such a situation and in order to assess whether the obligation to prevent pollution through the duty to impose the use of the best available technologies in industry has been complied with it is necessary to turn to the industry standards. Those standards may not be legally binding instruments but they will need to be referred to in order to assess whether the legal obligation has been complied with or not. Therefore indirectly those standards have a legal bearing but I submit that it would be a wrong conceptual shortcut to consider that they are legally binding as such.


I think we're ready. Okay, good morning. I apologize everyone for being a little bit late. I'm going to be on time and then I got caught in a paper and part of it cut by the key of the ocean. So maybe we'll start by going around the room doing introductions. I'm Dave Sneddick, your chair of the Connectivity Advisory Board. Ken Jones sitting in for Michael Schirling of the Agency of Commerce and Community Development. Robert T. White, V-Trans. Good morning, Ashlyn Joy on Treasurer's Office. Michael DeHart, Department of Public Service Connectivity Coordinator. Corey Chase, telecommunications specialist, Department of Public Service. Evan Crossen, two North Coworking Investors. I'm Iris and I'm reporting for VT Baker. Okay. Steve Whitaker, I got a point of order. I made a specific request to be notified and sent the agenda. That didn't happen and the agenda that didn't get posted 24 hours. So I believe your meeting is not in compliance with open media law. I'm Steve Law from Oregon Media. Steve Law, you said? Law, L-O-B-B. And on the video, we have Catherine. Hi, Catherine. Hi, Catherine Sims, North East Kingdom Collaborative. Okay. So it takes care of the introductions. So the next item on the agenda are the meeting minutes from April 18th, 2018. If I can just note that Michael's not included as an attendee and yet he provided comments. So I'm probably signed in late. I do think that was the case. Yeah. It's on the phone. So I have Michael Sherling to the list. Yeah, maybe go through, do it once over and make sure I didn't misattribute anything to people because I was trying to learn all your names and take down everything you said at the same time. I believe that all the comments from Michael Kloss and the Treasurer's Office are properly attributed. Thanks. One page, what turned out to be page three of the minutes under item 4.2. Just to the typo, I think when my comment was kind of under D it should be action plan versus action play. Where was that? Number D on 4.2 under 4.2. Should be action plan as opposed to action play. Oh, yep, thank you. That's all I had. Are there any other corrections for the minutes? Okay, if not, I would entertain a motion to approve the minutes of April 18th, 2019. Move to approve the minutes. Is there a second? Second. Okay, any, all of them were signified by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, abstained. I reiterate the objection that you're not in compliance with the law and you can't take formal action for this meeting because this isn't a meeting. Next item on the agenda is new business and the first item under new business was suggested agenda changes. Mike, did you, can you speak to that on this? Oh, yeah, I didn't know if anybody had anything they wanted to address in this meeting. It's a little light. Connectivity initiatives kind of out the door at this point and that's the major function of this board. So if anybody else has something they'd like to add, discuss, I'd be happy to tack it on. Okay, are there any suggested additions to the agenda? Yeah, I'd like to know what the status of the Microsoft RFP response is. Okay. I can talk to that. Is that okay to talk now or do you want to? Yeah. Right now we're in, you're changing the agenda so do you want to add that to the agenda? You want to continue adding to the agenda or do you want to discuss that? Let's do it that way. Add to the agenda then we'll discuss. So any other additions to the agenda? And like an update on the Public Service Department's new hire for a CD specialist. Anything else? All right. So if we can just jump to item B under your business update on the connectivity initiative. I'm not sure if Corey or Michael. Yeah, that'd be me. We've got all of the agreements fully executed and out the door. One project is finished. I should add a caveat. One project is not fully executed because of a misunderstanding. One applicant didn't understand that it was a reimbursement grant despite the RFP and the grant outline saying that it was. So we're renegotiating his agreement, trying to make it more workable for them. Other than that, MC Fiber has already finished working. It was fast. They're pushing to get their payment already so trying to keep up with them is going to task. I just have a question about that. Which project seems to be renegotiated and also what happens to that money if it can't be renegotiated and just the board then need to approve it again? Or did we sort of designate that authority to staff the public service department at the last meeting? So I don't know if I can discuss specifically which entity needs to be renegotiated with. I can say it's not MC Fiber. But yeah, I don't know if that requires executive session or if that's confidential for the company. As for the issue and whether or not that responsibility has been given to us, I'm not entirely sure. I know the commissioner has final say on these things. It's unlikely that it doesn't go through. But right now it's in discussion at the moment. So it's not the best news for them. And it's happened before that the grants have been fully utilized in which case the funds just go back to the next cycle of grants. Right, 2016 there were two rounds of connectivity initiative funding with the leftover funds. The practice has been, this is Corey Chase, the practice has been to if funds are not fully utilized to put the funds back into the connectivity fund and use them in the next round of grants. Either in the case of the company not completing a negotiated contract or the funds are reimbursement based. So if they don't use all the funds, if they come in under budget, the funds are used later. Yeah, and after this legislative session we're hoping the connectivity initiative gets a little bit of extra funding. Can't say that it'll actually happen or how much it'll get. But hopefully more than 200,000 because I think this year's money went or will go pretty far. I think it's a pretty effective program but actually just finding areas where internet can go and building it out. Would that be as a result of the H513 which was the increasing money to the universal service? But once it goes into the USSF I think some more allocation happens. So connectivity initiative's not necessarily first in line for that. Is that all for updates on the connectivity? Yep. Alright, so now we can jump to the additional agenda items. First the Microsoft RFP. So we conducted an RFP earlier this year and we've had two bids and we discussed the proposals with both vendors and both vendors we found the proposals to be problematic and so in the case of one proposal it was a novel new technology of using airships. The other proposal would have activated some but not all of the locations and we were concerned that it would use up too much of the capital funds the remaining 900,000 capital funds and not achieve a complete network. So we paused our process negotiating with both vendors and currently we're talking to towns to ask towns to consider the idea of cost sharing. So we prepared a survey and sent the survey to all 250 or 60-odd towns depends on whether you include villages or not but we talked to Vermont League of Cities in towns and sent a query to all towns and we asked towns if they would be interested in having microcells in their towns and second whether they'd be interested in helping to pay for those. We've had about 70 responses and there are about 10 towns we've not yet heard from where there are currently microcells installed and so we don't have results to discuss with you yet because we don't have a complete set of results. I've been trying to get answers from towns and it's not easy. Everybody's busy, select boards or volunteers and it's been frustrating but I imagine that we will have a report about that soon. From the responses you did receive can you say if they've agreed to provide some cost sharing? So there are some towns that are interested there are many towns that are interested as I recall I can't quote you exactly but roughly two-thirds of the towns that we heard from that participated in the survey we're granted it's not we don't have answers from I think I said we had 75 responses or something so roughly two-thirds of those towns that we heard from are interested in having microcells less than that are interested in paying not all that responded are interested in paying and those that are interested in paying aren't interested in paying the full cost that the microcell, the full operating cost of each microcell. So in any event if we are going to consider going down this road of participating with towns it's going to require some amount of subsidy from somewhere to pay for it. So to be clear the inquiry that we posed to towns was would you be willing to pay for the operating cost the direct operating cost of microcells in Europe? And if you're interested I can share some information about that board. Let me just now know what the kind of overall cost to town is. So what we heard from the previous vendor Bono Covertail was that the direct operating costs for microcell sites is $1,800 per year for each site. And how many sites would happen or be put in place per town at this stage? Right now there are 193 sites installed around the state and some towns have as many as 10, 12, some have this one. And these microcell sites are by and large installed on utility poles. And the direct operating costs include electricity, the DSL connectivity, and geolocation services. Any questions for Corey on the microcell project? Thank you Corey. The next addition to the agenda was a request for the an update on the new hire for the public service department for the CEV specialist. Well Clay's not here but he did let us know yesterday that he's put in the paperwork to create the position. So that's about all we know. The timeline I think what he should expect to be able to have the position out for hire by late August? Well I think that's his hope. I think you recognize that state government doesn't move on a dime. And so this is a new position. It's not only a new position to, in addition to the staff of the department, it's a new position. And so the state of Vermont Human Resources Department has to create a new job specification, and that takes some amount of time for HR to do that. Once that job specification is created, then we can start to see candidates. But we can't do anything until human resources creates this job specification. So I've started writing the RFP and getting help from Corey and Clay on what role there should be in place for this new grant program. So when this person starts the job, they should be already in the process of receiving applications, the broadband innovation grant program. So they'll be more or less facilitating feasibility studies and business plans for towns and contractors they select to help them do the studies. Do you need a very brief update on this grant program from age 13? That would be great. Cool. I forget what the budget is for this. Is it 700? Yeah, 700,000. So it's pretty significant. The maximum amount of one single grant is $60,000. There are two deliverables for each grant. They come in phases, the first of which is a feasibility study. So we're asking these applicants, tentatively right now we're still writing the rules, but we plan to ask applicants to identify a service area and preliminarily a type of technology and they can sort of stick and sort out the details after they've made the proposal and we've accepted it. But they'll start working and determined based on infrastructure costs, estimated take rates, whether or not it'll be feasible and whether or not they could be cash flow positive at any point in time with the plan they have. We expect to hear a lot of different types of solutions, be it CUDs or even all the way from CUDs to just paying the existing ISP to build out at the cost, you know, anything's on the table. So yeah, the first $30,000 of, well, the maximum is $60,000. They can come in under $60,000. The first half of the grant money will be paid after they turn in their feasibility study and we determine that it's credible. We're determining what the classifications of credible are in this case and what classifications for feasible are in this case. As H513 was written, there's a bit of wiggle room involved so we want to make sure it's pretty tight because being a big grant program we don't want to have it be ineffective. So after a feasibility study is determined to be credible and feasible, we would suggest they move on to the business planning study, which is the second half of the current environment. And their business plan will take the form of infrastructure planning, the whole nine yards, something Cori suggested and contemplating putting into the application is that the business plan has to be something that a lending institution would feel comfortable lending to. So we don't want just, you know, down the street trying to say I give me 40,000 bucks, I put some poles on the ground yet. So, you know, we don't run businesses but we want some third party to be able to verify this is a credible business plan and this feasibility that they've accredited themselves with is feasible. So yeah, I don't know how long this grant program will run but $700,000 can probably last in a while depending on how many responses we get. The first round precludes electric utilities. I think after February we're allowed to open it up to studies that include or suggest that electric utility be the provider or the partner in the program. And there's a few legislative requirements associated both with this and with the idea of electric utilities being broadband providers. Because regarding electric utilities they have their separate track, two of them can apply before. Only two, yeah. Right, but that can take place earlier than February. So the electric utilities can't apply until February. So are they waiting for the results of the work that you're sponsoring on general electric utility participation in broadband? And then the results of that allow the electric utilities to pursue? Potentially. So H513 is set out like a laser minefield of deadlines for our department to hit. Some of which conflict directly with each other. For example we're required to report on this grant program I think in January. And we weren't allowed to start working on it until late June. And it's a seven month grant term. So we don't expect to have a full report by January. And I think estimated February will open it up to electric utilities. Well, or potentially. So I'll just add to that. We another update. So this wasn't on your agenda, but I think it's for the department. H513 directed our department to write a report about the feasibility of getting involved in broadband service. And so we conducted an RFP and right now we're negotiating with vendors. We've received many bids and we're selecting a vendor to assist us in writing this report about the feasibility of electric utilities being involved in broadband. And based on the results of that report we'll then determine whether or not electric utilities are eligible for these feasibility studies. Because if the report says I thought the statute said thou shalt provide grants to two electric utilities to have them pursue feasibility studies. If the results of this report if the results of this report are support the idea that the reason they put this report in is that there was concern that maybe electric utilities shouldn't be involved in the process. In which case it would be you can't give them grants to do something that they shouldn't be doing. So we're doing this report if the report is conclusive then up to two electric utilities are eligible to receive these feasibility, grants for feasibility for their individual electric utility. What's the scope of this report is it statewide or is it it's general about whether or not electric utilities ought to be involved in the broadband arena. And the fact that some electric utilities outside of Vermont are doesn't. So I found that in the statute again not more than two electric utilities shall be awarded grant under the program awards to distribution utilities shall be made pursuant to a competitive bidding process initiated not sooner than January 1, 2020. So it's not February. It's January 1. But the intent was by then you have a better sense from the general study. Who are other eligible applicants for these grants? So the brand that we're getting ready to do now, the RFP, is hoping to release very soon. It's pretty wide open. It has to be an entity some kind of legal entity. But it could be a town. It could be a private business. It could be a formation of or partnership with a cooperative CUD, a rural economic development infrastructure district municipal communication plant or utility. But that's not an exhaustive list. Because it may be a regional planning commission but I don't see why not. Could it be a movie electric? At that point it's a distribution utility. So that's included in the intent. That's included in it but that brings in the deadline for it. Did you say what the timeline for this first RFP distribution and then award is? I'm not sure when the deadline actually is. We've just been working as fast as possible on getting that done. So you're hoping to have it out ASAP with applications do at some point. And then awards for a year? Yeah, we've been mostly using a microscope on the RFP right now. I don't know when we plan on getting it out but as soon as we're finished we're going to advertise it. And we want to give at least at least a month perhaps longer for respondents to prepare our proposal because especially towns need to wait for a select board meeting. But we've heard many inquiries about this grant program. They're probably going to be a significant number of people of entities interested in it. Because it's the state offering up to $60,000 for an entity to evaluate whether it's feasible for them to get involved. So pick a small town in Vermont. They don't know if it's feasible for them to be involved in doing broadband. So the idea here is to provide them the funds to hire an expert to look at it to say it makes sense or it doesn't make sense. Yeah, I look forward to all the responses in some ways especially the ones that don't return a feasible outcome. Because then we can kind of find out what the line is, what the mark they need to hit will be and sort of get out of the gray area for what's possible and what's not. Can you allow for profit businesses to apply as well? Yes. So like a kingdom fiber but even a consolidating to apply for feasibility then? I don't think we've discussed that possibility but the statute's pretty broad. Yeah. The statute wants to give entities an opportunity to apply for it. But we I think we'll use some judgment in determining which vendors to which recipients to award grants to. So we'll be lending preference to feasibility studies that plan study areas with locations that are on the connectivity initiative eligible locations list. So there's preference for unserved and underserved locations both from a department level but also in the language of the statute or of the bill I should say. Yeah. I think we should say that I'll just echo what Michael said that the money is given for feasibility studies. And it's entirely possible that or expect perhaps even to be expected that many of these will come back with a finding that it's not feasible. And that's good and fine. It doesn't necessarily mean that you just because you stopped the grant that you're going to go out and do the project. A town might learn through this process that wow this is really complicated and this doesn't make sense but we want to allow for that. That's the whole purpose. We hope that many will find it and go out and build broadband projects and prosper but we're open to the idea that you look and determine that it won't but it's not a good idea. And those studies will become the property of the State of Vermont and the Department of Public Service so that can inform future telecom planning efforts and granting guidelines and things of that nature. This should be pretty informative. I do think it's prudent to go backwards on the agenda to update on the connectivity initiative. That's okay. H513 does include a couple of changes to the connectivity initiative that I didn't mention. Easy to gloss over because we've been sort of just pushing forward so much of this new grant. The speed thresholds and connectivity initiative have been changed to 25.3 which is not insignificant. It sort of rules out the far reaches of DSL and there's also a new requirement that any services funded in whole or in part by monies from the initiative shall be capable of being continuously upgraded to reflect the best available most economically feasible service capabilities. So DSL has less elbow room or less. Sort of the rub here. Thanks. Any questions for Michael or Corey on the H513 or the connectivity initiative? Katherine, any questions? Next item on the agenda is schedule regular meetings and schedule a summer public meeting. I think the last meeting we talked about, or requirement is to have meetings on a quarterly basis or to have a little bit more than that. Not more than six is in the statute. Six is the most. So this next meeting we've been suggesting be the open house style public meeting in our public depending on whether or not you believe what Mr. Whitaker says. Yeah, so this next one will include our commissioner and should be a discussion of the telecom plan. That's been the plan at least. We've not picked a date yet. We figured an afternoon and late summer before it starts getting cold don't only want to push too far out but it'll avoid being quarterly if we go too closer. Attendively September if you want we could pick a date right now or we can do it via e-mail. Would this meeting take place here or are we in a different location to be a more public one? Yeah, it's worth discussing. The pavilion is pretty convenient. Pavilion? I'm not sure. I've never been there. It's across the street. The auditorium. Yeah, probably not do a morning meeting so we can actually have people come. Afternoon. It's probably best to check the commissioner's calendar I would think. Yeah. Put some dates out there. Okay. I'll send out a doodle poll and CC June see what her availability is like tentatively middle of September sometime. I think that misses everybody's vacation schedules. Okay. So you mentioned to discuss the telecom plan. What is the status of saw drafts? I don't know if I've seen the end of 2018 and is there a new do you intend there to be a new draft that will be the subject of discussion or we've been making changes but Cory, I don't know if you can speak to that. So it's a frustrating situation right now. The draft that's out there the only thing that remains for it to become adopted is a meeting with the joint and they didn't do that so it can't be adopted but this meeting is to discuss it. So did you want in the light of that situation we're continuing on to revise the plan again to add new content based on the feedback that we've been receiving. So I don't think that we have an answer for a direct answer to your question yet. We're hoping to have a new revision out but it's hard to do that and do all of these other things we're trying to do too. And I know that the commissioner wanted to have to participate in the meeting and talk more about it. We've written what? Two new sections on the 513. There were several that we were right working provisions for. Prior to the meeting and I know that it's a pretty long plan. So maybe if we're going to be meeting in September could you send at some point in August the most current draft that you have with the new sections? Yes, certainly. And representing the agency commerce we're supposed to participate in that development of that plan. If we're going to be meeting with the chair the updates with us that would be useful. Certainly. So it seems like you're recommending that it would be helpful for us to circulate a draft to your agencies before we make a public. As you say statute requires agency commerce and community development to be part of the development. And I know that if the treasurer's office is going to be participating in a meeting where the purpose is for members of the public to comment we would like to be able to read all the sections that you've added since the passage of 513. That makes sense. I'll stop my head. I know we've got the battery backup section stipulated from 513 that's been added but I don't know if that's been published because we're sort of thinking of it as a new plan already at this point. Living document as they say. But yes to your point. We'll send it around. On the scheduling of regular meetings can we just set the years worth of meetings, the calendar and get them all down at once? Sure. So quarterly would be every three months if we just don't treat the September meeting as one of the quarterly meetings or should we treat that as a quarterly meeting? Doesn't the statute say something about that? That the board needs to have a public meeting? Yes. Not more than six and we've been shooting for quarterly. And then it also has to have one public meeting? They're all supposed to be. One is different. It's a joint meeting. Yeah. To truly invite the public to participate. All these meetings are public. That's what I meant. One that's focused on really getting the input from the public to the direction of. So we can choose to make that one of the quarterly meetings or just create a quarterly schedule and also include September's meeting whichever you prefer. So if we include September's meeting then the next week we can have a meeting in December and then March and then July or something like that? So December we should probably shoot for the early half of the month before we all turn into pumpkins. Today's Thursday, right? Friday. How about December? Do you want to just send a doodle poll out for all of us as well because we're so far out? Sure. I know my calendar is empty in December but others might not be so fortunate. Okay, I'll make that an action that I'm going to send out. As we're making the doodle poll I would put in a plug and in March the week of town meeting is always a good week to have longer meetings because folks don't need to be over at the legislature. That makes a lot of sense. Can you say a specific time in March or just March? The week of town meeting is the legislature's non-session. Whichever weekend that is. I have one other little thing to add to the updates about what we've been doing. Just because you mentioned regional planning commissions I'd forgotten to mention it previously. An update on our mobile wireless drive testing. We did the mobile wireless drive tests for the particular reason to participate in the FCC challenge in December. Since then we've had inquiries from regional planning commissions in towns to borrow the phones to do more testing. So the tests that I drove just the main roads just the federal lane highways but many towns we've had inquiries from 6 or 7 towns but also several regional planning commissions including yours. We've let them borrow the phones and they've got interns and volunteers that have driven the back roads. And the Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission has a VISTA volunteer on all the roads of all of the Central Vermont plant towns this summer. Once all of the driving is done we will update the interactive map. So you get all the data. Once the data is collected we'll update the map. So the map has not been updated with the new data but when it's collected we will update the map. Yeah I talked to I know we did it and I think Addison County has already completed their work or at least they're thinking about it. Addison and LaMoyle County. LaMoyle and Central Vermont are the ones that are. Has any other state done this? I haven't been talking to other states I don't know. I know that New Hampshire when they were doing their drive tests last fall worked with planning commissions. But they didn't have as much time because it was also crunched. We had a tech savvy intern who was more than happy to help us out with that. It was a good project. Anything else Corey? Anything else on the meeting schedules? Is that broken down by carrier? Yes. I'll send you a link. Each cell phone in the little bank represented a different carrier. So there are six facilities based cell phone carriers in the state. There are many that resell each of those six but there are six separate networks of towers. Is that who you guys primarily use? No, first net. So Terry LeValley has the raw data. I know what we're about. When I say we'd be trying for battling with them just on our own infrastructure that we're putting out. I know it's frustrating. I'll make sure to get you off-line the data. You didn't have band 14. Did you have a band 14 phone? No. Can you add one? If you want a first net band 14 SIM, I can get you one. That's a good idea. We should add that. That's what I've got now and trust me I'm battling with them the same. The quality would be we could talk more about that later. To exclude it so that it only operates in that band. We have an AT&T phone. Yeah, but do you have the news? No, it's just checking. Yeah. I don't want to say we'll get you the new AT&T SIM that they claim covers all that. It should cover both band 14 as well as regular. Because this is for regular consumers and then for the public safety community. The other sort of idea. I agree with that. You can add my phone. Sadly, the app that we use for testing is an Android app. Yeah, I figured that. Okay. Anything else, Robert? No, I was just saying thank you for wanting me to have her up. Number five on the agenda is for public comment. Is this Stephen or Steve? Any comments? Yeah, absolutely. I want to caution that the drive test methodology is not anywhere close to the drive test methodology that was done statewide in 2010 and 2013. The sampling frequency. The signal measuring the signal strength and logging the signal strength. The signal strength is relevant. You may have signal but not be able to complete a voice call that has direct bearing on whether 911 connectivity is affected. If we are going to do statewide and it seems like we're promoting everybody use this cell phones and drive your county or your regional planning district we should really pause and take a look at whether we should be doing it to a certain standard. There are vendors Pericle is the vendor that we used to the state pay $1,000 to in 2010 and 2013 but I researched it and currently the data we're collecting with the purpose specific project that Corey described is not adequate to do the kind of planning we need to be doing. Both the frequency of sampling GPS location and signal strength we should really be doing once so we don't have to go back and do it again. On the microcells I understand there was 55 new microcells carrier specific microcells deployed by AT&T kind of in the rounding in subverting the neutral host microcell model that coverage code was. AT&T only banned 14 microcells for FirstNet whereas we're kind of missing the opportunity to leverage those microcells into all carriers neutral host model. So are they banned 14 only? I am not privy to that information. You know Robert, whether the new microcells AT&T are they banned 14 only or are they banned 14 capable but AT&T only Verizon folks can. The problem is that this is shrouded in secrecy. Is this about FirstNet or AT&T's private deployment or a state deployment? I want to take it down correctly. It's not all three. But it's FirstNet. It's FirstNet I believe that's driving this small cell deployment. The department's small cell deployment? No. AT&T these are new microcells. Also we call the advisory board's attention to the fact that two years ago the legislature required, upon the failure of coverage code, the legislature required the department to do a study of microcell technology costs, alternatives, need for subsidies, etc. That report was grossly inadequate. It really is a shell of a report and therefore we're lacking the information now and the department's admitting that it's lacking the information in order to adequately advise these towns on whether they should deploy the 2G microcells that the state already owns. I would encourage this board to advise the commissioner to get that report done professionally by an independent engineer, whomever. That microcell report, all the department did was to crib the numbers out of the coverage code report and did not look at the opportunities for reduced backhaul costs, reduced electric costs, meaningless installs, many things that could actually reduce the cost, the operating cost of the microcells and make it feasible for these towns. Similarly, there's no way that the towns will be interested in putting the bill an unknown amount for the back end routing geolocation. The geolocation charges should come out of the 901 fund because the 901 service is the only thing that requires those. The 901 fund is one of the first things out of the universal service fund and again if it's only 901 that requires that geolocation, that cost which is a substantial cost of deploying each microcell should not be burdened on the town. It should be the 901 fund. We've got a multi-million dollar investment in these microcells and it's going to waste while these things that idle on the poles are in boxes in a warehouse. And this board was created five years ago, four years ago to advise on these issues and FirstNet was a major one and this board didn't do it. This board has in effect understanding connectivity grants and not advising on the plan. And I understand that the new planning requirements of 513 require if I recall specific strategies to address each every goal and objective of 202C and that is a major shift in the role of the telecom plan and I would encourage you to read the goals of 202C. That's the state policy of telecom and imagine what a telecom plan is going to need to look like if it's going to have a specific strategy to address every one of those goals. The there's new set of antenna regulations that were just adopted on the west coast that are worth looking at. The antenna the expedited 248A expedited tower sighting and antenna sighting does come up for a sunset again and there's going to be a huge rush to get everything permitted ahead of that sunset. But there are goals that are not preempted by the FCC. There are design parameters and restrictions that can and should be considered by this board to advise the commissioner on what should be in the telecom plan related to small cell sighting. The towns and the league are actively engaged in not being preempted and not having these major carriers come in and throw small cell antennas wherever they feel like it. So that's again one that should be high on your list. This idea of meeting quarterly to, you know, rubber stamp grants is absurd when you've got a statutory body that has the ability even to diverge from what the department wants to do. It's okay if this advisory board wants to say something different than what is the company line. It would be a healthy debate to have. So I would encourage you to review the history of the first net decision. Review the micro cell report or like they're way in on the who pays for the geolocation of the micro cells and whether there's an incremental strategy where the towns can be invited to host the 2G micro cells and build out fiber anticipating an upgrade to a 4G cell and use some of those extra strands to instigate community fiber initiatives like these communications unit districts. The isolation docket where telephone exchanges and entire switches like Comcast and Charter are isolated and those people cannot call 911. That docket is open at the PUC and had a workshop last week the transcript is not yet available. I would encourage you to read that and realize that it's not cost effective for consolidated to build a special multi-mile fiber to remedy that isolation. Isolation is when there's not a diverse route via a different geographic path and so that one cable, be it a T1 or fiber gets broken those people and those exchanges cannot reach the outside world or 911. And it's not cost effective for consolidated to take on that entire cost and build it to the rate pairs whereas it is cost effective. It may well be cost effective to align the priorities of micro cell placement community fiber and isolation remedy in the same fiber sheath so it's going to push back on the BTA model of state owned middle mile fiber which I know the current commissioner is adamantly opposed to but this advisory board could come out and say we should revive BTA or some function of BTA for state owned middle mile fiber to accomplish these things. Currently there's no state agency talk to John Quinn, the ADS secretary, no state agency is responsible for thinking across the silos like that. You've got a public safety imperative for micro cells. You've got FERSNAT, you've got this telephone isolation issue and community broadband all of which could be consolidated or could make cost effective a fiber build. The state also has the authority under conditions on every VTrans permit to over lash its own fiber to facilities that others have permitted at no cost. That would mean no delays for the whole. Not true. What's not true? That violates federal law. State law cannot overrule federal law. Well, the permit condition continues on. The permit condition reads that I am. The permit condition reads that the state may for its own use over lash state. Your permit condition doesn't read that. It violates federal law. You're going to take it out of all the permit conditions? Nope. So I'd appreciate not being interrupted while I finish. I would appreciate it too. So, the permit condition that's been attached to every fiber build permit is that the state is allowed for its own purpose to build fiber over lashing to the existing facilities built by the other carriers. That would potentially reduce the cost of fiber builds by half or more. This network spans where there is no fiber. It remains to be argued whether the state's economic development and public safety qualify under that for its own purpose. I know that Bob's not a lawyer so he can have his opinion but I have been tracking that issue and this advisory board should clearly do so. That opportunity would open up and revive the idea that it's 500 million or a billion to build fiber to every address is totally unfounded. The information we have on where the fiber is is so incomplete and there's no effort. The department opposed the language in H513 amendments that would have built a GIS of where the fiber is and where it is not. The department is enjoying being the only one with that information under non-disclosure agreements and yet this advisory board should direct the department to require the production of that information under the 202D authority. The 202E authority is where the non-disclosure agreements are and that's what's muddied the water and pushed all this information underground. The 202D authority does not include that and it can be argued that if it's clearly in the public right away and it's clearly visible that fiber is not a secret. Who owns it and where it is should be public information to help facilitate all these planning feasibility studies that are underway. Thanks. Do you have those comments in writing because the minutes will struggle to reflect? That's why you record, right? The number of topics you just covered. You may want to just check in. Do we have a transcript? Do we have a recording of this? No, not a recording this morning. I would also encourage you to record all your meetings because I shouldn't be the only one with a copy or orca. Are there other public comments? A quick question. Sorry, I found out I was covering this meeting five minutes before it started in the 210th primary church. Microcells are different than H513? Are they related? So the state a former part of state government, the Vermont Telecommunications Authority acquired 400 microcell devices. These are small devices that provide coverage of approximately a quarter to a half a mile radius. Cell phone coverage. And they provide cell phone coverage they're capable of providing cell phone coverage in areas that have no coverage from other providers and the former vendor that worked for the VTA, Bono Coverage Co had agreements with major carriers so that the customers of those major carriers could roam on to the service of these microcells when they were outside their own coverage area. Unfortunately, that company ran into financial problems and the 193 microcells that they installed were shut off. The 193 installed now the remaining 207 are in our warehouse. Any other public comments? Okay. Now the next item on the agenda is motion for adjournment. I have a motion. Make a motion for adjournment. Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Thank you everybody. Thanks for making it. Thanks everyone. Thanks to Orca for being here.


Hey, everyone, welcome back to AZ Update. Let's jump right into the Microsoft News of the week. First up, Privilege Identity Management, now coming to Azure Lighthouse. This is a big deal because now, when you're offering up your partner access through Azure Lighthouse to gain access to your infrastructure inside of the Cloud, you can actually put forth just-in-time governance and ensure that the availability of the services made available to your partners that are managing your organization through Lighthouse. Given that access to Lighthouse, have the ability to automatically be disconnected during a certain amount of time. This comes into a lot of importance and plays in regards to certain organizations that can only allow certain aspects of access to one's infrastructure. The inclusion of just-in-time configuration for authentication to an infrastructure that an organization is being supported with via partner, having that governance and having that ability to cut it when it's no longer required is very important. This is currently in public preview and has always once things are in public preview, Microsoft asks for your feedback. The links available on itopsock.com, definitely go and check it out and we'll get more information and get that to back to our engineers to provide your input and your feedback on just-in-time configuration through Privilege Identity Management with Azure Lighthouse. Next up in the news, Sarah Lean shares a great tutorial on utilization of Windows package manager to restore your PC's applications. Imagine you have to flatline a PC because it's become corrupt or has received a hardware issue, and now you have to re-initialize that PC. You can actually use Windows package manager to take a capture of all the applications that are inside of that PC and once you've done the restore, push all those applications back through Windows package manager. This also comes into good practice when you're doing this on a new PC that requires the same applications as the previous PC that you've captured that package from. In that instance as well, you can then use Windows package manager to push out all the applications to the PC itself, and makes it a lot easier and a lot quicker to set up all the applications on the machine itself. Really cool tutorial. Definitely check it out. Available on itobstock.com. Next up is the Microsoft Learn module of the week. This week's module is Introduction to Azure Migrate for Server Migration. This is a big one. A lot of questions coming in regards to, how do I start my Cloud journey? My organization is looking at a hybrid model. We have a VMware implementation or a Hyper-V implementation and we want to move up to the Cloud. This is a great hands-on lab that gives you the understanding and functionality around what the migration would look like, what it would look like to have that capability of pushing some of your services up to the Cloud, continually having that hybrid model of on-premises implementation of compute, of storage, but taking advantage of the compute and storage capabilities in Cloud as well, especially in current times and the availability of data and information that's really important to your workers, to have that information at their fingertips at all times, taking advantage of Cloud resources without functionality is of great importance. Having that capability and having that ability done so and understanding the functionality around Azure Migrate tool is a great opportunity to learn an upscale through the Microsoft Learn module of the week. As always, if you have any questions or concerns, feel free to reach out. You can reach me at Wireless Life. If you want to get a hold of producer care, you can get a hold of him at Wired Canuck. Have a great weekend everybody and we'll see you all next week.


When we were kids, we had no understanding of the world around us. When we became adults, we understand so much, but oftentimes what we understand about the world around us is often what everyone else understands. In other words, understanding about the world is often influenced by what psychologists call social proof, which simply means that we define success the way everyone defines it. For instance, what is success to a 25-year-old? The fast cars, the big house, the fame, and the beautiful wife. However, when most people come to the end of their life, they have the wisdom to look back and see that they have spent most of their life running after the wind, hence the reason for regrets. In today's video, I'll be sharing with you three of the most popular regrets people have and I wish this video helps you to live a more fulfilling life. If you're new here, consider subscribing so that you would miss other interesting videos like this. A Long Life When I was in high school, I wrote something on top of our classroom that reads, Another Day Has God. To me, that phrase is a big reminder that life goes too fast and I have to be fast with whatever I want to do with my life. I stopped watching movies and TV when I was around 13 or 14 and one of the reasons was that I considered TV to have a way of making you sit down for several hours without giving you much in return. I leave most of my 20s as if someone was pursuing me. Doing many things, reading many books, say no to as many things as possible. The reason for all this is because I do understand that life is short. One of the biggest regrets for most people is to be 65 and not believe that they are 65. You get what I mean. When you are 70 years old and you look back at your life and wonder what you've done with it, when you're 65 and compare yourself with other 65 year olds and think that they have achieved 600 years worth of life, this is not the first time someone will tell you but we all need to remember all the time that life is short terribly so and when you think about what makes life short you'll understand why it's very terrible. Let's start with the clock. Everyone tells you that you have 24 hours in a day but that's not true. You don't have 24 hours in a day. You have about 8 to 10 hours and I will explain this. You see, when I was studying accounting, we were taught that if you go to the market to buy some apples and you buy those apples for $5 but you spend another $5 in transportation to that market, you didn't buy the apples for $5. You bought the apples for $10 and it makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? Now, let's use this understanding to think about the myth of 24 hours in a day. In a day, you sleep 8 hours. When you sleep, you're not conscious so you're not doing anything. You commutes to work, rest, cook, eat, chat with friends and do a million other things. In the real sense of what life is all about, which is productivity, you're only productive for 8 hours in a day. Yes, 8 hours in a day and I even have some sad news for you. You're not productive for 8 hours, you're probably productive for only 3 hours, except you're better than most of us at using your time. According to a study, an average salesperson is only productive for 90 minutes a day. If you wonder how that is possible, consider the report by Peter Katzengrit, who is the Vice President of Nielsen. According to Nielsen's report, average Americans now spend whooping 11 hours consuming different media every day. What does this all tell us? Very simple. The number of hours we spend on things that matter aren't much. And because we don't spend much time on productive things, we don't have many hours in our days. But even if you're the most productive human on earth, sleep, food and some socialization will still take away more than half of your 24 hours. So, let's say that you are very productive. You have 7 productive hours every day. It means that you have 7, not 24 hours in a day. 7 hours can go so fast when you're 70. You'll think that your 20th birthday was last weekend. What does this have to do with life and regret? Well, most people think that they still have a lot of time to do what they ought to do. The truth is the opposite. You've got no time to do anything. No time. You don't have any time to waste. You can't start pursuing your goals next year. You can't start that business next month because you've got no time. Another big problem with most people is that they spend all their 20s thinking that they still have time. But in their 40s, when they want to start pursuing their dreams, they experience few failures and they give up.  I'll explain. You see, 11 years ago, when I started fully in the business world, I was only 21 and 6 months. I was single and free.  Fast forward to today. I have a wife, two aged parents and kids. If I am to start a business just this morning, I'll have to be more conscious than I was last 11 years. I'm not saying this to discourage you if you're 45 by the time you're watching this video. This video is to encourage you because life at 45 is easier than life at 67. My message in this section is this. Whatever you want to do with your life, start today. Because if you don't start today, you may regret not starting by the time you're 75 and trust me, time goes faster than the speed of light. Not taking enough risks. Mark Twain said, 20 years from now you'll be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did, which failed. So throw off the bow lines, sell away from the safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sales, explore, dream and discover. Most of us tend to think that if we try risky things, we may regret the outcome for the rest of our lives. But the opposite is the truth. If you don't try risky things now that you're young, one day you'll look back and regret your inactions.   In fact, in a few months from the day of your failure, you'll look back and be proud of your bravery. And I can tell you this from my experience. After I failed in the business world for more than five years, even though I was broke and had nothing, I remain the proudest human I ever knew. And the reason for that is simple. I look back at my courage which led to failures and I saw that not a single person I knew personally has ever tried what I tried. I felt proud and I still feel that pride till this day. I'm in. If you try big things and fail, you'll be like a soldier who goes to war and lost his legs. Though this man is now handicapped, he is far more successful than any civilian in the world because he dared to face the death everyone is afraid of. What someone will ask me is that, what if that soldier dies at the battlefield? I tell you, he is still more honorable than any civilian in the world because life is not about living. Life is about living for something. The man who lives for nothing is not living and the man who dies for something is alive. I hope you'll never forget this. The man who lives for nothing is not living and the man who dies for something is alive even if he's dead. Most people would live an average life for the first 50 years and regret for the rest of their lives. Don't be like them. The fact that you have a single life to live should inspire you to do great things with your life.  So why won't you fight hard? Living for money. It is very easy to see those who are wasting time and criticize their acts. It's easy to see those who are cowards and challenge them to fight for their dreams. But there are another group of people who often end their lives with a lot of regrets and those are the people who live for money. Living for money is different from having a lot of money. This is what I mean. In an 80-year-old habit study on happiness which started in the year 1938, the researchers followed 268 men all through their lives to see what makes people healthy and happy. What they found isn't money. The money is needed to live. What they found isn't fame or power that we desire. What they found are relationships. So it turns out that people who take time to cultivate meaningful relationships are happier and more fulfilled than people who wake up every morning to run after money. I wish that you understand me here. Trust me, I hate poverty and I'll plead with you to fight hard to overcome poverty. But I also don't belong to the group of people who think that Ferraris, Rolexes or big homes are needed to live. Instead, I believe in relationships. I spend time, even travel to another state, just to hang out with my friends. I try to spend quality time with my wife and children. I cultivate and nurture relationships even though I love to have money. You get what I mean, don't you? Here's the summary of this video. Being a hurry because your time is short. Don't waste time on little things because 80 years isn't as long as you think. Dream big and pursue your dreams. Even if those dreams will cost you your life. And at the same time, develop and nurture relationships with meaningful people. Thank you very much for watching our videos. We'll like to give you another interesting video for you to enjoy next. But before then, our team will be very happy if you can like this video and share it with your friends on social media. If you're new here, don't forget to subscribe so you won't miss other interesting videos like this. Look at your screen now to see two other videos we handpicked for you to enjoy next. If you like this channel, we're happy to announce to you that our team has launched three other interesting channels. One of our new channels is called Hunt TV, where we publish inspirational videos to inspire and encourage you as you go through the harsh journey of life. Our second channel is called Fame TV, where we share with you the interesting and inspiring stories and biographies of the successful people who have achieved greatness with their lives. Our third channel is called Money TV, which is a channel designed to use more dramatic video clips to teach you about money. Look at the description box to join our three new channels. We love you.


kind of big screen. Hello. Hello. You're supposed to say hello. The way you say hello is the first introduction I have to you. Anybody see Jerry Maguire the movie? Okay. No. Tom Cruise? No. All right. Well the first thing that they say in there is show me the money. Then the next thing you get from that is help me help you. But for me the most important line in that movie is you had me at hello. Because you only have a very small time to pitch the value of your companies and you've got to do it fast. You've got to do it with purpose. You've got to do it with passion. Otherwise, venture capitalists, we're going to fall asleep and then you're done. And you have minutes. You don't have hours and sometimes you only have seconds. A while ago I spoke at a conference and I had about a thousand people and I walked out on stage and there was a woman in the middle in the front row and she was waving her shoe at me and then she was waving a little hanky on her shoe and I'm thinking to myself, oh my God, I got the first and the only crazy person is sitting right in the front row. But she kept doing this. And finally I finished my pitch. I finished my lecture and then I looked down to where she kept pointing at my shoe and attached to my shoe was a piece of toilet paper. It was the size of like the entire stage. I picked it up. I took it off my shoe and I said, anybody lose this? Stood up and they applauded. And you know why? Because I connected to them as people. My first investor in one of my funds came up to me. I'd seen him on every front of every magazine. And he came up and he said, Miss Manis, you've built three companies. You've run two successful venture funds. But you want to know something? Care because whatever you build, I would invest into you. And you are the starting point for every pitch. What is your hello? Guess what? We are all composition of meaning and emotions. All of us. And everything we build is an extension of us. And we have to keep that in mind. So who you are and what you stand for is as important to a venture capitalist as the product that you're building. Raise your hand if you think you have integrity. Who has integrity? I love this. People are like, I don't know. I've got integrity. I may not have integrity. And then I have some people saying to the person beside him, you don't have integrity. Do not raise your hand. The fact is that we don't know what integrity stands for anymore. What is integrity? And yet it is critical. Your values are critical on how you pitch and how you grow the culture of your company. Do you have integrity? If you don't have integrity, let me give you some tips on that. We invest in values, not just valuations. That's what structure capital does. Your values are going to inform how you build your product and your companies. How you inspire. How you perform under challenge in circumstances. Those are all important. Let me tell you about patience. Women, I'm going to talk to you. Men, you've got to listen. Women, men think we are all drama queens. Okay? And we are going to, not all men. Some men think we're drama queens. And we're going to react in an irrational way.   Don't raise your voice. Don't melt down. Show some self-awareness. Show some self-control. I want to see that when you're pitching. I want to see how you handle adversity. And by the way, at the very bottom of this is honor. You've got your word. That's your personal currency. Your word has to go the distance. So you give your word. That's your honor. Keep it. Maintain it. And pass it forward to everyone in your company. We are value-based. We are not just valuation-based. Okay, rock the room. I have a podcast. It's produced by Gimlet Media in the States. It's called The Pitch. We're sort of the antithesis of Shark Tank. And one day, Guy came in. He walks across the stage. And I'm really looking forward to this pitch because I've heard a little bit about his company. Just a wee bit. He walks in, sits down like this. I'm looking at him and I'm thinking to myself, get up out of that chair. Look me in the eye. Show me that you have confidence. Show me your passion.  You need to show that you are confident and not cocky. You need to show that you are going to be able to motivate an employee to motivate and inspire funders and founders. You're going to have to take this company for two to 10 years. And I want to see that in your eyes. And I want to see the respect and I want to see the passion. But first of all, I want you to know who I am. When you go for a pitch, please don't try to sell me a SaaS product when I'm really only interested in bioscience or not just bioscience, but a specific type. There are aerodynamics. Maybe I'm an aerodynamic fund and you're teaching me a product marketplace. Know your VC. We want to be able for you to connect to us the way that we connect to you. Be careful. Do due diligence on us as we are doing due diligence on you. Okay. The why. Most important thing. I've heard pitches all this morning. Everybody, please, if you leave with one thing, not the toilet paper today, but leave with this. The minute you sit down, I want to know why. Why is this product important to you? Why is this product important to a consumer, to a customer? The why is much more important than the what or the how. Why should I care about this? Steve Jobs actually started all this thinking in terms of the why, not Simon Sinek. It was actually Steve that said, what is our emotional connection to our product? I need to know the why. Then start with the how and the what. Why should I care about this product? Why should I care about you? And then go from there. All right. In our investment meetings, we do something really clever. If I were to pitch you a product, in two seconds, I want you to think of either a thousand people that would use this product or the top three companies that could be brand partners, how I'm going to expand their brand or solve their problem, when they're highest problems. Okay. Let me give you one. On demand dog walking. Who would invest in that? All right. That's a pity. Alrighty. So then I think to myself, you're not doing this right. On demand dog walking in two seconds. One, two, think of a thousand people that would use that product. Anybody? It was pitched to me. On demand dog walking. I took at my investor meeting. On demand dog walking. And they looked at me and they said, what? And I said, okay, let me support it with data.  Veterinarians make more money than pediatricians. People spend more money on pet and dog accessories than their own hair accessories. And guess what? There are no regulations with this industry. And it is global. And we were with the third check into Uber. Structure Capital was. Regulations are very high on mind for us. So I started talking about this data and all of a sudden, everybody in the room stopped. And they said, oh, now we get it. Now we get it. We invest in the company. It's called WAG. We just got 650 million from SoftBank. It is now in all the U.S. And it is going global. It's a huge company. I think its valuation is 1.3. And that's the pet market. Because I knew a thousand people would use this. Purina, Petco, they collect the data. That's the value of this company. Boom. Okay. I do not want to hear from any of you that you are the only one. You cannot be the only one. I don't have any competition, Jillian. Well, that's horse manure. Of course, you have some competition. You need to know your competition. You need to know your competitive landscape. And guess what? Do not compare yourself to the next person in the food chain, all right? Who is the next leader? Who is topping the market in your space? I don't want to know the person next to you. I want to know the first person in line. And so should you, because that's how you should be measuring yourself against the front runner. Know who that is. Talk about it. Tell me how you are different, what your differentiator, how you expand on them, how you compliment them, but know it. Don't dock your valuation. Oh, my God. Now, this is a gillie-ism. Okay? We talk a lot about anchoring your valuation. I know it's prestigious to have a big valuation. I know you want to have these big exits, and we want that for you too. But guess what? The composition of these rounds, the minds that you're bringing around the table are much more important than the money of your valuations. It should be something that represents the integrity that you have, the respect, and the value for the money at the mind that you're bringing in, not just the money. So we call it anchoring. Never give a number out when you are talking about your valuation. The VC will say, what is it? And you'll say, okay, now you're going to anchor. I don't know. I was thinking around this. That's based on progress I made from my last round. That's based on how I'm going to deploy capital. This is based on the milestones that I'm going to reach. That's a good answer. That's called anchoring. Don't dock, anchor. And the last but not least, which is not coming up here, it went back to the beginning, but I want you to listen. Being a founder is a very scary.  But I'd liken it to coming to the edge. So I'm going to leave you with a little visual. A venture capitalist, a little bit crazy, but she knows her stuff. Said to a group of founders, I said to all of you, come to the edge. And you said, forget it. I'm going to fall off the edge. I'm not going to come there. I said, no, no, no. You're confident. You've got this. Come to the edge. You said, I'm not quite sure about that. I said, please, come here. Come to the edge. And you all did. And I pushed you. And you flew. So bear that in mind.  You have to do that with confidence. You have to know and experience flying. And if you fall a bit, that's okay too. Pull yourself back over onto the edge, onto the ledge. Know your hello. Come pitch to me anytime. Try to figure out the best way to say hello. Thank you very much.


Welcome to Toffy TV, it is the Everton News Daily. Everton today have been banned from signing academy players for two years and fined half a million pounds by the Football Association and Premier League. Everton found guilty of wrongdoing, encouraging an academy player to sign with them when he was already registered with another team. The player was a card of city, I believe, according to reports and I haven't admitted that wrongdoing. I've done their own investigation basically and I've helped the Premier League with that investigation and this is the punishment for it. It means that Everton can't sign a player who's registered with another Premier League club for the preceding 18 months. So, it goes on in football, it happens all the time, I'm quite sure, we're the latest in it. Obviously you've got to play by the rules and I've tried to bend the rules like Liverpool have been dumped for it and probably City and Chelsea and those kind of teams as well at some stage. Off you go, it just means that there's more money to sign all the players in the world for the first team. Now listen, it goes on, it's gone on forever and now obviously they're cracking down on it so you risk it, you get caught, you take your medicine and you move on. So, Gerri Mina had a press conference today. It's mad the way he had these press conferences months after he signed but he's had it obviously ahead of making his debut on Sunday's Premier League full debut. At Chelsea came on last week against Brighton of course, he played the last five or six minutes of that, played against Gormaria in the friendly or the Sport Peser Cup on Tuesday night, played the full 90 minutes there. Said he's a bit nervous but he's excited about playing in the Premier League. He said he just wants to be happy and he wants to win trophies at Everton and do well. He's really took the club to heart, he said he's got to know the fans, he likes the fans. He said he's a happy person, he doesn't worry too much about things but he's got an excited nervousness about Sunday and he wants to get out and test himself. Said he's always wanted to play in the Premier League and he wants to test himself against some of the best forwards in the world who he feels play in the Premier League. So, you know, obviously it's going to be interesting to see what he's like in the Premier League. He looked very good the other night, like I say, you have to take the opposition into account. He looked a big unit at the World Cup. Can he cope in the Premier League? We'll find out but if he's anything like Marko, Silver and Marcel Brantys signing so far, he'll be fantastic because they have been fantastic so far as well. Talking of a couple of those signings, they have made their way back into the national team, a game being called up. We've got Luca Dean who's been recalled to the French squad. He was in it for the last set of games. Caterham hasn't been though, which is a bit disappointing because I think he's been very good. Andre Gomez has been called up to the Portugal squad and Everton's. I've also had good news today from Michael Keane who is back in the England squad and obviously Job and Pickford in that as well. But really happy for Michael Keane. I think he's been excellent this season and given the way last season went, he's got his head down this season. He started the season off quite well and then got a head injury at Bournemouth and had to come back from that and has been excellent. So congratulations to Michael Keane there for getting his call up to the England squad alongside Job and Pickford. The People's Project underscore has been treating stuff today as we move towards the consultation for Bramley Mordock and the surrounding area next week. The public consultation begins on the 15th of November so a week today. And they mentioned one of the questions would be around stadium capacity. Not surprisingly, lots of people answering it with 60,000 on one of you. It's a bit of a mad one for me because I would have thought that Everton would have had the stadium capacity kind of nailed down to the site and the way they wanted the stadium to look and everything. So it's a bit of a mad one that this is still going on. It might just be paying lip service, making us feel like we've got more of a say in it. I want the best stadium for Everton. I would lie daily, it'd be 60,000. I'm happy with 58, I don't want it lower than 55. But if Everton gave me a reason for it to be lower than 55, it'd have to be a good one. So I would say 55,000 is the minimum it can be. But as long as it's iconic and it's steep and it's intimidating, I'm good with that. But I just think Everton personally, I just think they should put it out there, what the capacity is. Let everyone moan about it for a while and then move on with it because people are going to moan regardless of what it is, I think. So yeah, there you go. So make sure you have your say in this consultation. It's imperative, it's vital that everybody has their say in this. Honestly, it really is. It's not really about Everton. It's about you having your say in the stadium and that surrounding area. Get it, get your opinions down and back the ground. It's going to be the most important thing we're part of as a fan base, I think, probably in our lifetimes. It's a huge, huge thing. So you need to get over there to the people's project and fill in your form, basically. Yeah, and finally, Everton again, I've been linked with Torg and Hazard. He plays for Brush Your Monshing Gladbach and Hazard's younger brother. Go play it, it's actually easy to do anything. I don't know whether this is a tenuous link. Everton have got a lot of creative players. But this is about the third time this story's popped up. Obviously, we're going to report it if it's bouncing around. So keep an eye out for that one and see what happens. Don't forget it's the goodness and sleep out next Friday as well as 16. So if you want to get involved, get over to Everton in the community and get yourself involved in that. We'll be there doing some videos on there as well. Thanks for watching. If you haven't subscribed, please do so. We'll only take a second if you want more videos. Get over and join us on Patreon. See you soon on Toffee TV.


Hello, my name is Barbara Mofeo. I am here today as a representative of Body and Brain Yoga. Body and Brain Yoga has a site in Arlington Center where we offer both in-person and online classes. Body and Brain is hosting Earth Day events across the country to honor the Earth and promote a healthy, peaceful, and more balanced lifestyle. I hope you will join us on April 22, 2023 from 1 to 4 p.m. as we celebrate together. The event will include yoga in the park, a park cleanup, and it's optional if you want to join us for a potluck after the event and family and friends are welcome. Let's meet at the cistern, 1516 Mystic Ave Medford. Parking is available on Kilgore Ave, Mystic Valley Parkway, and Pitcher Ave. Hope to see you then.


It's my 50th birthday, gotta get it out here. Where are you from? Random Lake. First time? First time. What do you expect? Cold. Hello from West Bend. I've been seeing people all my whole life, but really, what are you saying? I'm so glad I took the ride. If you're a will, what's your share?  David, you're on it. I'm to the camera. You're on camera. Not bad. When you ask for icebergs and you ask for cold, sometimes you get your wish. This is a thumbs up here for the polar bears. Good atmosphere. Lots of people jumped into water with us this year. Couldn't ask for better showing. It's good enough to go out and do it one more time. See, when you're as old, I don't know when I got into the water. For Toastmasters. I recommend it for younger people only. Unless you're in good health like me, of course. Where are you from? I'm from the city. I've lived here all my life. I watched the first polar bears go in in the late 60s at King's Park on the south side. But never until this date did I decide to do it. And I'm cold. Yeah, I'm from Shibori again. We're on to 2013. Glad we could bring it in with a nice refreshing dip in the lake. It was a very good turnout. Everybody was safe, had a good time. Little slow getting in and out due to the ice conditions, but we made it work. How many did we need? It's tough to guess. I would say 2 to 300 maybe. Something like that. This is my son. The president. Not yet. We'll know that afterwards. We always get that from the Coast Guard. I was a little nervous that we were going to be able to get in and out in a safe matter. And with a lot of work with shovels and chopping and sawing, we made us a shoot to get into the water and everything worked out great. Nobody got injured. So I'm real happy with that. From Florida. Fort Lauderdale. Coming up for the week, yes. This is the first time they've seen snow this much of it. You saw us jump in the water too? Pretty crazy, huh? What do you think? Crazy or not crazy? Crazy people. What would you do on a new year's day? I don't think they believed that they were actually going to go in. Did you actually think they would go in the water? They went, yeah.