Good afternoon everybody. I'm well done for surviving this far and most importantly welcome to our panel on open-source software funding My name is Kaylin Osborn. I'm a researcher at the Linux Foundation and a PhD candidate in social data science at the University of Oxford Before I introduce our incredible panel. I just want to do some housekeeping and say some introductory words It's firstly on housekeeping. This is the shortest panel of the day and we have 30 minutes So well our time management skills are gonna be tested, but I think we can do it And yes, so some introductory words quickly. I think I I'm probably preaching to the choir when I say open-source software funding or funding is Crucially important to the sustainability of open-source software But the question of who should be doing something about it and how or how not are not straightforward questions So we're hopefully will dig into these questions during this 30-minute panel Just to kind of set the scene of the kind of ecosystem of open-source software as Deborah mentioned this morning log4j really mobilized governments about a year ago because it shed light on the The consequences of an under-investment on open-source software maintenance So just one example of this is the White House meetings last year which resulted in the open SSF mobilization plan Which Brian will tell us more about today Of course, it's not just security that governments care about Today we heard a lot about digital sovereignty also digital public goods Was an interest in supporting digital public goods that led the US government to set up the open tech fund and As Paul Keller remarks in his proposal for a European public digital infrastructure fund to the mouthful This inspired models in Germany with a sovereign tech fund as European Commission With the next generation internet initiative and I'm more recently in France with the digital commons initiative So we're lucky to have Jean-Luc with us today who will tell us more about the NGI at the Commission Of course, it's not just governments, but many nonprofits are involved as well We have Rebecca Rumble from the Russ Foundation They're developing initiative approaches to community grants and we also have Emmy today who will tell us about what invest in open infrastructure is doing and Also, we have philanthropies Investing a lot with the future is a media network just as examples and today we have Govind who'll tell us more about what the Amidio network is doing and also finally, we know that the private sector has been playing a crucial role and Paula wonder if you have your bell ready But as we've already heard many times today The European Commission led a study which found that in 2018 Companies based in the EU invested about 1 billion euros in open-source software Which led to an estimated impact positive impact of 95 billion or up to 95 million euros. So Clearly open source launch. There's a lot of developments in open-source software funding. It's important lots of players are involved But yeah, who's doing what and how they should be doing it We're not doing it doing it and what how should we we should proceed going forward is going to be The topic of discussion today. So without further ado, I'll pass over to our amazing panel I'll invite them to introduce themselves while their organizations are doing and to share some thoughts on a first Provocation, which is why should why should Europe care about open-source software funding? So Jean-Luc Hello, good afternoon. I work for the European Commission so the executive branch of the European Union and among other many responsibility the European Commission is responsible for the implementation of the Union budget. So It's a multi-annual framework seven years one trillion euros and in this budget there is a research program called or ism and We I mean the next generation unit and my with my colleagues We are responsible for implementing a part of it, which is called next generation internet So I guess that's the thing. I'm glad to share today with you You want me to elaborate on why we are doing or we do it next? Yes, please. Okay So next generation internet. This is In few words, it's it's a program that is In four years of existence now, so we have 800 projects. We have mobilized 80 million euro of budget and we still have 25 million for 23 24 open for a contribution and We are focusing on technologies that will drive the internet towards More inclusion more openness more decentralization more privacy and more trust That's the narrative we push and We have a lot of projects initially it was a 80% of open source now it's mandatory open source so we move a little bit from encouraging to mandatory open source and and Open source is very is a vast Number of things we are not going to fund for instance things that are Well funded for instance from foundations or some business model that are Very sustainable. So we are going to focus on those comments internet commands That will that will be used like building blocks For this internet that I mentioned And I can give you few example later Thanks. Yeah, I'm Govind. I work with the Omeria network The Omeria network is a philanthropy organization Which reimagines critical systems and we've deployed over two billion dollars in the service of better markets better inclusion and Our focus areas are responsible technology Reimagining capitalism and our cultures of belonging The reason I think why we are interested in open source and some of our examples is I think our Conscious belief is that technology should be in the service of society and there's an inherent breakdown of trust today in society and Open source historically has allowed us to think about these issues where people participate and collaborate in very non-traditional ways But your decoupling property rights from the value created So this is a way to really decentralize the internet. I think away from getting into conversations about web 3 but sticking with how open source has Evolved It is one of the most important investments that we can make today in our societies Why should Europe care? I think Or some of our examples, I think we have four examples. One of them is we invest in informing policy An example would be an investment in Atlantic Council and open forum Europe to think about policy more deliberately Convening funding we have set up a five hundred million dollar fund an anchor of five hundred million dollar fund to think about deliberate open source implementation and Enhancing and building communities like the open source technology improvement fund here who work at non-security audits So it's a combination of different factors And providing funding and networks to these institutions Why should Europe care? I think every technological revolution is accompanied by a financial revolution without Financial way to buy cars. We wouldn't have had so many cars on the road without Billions of dollars of venture capital. We wouldn't have so much consumer and enterprise technology Today, so I think we need new ways and Europe historically has been very good at a regulating be thinking about institutions But if you take the other two things that impact ecosystems, which are incentives and infrastructure It's imperative that Europe which sits at the center of safeguards and good technological development leads the way in thinking about the financial Revolution in addition to the technological and regulatory revolution Thank you Hi, my name is Emmy Tang. I'm the engagement lead at invested open infrastructure Our mission at invest in open infrastructure or IOIs the name suggests is to increase and accelerate investment in open infrastructure So we do this in a couple of ways. We conduct research To increase our shared level of understanding of the funding landscape. So questions like, you know, what's getting funded? What's not getting funded? Who's funding? What and where are there, you know trends and gaps that we can see? And we use that research to produce strategic recommendations and guidance for key decision makers We also knowing that some of the knowing about some of the constraints and issues with the way that some of the funding mechanisms that are in place have convene key stakeholders to try and pilot and test out some new ways to Fund open infrastructure. So for example, what about participatory budgeting or how can a vendor reciprocity model work, right? And beyond that, we're also launching a fund ourselves with looking at launching early to mid 2024 So in terms of why Europe should care, I think this morning, there's a lot of eloquent speakers who spoke about trust and We at IOI have built an evidence base that Substantiates, you know, that open in particular in terms of having, you know, robust community governance and transparency In the ways that we're working really help promotes trust and encourages stakeholders Participation and so which I think we can all agree that that's crucial for Not only governments, but also corporates in these days and ages. Thank you Hi So I'm Brian Bellendorf. I'm general manager of the open source security foundation It's an organization embedded inside the Linux foundation, but with its own membership its own budget its own remit And we're interestingly both an organization that recruits funds and also disperses them But but it has an operational element to what we do probably the bigger part of what we do is operational But we do disperse some funds in some interesting ways as well Our reason for existence is this recognition that software has often been an out or security has often been an afterthought when it comes to open source software and there's a lots of Default biases and assumptions that even we as open source developers have had about trust in the software supply chain trust that you know after solar winds after You know weaknesses and open SSL that became very pervade caused a lot of downstream kind of thrash In in the open-source world We kind of realized you needed to to think more about how to push security upstream and how to get a better set of Tools and processes and standards together it actually came out of a bunch of different conferences and the like about open-source security that Discovered everyone had these collections of little projects and ideas and if we just put them under one roof and get everyone talking to each Other, maybe we'd have something interesting and so we are this kind of motley assortment of everything from Software such as the sick store software project, which is about signing of artifacts through the software supply chain Sick store is also kind of a service. It's a way to look up whether signatures are valid And even kind of a quasi specification, too. There's a couple of different implementations in different languages There's another project called security scorecards and actually a whole set of things we do which are about trying to objectively measure risk in an open-source projects like what's the likelihood that there are undiscovered undiscovered vulnerabilities in the code that could come and be a problem later I and Other work that we do that is about education. How do we help trained developers to? Recognize common anti-patterns when it comes to security things like parsing untrusted user input Or particularly for format strings and you know, how do we train them to? Look for those in their own code and try to avoid them What we've discovered is that if you can measure risk if you can talk about processes that can systematically work them out You might have a path to raising the floor for security across software across the not just the open-source software Landscape but really frankly the entirety of the of the software industry given that by different studies something like 70 to 90 percent Software sitting inside of any end product is pre-existing open-source code So I was some of the more exciting things that we've done. I think I have come from What we have a project called alpha Omega, which has raised seven and a half million dollars to go and target two very complementary activities one Going out and trying to scan saw the top ten thousand open-source projects to systematically look for New vulnerabilities that look like things that we've discovered before things that haven't been resolved yet Even though they've been widely known as as issues out there and proactively issue pull requests to go and fix those And we've got that infrastructure standing up now We've already discovered a bunch of CVE's and they're starting to report that The complementary side to that is the alpha side, which you could really think of as capacity building amongst other open-source Foundations in how they work how they deal with security issues and so we've dispersed Roughly on average four hundred thousand dollar grants to Python to rust to jQuery to node And to one more I'm blanking on That no clips. Sorry I to try and help resource security teams I help them resource adoption of different security practices and I use the term capacity building very much intentionally Because I think of it like the kind of capacity building that development organizations or governments often do when they look at What does it take to systematically go and up level a how how a country feeds its people or how a nation state? Manages its its democracy or or other types of capacities, right? Because we're eager to help uplift the entire industry and kind of project by project and move on to additional projects and fund those So we've just we've raised a dispersed a bunch of money to do this work I should I should also note, you know, we had this inflection point about a year ago right after log for J Where a whole bunch of people started to ask us? It's nice that you've got these cute projects But what would it take to actually close and solve some of the issues that are out there, right? What would it take and this is not a perhaps a fair question, but to prevent the next log for shell type of vulnerability and And just dialing down on that for a bit. I log for log for shell the vulnerabilities that Led to the log for shell breach had you hired a third-party code reviewer? I'll go out on a limb and say what have been a fifty that the hundred thousand dollar project to hire Ostef for example, I don't know if any of you have hopefully all of you have heard of Ostef Ostef is an amazing organization that front-ends Third-party code review work and does a lot of other things a mere Montessori sitting here in this fancy pinstripe suit I will tell you all about it But you know basically you can go to them and say we'd like to do an audit of this software project This package how much will it cost he'll go and talk to a bunch of different orgs come back with a quote And then may oversee this process that makes sure that it actually solves this for open source communities So for 50 or 100 grand I would wager We could have found those issues and proactively remediated them through a Coordinated vulnerability disclosure process and kind of avoided the billions of dollars We don't even know how much disruption resulted from the log for a shell incident that happened over a year ago And all everyone's ruined winter holidays I can't tell you what the next log for shell is but I could give you a list from As some of the projects we've done we have a way of looking at one of the most critical projects out there Here's the list of 200 projects that probably have about a 1% chance of Having the next log for shell level breach through a combination of how critical are they and and what what are the risk scores that We get from all these studies we can do so let's do third-party code reviews of them, right? What's 100 grand times 200 projects? It's 20 million dollars, right? That's a lot of more money even a hundred grand even 50 grand is more money than anyone open source project tends to have in its Back pocket to apply to something like this But it's it's pocket change for a lot of governments not to say it's not it's completely non-trivial Like you have to go and justify and show value But this is the kind of scale that we need to muster if we want to try to solve some of these security issues at scale That and and address them entirely not just you know throw rocks at it and hope to have an impact But it's also not billions of dollars. It's not trillions of dollars to solve this problem And so at this point about a year ago We developed a plan something that we called the the security mobilization plan that looked at ten different kind of angles to These challenges to securing open-source software in the software supply chain Funding of third-party code reviews was one of them funding a Assert an emergency response team for the next under resourced open-source team that finds a bug and doesn't know How to manage a disclosure process is another I mean there's I can I can go on it on a board folks I thought when we put this together it would be again billions of dollars to actually have this kind of impact It's a hundred and fifty million dollars, which again is bigger than my budget bigger than most Organizations budgets in the open-source lens of the world But but a completely tractable amount especially if as companies and as governments around the world We work together to address this so so we're really eager to figure out How do we help this collective? Recognition of the need to make this proactive investment in security hardening and and and the not just the creation of digital public goods But making them safe making them consumable making them the kinds of things that we can build critical infrastructure on top of Great. Thank you, Brian. I've had clear answers to why Europe should care and we're just yeah at the halfway point or just over it so To make the most of the remaining 13 minutes, I think we should focus on two questions, which is going forward Who should be doing what who should be mobilized and how should they be doing it or how should they not be doing it by that? I mean what funding models would you recommend? Cooperation that needs to happen so on so perhaps we can start with you John Luke since you are working at the European Commission Yeah, sure no problem. So on the who I guess everybody that has money is welcome So it's a very simple answer We at Commission we will for sure invest we have invested the as I mentioned in the next generation internet We are going to invest in a next work program. We have open course So for instance, we have a fund that is a with a 27 million euro open And then we will we'll invest also in in pilots of 14 million euros now the question how is very interesting one and and We at Commission we realize that we are not very well not necessarily well adapted to Target the open source communities Because we have you know very heavy process and it's it's not necessarily the best approach So the way we work we work with in the two steps. We give money to intermediaries that in turn give money to Open sources and the people developing the comments. That's what Is the term we are starting to use So it's it's today. They are open course for Precisely innovators and there is a deadline in two months just to be practical and we are going to to have projects that are going to improve the internet in the in the sense that I mentioned and as example, we have Existing community projects or take the GC big blue button We are working with the solid community the Fediverse community. We have 20 projects Open hardware is also very important. We have a risk 5 projects which is from from Malo Linux Foundation. We have open power. Also, we are working on the Value chain from design to electrical level. So there are software there and and we try to Make sure this is open open for students to democratize the process of moving from the design to the To the layout to the to the open hardware. That's for example wire guard was also funded by NGI and We have a lot of projects in relation to Distributed decentralized infrastructure. So the common denominator is openness for sure is a better privacy. We want to have an internet that is Protecting privacy trust is is another key world. So I guess that's the how we are going to to work. Yes Thank you I think I have Brian spoke about the risk But I also want to talk about like the opportunity that it presents Europe and many other Geographies right see you has a GDP of 17 trillion dollars and The cost to cost the cost to start a company a decade ago was maybe 10 million and today the cost to start a company is literally 100th of that it's because of this open source infrastructure. So we have to also frame this in the context of innovation What can happen in the next 20 30 years? How much money can be added? I think oh if he came up with this amount of a hundred billion dollars is added to GDP right and So we should get the industry to contribute back an example of that is a fund we set up with open technology fund Which is a collaboration between the github octa Philanthropy our sentiment futures and the federal government. So you can experiment with new funding models And get industry to collaborate and contribute back Tax breaks is an excellent way Second is I think European Philanthropy should think more actively about de-risking some of this stuff for industry and the government and Take an active participation in thinking about digital commons and open source Third I think it's definitely government right and if you set up like a European digital infrastructure fund 100 million 500 million just like the sovereign tech fund in Germany. It's not a lot of capital to think about the next billions of dollars that can be added to the overall GDP and finally I think one thing one idea I've been playing around with is Just like a social impact bond can we have an open source or a digital infrastructure bond where governments and philanthropies guaranteed on a result Actually do intermediation of this fund right like a bond. It's like a simple bond structure Someone pays for it and if it is successfully remediated over a three to five year period governments Actually pay for results instead of paying in anticipation of impact Thank you. Go ahead. I mean would you like to share some thoughts? Yeah, I think I'm gonna talk a little bit more on metal level about the how to fund right. I think well First thing is that I think there needs to be definitely more coordination and transparency in terms of how Funders are working got to walk the talk when we fund open source, right? So I mean we see that If anyone's tried to dig into kind of funding data and analyze funding trends You know that this data is actually really really hard to analyze and obtain because it's just all over the place and Not every single actually a lot of open source projects don't declare how much they've got when for what time kind of timescale and that sort of thing So Without this kind of data is really hard to figure out how to coordinate between different funding efforts and you know The the flip side the downside of that is when you have for example A certain funder coming into a certain space with a huge amount of investment What we've seen is it could potentially drive away other smaller funders that were initially kind of funding that space safely and Then that's not an issue the issue is you know when there is for example a change in strategic priority in terms of that particular funder We see that this space of open infrastructure is then left very very vulnerable and so I think With more data with more research in this area and with what with funders will flee working more transparently We can actually have more coordination and avoid those single points of failure and really work to us You know a more coordinated action to Collective efforts to fund fund this space So one of my favorite things from the last year is that you know It's not a free software isn't necessarily free as in speech or free as in beer. It's free as in puppy And I think what's what's always driven a kind of the value exchange and the the energy of the creation of open-source software has been The the use value that comes from it from the individuals and the companies really receiving it working with it and Recognizing this kind of implicit Obligation to contribute back if you're fixing a bug don't keep that bug fixed to yourself Contributed upstream right if you have an idea for a feature, you know You could write it all yourself and contribute upstream Sure, but you might also find other people willing to help you to do that, right? And so this implicit like I got it for free, but I should take some responsibility for my own kind of like use of it and Pay it forward, right? I mean, that's a very socialist term I would I would be called a socialist in the US if I put it in those terms, right? Not not positively, but it's actually really a positive thing in my opinion, right this proactive pay it forward Kind of cycle that we've developed an open source And so I think the the first thing and that's this is always powered open-source development even since Rishabh Iyer Ghosh at the European open-source observatory He was was doing some of the first econometric work in open source in like the late 90s and and based on surveys and other data Concluded it wasn't charity. It wasn't you know research dollars It was actually the use value coming from open source that drove so many Contributors to that so that Figuring out how to how to keep that engine going is critical I think to making sure how do we not, you know strangle the goose that laid the golden egg, right? Like that's that's the first thing the second of course though is that there are some institutions That have perhaps been a bit more of a free rider on this stuff than others So the cloud companies the technology companies the folks who are close to the bone on some of this stuff They do recognize that need to pay it forward There's other organizations that are just now waking up to the need to have ospos for example, right? Ospos at large companies that are retailers or automotive firms. Thank you very much to to continental who's here and and I mean Mercedes and others I'll do this as well So these kind of end-user companies and increasingly smaller companies recognize that even if before they hadn't thought of themselves as a Software development operation they use this stuff They should you know invest in it like a puppy take care of it like a puppy And then and then also pay it forward and if government only government is a massive user of open source code And if they only invested back upstream into it proportionate to their use of it the way that happens in the rest of industry They would be a huge contributor to open source and what we've seen is that there are in the United States and a lot of other countries policies against government Employees contributing upstream against government contractors who are typically paid by the hour You know contributing upstream so we need to look at some of those policies And I think if we just made some minor changes We'd see a lot of of that kind of funding and that resulting work come in but then finally Let's look at are there systematic improvements that can be made particularly around security Which all of us all of us want somebody else to pay for security work We want to be able to take it You know we want to be able to take it for granted right we should be able to take it for granted The fact though is sometimes there's large expenses like a third-party audit Sometimes there's the kind of expense that goes into paying for things like Validating signatures on your upstream dependencies that don't create an immediate benefit for you So they're not quite a feature But they're in the long-term benefit for your users and in resiliency against the kinds of attacks that we all hope We don't ever become the subject of right so for that kind of investment Foundations are an appropriate way to try to coordinate some of this and pool some of this interest in this effort But I also think that's a role for governments to play There's an economist named Mariana Mazzucato who has been doing a lot to try to understand the value of public goods Public infrastructure and the resulting economic impact that can come from I mean bridges and highways But digital public goods as well and I think if we had a sober analysis of the economic value being created by improvements into open-source code and then carved out a 1% of that value as a as a pay it forward or pay it upstream type of thing We would we would we would be able to tackle some of these systemic issues I think we see with security and open-source code, but but in other places where open-source needs that kind of investment Thank you, Brian Disconscious of time we have two minutes left. I have a few more questions I wanted to ask but I'll just conclude with one last question Which is I'll like to hear from all of you very quickly one thing that you're optimistic about Enter in terms of open-source software funding okay, so Open source is becoming extremely important There are many factor for that and some of us discuss that so I X I'm optimistic about Notably the involvement of governments. There are many reasons for that. There is an economic argument OFE and front of her did a study recently that shows that investing in open source brings an increase of GDP an increase of jobs and Startups, so there is an economic argument. There is a strategic argument because open source is everywhere lock 4g was Revealing for that and it rings a bell for a lot of decision-makers and it's also somehow a geopolitical question There was a study from the French Institute of International Relations that explore the logic of regions Russia China and the US with with very interesting top-down policies the The BEMOL or the the concern is that When a government enter in this world, which is very bottom-up grassroots There may be a mismatch, so we have to be careful Top-down policies do not always fully align with the bottom up That's one of the the message and lesson we we we got so it's important to design policies that are Exploring the potential of open source, but at the same time leave the freedom and leave the Decentralization aspect of and it's not it's not easy. I mentioned we use intermediaries because Commission we are not Fully equipped but at the moment that we have the instrument It makes sense to start reflecting on a more strategic way. Should we have in Europe and open? an open source operating system for Devices from some smartphone should we have a browser in Europe? Yes. No, should we think about? Hardware in Europe, but all this question can only come when I believe we have the instrument to address The community because it's a leverage effect that is for us very important and if we Put ourself in in few years from now. I believe the seed we are putting with this amount of money I mentioned which are not the big with all their contributors with philanthropics with Partners we we can have in few years from now the the building blocks a trusted building blocks open that will Allow business model to flourish and that will allow also Users who have a more trusted experience with the internet We have to keep in mind the evolution of AI the intelligent bots so brains that will work for us Multiverse that will give an immersive experience as it's close to reality and the web three that will allow transaction almost Immediate so that this combination can be very powerful But at the same time we have to have the trusting tools that will allow us to to do more. Thank you Okay, we're at time. So let's just hear very very quickly from the rest of the panel Maybe one of you two sentences. What are you optimistic about governed? I'm seeing a lot of momentum around legislation and Capital convening in both the US and Europe and the fact that there are so many people sitting here at 5 30 p.m Listening to us. It's very hopeful. Great Any yeah likewise I'm I'm because of this panel. I think I'm optimistic in this conference as well I think there's a genuine willingness of all of us coming together to understand What incentives there are for all of us to be in this room and those who are not in this room as well to bring more People into the conversation and I think that's you know, the first step to better Coordination and collaboration I'm very optimistic about the government's outside of Europe and America not to say I'm not optimistic with the ones that are In but the ones outside Singapore Korea Japan in South America a lot of them are recognized in the need to invest in this Systematically and recognize the role. It's already playing in their own economies Thank you. I Won't sum up in the interest of time. So please join me in thanking our amazing panelists for the panel


Hello, everyone, and welcome to Think Tech Hawaii's Hawaii Food and Farmer Series. My name is Stephanie Mock, and I will be your host today. Hawaii Food and Farmer Series aims to talk to those who are part of Hawaii's food system, whether that's farmers in the field, chefs, restaurant owners, or all the agricultural professionals who are behind the scenes who help make farming in Hawaii possible and ultimately help comprise our Hawaii food system and food sustainability movement. Today's show is titled 808 Planner, Utilizing New Technology for Hawaii's Farmers, and today our special guest is one of those behind the scenes actors who helps make farming possible in Hawaii. She works with many different farms of all different sizes throughout the islands and she'll be talking to us today about her new project called 808 Planner and how this new project will help farmers throughout the islands and ultimately help our food sustainability movement. So, again, I'm joined in the studio for 808 Planner, Utilizing New Technology for Hawaii's Farmers, and today we have Jean Brokish, who's the Executive Director of O'ahu Resource Conservation and Development Council, better known as O'ahu R-C-N-D. And even though O'ahu R-C-N-D has O'ahu in the name, they provide services throughout the islands for farmers of all sizes, whether that's technical assistance, outreach, workshops, farmer training, or, most importantly, what we're talking about today, technology. So I'd like to take one second and offer a quick and warm welcome to our special guest, Jean Brokish. Hi, Jean. Welcome to the studio. Is this your first time? It is. Yeah, thank you for having me on. Of course. Thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate you taking the time and being a huge supporter of Hawaii agriculture and all the work that you do to help support that mission. So I mentioned that you're with the O'ahu Resource Conservation Development Council, or the nickname, I guess, of O'ahu R-C-N-D. And, you know, you've been working here almost 10 years, I believe, but I thought we could take a step back, kind of learn how you got involved in agriculture as we like to talk to our guests, because there's many different avenues of agriculture of how people get involved, either growing up on a farm, education, doing Peace Corps, etc. So I thought we could learn a little bit about Jean, the person, about your time in Hawaii agriculture and how you are going to help support the future of Hawaii agriculture. Sure. Yeah, so I actually got my start. I grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, and I spent many, many days, years, lots of time outside with the environment, with animals, with plants. I like to say I inherited my mother's green thumb. I like to grow things a lot, and I think my experiences growing up on a farm in a rural area in Wisconsin inspired me or led me to studying agriculture in college. I got a bachelor's degree in agronomy from UW River Falls, which is a small branch university, very focused on agriculture, part of the Wisconsin system. Rural Wisconsin. Rural Wisconsin, yes. And then after my bachelor's degree, I pursued a master's in soil science from Purdue University, which led me to a lot of interesting opportunities in agriculture in a variety of roles, a variety of places, and in 2008 I made my way to Hawaii, and very shortly after that I obtained a position with O'ahu Rc&D as a project manager working with farmers in the Waimanala watershed. We had a program and some cost share financial resources to develop conservation plans for them, and then also provide financial resources for them to implement conservation practices on a watershed scale. So that was a great opportunity to get to know a very important agricultural area in O'ahu. You kind of hit the ground running then when you got here, huh? I did. You're like, boom, I'm here. Let's provide cost share opportunities. Let's make this happen. Let's make this happen. Yeah. So perhaps you could tell us, so you're executive director of O'ahu Rc&D, and you mentioned that you started off as project manager. So, you know, you climb the ladder per se, and then could you explain what O'ahu Rc&D does now? Sure, yeah. So it's the 20th year. It's a nonprofit organization. It was formed in 1997. And it really came about as one of the locally led organizations that originally was sponsored and kind of cultivated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It is one of 375 Rc&D councils across the country. And it's really designed to be kind of the local arm, the connection between the federal programs and the local communities. Over the years, the federal connection has changed and morphed and really virtually disappeared with federal program cuts. But as an independent nonprofit organization, we continue to work with local communities, agriculture being a very important part of the local and rural kind of sustainability in Hawaii here. And we do a lot of outreach, workshops. We have a variety of resources that we produce both for like environmental stewardship, but also business planning, marketing, economic sustainability of agriculture. And then combine a lot of our services together through an approach called conservation planning, which is really providing technical assistance one-on-one with farmers on their site to figure out what's the best use of the resources. How can we work together and tweak some things that might improve both their profitability, their production, as well as the environmental sustainability? So this idea of conservation planning, you're talking about this technical assistance on the ground, working with individual farmers and larger operations. But can you tell me in a quick sentence, what is a conservation plan? Because it sounds great what you're talking about, but if I don't know what a conservation plan, what exactly is it? Sure, yes. It's something that's difficult to boil down into an elevator speech. I have to, I have to. I wanted you to try at least. Okay, I'll try. So basically a business or a strategic plan that is less focused on economics and more focused on your use of the natural resources. So you're doing an inventory. What are the soils on your land? What are the plants that might be growing already? What could grow well? Are there areas of erosion? Are there areas where water quality, water bodies or water quality might be impaired or inadequate sources for irrigation, for example? So it's like the strategic or business plan for managing your natural resources. So you have an ultimate goal to be economically viable as an operation, but how are you going to do that by managing your natural resources? Well, if you think about farming, we really need the soil. And as somebody who got her degree in soil science.  Yeah, I'm a soil nerd. A good one. Soils are living, breathing systems. It's not dirt. I used to learn in college that dirt was a four letter word. Okay. Whereas soil is a natural living, alive. Yeah, it really sustains us. And if you think about farming and your business is farming, if you don't protect your soil or enhance your soil, you're really literally eroding away. Sorry, bad pun. But you're literally eroding away the foundation of what makes your business possible and successful. So I read the statistic that there's approximately 7,000 farms throughout the islands. Is there any sort of statistic or a general number of how many farms have conservation plans or need conservation plans? So in addition to the conservation plan being beneficial from the farm or managing the resources, one of the other benefits is it allows you to comply with local environmental rules and regulations. So you would think in an ideal world everybody would have one of these both from the environmental stewardship standpoint as well as our local laws. But unfortunately a lot of farmers just don't know about it. And I think with the changing local agriculture, a lot of new farmers coming on, a lot of small farms, leasing land or owning land, there's not a lot of awareness about conservation planning. And there's somewhere around 10% to 15% of Hawaii's farmers have an active or current conservation plan. They may have had one developed in the 90s or the 80s even. But there's opportunity to update that and revisit that given the new technology we have, maybe the new farming approaches that they're using. And so there's definitely room to make it easier and to sort of move the needle and get more people informed about conservation practices that they may already be doing actually. But a conservation plan and going through the process of creating a conservation plan would allow them to formalize it and document their goals and their practices. And as well as a system in record keeping, which is something that I don't, I know very few people actually love and I think it's a very difficult thing for farmers to find time in their schedules to do. But a conservation plan could help them record their practices, kind of help formalize their goals, both benefit for themselves as well as how they communicate to their partners, their customers, et cetera. And I think when I'm thinking about it too, you know, because of Hawaii's unique geography and isolation from other larger land masses, it can be difficult to get access to agricultural professionals who are able to, you know, satisfy this huge demand that we have for conservation planning. You said somewhere only between 10 and 15% have a current one. In order to get that 100%, which I think is the ideal goal, we would need a whole host of conservation planners and I, you know, especially with funding, you know, the classic understaffed, underfunded, how can we streamline conservation planning and make it available to all farmers? So I think, you know, what we're going to be talking about in our second half today is how do we streamline that process? Because like you said, there's this huge demand and many different benefits for farmers, but how do we streamline that and make it available and allow all farmers to know about this process? So what, you know, before we start talking about the new technology, what's the general process of getting a conservation plan? Like who do I call or like do I do a site visit? Where is the general standard? Sure. So for many, many years, the federal government, the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the local soil and water conservation districts had a lot of employees and technical assistance available for all farmers. But through, again, those government and programmatic changes, funding cuts, their staff has shrunk greatly and their priorities have shifted and they're being basically mandated from Washington. These are the people you need to work on. These are the goals you need to work on. And so there's just more and more need in Hawaii. Again, as I mentioned, the changing agriculture and new farmers and there's fewer people to provide those services. However, there are, so there's the local soil and water conservation districts. There's 16 in the state of Hawaii. And then each county in Hawaii also has federal employees through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. There's also private consultants. Maybe some planning services or planning consultants that could work with farmers to develop conservation plans. And then little nonprofit organizations like Oahu Rc&D who've been doing this for a while and provided either through grant funding, subsidize it through grant funds or do it on a fee-for-service basis. But even an army of people, I think there's really a greater need than there is the ability to provide those services. You say little but growing because we're going to be talking about how Oahu Rc&D is growing with this new project of 808 Planner and helping to fill that need for conservation planning assistance. Yeah, so we're going to take a short break and think that Hawaii's going to show some short messages and when we return we'll continue talking with Jean Brokish, the executive director of Oahu Resource Conservation Development Council. We spent the first half of our show getting to know how she got involved in agriculture, especially agriculture here in Hawaii, but now learning more about conservation planning and the need for conservation planning assistance for Hawaii's farmers. Our second half of the show will feature 808 Planner, a new development or program or website if you will, that Oahu Rc&D has developed and we'll see how farmers are currently using that new technology and how they'll continue to use that new technology into the future. We'll be right back. Stay tuned. This is Stink Tech, Hawaii, raising public awareness. Welcome back everyone. We've been talking with Jean Brokish, the executive director of Oahu Resource Conservation and Development Council, better known as the Oahu Rc&D. We've heard her background in agriculture and talking about conservation planning and Oahu Rc&D. We've talked a lot about these broad topics, these great environmental stewardship programs and entities that help support our island's natural resources, especially Oahu Rc&D. Our show today is titled 808 Planner, Utilizing New Technology for Hawaii's Farmers. This half of the show is going to be all about 808 Planner, a new technology that farmers can use throughout the state to help with conservation planning assistance and other areas of record keeping and documenting and mapping their properties, et cetera. So I'm going to turn to Jean and I'm going to ask her, what's 808 Planner? What's the elevator pitch for 808 Planner? And then we're going to talk more about how she helped develop this technology, how farmers are currently using this technology, and how the future of farmers here in Hawaii can use this technology to help their operation in the long term. All right. Well, I just want to say thank you again for joining us. And I'm just going to ask, what is 808 Planner? So as you mentioned, it's the way of utilizing some technology that is available and connecting that with what used to be a very paper process, very resource-intensive process, and connecting those and providing an online user-friendly tool for farmers to learn about their property, learn about what resources they have available, and then connect those dots with some conservation practices that could help improve the stewardship and the management of those resources on their farm. All right. So is this a website? Is this a program I download? How do I access 808 Planner? It's an online program. It's 808planner.org. You create a free account, and then once you establish an account, it's an online software app. You can do it through your laptop. You can do it through a smartphone. There's some processes, just some user information. You create a user account, put your name, contact information in there, and then you identify some of your goals. What are your resource objectives? What do you want to accomplish by using 808 Planner or through a conservation plan? And then from that, you do a quick mapping of your property and then connecting the dots with what kinds of conservation practices might be the best suited for you. So you just gave us a very quick overview, which I love, and I thought we could take this moment to show a short video so people can see the website and how you kind of move through that website and create this conservation plan and learn about practices. So let's take a second right now and check out that video. Sure. So Jean, if you could tell us as the video is going through, maybe you can read or tell us what's happening on the screen. Sure. So this is a view of the website, 808planner.org. The first thing you do is create an account. You create a free account using your email address and then after you get your password, you identify your resource objectives as it says. So there's improved air quality, reduced soil erosion, things like that. Then the next process is to map your fields and this is a pretty simple paired down mapping software where you just draw a polygon, you label it and then based on the resource objectives, it will tell you which conservation practices work best. If you want to learn about any of them, you just click the link in a little pop-up window with a picture and a description appears and then you can review your plan and the important part here is once it's finished, it can be a document for you to use to just help provide information and guidance of your stewardship, but if you want to make it formal and use it to qualify for funding, the key is to work with your local soil and water conservation district to make it formally approved and make it kind of an official document that would be recognized by the county government, the federal government, perhaps your landowners or whomever you work with on your property. So I know this is an agricultural show and we love farmers, but who else can use this kind of information and technology to benefit their operations or their entities? Sure, so large landowners, so for example, Department of Agriculture, they have a lands or DLNR has lands in their purview. They could use it, agricultural professionals employed by those entities could use it to inventory their properties, learn about it, map out some areas that are maybe more susceptible or areas that are in conservation practices. As well as just homeowners could, it's not ideal necessarily or it's not necessary for homeowners to have a conservation plan. But they may want to learn soil health techniques for their garden. Of course, right, and it provides some useful ideas on tips on like cover cropping, for example, or windbreaks. And really the idea, I think one of the benefits of 808 Planners, what it takes, what can be kind of a complicated, really opaque process of figuring out what conservation practices might work for you. And it pairs it down based on your objectives, as I said. But it also provides a very simple description and a picture for you to get an understanding of what does that mean and what would that look like if I employed something like that on my property. And I really like that it's like a user-dominant experience in the sense that farmers know their land best, right? Obviously, you know, people can provide information and additional recommendations, but ultimately they're managing the land and they know their process and their routine and schedule, and they're able to tweak that and learn about practices that fit within their schedule for economic reasons or natural stewardship reasons as well. Yeah, absolutely. This is not something that somebody creates in a back room without ever knowing the property. Ideally, the farmer is the one, as you said, the one who knows the property the best. They know where the water ponds, they know where the erosion is happening and can utilize this program, 808 Planner, to get some ideas. Oh, okay, well, if I want to reduce erosion, these are the four practices that might work for me and out of that, oh, I really like this one here. You know, this makes the most sense. So I'm going to put that in my plan and there's also the opportunity to schedule a practice so you can say, do this in March of 2018. So you start thinking about the future and how that works into your harvest schedule and everything like that. Right, right, right. And as well as utilizing it to make notes. Okay, well, I planted papaya, this is the orchard that has papaya that was established in 2013 and it kind of becomes, as I mentioned, that record keeping tool as well. So we keep talking about, you know, how farmers could potentially use it. I was wondering, are there any success stories you've had? You mentioned that it's only been out for a couple months now. So I know it's still pretty brand new and we're trying to get the word out as much as possible. But have you had any farmers use 808 Planner and find success with it? Yeah, so one idea, one benefit of using this is to just get the information out there. But really the finish line is getting farmers to go through the process, have a conservation plan, and take it to their local soil and water conservation district for approval, as I mentioned. At that point it becomes an official document that is recognized by the county for the grading and grubbing environmental ordinances as well as potential funding. And it really just went online in June, became fully fledged, workable program, it's real, exactly. And last month we had a farmer present his conservation plan to a soil and water district on Oahu and it was approved. And so that was the first farmer to make it to the finish line. First big accomplishment. It was great, yeah. And we also had a farmer on Kauai who was using it to show a landowner, hey, this is what I want to do, kind of map it out and use the document to show I'm legit, I'm real, I have a plan and was able to secure a longer lease from the landowner with the conservation plan that was developed through 808 Planner. So yeah, we've been talking about all these benefits, environmental stewardship, but record keeping and profitability and just getting it on paper. But I think a great benefit of it is it becomes a document that other entities can understand. Farmers have all these great ideas that most times live in their heads or they're trying to speak about them all the time and they can't really show it in hard copy and so this allows at least a streamlined way of I want to do X, Y and Z, I want to do it this time and they can show that, you know, FSA, they can show other potential funders or even landowners and say, listen, I am legitimate, like give me that lease and that's a great side benefit I think of 808 Planner. I know it was designed for conservation planning but you're talking about all these small farmers who ultimately need land, right? And you know, it's really hard to find land in Hawaii and if you're just like, I want to farm and don't really have a plan to show, you can develop a business plan but that doesn't necessarily show your management style or schedule so 808 Planner kind of loops all these great mapping technologies, conservation practices, but also just that record keeping, scheduling document form that other people can understand. So if people want to learn more about 808 Planner, you know, who do they contact? Who do they work with? I know we've mentioned the local soil and water conservation districts who are great resources throughout Hawaii but like we said, there's only so many planners on the islands, in-person planners, so what, if a farmer is like, oh, this sounds really interesting, what would you say their next steps are in using 808 Planner and getting a conservation plan, that end goal you were talking about? Sure, so really the first step is to go to 808planner.org and create an account. Simple. Yeah, and then from there, there's an about page that has some more information as well as a short tutorial video that you don't need to create an account to access. You can just walk through it, it provides a little more detail than the video we just watched and that just provides an overview of the program, how it works. But really the best advice is really to just dive in and give it a try and if you get stuck you can contact Oahu RCD for help. You could contact a conservation planner on a neighbor island for help, pick up the phone, email. There's a link to Oahu RCD email from the 808planner.org domain and just get started, give it a try. I mean, farming is risky. This is one way, you know, farmers are not unfamiliar with taking risks and trying new things. Oh, I like that, that sounds really nice. The original risk takers can now utilize this new technology so they can minimize their risk and have this tool in their toolbox so that they can go out there and ultimately get that end goal of getting a conservation plan approved. Absolutely, yeah, go for it. I wanted to just give a quick shout out to some of the funders as well, some of the supporters who helped us get this far, get to the finish line. Yeah, so originally we got some funding from Ulupono Initiative to do some stakeholder assessing them, getting some feedback from them about what would be useful and then we were able to acquire some funding from the state through the Department of Agriculture. Some private foundations also contributed government entities, HACD and Atherton Family Foundation, Community Foundation, et cetera. So we're really grateful for everybody who's been behind it and get at this farm. I want to see some people try it out, provide us some feedback. Continue to improve and move it forward and help our Hawaii farmers. Exactly. Well, thank you so much for joining us in the studio today and I'm so glad that you had the chance to talk about 808 Planner because I think it is a tool that's good for all of Hawaii's farmers, so not just here on Oahu. And again, thank you for joining us. My pleasure, thank you. We've just been speaking with Jean Broakish, Executive Director of Oahu Resource Conservation who's been talking about 808 Planner, a new technology that Hawaii's farmers can utilize to develop conservation plans and ultimately help with environmental compliance but also, you know, mapping out their operations. So I'd like to thank Jean for taking the time today to join us in the Think Tech Hawaii Studio and I'd like to thank Think Tech Hawaii Studio and staff for hosting our show today. We'll see you next time on Hawaii Food and Farmers. Thank you.


effects on equal opportunities, human rights, island communities, local government, sustainable development, etc. Equal Opportunities The bill does not have an adverse impact on the basis of gender or gender reassignment, marital status, religion and belief, pregnancy and maternity or sexual orientation. Disability is a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010. Deafness would generally qualify as a disability under the Act, regardless of whether deaf people consider themselves as having a disability. It is anticipated that a consequence of the bill will be a greater equality of access to services provided by public bodies, regardless of disability and as such, it will have a positive impact on most individuals within this group. At the same time, it must be recognised that individuals with a hearing loss who do not use BSL might be at a disadvantage compared with the rest of the hearing impaired population as a result of the bill. With regard to age, a greater proportion of older people suffer from hearing loss. Although only a proportion of those affected will adopt BSL, the bill will have a positive impact for those who do in their engagement with public bodies. It is anticipated that an effect of the bill will be to broaden opportunities to learn BSL which could deliver positive benefits for the older age group. Service users with a range of ethnic or racial backgrounds may encounter some difficulties accessing services in their first language. The provisions in this bill do not prevent public bodies from developing policies relating to other minority languages. Human Rights The bill does not give rise to any issues under the European Convention on Human Rights. It is designed to enhance the rights of all those who use BSL. The Scottish Human Rights Commission, the commission, promotes and protects the human rights guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights which form part of the law of Scotland through the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Scotland Act 1998. The commission also promotes and protects other human rights which have been granted by international conventions ratified by the UK. The commission states that the foundation of modern human rights is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, UDHR. The core values of the UDHR are human dignity, fairness, equality and non-discrimination. The bill enhances the human rights principle of equality and non-discrimination, the principle that all individuals are equal as human beings and by virtue of the inherent dignity of each human person. It seeks to do so by enabling users of BSL to enjoy the same level of service as those who use other languages. Participation in inclusion, the principle that all people have the right to participate in and access information relating to the decision making processes that affect their lives and wellbeing, should also be enhanced by the bill since it will lead to a consideration of how BSL users can be involved in decision making about services that affect them through the provision of information in their own language and the opportunity to engage with government and its agencies using their own language. Island Communities The bill is designed to benefit all BSL users in Scotland and does not have any specific implications for those living in island communities. Nevertheless, it is hoped that those living in island communities will benefit from the bill through its potential to identify any gaps in provision that might arise from the availability of BSL skills among those delivering public services in areas with low population density. Local Government Under the bill, local authorities being listed authorities under the bill will set out action in relation to BSL in authority plans and must try to achieve consistency with the national plan and any guidance issued by the Scottish ministers. In producing plans subsequent to the first session, local authorities will be required to review and report progress with their previous plans. The Scottish Government will use this review report to form part of its performance review. The financial impact of local authorities new responsibilities under the bill is set out in the financial memorandum. Sustainable Development The UK shared framework for sustainable development was abducted by the Scottish Government in 2005. Commitment to the framework was reaffirmed in the recent draft Scottish planning policy. The framework includes the principle ensuring a strong, healthy and just society, meeting the diverse needs of all people in existing and future communities, promoting wellbeing, social cohesion and creating equal opportunity for all. The bill puts this principle into practice by ensuring that those delivering public services give consideration to the needs of BSL users with the aim of ensuring that such individuals have an equal opportunity to access their services. The Christie Commission report closer reflects the sustainable development aims of intra and intergenerational equity and public participation. The bill seeks to help meet the needs of members of the deaf community, not only to access services more easily, thereby reducing inequalities, but also to prevent the exclusion of deaf people at a time when the public sector is seeking to implement the commission's recommendation that people and communities be allowed to participate in the design and delivery of these services. Through this inclusion, it is hoped that some negative outcomes can be prevented, as is the aspiration of the Scottish Government's response to the commission. It is envisaged that the bill will help to increase the awareness and acceptance of BSL and deaf culture, thereby increasing social capital and improving the wellbeing and social cohesion not only of deaf people, but of wider society also. Deaf language and culture would be promoted should the bill give rise to broader use of BSL within public bodies and lead to the provision of courses for families and interested parties. Greater awareness and use of BSL in schools would help to promote the social cohesion and equality of opportunity by ensuring that all children, regardless of whether they have any hearing loss, are exposed to the language. In economic terms, better access to and engagement with public services and public service providers could improve the life chances of deaf people and therefore increase their capability for economic participation.


Chris here from IELTS Advantage, and in this lesson, we're going to look at the most common words in band seven, eight, and nine essays. What I did was I asked my team to give me 100 band seven, eight, and nine essays that we had corrected, that we had given our students feedback on, and those students have gone on to get either a band seven, eight, or nine. And what we've done is we've analyzed all of the words in these 100 essays so that we can help you guys learn what the most common words are. We're going to look at the top 20 words, and the percentage of the top 20 words is unbelievable. So stay tuned for that one. Then we're going to look at the top 20 keywords or the top 29s that kept coming up again and again. This is going to help you with those common topics that come up in task two. Then we're going to look at the most common linking words, and we're also going to analyze the percentage of high level words and the highest level words that were in these band seven, eight, and nine. We're going to give you a list. And if you stay until the end of the video, we're going to give you a link to the most powerful resource for band seven, eight, and nine students for free. So how we teach our VIP students is very different to how most schools, most courses, most online teachers teach their students about vocabulary. What we do is we emphasize that students should keep it simple, whereas most other schools emphasize that in order to improve your score, you should use mostly high level words. We focus more on accuracy and helping students be as accurate as possible with their words, whereas most other schools emphasize improving the range of your vocabulary. We don't really help students improve the range of their vocabulary. What we do instead is we help them use their existing vocabulary to improve their score, whereas other schools, especially online, especially YouTube, they encourage you to learn lists of words and then put those words into your essays. We focus more on topic-specific words, whereas most schools focus on complex words. So we're going to look at the data now and we're going to see who is the winner and which one is going to help you improve your score. So when we looked at all 100 of those essays, these were the top 20 words, words like the, two of and in that are this, they. In fact, just these 20 words made up 33.5, more than a third of the total words in essays. The was the most popular word, two was the second most popular word. So what does this teach you? Well, number one, the vast majority of the words that you're going to be using are going to be very, very, very simple words. So a problem that we see a lot is students focus too much on improving the range and complexity of their vocabulary and they don't focus too much on these words. What we do with our students is we teach them how to crawl, we teach them how to walk, before we teach them how to run. The other interesting thing about these words is it shows that it is impossible to write a good essay without repeating some words. Try and write a band nine or even a band six essay without repeating some of these words over and over again. So if your teacher is teaching you that you can never repeat a word, show them this, it's impossible to write an essay without repeating these common words. So don't worry if you repeat these common words. So let's see who's the winner for these common words. Simple, I think we get that one. Accuracy, focus on using the simple words accurately rather than trying to improve range. I think we win that one. Use existing vocabulary. This is, you know, every student we work with, this is within their existing vocabulary. So we don't have to teach them anything new. Topic specific, there's no real topic specific words in there, there's no real complex words in there. So we'll call that one a draw. Here are the top 10 keywords that we find in those 100 essays. We used a very broad range of questions and these were the top 10. So people, children, time, companies, parents, life, school, health, employees and diet. Again, very simple words, as you'll notice all of them are about people. Even companies are just made up of people. People go on a diet, employees are people. So you better get used to writing about people. Most of these are very topic specific. So you'd say education that could also be health, parents, education, health as well, school, education, health, health, diet, health. What are the two most common task two topics? Education and health. So if you're focusing on big complex words like plethora, for example, is a very common word that we see, how does plethora help you write about education or health? It doesn't. Simple words that are topic specific help you write about these things.  I know we said that it's okay to repeat a word, but you should try also to vary your vocabulary as much as you can. So let's see who's the winner here. Simple, of course. Accuracy, use existing vocabulary. There's nothing new in there. And topic specific. Now let's look at the most common linking words. Some people call these linkers, some people call these cohesive devices, but they're all words like this. And these are the most common ones that we find in those 100, band seven, eight and nine essays. For example, in conclusion, however, although for instance, as a result and therefore. Again, very simple. All of these are just functional and practical because we teach our students what the examiners are going to think about these. The examiners do not give you extra marks for having complex, fancy linking words. They give you extra marks for using them appropriately and accurately. So it's much better to just learn a few simple ones and use them appropriately and accurately than it is to learn a bunch of ones that are very complex and take up a lot of time. So if we just take this, for example, in conclusion, how many conclusions are you going to write? Are you going to write more than one conclusion? No, you will only write one conclusion for your entire essay. So our students spend their time learning one way of doing that because they're only going to do it once and then they can spend their time focusing on other more important things. How many times are you going to put examples into your essay? For example, for instance, that's it. So if your teacher is teaching you 17 different ways and I've actually seen videos, you know, 17 different ways to write a conclusion, why would you spend time learning 17 ways to write a conclusion for your IELTS preparation? Are you going to write 17 conclusions? And also the thing to learn here is you don't need that many. You have ways of ending your essay, you have ways of giving an example, you have however, although as a result therefore, you don't need much more than that. So that's why these ones came up again and again and again and again. And the other interesting thing is the band nine students were exactly the same as the band seven students when it comes to linking words. In fact, the band nine students used fewer linking words than the band seven students. So let's see who wins this one. Simple, accurate, use existing vocabulary. You don't have to learn anything new. Again, there's nothing about topic specific there. So we'll leave that one as a draw. Okay, so here's where it starts to get really interesting. Let me explain what these mean. So there is some software that you can use. It's actually produced by Cambridge English. And what it allows you to do is put in text and it analyzes the level of each word within that text. So we put in all 100 essays and this was what the software came up with. So what is this? A1 is the simplest words that you can use. B1 and B2 are kind of intermediate words, but by most student standards, A1, A2, B1 and B2, all of these, most students would say that these are simple words if you showed them these words. Then C1 and C2, these are your high level words. So out of those 100 essays, about 20% were A1, about 15% were A2, 25% B1 and about 20% were B2. So the vast majority of the words were A1, A2, B1, B2, simple everyday words that students have within their existing vocabulary. So the band's seven, eight and nine students that we work with, they focused on using their existing vocabulary to clearly communicate their answer to the examiner. Why? Because your main job when you're doing the writing test is to clearly communicate your answer to the examiner. They only used complex vocabulary, high level vocabulary, when they couldn't use one of the simpler words. That's what we teach our students to do. So less than 10%, so I think came out at about 7%. Less than 10% of the words were high level. Think about it as a cake. What are the main ingredients of a cake? If you're baking a nice cake, most things are simple ingredients, sugar, flour, milk, everyday ingredients. But then you put a few sprinkles on top. So the sprinkles might be 10% and that makes your cake. That's what most of the band's seven, eight and nine essays look like, the vast majority of words were simple everyday words that most students can use. And then about 7%, 5% were just the sprinkles on top, those complex words. But these words were very topic specific. These unknown words, so these are spelling mistakes, the software can't pick those up, or just words that are not in their database for whatever reason. So let's see who's the winner here. I think, yes, definitely simple. Accuracy, the simpler the words, the more accurate you're going to be.  Use your existing vocabulary and focus on topic specific words, not really complex words. Now let's look at some of the words that our students used. I want you just to look at these and think, are these words that you know that you could use in your own essays? You know, what percentage of these words are words that you already know and are pretty confident that you could use them in your own essays? And also think like, how high level are these words? So now that you've thought about that, these are C1 words and these are C2 words. I've only used the A, so I literally have a list of all the C1 and C2 words in this 100 essays, but I couldn't give you them all. It wouldn't fit on the paper. But if you look at these words, like accountable, adolescent, advocate, allocate, aspirations, assault, none of those words are particularly complex. What a lot of students think complex words are, are big words that you don't know the meaning of and they're very rarely used in English. That is not the case. These are very topic specific, functional, practical words that most students are able to use already. So, simple, accurate, within your existing vocabulary and topic specific. It's a pretty one sided victory.  But the difference between what you'll see on the internet, I know the internet is full of people telling you that they're the best. What we do is we post proof of one-on-one interviews with our success stories. Go to the link, click on that and it will take you to all of our success stories. That is the most powerful resource if you are hoping to get a band seven, eight and nine. Don't listen to me. Listen to real students who actually did it. Go to that page, you'll find people from your country, you'll find people from your occupation. Click on there, watch a few of them and you will see that they all say these things. So who is correct? The data and thousands of successful students that followed this method or your YouTube guru who wants you to click on their video. Hope that you enjoyed this video. If you need any help with your aisles preparation, always feel free to get in touch. You'll find my contact details on the website and I hope you enjoyed the video.


Kathy and Elliot Lewis on stage. Two of the most distinguished names in radio, appearing each week in their own theater, starring in a repertory of transcribed stories of their own and your choosing. Radio's foremost players in Radio's foremost plays. Ladies and gentlemen, Elliot Lewis. Good evening. May I present my wife, Kathy. Good evening. In the six months that Elliot and I have been doing on stage, we've been very lucky in the kind of stories that have been made available to us. Somebody said once that an artist is as good as his tools. A painter needs paint and palette. A musician needs instruments. A piano player without a piano is not easy to identify. And two actors without a script, especially on radio, are not likely to be very entertaining. Since this program started, we've been delighted to play the stories of the E. Jack Newman, Shirley Gordon, Richard Chandley, Anthony Ellis, Walter Newman, Shelby Gordon, and many others. And we've been even more pleased that you've liked these fine craftsmen and have remarked the same to us in your letters. Shirley and E. Jack especially. Tonight we add a new author. The young man's name is Thonus Calhoun. His home is in Galveston, Texas, and this is his first radio script. And it's called Canary Yellow. Now listen, you good people. Harold Drake, the veteran comic, opened his new show at the Plymouth Theater tonight with 20 curtain calls. Count them, 20. This master of sophisticated comedy is as much at home in his new vehicle as you are in your own beat-up carpet slippers. With a poise and a sparkle and glitter as only you'll read about, this Drake proves again actors are born, not made. I'm Harold Drake, ladies and gentlemen. Don't believe everything my good friend Foster says about me. Not everything, that is. He much maligns me. In my case, an actor was made, not born. An actor was made through a process of self-preservation and in spite of a bilious yellow canary costume with a bill yet. It all began one spring of a yesteryear or perhaps even before that. I was not yet out of the cowboy and Indian stage.  I didn't hear the beginning of the conversation, but suddenly was aware my father had raised his voice alarmingly. I looked up to see my mother placidly tatting an Atomacassar as my father stared at her from across the room. My father's face was a blotched purple and the veins in his forehead reminded me of the human anatomy chart I'd seen in the Almanac. I could have told him which veins were bulging, but I didn't. I didn't care. Father was not in the mood. A bird? Yes, a bird. He would fly around to the little girl flowers and visit. You mean walk? Dance, dear. May fates are usually held on the grounds of the school and so Harold would have to flip from flower to flower. Flip? Dance? It's for sissies. Harold's a man like me or will be. Yes, dear, I know, but now he's a very young boy and I don't think the experience would permanently stunt his growth in the right direction. Have you thought how expensive a costume would be? You can afford it, dear. If you can't, I'll take the money from my sugar bowl. You can't tell what talent we may discover in Harold. You know very well your own father read Shelly and Keats with a great deal of feeling. While us kids did most of the hoeing and chopping cotton. No, sir.  Miss Stutz thinks it'd be a good thing for him socially. Who is Miss Stutz? His teacher, dear. You remember Miss Stutz? I don't. Anyway, I came right out of the hills of Arkansas. The hilly part. No, dear. I got along without sociability and so can he. These are other times, dear, teachers nowadays think children should be given a chance to express themselves. As a flitting bird rigged out in crepe paper feather? It's not just the part, dear. It's the confidence he'd gain performing before an audience. He might even become an actor or a politician. That's enough said. He'll not flit. Sam, you've no right to hold him back just because of personal prejudice. What about my position? Every man at the factory would say something like, shame about Sam's boy got none of his father's ways kind of scissified. Oh, well, what do you care what they say as long as you know the difference? Just fooling around as a bird may be the difference. We've no right to keep him from opportunity, Sam Drake. 9-10 sees the boy gets his chance. Besides, there are other little boys in the dance. I have to face their mothers. I never knew my wife was a bleating sheep who jumped fences. I am a mother who looks out for her son's welfare even if his father does not. What kind of a bird does this Miss Stutz want him to be? A yellow bird. A canary. A canary? No. I forbid it. I forbid it. Canaries are beautiful birds, dear. A tame, hot house bird with no spirit. Not a crow or a blue jay or one with some dignity. A canary? Never. Never. But not even my father was able to get through the embattlements of the Ladies May Fate Planning Committee and a canary I was to be. During the next week, my father was a bitter man. He was practically a defeated man why he even sulked at meals. Well, everyone's through, but you, dear, haven't eaten enough to keep a spar alive. Oh, I've lost my appetite. What's for dessert? Your favorite, dear. He knew very well there was another berry cobbler, another of my mother's bribes to keep him in a good humor. Later that night, she asked him as he pretended to read. I say pretended. Dear, when you're going to work on my seated chest, you've not touched it for days. Don't feel like it. Just don't feel like it. All right, dear, when you feel up to it? My father knew how to make the most of every scene, even as to eyeing me suspiciously like I was a small, undernourished rat about to fall into his glue pot. Harold! If I thought you were happy about this, I'd take a limb to you. Happy? Papa, I'm scared. I'm shaking. And scared I was. Here was father always threatening to take my pants down and cane me and my mother taking them down to try on my costume. I was caught between two parents. I was being grown up fast. It was goodbye to my childhood and perhaps the muskets of my little lead soldiers were molding in hand. At any rate, one noon before the big debut, father took his lunch sack and wandered over to his friend's bench. Mortiske, let's eat outside today. Fine day. Oh, hello, Sam. Sure. Let me get my lunch here. You look sort of dispirited. I am.  Sure can. Just plumb rub off. I sometimes wonder if it's all worth it. I know what you mean. You're about wondering if it's worth it. Yeah. Women get the craziest notions. Yeah.  Yeah. A thing can be just one way. And they always pick the wrong way. Yeah. Just opposite. And stubborn. Now, for instance, a man likes to think his son will follow on his footsteps. Or a man's life just don't make any sense. That's just the way I feel. Covering around in a female costume. Okay, here's a shady spot. Your wife? No. My son, Leonard. What kind of a costume? You won't mention this to the other fellas, will you? Of course not. A bird. A blue jay. Blue jay? Oh, Miss Stutt's fault, that schoolworm. She kept telling my wife that Mayfait wouldn't be right without a blue jay and that Leonard was the only boy temperamentally suited to it. Oh. I appreciate the honor. And I'm sure Leonard does have my feeling of things still, uh, blue jay. Uh, what do you think of a canary? Ah, that's an idea. Why couldn't he be a canary, a little closer to home? Maybe he could. I... I don't know, though. That's a little sissy for Leonard. Oh, I wouldn't exactly say it's sysified for anybody. Too much for Leonard. I'm sure he'd never consent to it. Not that I would want him to. Well, I bet you're glad Harold wasn't asked. He was asked. He was? He's going to be a canary. Oh, no. Look, Sam, I didn't mean a canary is anything to be ashamed of. I don't think so either. A canary is a refined bird, sings like a true artist and has good manners. I... I... I think so, too. Only I think a blue jay is an elegant bird, too. I think Leonard will do fine. I didn't mean to say Leonard would be wrong as a blue jay. I think Harold would be a fine canary. Just fine. Fine. Uh, have a piece of cake, Sam? I don't believe so. But it's Lady Baltimore, your favorite. I don't think so, Fortescue. I think I'll take a turn around the plan. No, wait up. I'll go along. No, if, uh... If you don't mind, Fortescue. Well, sure. Sure, Sam. My father was only miffed that Fortescue should think I could not properly flit from flower to flower. Then he reasoned a different way. He came off his hunger strike, worked on the cedar chest, and when mother had finished the dishes and had settled herself for her sewing, he put down his tools and came over to her. Um, how's the costume coming on? The bird costume? Oh, very well, dear. I'm thinking of a bill that won't fall down over his eyes. Uh, could I see it? Where's Harold? I'll get it. It's upstairs. There's lessons, I think. Uh, Harold? Harold, come down here, will ya? It is, Sam. There. How'd he like it? Hold it up so I can see it. You sell one row of paper points on top of each other. Yeah, it looks a little flimsy. Looks flimsy? You sure it won't break out at the seams? I don't think so. You better be sure. Harold is pretty much of a boy when it comes to busting things out and we couldn't have that. I suppose we couldn't. And don't spare the feathers.  Oh, plenty of feathers. Sam, you're taking an awful lot of interest, aren't you? Here I am, Papa.  I guess so, Papa. Guess so? That won't do. Don't you know you'll never get anywhere in society or any place unless you know what you're about. Know a thing, Harold. Yes, Papa. You've got to know that dance good enough to show up everybody on the field, do you? Not everybody, I guess. All right, then let's get at it. Add it and add it until you know you mastered it. I didn't know you wanted me to do it at all, Papa. If you're gonna do a thing, you might as well do it right. Yes, sir. Now, Bessie, will the costume fit him? Yes, dear, I'm sure it will. Oh, perfect. All right, let's try it on. We got a few days yet to fix it up in case it isn't right. Do I have to now, Papa? I've got geography. All right now, Harold.  Who says I disapprove of it? We're just not going to be outdone by a blue jay. Blue jay, dear? A blue jay. You climb into that canary suit, Harold, and you'll be quick about it. I think I can fix that bill. Yes, sir. You are listening to Kathy and Elliot Lewis on stage tonight's play, Canary Yellow. In the Greek island earthquakes, 120,000 were left homeless. Over 1,000 killed and more than 4,000 injured. The stricken area is in desperate straits. With the approval of the State Department, the American Red Cross is conducting an appeal for disaster relief contributions. All funds you send to your local Red Cross chapter earmarked for Greek relief will be used solely by the Greek Red Cross to aid earthquake victims. If I was scared before, now I was numb with fear. With father suddenly in favor of my being a canary bird, my parents had put up a solid front against me. I knew I must produce the goods. As the next few days passed, like so many milestones to my execution, I was trained like a prize fighter for his first championship match. As I went through my routine, my father would suddenly, without warning, bellow, shake a leg, Harold. Shake a leg. The honor of the family is on the chopping block. Right on it. Or when I would lag, he would look up from his work and admonish me roundly. Harold, do you think a blue jay is the equal of a canary? No, sir. Then show that you don't. Believe in what you do. Always convince yourself what you're doing is the most important thing happening in the world. Even me in a paper canary suit? Certainly. The canary is a noble bird. It comforts old ladies, and it twerps young people into getting married. Yes, sir. You're not scared, are you? Yes, sir. You'll never be a politician if you don't learn to face people. Don't want to be a politician. Actor then? No. Harold, did you know Leonard Fortescue is to be a blue jay in this same May fate? Yes, sir. Well, that should be enough. You'll not only dance, but you'll make him look like a blue jay. But what if I should forget or stub my foot or my bill fall down over my eyes? Something like that? I'm warning you, it had just better not. Yes, sir.   Yes, sir. Yes, sir, I understand. And that was the way it went. My poor father was afraid I would disgrace him. He wasn't alone. I had visions of disgracing myself. The days dragged slowly by. Each one was a new instrument of torture. I was being given a final coaching course under Miss Stutz, the effusive and determined Miss Stutz. Tripping along ever so lightly and flapping my wings at the same time seemed an insurmountable mechanical problem. Not like a frog, Harold. You don't hop, dear. No.  It is thrilling. Can't you feel it, dear? You must float, float, float and glide on the wings of spring. But I'm too hairy to float, Miss Stutz. Well, of course you can't really float, Harold, but you must give the impression that you are. As long as my feet stay on the ground, I can't believe it myself. Please, don't be so literal, dear. Just gently flap your wings and say to yourself that you're going to visit Oh, a beautiful morning glory. But Genevieve's got freckles. Lots of them. And she don't look like a morning glory. Your imagination, Harold. You simply must use your imagination a little. Yes, ma'am. All righty. Now, small breezy steps, your wings gently waving in the breeze. Start again. No, no.   You must remember that. And don't sweep the ground with your little wings either. And you must keep your knees straight. You don't walk on them. Yes, ma'am. Now, start again. Now, pretend that Genevieve is by the water fountain. Are you ready? Go. Oh, watch out, dear. Oh. Oh, are you hurt, Harold? No, ma'am. I just tripped. I'm afraid you're just a bit clumsy, Harold. You've got to learn how not to get your feet twisted up. You must be fleet of foot, like Leonard Fortescue. Leonard? Yes, he's a very, very gifted dancer. He's as graceful as a gazelle. I can do anything Leonard can. Oh, well, I'm sure you can. Now, let's see you flip over to the morning glory. I can do it. I can do it. And so I was so thoroughly peaked and humiliated that there was nothing for me to do but forget my fright and go in there and fight. Leonard Fortescue was smarter than me and I could prove it. I got that dance down to a last polished wiggle. I even thoroughly convinced myself pigtailed freckle-faced Genevieve was a dewy morning glory. Oh, that's better, Harold. Much, much better. Bravo. Finally, the big day came. All the fathers and mothers dressed in their Sunday best sat stiffly in the folding chairs which had been set up on the school lawn. Among those beaming over cordial to their neighbors to hide their anxiety was my mother and father. My mother seemed happy enough but my father could not quite hide his agitation. As the son was just about to set, I started from my dressing room but not before father gave me one last word of warning. Yes, sir? Remember, Harold, the family honor is at stake. If you make so much as a bobble, I'll fix you up so you won't be able to sit down for a week. Yes, sir. But don't frighten him, Sam. Just do your best, dear. Yes, sir. You were long, honey. And before too many minutes had passed, just as the sun was all red and gold, the music for the May Fate began and with my bill in place so it wouldn't fall down over my eyes, I stood ready to make my debut into the theater. An earthly flight I kept telling myself. Before I knew it, someone had given me a shove and I was out on the ground winging and flitting my way to Genevieve, the beautiful freckle-faced morning glory. There it comes. Yes. There it comes. Doesn't he look sweet? He's not supposed to look sweet. Well, sure, he's trippin' along. I hope he don't trip himself. You kind of stiffen me. Certainly not. He's very graceful. He's not. 364 days of the year. He's an awkward boy. You'd think just for one day he could pull himself together. There goes to the little morning glory. Oh, I hope he makes it. Look, here comes Leonard. The blue jade. He looks much better to me. He's not all feet and neck. Seems frightened to me. Not as much as Harold. I knew I'd be sorry. He makes it. Very graceful, Sam. Your Leonard is better. And after me tellin' Harold he'd get his pants worn. Looks like Leonard's showing off to me trippin' along with complete abandon. Not even noticing where he's going. Don't worry about Leonard.  Harold is doing fine. He's just not the exhibitionist, Leonard, isn't he? Oh, mercy. Leonard speaks fallin' down over his eyes. He'll never be able to get his hands out of his wings. He's gonna hit that geranium. He did. Oh, mercy. Both of them on the ground, poor dears. I wonder if they're hurt. Here looks like Leonard knocked himself out.  Yes, dear, the Simpson girl. There goes Harold into his dressing room. Not above all. Good work, Harold. Good work by Jingle. A short while later, just as the sun disappeared beyond the lawn, a few pale stars had come out. A chilly breeze came up and the crowd began to disperse. Just as we were leaving, Miss Stutz caught up with us. Papa, this is Miss Stutz. I'm glad to meet you, Miss Stutz. You know my wife, I think. Oh, yes, yes, we're old friends. Yes, thank you. Mr. Drake, I want you to know you have a most talented son. He did do right well, didn't he? And on the field, I fairly was. He was the epitome of a feathery creature. An almost in a spiritual feeling in his creation. Thank you, Miss Stutz. I wanted to thank you all so for your work with him. I kept him at it, but you pulled him through it, I'm sure. It was nothing really. He's a very graceful boy and I'm sure it would've come through even without me. Of course I did save him the embarrassment Leonard Fortescue went through. I saw the bill might fall down, Well then I suppose we all did our bit then, didn't we? I suppose we did anyway. I'll be able to hold my head up at the factory. That's more than Fortescue can do. Well, I must be off. It was all a very, very great pleasure. See you soon. Now you see, Harold, what comes of being sure of what you're doing and staying with it until you succeed. Yes, sir. Now what do you think would have happened if I hadn't stepped in and seen that everything went off all right? No, papa. You'd be in a fix, like Leonard, perhaps bumping into a geranium just as he did because your bill might have fallen down. Sam Drake, I'll not have you taking the bow as a belong to that boy. He did the dance, the credit belongs to him and I want you to tell him so. I didn't mean it that way, Bessie. You did do all right, Harold. Now I can tell Fortescue what I think about a blue jay. Yes, sir, you've saved the family honor. Well, that's better, Sam. By the way, Harold, how would you like to have lessons on the tuba? You seem to have a small talent for performing and when I was a boy, the tubo was my instrument. I don't believe I've ever... I don't think my father ever really forgave me for not taking up tuba lessons. The confidence I gained from the debut led me to study acting. After many years, I landed here on Broadway. But when Arthur Foster says I was born an actor, don't you believe him? As you now know, in the beginning, I was just playing Canary Yellow. Canary Yellow, starring Kathy and Elliot Lewis on stage. In a moment, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis will tell you about next week's play. Tin Pan Alley ain't proud when those cats get hept to a good melody. They don't care where it comes from. Tomorrow night, over most of these same CBS radio stations, there's music in the air demonstrates the point. As Earl Wrightson, Clark Dennis, Francis Greer and Fredo Antonini's orchestra play one favorite after another originally heard as classical music. That's tomorrow night on CBS Radio. And now once again, Kathy and Elliot Lewis. Which will introduce to all of you Mr. Thonus Calhoun. And we believe he's a very gifted young man. We had two members of the Merrill family with us tonight. Lou Merrill, Thomas Highland on crime classics. Lou Merrill is a father and played Mr. Fortescue tonight. Harry Merrill is his son and played young Harold Drake. While Gigi Pearson taught the children how to be birds and flowers and was Miss Stutz. Next week, a new drama by Shirley Gordon. It's a beautiful and frightening experience dramatized under the title The Child in the Room. Until next week, thank you for listening. And good night. Good night. Music for tonight's story was composed and conducted by Fred Steiner. The Kathy and Elliot theme is by Ray Noble and the program is transcribed and directed by Mr. Lewis. George Walsh speaking. And remember, the Johnny Mercer show is heard weekday evenings on the CBS Radio Network.