Good afternoon and welcome to Town Meeting Television's continuing coverage of Town Meeting 2021. I'm so glad to be here with Joe Duncan. He's the general manager of the Champlain Water District and we like to talk to Joe around election time because this year there is a ballot question for a bond issue that is going to be before some of the eight municipalities and 12 water systems that CWD serves and for our communities that'll be South Burlington Essex, Essex Junction, Winniski, Colchester and Williston, although there are some other communities in the region that may be watching this. So Joe, thank you so much for joining us and we really look forward to hearing about the improvements that you're going to be making yet again on this reliable source of clean water for our community. Yeah, I'm very, very happy to be here again. LG, it's always wonderful to be able to meet with you and talk about what we're doing here at the district. And yes, we have an opportunity to continue moving our master plan forward. We've got some items that we have been looking at doing over the next several years, probably three years out. And we've found an opportunity that we believe will allow us to do those now and do it at a very affordable cost, actually no impact to the rates. So happy to go through that all and let you know what we're looking at doing. Well, while you share your screen, I'll just remind people that Burlington is not served by the Champlain Water District. They have their own standalone system. That's correct. That is correct, yes. And these the other communities form a partnership, a regional partnership along the lines of the Solid Waste District, right? I mean, it's that kind of an entity. Yes, it is. Yep, it's not a county as a whole, like the Solid Waste District, but it is a district of eight communities that came together in the 70s to form a water district to provide service in response to increasing regulations and a desire to have one source and then multiple sources. And like you said, Burlington has had their own system and they're able to maintain their service, although we are actually tied in with them on an emergency impact basis. So we have a very good relationship with the Burlington Water District. So a little history on us, kind of in that vein, is we are Vermont's largest water supplier. We did go online in 1973. We are a municipal entity. We're chartered as a consolidated water district. And our mission is to provide wholesale water to 12 water systems. And you mentioned most of them, South Burlington, Shelburne, Williston, Essex Town and Essex Junction, which are their own water systems. Milton, Nuski, the village of Jericho, and then Holchester has multiple entities in it. And we serve four of those, Fire One, which is St. Mike's, Fire Three, which is the village area, Holchester Town, which is exit 16, and Mallets Bay Water Company, which is a little section off of Mallets Bay, mounted by Wajuski. And so those are the systems that we serve. And the eight communities that they're in are the entities that will be voting on this bond. And it's a million, just to interrupt, it's a million dollar bond. Is that right, roughly? Yes. General obligation bond. That's correct. So it's a very specific number. And I'll go into exactly why it's probably sounds kind of odd that it's a very specific number, but there's a very good reason for it. But like I mentioned earlier, LG, we've got a master plan that we developed back in 2002 year plan. So over the 18 years, we've been following it. We're actually in the process of updating it. But we have some projects that haven't quite been completed yet. And we want to try and take advantage of that through this. So one of the things that we like to do is we try to take a look at what we have for debt service that's falling off. And as it falls off, we try and backfill it. And with the goal of generally keeping our annual debt payments about the same, so that as one debt service payment falls off, we backfill it with another of the same level and really trying to result in no increase in CWD uniform wholesale rate, but providing the benefit of reinvesting in our infrastructure, which is critical, because a lot of stuff that we own is buried. No one really gets to see it. But when it becomes a problem, you find out about it real quick, even though it's buried underground. So we try and head of that by reinvesting before it becomes a problem. Can I ask you just a question here? The red, does that indicate the bond that voters passed last year? Yes, you are correct, LG. So the red that you see there, and then there's a little tiny orange as well, that's barely seen there. But that's the Essex West project and the Colchester South Bank Loop projects that we're both voted on last year. They are under construction, one of them is under construction right now, the Colchester South Bank Loop, and the Essex West Pump Station is currently out of it. So we anticipate the first payment on those bonds being due in 2023, when the projects are their one year warranty and ready for the first payment. So what you're talking about is pointing out is that we had anticipated that drop in 2021, 2023, and then like you said, backfilling it again with new debt reinvesting. Excellent. Let's talk about what this bond will support. Sure, absolutely. So it is a, like I said, it's a very specific number. It's $1,090,607. And what we came to, and I'll talk about specifically what items are going to be in this bond, but the concept is that we've had previous bonds that we've done that have underrun, whether it's because we got a grant or because the money that the project didn't fully get sent out because of cost savings or bids or whatever it is. And so each year what we have to do is report that in our audit as a liability of this bond, excess bond amount that's sitting out there. We got looking at the municipal market for bonds, as well as our financial model and said, wait a minute, we've got this, I'll call it 1.1 for simple numbers, $1.1 million already built into our financial model within our current wholesale rate, but we're not using it. So why don't we take advantage of repurposing those bonds to move forward on some of those projects that we were looking at doing three years out. So do them today in today's dollars with this bond that's already built into our rate. And so this 1.09607 is a specific combination of four bonds that underrun. Yeah, go ahead. Well, I was, you're telling me here that the wholesale rate, what doesn't increase. So do the municipalities mark up the water cost when they pass it on to the tax payers or the rate payers? Do they add other costs on top of that wholesale rate so that when I get a bill in Winniske, I'm seeing CWD wholesale rate plus something else that the municipality is putting on? Okay. Yep. So if you think about it, we basically are the water source. So in any particular system, there's, you know, getting the water, treating the water, and then it's bringing it to people's houses. So we do the part where we bring the water to say Winniske, then Winniske has their own staff, their own water mains, their own infrastructure that they maintain. And so they will take, you know, they take the water that they purchased from us, and that's part of their budget. And then they also have their own employees, their own debt service, their own maintenance that they do. So what we'll see is our rate is reflected in the overall rate for a particular community. And it's basically a subset of it. But when you get billed, it doesn't get broken out that way. You just get a bill for the overall cost. So it's built in that way, that inch. Exactly. Okay. So you're the water transmission line in effect for those communities? Yep. So, you know, to give you a general sense, for a typical home, the average around the state is about 65,000 gallons a day, 5,700, I think the exact number that a typical home will use over 65,700 gallons over a course of a year, which is like a couple hundred gallons a day. Okay. With that average, we cost the typical user around $157 a year. So if you look at different communities, some communities, you know, the whole bill is somewhere around 200 or 300 dollars a year. And so about 150 of that is buying the wholesale water. And you're, are you taking this out of the lake, I presume? We are taking it out of the lake. Yes. And that's actually one of the, there's some improvements that we're going to be doing that are specific to how we get the water out of the lake and then what we do with it. So we draw out of Shelburne Bay, and we have a pump station down on Shelburne Bay in Red Rocks Park, pump water out of there up to our facility. We run it through filtering process. We disinfect it, and then we pump it out of our facility, leave South Burlington, and then fans out down to Shelburne over to Will's and up to Milton. Well, let's hear about those various capital assets that you're going to be funding with this geobond. Sure. So we've got a, we've got a variety of projects of different types and purposes. And so, but they're all aimed at improving system reliability. We've got one of the items that you just mentioned, LG, is our, our raw water pump motor and control valve replacements. We've got two pumps that we're looking to rebuild, to refinish, replace the motors and replace some of the control valves. And kind of what you see here is on the left is the, the internals of our pumps before they're, they're finished because we've done a couple of these already. And then you can see the, the refinished internals, the impellers and the internal pump can and then the, the returning of the pump unit back into the, into the pump system. And so basically what it is, is our, our goal here is, you know, the motors are 20 years old, so they're towards the end of their life and need to be replaced. The, the pump cans and the impellers they wear and the age they're drawing water out of the lake. So the whole idea is to, we can make sure that we maintain the integrity of those, those cans and impellers last longer. So kind of make sure and the biggest thing for us is if we can't get water out of the lake, we're not getting water in anybody else. So that's, that's a really critical place for us to be. One of the other ones is our particle counting system. We, we have water that comes into the plant and goes through our filters.  And then we have to filter it out so it comes out nice and clean. So one of the things that we use and is a particle counting system and that particle counting system enables us to identify the quality of the water coming out of the filters and make sure the filters are, are removing things at the levels that we want them to. And so they're almost 20 years old and need a replacement. So we're looking to use this pond to replace some of those. Some of the other other items that are on here, we've, we had a well, it was an old well that when we connected our system back in the 70s, used, got rid of the well and just used the meter vault as a place to, to put a meter and controls in there. It was buried underground, very wet. We wound up putting a building on top of it. And in order to get all the electrical and everything out of the ground up into that building. And now we need to finish off that project by redoing all the interior piping. The whole year is been able to get into there, clean that space up. We want to place all the, all the parts and valves that are, that are aged and also corroded and put it into a, a better environment now that we've been able to clean up the building a little bit. So that's the main question. What does a meter vault do? Sure. So for us, the way that we, we go from community to community with our water. So we start everything here at the plant. And then eventually it leaves South Burlington and then it goes from South Burlington, say to Shelburne or Wilston or Colchester up to Milton. And so we, in order to build each community, we have a meter where it transitions from one community to another. So essentially what we have is a bunch of goes in is and goes out as we monitor everything coming out of the plant. And we have meter vaults all around South Burlington. And so there between what went out of the meter vaults versus what left the plant is what would build South Burlington. And so this particular one is over in, in Colchester. And so it's a, it's actually a boundary between, between those, the Colchester or South Burlington locations and, and also provides low control in order to move the water back. You know, when you really stop and think about that there are these giant water pipes under all the streets going from Shelburne Bay to Milton. And that's remarkable. Really. When you think, I mean, you're an engineer, so you think about these things all the time, but this, this is, it's, it's quite a feat that we can depend on clean water in this way. And there's so many working parts necessary to make it happen. Yeah, we own CWD alone owns 54 miles of water mains throughout the county. Most of them are 24 inch in diameter. But we then, when, where we stop, there's then the water infrastructure for the, for the towns that we, communities that we serve, and they add up to about 600 miles. So I mean, there's a tremendous amount of, of infrastructure in the ground. People don't really pay too much attention to, but it's there when they turn on their tap. They're able to take advantage of it. And in this infrastructure just quickly, you know, I've read a little bit about the New York City water supply and, you know, these giant underground pipes and the fact that the, the fittings on the switching underground are so corroded that they don't even dare turn them on and off. So do we have the same kind of underwater vaults, underground vaults of pipes where things are happening or most of the, the levers and things above ground? You know, most of them are below ground. Most everything that, that we own, I mean, it's, it's tough to get photos of, of, of infrastructure that we own because, you know, there aren't too many buildings above ground or anything like that. So most everything is buried, you know, on our, on the 54 miles of main and the 600 miles of mains of the, that the, the systems own. It'd be interesting, I should probably get a number on this, but there's, there's, there are tons of buried valves, buried vaults. And the only way to get to them is to dig to them, to address them. We have a, we have a program where we try and replace a couple of valves each year. And it's expensive because you've got to dig down to them. And, you know, we live in an area where we have frost. So everything is six feet down. I have a, a friend who, a college maid who works in Florida and everything is three feet down. So that three feet makes a big difference in, in maintaining stuff. But it's, I mean, they even have stuff that's above ground, which is close my mind, but it's all buried because it's water and you want to make sure that it's not susceptible to freezing. Exactly. So a plant site perimeter fence is another part of this bond request? Yes. Yeah. We have, we have our facility here on Queen City Park Road in, in South Burlington, just, just on the other side of across the road from Burlington. And we, our facility is not fenced. And so when you look at, you look at the world of physical security and heightened awareness and potential for water systems to be targeted or for different events. Having a, having a fence is key. We actually, you wind up driving over here. We, we started the, the phasing of it with putting some new gates in front. So that at least in the evening, we can isolate our facility from, from vehicle entry. But really, not that we don't enjoy seeing the public, but the reality is, is we need to, we should be looking at increased site security here, just given the nature of things. So we are looking at putting a fence around. And as you can see, we have a pretty large facility. I think a lot of people don't, there's pros and cons to this. There's, it's good that a lot of people don't know what we have back there because again, from a site security standpoint, but really we have a lot of infrastructure here. And I don't think people recognize what just over the horizon when they drive down, well, yeah, you see the big white tower tank. And that's so commanding that you just kind of forget that there are probably a something behind it. So that sounds like an important security improvement. And then what's the what's the HS to the FD? Sure. So that's, that is the high service to pump variable frequency drive. So all of our, all of our water that leaves the plant is pumped out through either a high service pump or a main service pump. And that's really just a matter of main services, a lower hydraulic grade. So everything along Shelburne Road goes along main service because you can kind of picture it probably takes a little more energy to pump something up to, up to Williston because it's up the hill versus along the lake on, on main service. So our high service to pumps are 350 horsepower pump. And so what we want to do is put a variable frequency drive on there. And what that allows us to do is it allows us to to toggle that pump in response to variations in flow. Right now it just has, Don has got one speed. But what we've been trying to do with all of our pumps is have them be able to, to vary the flow and a variable frequency drive allows you to do that. So that provides us a little more flexibility in responding because you can imagine that there's parts of the day where, where everyone's got their, got their faucets on in the morning, taking a shower and we want to put out more water. And then it slows down before lunchtime and it picks up again. So having these variable frequency drives allows us to do that. So I guess people aren't running home to have lunch and take a shower at the same time. It's not the way people operate. No, no, yeah, we see a spike in the morning. And then we usually see a spike around dinner. But you know, and if that hasn't changed too much with, we thought we might see some changes with COVID, but still people get up in the morning and get everything done and then, and then seem to come back to water use again in the evening. So that, and I guess the other one, it'd be interesting to see there used to be a, there used to be a major surge during the Super Bowl, halftime. So it'll be interesting to see if that happens again this year. But that's also a very, it's amazing to look at some of the figures on that. Yeah, that's so interesting. So just a reminder, viewers, we're talking about the Champlain Water District's general obligation bond request that's going before some of the eight municipalities in our viewing area and in the water district itself. So Joe, tell us what the timeframe is for the building out of this investment. Sure. Yeah. So, you know, our plan is to do it over three years. But we actually think we can get it done in the next two years. So including this summer. So if the bond passes, we would be looking to start these improvements this summer, and most likely have them done by the end of the construction season of 2022. But there is a potential that it could flow over into 2023, although that's not our goal. And we are looking to take advantage of what our historically low rates through the bond bank, which really makes this very attractive is we're looking at a 15 year term that the interest rate may change. But right now it's sitting at 1.54%, which is for us to be able to take that and have that done within our existing, our existing rate structure, non impact, the wholesale rate for us being able to start that now and get it done now, as opposed to starting it three years from now and doing it in dollars, you know, three years, but from now, whatever inflation looks like then it's to us, that's a real advantage. And it, you know, it helps us advance our master plan sooner or later by reinvesting in our infrastructure now. So that there are two other items that are covered in the bond. One is the thermocline system. And the other is the south filtered water tank. We have about six minutes left. So why don't you? Sure. I'll do this. I'll do the south will filter water tank first, because that's pretty easy. We've got the white tank that you referenced. And when you drive up on at the end of Pine Street, that's our north filtered water tank. That's a concrete tank we put in a couple years ago. And what it is, is everything that comes out of our plant needs to get disinfected. And we put it into these filtered water tanks with some chlorine to do a final disinfection of all the water. The south water tank is our original one. It's a glass used to steal metal tank. And it was put in the 90s. And we are seeing some leaking going on with that. We've got a core foundation that needs to be rehabbed.  Because this is what's happened recently with our ice build up and water leaking through the bolts. So that's a major project that we want to reinvest in that so we can get it to last for another 15 to 20 years. So you have to drain the whole tank, I imagine, right? To do that work, right? Yeah, that's why the north tank was really critical for us. Because we knew we had this problem here at the south filter water tank, but we always need it available. So you couldn't take it offline to make the repairs. Now we have the redundancy of this newer tank, rely solely on the north one and take this one out of service to make those repairs. That's exactly what we need to do. That's great. And the last one's an interesting one. I think it is at least. So I realized we have the time constraints here, so I won't get too detailed into it. But we have probably one of the, there used to be another one. So we may only be the only ones left with one, but we have a thermocline system. And all that is, is essentially it's a bunch of thermometers going from the top of the lake at our intake to the bottom of the lake at our intake. And so what we're doing is we're monitoring the temperature at 10 foot increments across. We sit down about 80 feet deep. And so we're just monitoring the temperature there. And so, you know, the lake, when it warms up in the, in the summer, you get a warm layer on the top and you have the cold water sitting down at the bottom. And then as winter comes along and everything gets closer to the 33, 32 degrees, you just have a constant, constant temperature across. But in the summer, it stratifies. And what that does is we monitor that. There's also to an interesting, there's a, there's actually an internal satian the lake, the lake is constantly rocking. And that's kind of what this, this blue and green and yellow kind of show on a basis, there's, but even on like an hourly basis, rocking. And there's a whole another story behind that. But what happens is, is we, we like to know what kind of stratification there is, because if there's stratification, typically any, any snowmelt rain events, if they do occur, and there is stratification, we're probably not going to see any sediment coming into our intake. But if it's not stratified, and it's all the, it's all the, a similar temperature density, it's possible that the sediments can come into our, so this thermocline system combined with a USGS gauging station that we have on the Laplac. Laplac is our major contributor to Shelburne Bay. So we monitor that and over time, we've been able to use flow data from the Laplac combined with the information from our thermocline, tell us whether or not we should make modifications to our filter system in order to adjust for what we might see. So that's what the thermocline is. And so it's a really important tool. It's a, it's an expensive one, but we'll, we'll be able to take advantage of it through this bond. So we will be voting on town meeting day. People can go to their, their poll locations in South Burlington, Shelburne, Wilson, Essex, Milton, Manuski, Village of Jericho and Colchester, and, and vote on the article that's shown here on a $1.1 million bond with no increase to the wholesale rate. And if people want to know more, we will be having our informational meeting on February 25th at seven o'clock. It'll be virtual attendance only. We'll be putting a link on our website. Access that. Wonderful. Joe Duncan, general manager of Champlain Water District. Thank you. I'll just also remind voters that you'll be getting your ballots in the mail so you can vote before town meeting day itself. And we really appreciate your willingness to present this general obligation bond information. It will be on your ballots in these participating communities. So thank you so much for watching and thanks for staying tuned to town meeting television during town meeting 2021.


Loyalty, as we are so often taught, is its own reward, yet so often in this wretched galaxy of ours does the cost of loyalty exceed even our most dreadful estimations. Honor is a bitter thing indeed, reaping from its pledges tolls unimaginable, its benefits perhaps debatable, yet important to those that keep it. Too often is it that the price of loyalty is everything, casting those who pay it into hallowed memory and little else. We speak of these honored dead with reverence, their loyalty, their honor perhaps erasing the black deeds that placed them in their positions in the first place, for within Memoriam is resolution birthed for our own convictions. The subjects of this record have passed into history, marked in ways scant and few survived by their comportment, their wars, and their deeds under the most extreme of privations. Know then that this is a record of the Sun and Scarlet, the bloody dukes of the Eastern Fringe, the lances of the Thirteenth Legion, the night household of Vornhair. To the Lundborg system in ancient days were born the colony arcs of old earth. The planets, part of the scattered stellar drift in the sparsely filled depths between galactic spiral arms, it is not precisely a common sort of destination, even in the days of ancient human pioneers seeking what worlds they could. The Staratours of the Crusade Era speculated upon this, stating that it is highly lightly that these ships were born to their new home upon capricious warp tides, arriving at their destination through accident and happenstance, as much as actual resolve. Regardless, the colonists set about their work, building a new home for themselves in the darkness of the eastern galactic reaches. In time, a total of no less than seven night households arose from the planets in the Lundborg system, a number almost unrivaled for one group of worlds in what histories remain of the dark age of technology and the nightly households themselves. And for a time it was good. The system prospered, the night houses ensured the prosperity of their worlds, riding to their defence in times of crisis, using their night suits admirably, honourably, and conducting their politicking with dignity in times of peace. Sadly, and perhaps predictably to students of that dreadful era, the age of strife befell Lundborg as much as it did the rest of the human galaxy. Trade with other worlds far afield collapsed, starving the worlds of Lundborg of priceless resources. After decades of privation, the night households turned upon each other, warring across the void in year after year of internecine warfare, bleeding each other even as the predations of the outer darkness, Xenos raids, continued unabated. Once paragons of nobility, the fall of these households was as rapid as it was terrible. Within a couple of generations, the concept of peace seemed impossible. No diplomacy was ever brokered, not to put a halt to the constant bloodshed, nor to unite against Xenos foes. To do so would have been regarded as unacceptable weakness.  There was, and seemingly would ever be, endless war. The conflicts between the households persisted for millennia, most all records of which have since sadly perished. Of the scions that fell in these wars, of the suits that were destroyed, we have almost nothing in the way of chronicles. This is less to do with the issues of record-keeping in ages that have passed since the time and more so related to the manner in which the wars were concluded. Eventually, one house arose from the seven, claiming its victory over its fellows after thousands of years of war. And with an iron fist, this house annihilated the histories, titles, standards, and chronicles of the defeated. Their lands were claimed, their keeps were occupied, their night suits taken as prizes. And to great pires were cast their colours, and in every way that mattered, their memories. We do not even know the names of these houses. Six entire questorous households consigned to destruction. This should give Acolytes some idea of the totality of this purge. After millennia of warfare, the victors intended for their enemies to be committed to the ashes of history. What scions of the defeated houses survived, a choice was presented. Assimilation into the victorious household through carefully assigned and powerless marriages, merging the bloodlines in ways that simply would never challenge the succession laws, or be committed to exile, bereft of their night suits. One name would now persist in the Lundborg system forevermore. The name Victorious, Vornherr. Histories were now rewritten within the space of a generation. The barons of Vornherr that had led their house to victory ensured that the chronicles written thereafter, the great purge was presented as a terrible necessity, a last resort to ensure the fallen villains could no longer meet out their great evils upon the populace of Lundborg. Overcame as they were by some vague unspecified corruption. Such is the heroic light victors are ever able to cast themselves in once they control the quills of history. Their ranks now replenished with prized suits and coerced scions. Vornherr's ascendancy was immediate. They assumed the role of feudal aristocrats over the entire Lundborg system within a year, putting down peasant rebellions and rooting out vestigial loyalties to defeated enemies with utter ruthlessness. The latter took more time, of course, but within two generations of careful marriages the culture and blood of Vornherr had supplanted the lost households entirely. Naturally, the result was a genealogical tree that was a sprawling morass of relationships, marriages and dynastic connections that, by its very structure, spawned rivalries and feuds. Branches of the house competed with each other for titles, baronies, castellums, and night suits, seeking to secure their own power over those who had committed great crimes against their ancestors or those who were deemed to be in possession of weak blood. Furthermore did Vornherr take upon themselves the mantles of the privileged class, growing vastly wealthy with their total control of the political and military cultures of an entire star system. The highest amongst the house, however, were always diligent in ensuring that the spats between their lesser scions never arose to anything approximating all-out conflict. However editing their forefathers had done to the past, as it had actually occurred, it was an embedded part of Vornherr tradition that they owed their ascendancy to a victory in an impossibly long struggle, and that such a war could never again be let threaten those spoils-so-hard-one. Court intrigue was thus bent from the top down to ensuring that none of the branches developed into distinct enough polities, or amassed enough political or material power to attempt anything approximating secession. Tournaments were quite frequent, a means by which rivalries could be handled in as controlled a means as possible. The sparring of night suits upon the tournament field is only a tad less vicious and lethal than upon a real battlefield, but the trappings of honour and house fidelity tempered the bloodlust of spurned contestants just enough for them to be happy to win in those arenas. Never mind the work of poor sacristans that they had in repairing the damage done to sacred night armours in the process. There was, perhaps thankfully, the omnipresent scourge of alien pirates, isolated as it was, the Lundborg system was ever beset by such raiders, and the household's frequent wars against them served to bond its scions upon proper battlefields against proper foes, dispelling in the heat of life or death combat the feuds that percolated during peacetime. After centuries, ships broke reality at the system's Mandeville point. They were of an altogether different mark than the ancient starships that plied the various routes between the planets of the system. But they were also broadcasting hails of friendship and peace. Scout frigates flying the banners of the celebrated dashing and altogether idiosyncratic rogue trader Conwallis had found Lundborg, operating as an exploratory vanguard for the lead pathfinder elements of the twelfth expeditionary fleece of the great crusade. Had worn hair ever been set upon mounting a naval interdiction of these frigates, they were unable to. What ships they possessed were few and delegated entirely to the transport of persons, cargo, and night suits between this planet's systems. Rogue trader Conwallis was, at least, a man of deep tact when it came to the delicate first contact situations his role had so often cast him in. Having encountered many night households upon his travels across the galaxy, the rogue trader knew that deference was the best of primary plays, ensuring the nobility of this system were given all possible dues to their honor and, more importantly, their pride. Every flattery possible, delivered with the sincerity of one who fully knew the value of an entire system of night suits, was broadcast to the lords of worn hair, and Conwallis's sheer amiability was such that by the time the rogue trader personally hoeve into orbit over Lundborg 9, the gates of the household's ancient seat were open to his delegation. Possibility of hostilities long diffused. Conwallis met with Duke Corvin Bevenwolf, the lord of the house and grandmaster of her knights, to enter into immediate talks. The aristocratic mien of the rogue trader served the Imperium well that day. Drawn from ancient Terran nobility stock, Conwallis was quick to spot the potential pitfalls and dangers inherent in the patrician ceremonies and interactions he was now forced to be a part of. The Terran template of ancient class structures had clearly been exported to her colonies and had proven surprisingly resilient. Having not encountered greater humanity for millennia, worn hair were cast at ease by the clear similarities of dissent between them and the strangers. Within a month, the talks had concluded with total success. Under the approving and encouraging gaze of Conwallis, Duke Bevenwolf announced that the house would ascend to the Imperium. The Mechanicum Tagmata elements attached to the 12th Expeditionary Fleet lodged formal protests, common whenever Imperial forces encountered night worlds before the scions of the machine gods did, but their entreaties had fallen upon stonewalling. Worn hair's sheer size, history and infrastructure had ensured their independence for millennia without any forgeworld to aid them, and in this new era they needed fealty to none. With the 12th Expeditionary Fleet requiring onward passage to the southeastern Galactic Fringe, Worn hair seconded to the Armada a significant quantity of its strength, fortifying its home system with a cadre of veterans to await oncoming civilian elements of the Imperium. The onward advance of the 12th Expeditionary Fleet would eventually become known in Imperial annals as the long march to Ultramar. Night Scions of Worn hair comported themselves admirably during its course. Many of the Xenos strains encountered therein were utterly unknown to the Imperium, but ancient enemies of the Knights, which allowed Worn hair to provide incredibly valuable combat data to their new Imperial allies, as well as granting the household the distinct pleasure of ensuring the extermination of their longtime foes. Elsewhere, Orc holdings were frequently barriers to the Crusade's path, well known to the Imperium as they were, and against these Xenos did the Knights of Worn hair become increasingly adept. The clanking smog belching constructs of the Orcs no match for the swift and ever more experienced night suits. Following the assumption of command of the Eastern fringes by the Primarch, Rebut Gulliman, House Worn hair participated in the scouring of Jardin Gry, known portentiously as a grave world under the light of a black sun. Under twelve whole chapters of the newly renamed Thirteenth Legion Ultramarines, ten cohorts of solar auxilia, and Titan Manipals of the Legio Metallica, the Great Crusade brought the wrath of humanity against these worlds hideous necrogenic Xenos, revenant organisms whose sheer foulness saw their nature redacted and expunged from Imperial records. The slaughter however was catastrophic, though eventually victorious, the single planet campaign cost the Imperium a dozen Titans and hundreds of night suits, as well as almost three thousand Astartes and some tens of thousands of auxilia. Despite the losses, House Worn hair had emerged triumphant, hailed alongside the surviving campaign veterans at a triumphal parade. During the opportunity provided, the New Duke knelt his battered and war-scarred Sarastus Night Lancer before Gulliman, echoed by the entirety of his house, and pledged to the service of Ultramar and its five hundred worlds. The Thirteenth Primarch's conduct during the war had earned the respect of the Bellicose Worn hair, and the Primarch's respect for both their traditions and role upon the battlefield cast him as the patron of the house who wished to pledge their banners to him. Worn hair thereafter served the Thirteenth Legion across the breath of the Great Crusade, although were in occasion seconded to other legions and primarchs, most notably Magnus the Red of the Fifteenth Legion Thousand Sons during the war for Sophia's Moors. A staple of Ultramarine campaigning, the deep ties the house had forged with the Thirteenth Legion meant that, when the call came, Worn hair answered their oats with alacrity, sending hundreds of knights and detached sacristans to the Great Muster at Calth. At the time of the Calth Conjunction, house Worn hair was rated amongst the stratigo echelons of the Divisio Militaris as Primus Bellicosa, a classification reserved for a select number of nightly households pledged to both Imperium and Mechanicum that possessed the greatest number of suits and thus the greatest material strength. There was, initially, difficulty in establishing this rating. House Worn hair did not permit Militaris assayers accessing their crypts and only rendered unto the Imperium records and chronicles that met the barest minimum of commitment established under their Treaty of Loyalty. Undeterred, Militaris assayers attached themselves to the Twelfth Expeditionary Fleet to monitor the house in transit. As Worn hair possessed not even a paltry conveyor fleet of their own and were utterly dependent on the Navus Imperialis. Careful assessment determined that the initial force pledged to the Crusade numbered some 500 suits and interviews conducted with scions taken to cups to cope with the boredom of warp travel revealed that the house kept at least several hundred more in stasis vaults across their home system. The sheer number of suits, even those in reserve, allowed the household to avoid the necessity of pledging to a forge world, securing them against the rapacious Mechanicum's advances. The sheer range of armor marks the house could field was as impressive as its numbers although they were always deployed in almost entirely homogenous lance formations. There was never to be a mixing of suits rather the household collected scions into what could broadly be considered squads of identical armor marks to fulfill specific battlefield roles. Thus, Questora's patterns, predominantly of the errant and paladin varieties, fulfilled the role of Knights of the Line, the bulwark of Worn hair formations. While veteran scions took to the field in Sarastus patterned suits of Knight Asheron, Knight Castigator, and Knight Lancer varieties. Depending upon the enemy that the household was engaging. The doom of the house was to perform them on Calth. Another facet of that calamity that claimed so much. Assigned as Knight Support for the legio presagius of the Collegia Titanica, House Worn hair mustered alongside the god engines in the city of Ithrica. A scarce two dozen knights had made it to orbit before the annihilation event precipitated by the fleet tender Campanile. And before the scrap code infection of the traitor attack had crippled the Mechanicum's new spheric net. Invoking a localized communication protocol in order to maintain household coherence, the Sacristons of Worn hair sought to establish some means of operational efficacy amongst their scion masters. But all would be paltry efforts against the disaster that was unfolding. 17th legionship Destiny's Hand unleashed an atomic bombardment upon the cities of Calth's southern islands. With Ithrica and the muster conducted there, another target amidst a literally apocalyptic nuclear saturation barrage. So intense and so total was the word-bearer attack that every single night suit upon the muster field was simply incinerated. Even those that managed to activate defenses in time. A knight's ion shield was no match for the bombardment that was committed against them. Despite the total obliteration of their targets, the 17th continued their attack, following their atomics with directed land strikes and mason converter broadsides. It was a display of deliberately want and overkill. No living thing had survived the first bombardment, save for the Titans. And those that did managed to weather the second, third and fourth barrages. Across the whole of the southern reaches, flash-boiled oceans created massive atmospheric disturbances, and the very tectonic foundations of the Isla chain were shattered to near-rubble. The sole knight conveyor that had lifted to orbit immediately prior to the attack had, however, miraculously survived. Its pilots, having detected the incoming bombardment, with enough time to plot an emergency landing, moments before nuclear flash had blinded all of them. The electromagnetic pulses unleashed by atomic attacks were so overwhelming that much of the craft systems simply burnt out as it struggled valiantly to land, only to find amidst the boiling ocean and dust storms that all that remained of the southern island chains was a sundered boiling mess of rubble and seawater. Despite the best efforts of the surviving flight crew, the conveyor plunged into the ocean, settling upon the seabed amidst the devastation of a drowning island chain. What crew had survived the radiation deluge, swiftly drowned in ocean water that scalded their lungs even as it filled them. But surviving, ensconced within their night suits, were worn here, some two dozen knights, including the Duke. As the starship had been designed for atmospheric and orbital flight, its hull was rapidly collapsing under ocean pressure. Surviving video logs depict the scene within the hold from the pilot's own helm cams, showing water rapidly flooding the space as the Duke tore at the hulls with his knight's reaper chain fist. Bleeding his scions through the breach he forced, the Duke and his surviving kin escaped the conveyor and began to march across the seabed itself. Corrupted helm footage, all specks creed and vox logs, speak to a subsequent march to relative safety that was defined by confusion and fear, for the fate of their kinsmen and the planet in general, but also were resolved to survive. The environment was simply hellish. Pockets of water would flash boil, scouring the suits and raising their internal temperatures to nearly lethal levels. Visibility was near zero, the arc lights of the knights barely penetrating the chaotic murk of the seabed. Yet persists they did, rising through the catastrophe to breach the surface on the coastline of devastated Ithrica. Sensorium suites screaming radiation warnings, even as picked feeds captured banks of boiling fog and the twisted remnants of machinery still glowing hot from the passage of the word-bearer bombardment.  Half their number had been claimed by the boiling seas or had fallen into chasms torn in the very rock itself. The final video logs of the timestamp depict a dark horde marching towards the surviving scions of worn hair. Eyes at low with dark energies and then nothing. That we even know of the last moments of worn hair upon Calth is thanks to the recovery efforts committed by members of the 13th Legion in the years following the catastrophe. An ultramarine's recon squad operating out of the newly established nearby arcology discovered what can only be described as a grim tableau vivante. What was clearly the aftermath of a great battle, a dozen knights of worn hair gathered around the juke's personal suit Sir Crease of Sorrow stood in formation, arrayed outwards in the manner of a doomed final stand. All were scourged black, warped by arcane fire, their livery barely visible under the scorched armorials. Nothing remained of those that they had fought, safe for ashen smears upon surrounding rubble. All were dead, utterly dead. The ultramarines, as a mark of respect for the fallen, recovered the data one has thus far presented and returned it to the house's keep upon Lundborg. While the march across the seabed was presented to the Imperium as a matter of historical record, the final fate of the duke and the last of his kin was purged. Whether through worry for corruption or to spare the surviving scions of the house, the truth of what had finally ended their sire. Indeed, all that remained of the once mighty house were now several older barons on the verge of dotage and younger squires barely upon the cusp of elevation to scions. Debate amongst the surviving grandees as to the course of action the house must now take following the calamity was intense. But ultimately the resolution was passed that all surviving suits would be painted black as a mark of grief, but that the stasis crypts would now be deactivated. No matter the cost, Vorneher would have its revenge upon the forces of the traitors. It committed itself and its reserves of suits to the remainder of the war as it unfolded. The black lancers of house Vorneher, as they now were to become informally known, were a terrible scourge against the war masters hordes in the years to come. But as far as one is able to discern, the last of their scions fell during the titan death at Beta Garmin, scant year before the siege of Terra itself. Vorneher committed themselves to a revenge that they would not live to see, but that memory alone would honor. So shared they the fate of so many that pass into the annals of history in the age of darkness. Ave Imperator, Gloria and Excelsis Terra. This video and this channel were made possible thanks to the very kind donations and support from my Patreon subscribers. If you'd like to help support the channel, head on over to patreon.com. If you'd like to receive more updates about the channel and any future videos, you can contact me or follow me on Twitter at OculusImperia. Otherwise, please like, subscribe, comment, let me know your feedback, and as ever, thank you very much for watching.


I'm gonna talk on anatomy of accessible forms just a few words about me, okay. So here, it's just all about me for I'm not, I'm an English graduate, I'm an English graduate, and I shifted to accessibility just eight years back. Okay, I work for DQ software, I'm interested in listening to music, reading, blogging, and even I do beatboxing and you know, when I really am bored or something like that. Okay, this is today's agenda, so if the self-explanator, I don't need to really go through this so we can move to the next one. So, I think the slide is about what is accessibility, is it? Okay, so I don't know how many of you know about accessibility first of all, anybody knows about it? Yes. Yeah, you're the only one. No, so if you raise your hands, he won't be able to see you, so you're gonna need to speak out, okay. Just raise your hands and he'll come. Okay, so I don't want to lay on this definition from Wikipedia, I just put it on the slide's purpose, okay. So the world has 15% of persons with disabilities, okay. So say that 70 million people are around the world and out of which 15% people are with, some know, I mean, visible or invisible disabilities, that is one, and that by two, by 2050, the 50% of the population will become senior citizens.  So if you are designing your products and services only for people who are well able body, then they are losing out on a six within the order of money that is there in the pockets of people with disabilities, that is what the definition of accident, if you want to make it very simple, I don't want to elaborate it, obviously you can discuss that for hours, but I want to give the further, you others a lot of time, so that's it. Yeah, so these are all, this is the slide about, yeah, so the way the accessibility slide, so you know what the new 360's founder has said, so that is for all, that is what it says, I don't need to explain that again, and this other side, so when you make your products websites accessible, you can enable them, people with disabilities, and they can also continue to the empowerment and enrichment of internet, that is the idea of the accessibility, so I don't want to miss one. Okay, so these are so benefit, I don't need to really tell that, I mean this is all, I mean self-explanatory, people who applying low vision, mobility impact, cognitively impact, which means people who are neurological, brain-related issues, and things like that, and even mobile users, so mobile users are not disabled users, we don't think like that, okay, but even when you are using the smallest thing, so why do you think everybody is behind the dark mode? Okay, that is kind of making your eyes comfortable, which is like the same thing, right, so I am again for everyone, okay, so I just want to elaborate on, I just want to narrate one small story, okay, there was a lady who was into some, who was suffering from some fever or something, and she was stuck up on the phone for seven days, so suddenly she wants to eat cupcake, which is her favorite, so she goes for an online bakery, and wants to buy cupcakes, she selected everything, added to the cart, and she went to the checkout page, but to her frustration, she tried to fill the checkout forms to a greater extent, and unfortunately, she didn't know, until the last minute, I mean she tried for half an hour, and she failed so many errors, the form was not able, she was not able to submit the form, she was not able to get through the checkout process, so the cupcake was not ordered, she was in a kind of frustration, she came out of the site, and she, what it had, I mean you can say that her temperature increased, not because of the cupcakes or something like that, but the frustration is what I am saying, okay, this is what I want to tell you, and imagine, if a lady who can see just a lot of fever can get into that frustration because of the checkout process, that was not actually use of the place, a neighbor calling person, okay, what will happen to a person with disabilities, that's what this story explains, so we'll go for it, as I said, why accessible forms, you know, are insolcite, sometimes very free, so accessible forms, you know, your site center, you want to enter into any social network, and you may have anything, accessible forms are the forms of the first aid way to your site, and obviously if you're a worker's user, you want people to contact you, that is, you want to pay for them to contact you, and they are frustrated, obviously, they will not fill any details, and obviously they won't come back, that is what I told you this slide, okay, so here I've explained what all would make an accessible form better, a form better, so if you want to go through these labels, you know, marking the required fields, okay, and you have instructions, you have error identification in text, and you have error suggestions to make, and with all that, these are a few things, or at least some basic ingredients to make, or opportunities to make your forms very accessible, so we go through the next one. So here the first slide says, a placeholder is not a label at all, okay, you see the state shots here, you can see here have a login form as email and password as placeholder as label, then once the user starts to fill in this particular value, the label disappears, so imagine a cognitive, a short term memory last person is filling the form, how, okay, this particular form and we do feel like it's in the form, but if the form is very big, what will happen to that person? You're talking about that, so that is why I said placeholder is not a solution, I mean, there are other points also, placeholder does not need the contrast, it will go, it is just illusive, so do not use placeholder as a label, that's the first point I want to make. Okay, so this is simple explanation, I won't need to really talk about it, but I will just say that people who are blind, don't listen and cognitive users will really benefit, so imagine you are, why do you think it's important without a label? After a few days, I know if you forget where you kept it, you will be searching if you just mix some other borders, you will never know what is no medicine and if you take something wrong, what will go wrong, so that's the same thing in the website too, so it helps everyone in general, but you know people who have no, I know no mission and if you are cognitive disabilities and all, for them it is going to be really difficult if you have a permanent disability and make sure that it is in the text format, so use no label, tag or something like that, but never use, but just for aesthetic purpose and just for the design purpose, don't use, you know, temporary label, yeah. So here this is another thing, so if you see this picture, again as we have explained, so there are two other screens, the other sections here, one is a shipping address and the other one is, so obviously the field would be the same, I just want to show a 9192 zip code, but what is an amygdala, this is going to be a very helpful thing if you group the properties with appropriate groupings for the screen readers, because bigger forms are going to be really confused screen readers or people who are blind and who has a certain technology, so that is the reason we are telling you to group them, if you have a gender, if you have a male and female gender, but it must be grouped with the gender using a pizza legend or you can even use other properties, and then you can group them so that people identify, and pizza legend, even sighted users get a small line around them to say, okay, this belongs to gender, so if you think there is a bad design, you can take out their lines, but that's difficult to take out. So, any, no doubt you have questions on labeling anyway, so I'm going to the instructions now. So, forms are the toughest thing to fill in, if you agree or don't agree, it's up to you, but for example, go to any government examination forms, man, it takes years to fill in, okay, and several times I have with my friends blind, people who are blind, don't help to understand forms, and I myself fail to understand what they say that they have to fill in, and where are the instructions, and when you're creating a password account, what are the password criteria that you want to tell the users? So, mention them up in a public format, I mean tell them, okay, the password should contain eight characters, one special character, one number, many other sites provide that some sites show that as an error instead of providing a instruction, which is a very bad practice because, again, as I said, people who are deserving these gender citizens will really get frustrated, and they will not use the site again, that's why I'm saying, do not get other site instructions for you, first thing and last thing, you don't need provide instructions for same and last thing, but at least where it is necessary to provide a path, etc., in such, okay. So, this is another important thing that if you want to consider your forms, so there are big forms, okay, so imagine there's a checkout fee, checkout form, okay, you don't want the users to fill their official phone number or their company name, which is an option, okay. So, the form has a mixture of the mandatory gender option, okay, so at least give the users an instruction through a star, or the text like required, or you can also use required attributes from H&M or RIA to mark them as required so that users do not commit errors, it prevents errors, that is one of the principles of universal business, it prevents errors or users make errors, so mark your required attributes, don't use color color to do that, give proper text, give proper visual clue, because colors, there are color languages that cannot see different colors, people cannot see red color, people cannot distinguish it with red and blue, so do not use colors to make these kind of markings, use a star mark that is cyclable, or use a required word as a text in your daily set, so that will help a lot of users to complete their tasks so easily, okay. So, this is very, very important because sometimes, 100 times, if you click submit button, but it will say the form will not be similar, if you're wondering why this form is not submitted, and what will happen is you will be marking the error feature, the red color code, or the color marking, and people who cannot understand this kind of legends, people who are learning this ability, reading this ability, color blind, people who are speaking and you are blind, you cannot understand this kind of error identification, so provide them with textual error messages, as much as possible, provide them in-line textual error messages below the seats, and associate them using different techniques available, and mention which field is in question, so as the speech also, please, that should be an error message, this is an outside invalid email, because many people cannot understand this much of invalid email, what would you mean by that? I understand because I did it as an English, but not everyone comes to us on site, you know, with that kind of qualification, and you know, there are people who can, I know someone who did their English, you need to correspond for their exact documentation, just like, so if they come and say invalid email, they've got invalid and some useless history, so use clear error messages, identify the fees, and associate them, which will be really helpful for the work of the email. So this is another thing that I would like to say, so there are places where you cannot provide instructions, but when the users make mistakes in your form, in the form that you put in the data, wherever possible provide fixes, for example, data, so dates, okay, the date must be D, M, Y, Y, other date must be M, D, D, Y, Y, example, 16, 0, 6, 9, 8, that kind of instruction. So there's other example that I've given here, so for example, a credit card value must be at least 16 characters, okay, you know, error solutions must be, you know, or you can also find them, where the credit card number will be located, you know, these things, error fixes, would be added, and you know, the users who fill in the data only fill in a particular format, provide them in the error messages, emails, example at domain.com, so many people would be interested in that as well, so when they see this example in the error message, they know the example at the way the format tells them, oh, okay, this is what I need to make a mistake. Okay, so this is all self-explanation, I don't need to use descriptive and clear labels, and use them permanently, don't use a temporary label as I said, and associate, programmatically associate them with the form keys using foreign-digging that there are error methods, and you can also, you know, provide instruction where it is necessary, you can provide a tooltip, or you can provide a visible instruction, and use aria to, you know, sometimes use aria if you can't make any, you know, any changes in the form using html format, instead you can use aria to make the changes, but use them very sparingly, and see aria specifications before using aria for that purposes, okay, so if, that is, I mean, these are data that we have just explained, I mean, already without calling the user, there's one of the three key points, there's nothing much added here, so we can go to the next slide. So, okay, why I include it, first of all, is accident forms are not specific to our system, anybody who's building a website can make accident forms, but obviously this is a work camp, so without touching upon the purpose, it is not, it is still complete, so, I think most of you know this, WC18.0 for gravity forms, which will make your form automatically accessible, and then the next one is contact forms, for a contactless page, when you have a contact form, even that, that is also available to make your form accessible, but other than that, not because their sponsors are mentioning them, but Jetpack form module is actually accessible, it's a 70 quantity, they are using HTML5 data methods, so other than that, this will be separate estimates that you can make, but that is the only drawback that is easily as an accessibility consultant, but otherwise, you can use Jetpack form module, and that also can make your forms pretty accessible. So, I, like I've gone very fast, I do, because these are all easy, basic fundamental things of an accident form, there's nothing that, you know, nobody knows yet, it's just a re-iteration, but if this you want to ask, you can ask me any question, you're welcome. So, when there are no questions, there are two things, one, I understand everything, none I don't understand anything, so, I consider a false form, okay? And, Yeah, there are questions. Yeah, sure. What are your false form forms that have two forms, and is it accessible from your point of view or not? I think form is not accessible, but if you want to make a case, you can take it out. So, for example, if the forms are arranged in a table, where you have only two columns, the left side will give you the form labels as such a header, and the right side will give you the edit fields, you can make the label resolution, to automatically the shape will get associated, and that will become accessible, obviously, and you can make spaces for the messages and instructions within the TP cells, obviously, but do not make clear columns based on CSS, and you know, try to do that, because sometimes screen readers will not interpret you know, those things, and then you have to go from the area as an option. So, I have a question. Yes, please. So, accessibility is not only in the forms, it is for real, actually. Yes. So, it would be better for the developers, like if you could tell me like, is there any guidelines or standards that we can refer like when we are, believe me, a website, and also if you are able to remember and tell me some of the websites which has very good accessibility implementer, so that we can refer and build the websites better. In the world, there is no 100% access to the site, but yeah, I can tell you, there is a site called mobility.org, K and O, B-I-L-I-T-Y, not O-R-G, okay? This site is compliant with WCG 2.1. Okay, what is WCG 2.1, anybody knows? We have come to an accessibility guidance 2.1. Okay, BQ.com, BQD.com, even that site is our company site, I'm not promoting our company, okay? But if you just visit the site and just see how it is accessible, that is also WCG 2.1 and compliant. There are a lot of other international, other companies like Apple, all of them are usually a good job. You can also visit digital.com, which is our blog and we write a lot of blog posts on accessibility-related things. I've given this in the reference section, and I did not post of these sites on a given within the company, and anybody who wants these sites, you can take it from there. And then, yeah, so there are a lot of tools. I don't know if they will use this axe, A, X, E, B. Good riddance, anyone else? No, I'm okay. So it's an open source tool, so I thought that it's not a conversion, even though this product is very commercial company, it's just an open source tool, you can integrate it with your frameworks. It is available, I don't have the internal, but I can get it for you. So, yeah, there is a five box plugin, there is a Chrome plugin also on Chrome Store, but it is available as a JavaScript library which you can integrate with your framework, and as and when you can, even WordPress Accessibility Checker also uses axe to some extent, okay? But WordPress Accessibility Checker I'm not really sure how much it detects errors, or how depth it goes, I'm not sure because I don't like to use it, so I cannot comment on it. But use axe as an open source tool, there are other tools also, we have accessibility tool, but nowadays we have here five box, and I need to be able to use it for this thing, but axe is an open source, it is used by Microsoft in the Insights program, and Google does it in their Lighthouse program, and so you can take it from, you can also add it to your framework, and you saw the plugins from five box and Chrome Store, and I really go through the reference process. So this is, there is a series that we had a few months back when I had any of the accessible forms, so you can see it here, and then you have links for WCAG 2.0 and 2.1, you also have WCAG accessibility page, you want to develop a business case for your businesses, or your organization to fight for accessibility, you can develop the products that they have provided here. So more references are there, if you want to meet these, meet me, go and interact, I'm available to go all the way, and I'm open for any discussion or any questions, actually. Any more questions? No. So this is a thanks that I have here, my contact ID is here, you can go down, and you can hear me at least like later, okay? So thank you so much for patiently listening to me.


I should have done the training. Oh, I see. Okay. Yeah. There's two laser pointers. Is that better? Can everyone hear me? Yes. Much better. Okay. I don't know what's going on with that, Michael. Thank you. Sorry about that. Okay. No, that's fine. All right. So essentially I was just talking to you, like any rejected from talking to you at DEF CON. So we don't even need people to listen to that. All right. So this talk is all about. All right. Let's see. Yeah. Okay. Can we move to the next slide please? And all right. So essentially I've got a brain that is always trying to consume as much as I possibly can all the time. And sometimes I just don't have the hours in the day to actually do everything that I want to do. And this is especially true. So when I go on Twitter and I'm on Twitter as the introduction said, pretty much all the time I'm pretty much addicted to it. I follow basically the cleverest people in the entire world as far as I'm concerned. And some of them drop some information about stuff that they're working on or something that they find interesting all the time. And I just put it into bookmarks because I just really can't get to it. And so I have, and I checked this out this morning, over 500 bookmarks sitting waiting for me to address them. And I have had a 10 yes today since I created the slide. So it's a huge issue. But it's a good one to have. And I think that's probably what the whole subject of this talk is all about. So to produce this talk just behind the scenes I used a piece of software called Dewey. It's a way of arranging bookmarks. I know that if you pay money to Twitter each month, you can do the same thing. I have a problem with paying money to do it to each month, especially since this Dewey program is free. I have no idea anything about the organization fall. I know my bookmarks are being looked at by some sort of weird government of some sorts or some company and they're selling it so that whenever I jump into Twitter, it advertises something that makes sense to me, which doesn't seem to be the case. But that's maybe why they're happy to do something for free. Who knows anyway. So I quickly got hold of this app so that I could arrange my bookmarks and have a look and see exactly what was available to me. And for the first time I actually jumped back into bookmarks that I started with about two or something years ago. There's actually good stuff in there. So next slide, please. So we're going to take a bit of a look through these. I've skipped some bookmarks because they just don't really make sense to the great public. And yeah, let's jump in. So this is like one of my oldest ones, February 27, 2019. So it's a good, what, two and a half years old. And yeah, it comes from Katie McCaffrey. And what they were talking about here is running an experiment where instead of using words and using track changes in words and comments and stuff, they decided to abandon word altogether and just make their documents in a way that they could store it in GitHub. So any changes that you made to documents, once you've committed those changes, you put like a change reason. And so anyone that's following up on your documents can just go through essentially the change log and see exactly what those changes were, which is an interesting way of doing things. The reason why I'm showing you these is a lot of these were just me thinking, well, how can we do things better? So as my introduction says, I'm a GRC consultant, but I also consider myself to be a GRC hacker. And so I'm always trying to see how can we hack the processes that we're doing. So instead of just accepting the fact that reports are done with word, but it's better. What can we do? What's a better way of us doing things? And this one just really appealed to me. So should you do this? Should you use word? Who knows? I'm up to you. But at least it's something that you should be thinking about, I don't know, if you want. And that's what these books are all about. It's just stuff for me to think about. And maybe you can think about it as well and get something out of it. So yeah, that's one thing. If you're looking at me for answers in this talk, I'm sorry, I don't have answers. These are all just ways of making me think and making me question. All right, next slide, please. OK, so it wouldn't be complete without a tweet from Dominic White, also known as Cinge, who's one of the smartest people that I've ever had the privilege of meeting him and I were originally from Johannesburg. So we used to kind of move around in different, sorry, in the same circles and bait and think together. And so I consider him to be one of the smartest guys that I know. And then Sholdovet, who he's quoting here, is also fits into that category. So yeah, businesses can get away with being technically bankrupt in terms of security debt because it isn't something that is measured. Yeah, I just love the idea of security debt. Again, not something that I can claim to know everything about and certainly not something I can do in a talk that's supposed to be 15 minutes long. But it's something that I like to think about the idea that if you take shortcuts when you're developing new systems or new services or anything to that effect, it's going to cost you down the line. And that's just something to think about in terms of security. And when you're working with organizations and you look at them and say, listen, surely when you're putting the solution together, patching was something that you considered. And they're like, well, no, not really. And it's like, well, okay, well, you're going to have to consider it now. And it's going to be more difficult for you to consider it now. And they're like, well, we just kind of fought the time. And it's like, well, then in that case, you're pretty much technically bankrupt. And it's not a security issue. It's a development issue. You should have done it right at the beginning. And I love that kind of concept of thinking of it in terms of debts where if you start it now and do it now, it'll be a good thing. But if you do it in the future, you're going to not only be paying the debt, but the interest on top of that. So yeah, this was an interesting tweet. Next slide, please. Okay, so this is one that I found quite interesting just basically because it quotes one of the people that I really, really like. And so Dr. Nikol Aforskren, who's basically written a book about essentially DevOps, including ways that she investigated on how companies do it successfully. She's like basically the one person that's scientifically tested where the DevOps is a good idea and come out with an idea that it is. Now I disagree with her on this one very specific point about the fact that she talks about maturity models and I think her definition of maturity models is different to mine. So essentially what she's talking about here is the idea of something like a PCI where you're not kind of working out what you should be doing based on your own environment but literally based on a set of best practices. And I actually really like PCI and I like the idea of the fact that you should use your best practices because in a lot of organization, that's really what you've got. And I probably shouldn't say best practices. I should probably say good practices because a lot of organizations, you know, that is the minimum that you should be doing is actually what they do. And so I guess I kind of agree with this that you should customize your controls for your organization but a lot of organizations don't even have the minimum. So this is something that I'd like to think about like to work out more and be able to come up with a good solution to what organizations should do. But yeah, so this is one that I thought I'll just pull out and highlight. Next slide, please. Okay, so going from a tweet about Dr. Forsgren to a tweet by Dr. Forsgren about someone else. So this is from Camille Faunier. And it's about, it says, it's the most insightful thing that you can say about metrics and measures is that people will game them. You don't have anything insightful to add to the conversation. So we know that. We know that people will try and game these things. Doesn't mean that you should just abandon them with gut feel or something. You should lean more to collecting good information. And absolutely. So I think if... Which continues this idea. So Dr. Forsgren carries on and says, metrics will be used against people because trust me, lack of metrics is also used against people. And the idea being that if you... is that metrics can be used against certain types of people. And absolutely it can. And especially when you look at AI or ML. So artificial intelligence, all machine learning which is based on the past essentially. And you'll see that a lot of them have issues. The reason why they have issues is because the source material is not great to start with. And the idea being, hang on a sec, but even though it's a bad thing, doesn't mean that we should stop there or ignore it and just go with gut feel because gut feel is probably based on the same data, the same information as it has been. So yeah, that's an issue. But we should actually work harder to get that source information better. We should work harder to understand what the stuff is that we're looking at. Don't abandon it just because it doesn't make sense to you. Work harder. And I think that's what I get out of this particular tweet. Next slide, please. Okay, this is just one that I just thought I'll throw in. So this is from Rachel Toback, who is one of the best social engineers out there and has computed many times at the social engineering village. And I just thought this was a good one because it kind of shows how if you look at things more deeply, they make a lot more sense. So if you look at the laziness of information security, we always say, listen, don't click on links in emails, which is actually not helpful advice at all. I always think of kind of a sign felt explaining that to Gary and him coming back and saying, that's what emails are for. Like literally like what half the point of an email is you send something to someone so they can click on a link and carry on their daily business. It doesn't make sense to say something that's just kind of glib, don't click on links, email.  They should have just not clicked on the link. But this takes it one step further and has a look at exactly what is going on with kind of spam emails. And what she's got here is a principle created by someone called, name I'm going to try and pronounce, Robert Cialdini. And that's a principle of persuasion. But like, okay, now we're looking at the philosophy behind emails. So not just don't click on links and emails, but hang on a sec. Is this email trying to increase the amount of urgency that I need to do? And if it is, do I need to actually be as urgent as the email says that I should? So it's like, okay, if you don't contact us within the next 24 hours, something bad's going to happen to your account. Whoa, wait a minute. Someone is trying to cause me to bypass my thinking to try and be quick and rash. Why are they doing this? What is, why is it in their best interest? Does it make sense that my banquet would give me a certain amount of time to respond to something? If not, hang on. So maybe someone's trying to con me and trying to bypass my actual way of thinking. This to me is so much better advice than don't click on links and emails. It's kind of understand why someone's doing something. Why are they talking to you in a certain way? Next slide, please. Okay, this one I'm getting close to, to break in the rules about spot language. There's no swearing in this, but it's close. So this is a risk matrix, which I thought this was quite cute. It's the Australian risk matrix. So if anyone is interested in knowing how risks work, you basically take the likelihood of something happening and you take the consequences to you, kind of times them together or add them together or times them together and you come up with a number. And that's how much risk there is in something happening. So yeah, so in Australia, you've got a chance of something that's either now, now or get set. And that's the likelihood of something happening. And then of course your consequences is lower than elizards.  She'll be apples or fair dinkum or rooted.  So those are the different ones. Have I seen this used in business? No, actually. But I really like this, this one. And then the same chap came out with, he's actually from Britain. And he came out with the British one, which is on the next slide, please. And here's the UK ones. So yeah, so their chances are once in a blue moon, not likely on occasion, a fair chance. And then momentarily, which is like the opposite to what the US uses is momentarily. And then your consequences are triforce before who are chagged or royally leaped. And then of course, yeah, you can see the different ones there. So like biscuits or pop the kettle on. And then it gets worse.   We better pop the kettle on. And so yeah, there's your risk matrix for the UK. Think in the interest of time and also because I don't know if it's technically possible. Can we skip the next slide and go on to the one after that one, please? But yeah, this one was just a bit of fun. But also I like the quote at the top there when someone sacrifices the main feature to ship on time. Yeah, a big part of DevOps. And you'll see a lot of these things are concerned with with the idea of DevOps and all of that. Because I think that our processes and is something that IT has totally skipped over in previous years.  And manufacturing was like that. But they were like that a good 60, 70 years ago. And they've worked really, really hard to improve things, come up with all the best ways of doing things. And we totally ignored that. We just thought we were better than them. We just decided that that we'll do things in our own way. And it's a problem. And I think now we're actually starting to understand that Hang on These Guys actually spent a lot of time doing the right thing. And we can learn from them. And so I like to think that a lot of this has been has been worked out for us. And yeah, this is exactly what DevOps is all about actually. The idea that you need to ship something on time and that is the biggest, most important thing that you can do. But in reality, the whole point of it is to get a good working system. And that's what you should be working towards. So I just really liked the picture because it really doesn't make sense. But I also liked the quote that they've got at the top. Next slide, please. Yeah, this is a fun one about consulting. So it says, yeah, at GM, if you see a snake, the first thing you do is hire a consultant on snakes. And then you get a committee together on snakes. And then you discuss it for a few years. And then the most likely course of action is nothing because, you know, if the snake hasn't bit anyone yet, then probably won't be a problem. And then, so you just leave him to crawl around on the factory floor. A better way to do things is put in an environment where the first guy who sees the snake kills it. Well, not necessarily kills it. So I just really, working as someone, as a consultant for so many years, this is absolutely what I see in a lot of organization. And as a consultant, I'm not complaining because this pretty much is what puts food into my kids' mouths. Because the amount of times that I've been hired by an organization because they just didn't want to, you know, look at an issue and deal with it. They'd rather bring consultants in to tell them, hey listen, you have an issue. And then they still do nothing about it. It is crazy. I guess if you're in an organization, the best thing that you can do is, hang on, what is practical? What can we do? Let's get this thing sorted out.  At the end of the day, are you actually solving what you set out to solve? Hopefully. And if you're not, then you probably need to take a deeper look at the work that you're actually doing. Next slide, please. Okay, this comes from, go see the dog, or so someone really smart and someone I enjoy following. This was quite an interesting one. Again, so what they said here is, Google says there are two shows. Okay, this is not even, you know, application-driven two-factor authentication. This is SMS-based two-factor authentication. 99% effective against bulk fishing. So that's pretty good figures, actually. And then 100% effective against credential stuffing. So what this is saying essentially is multi-factor authentication can help you out against people trying to attack your authentication, which is great information in the first place, but hang on a sec. It also, if you think about it, means that you're phishing emails that you're sending out and spending a lot of time doing. They're good, they're effective. I wouldn't say stop doing that, but you're aware that if you're just doing that and all you're really showing is that there's an issue, you're not really fixing it.  So sometimes it's good to actually look practically at what there is and what you should be doing. Next slide, please. Okay, so this is just to show you an example of what there is in my bookmarks. This is just a picture of a control that absolutely can be bypassed easily, and you can see that in the practical, in the real world, which you can't really see that in IT. Sometimes we just put things in place without understanding them. The reason why I've actually bookmarked this, if you ever look at the next slide, please, is because it comes from Swift on security. If you don't follow them, you absolutely should be. They just said reply with security memes, and this whole kind of Twitter threads is absolutely packed full of lots of fun and games. And so I bookmarked it in case I ever needed to use it in a presentation, which I did, and here it is. Next slide, please. I'm running very low on time here. So we're just going to go through the next few quite quickly, and I think they all slide that we can get through quite quickly. So this is just a picture of when Kubernetes goes wrong, just lots of fun and games. I just love Kubernetes kind of visual puns. Next slide, please. This is just to show you that my bookmarks are not all just information security and process driven and very serious topics and stuff. Some of them are just quite crazy. So this is just a way of making it look like you have a head in a jar. I'm probably going to put on your desks to get the rest of the IT team to take you seriously. Next slide, please. This is actually a really interesting story which I had if I had more time I would jump into. It's just basically the whole idea of how processes are broken. If you send an email to this organization and get sent off to an email address that belongs to a person. So this is a few unsubscribed from the email list. It actually goes to a single person that works at the organization. Left the organization, some other IT team have picked it up, it goes to them. They do their research as to whether the person is supposed to be on the list or not and then that goes into an Excel spreadsheet which then gets emailed to someone else who then checks it against the database, manually sends it back, logs a call, it goes to a third person, et cetera, et cetera. It's a beautiful way of showing just how broken organizations can be. Next slide, please. This is just a document that shows that I kept because it's got a cybersecurity style guide which I think is really something good to use. Next slide, please. A recipe on how to make the best bread and I have tried it and it is the best bread. It's absolutely amazing. So next slide, please. Vendor documentation can definitely be not all that very useful and that's what the slide is showing. Next slide, please. This is just good advice. I think always be thinking about what your customer wants, what they're trying to do, how do you fit into their processes and just remember customer doesn't want to call the inch drawer, they want to call the inch hole. I think that's absolutely good and something that I consider every single time. Next slide, please. Next slide, please. Let me check if there's technical issues. Yeah, it's absolutely fine. The next couple of slides are not all that important. One thing I can leave you with, I guess, the last slide that I just had there was like even though I've got so much stuff and it's also probably good just to keep some of the rest of the slides were just basically just fun and games and I think the one thing I just wanted to let you know there is just keep a sense of humor about you. Life is always serious, especially in the industry that we're in but also you should just sometimes go outside, have fun, take a break, relax and let your mind just take a break itself. Really the kind of book that leads to questions is just a bunch of things that I found quite interesting once upon a time. I guess if there's any takeaways, besides the fact that you should always relax and take life easy from time to time but also there's a lot of good stuff on Twitter, there's a lot of smart people out there and I highly recommend that you take a look around and see and sometimes people are real people that don't only talk tech, they talk about their lives, they talk about how they do things and sometimes that can be even very useful and you can learn a lot from that. So that's pretty much the takeaways. Yeah, thank you all very much. If there are any questions or anything that you'd want to discuss further about any of my slides, please let me know. One thing I'm going to try and do is get hold of all the different tweets that I actually collected up.