Good to go. Hey, folks. Thanks for joining us for this marketplace session. So we're going to talk about Brocade's NFE orchestration using OpenStack Tackup project. My name is Sridhar Ramaswamy. I'm a principal engineer in Brocade. And with me is Jeff, Jeff Remeter. He's a solution architect in Brocade in our BU. So let's go ahead and get started. So the agenda is we're going to talk about, in general, this OpenStack Tackup project, what it is, what is the scope. And we're going to talk a bit more on the features and how some of the features function as a workflow. And we will move on to do a demo, which is probably the main piece. I'll probably spend maximum time showing how this project functions, how this whole feature goes, and kind of wrap it up with what we plan for this project down the line. So with that, so what is Tackup? So some of you might be familiar with this diagram. It's an HCMano architecture diagram. And what Tackup project is, is essentially it's an orchestration project that geared towards the red box that you see around VNF manager and NFE orchestrator. So those are the two components that that's in scope for OpenStack Tackup. Our initial features are mostly geared towards VNFM, which is in the bottom. But as we add features, we are progressing up to an NFE orchestrator. So again, many of these things, again, this architecture diagram comes from the HC, NFE organization. And the theme for this OpenStack Tacker is to align with that architecture. I know that the word OpenStack and orchestration is used fairly widely. But the scope for OpenStack Tacker, it's an HCMano orchestration solution. So some of the features, if you're familiar with the basic orchestration, the main few building blocks that's required in VNFM is what something that Tackup supports today. There are features like the VNF catalog, which is essentially is used to onboard task templates for VNF descriptors. This is something specced out in HCMano. So we support that where you would first thing you would do is basically onboard your VNF. And we have other basic lifecycle management features, basically instantiating a VNF through the life of the VNF, instantiation, termination. There are other aspects where some of the templates need not be fully art-coded. It can be actually parameterized. So this feature is something we introduced recently in Liberty. So beyond that, we made sure the features that are really relevant for the deployers, which includes the VNF should be instantiated with the initial configurations. And sometimes there are two ways to get the configurations in. Like one could be through user data where things get injected during Buddha process. The other mechanism that we have is the instantiation finishes, and there are functions that you need to do on the VNF, either through REST API or we are actually going to demonstrate a case where you can use an SDN controller and use NetConf Yang to actually configure the VNF that just came up. So now beyond configuration, we also have a basic health monitoring where you can monitor the KPIs for the VNF that you just instantiated. And if there is any events in the health, attacker can actually yield, basically by respawning or other methods, it can actually rectify the situation for that particular VNF. So I'm going to briefly walk through the architecture and the workflow. So this is a fairly big colorful chart here. So it has different components through the functionality that I just talked about. And one thing I want to stress, again, is that attacker is like any of the open stack project. It's its own API server where there's a CLI, there's an API, and of course we have a horizon dashboard. That's something you would see. So I'll quickly walk you through the workflow. So the first thing you would do here is you need to onboard the VNFs. So again, the open stack attacker project envisions this to be a general purpose VNF manager. So you can use it for it's not tied to a particular VNF type, like a router or a DPI VNF. It can be broadly used for any VNF type. So that's our focus, so that's our vision. And another thing is it's, again, being an open source and open stack project, it needs to be multi-vendor. They kind of go hand in hand, but it's actually important to take that into account that this catalog can have multiple vendors VNF and we're going to show a few using the brocade VNF, but it can be from any vendor VNF. So that's the first step. So once it's things in the catalog, you can actually instantiate. So we use EAT. So that's, again, there are different drivers that you can potentially plug, but current default is EAT. We also have NOVA, and in fact, VNVision, there might be other newer infrared drivers down the line to orchestrate. This could be even containers, perhaps, down the line. So this would actually place the VMs in the target VEM. And so you can imagine there are multiple VNFs and we're going to demonstrate using brocade VNF in this session. So once the VNF is up, the first next thing you want to know is how the VNF configured for the services it's supposed to provide. So that's the next step. And Tacker has a management driver framework where it can actually use a management driver either to directly configure the VNF, or in this case, we're going to demonstrate how it can use an controller, an SDN controller to actually configure. So we're going to use the brocade SDN controller, which is a commercial version of an open daylight controller. So that's what we're going to see. And it will, in turn, use a net confiang to configure. So there is also a plan to do SFC once the VNFs are up that's still under development, but that VNVision that will follow the configuration of the VNF. And another key aspect of Tacker is, again, monitoring. This is important. Instantiating is one thing, but having the operators know what the VNF is doing and how it is doing is very, very critical. So this is something we enable where you can actually have your, so there are a couple of ways you can do it. Tacker has few inbuilt monitoring capability that are simple, but they are ready to go. You can make use of, but your VNF health might be determined in different ways, right? You might need to probe your servers running in your VNF to actually determine the health. So this is something we enable through the Tacker framework where you can bring in your own management monitoring driver and Tacker will just basically make use of that to determine thumbs up or thumbs down. And if there is a issue, it can actually detect that and heal the situation. Like perhaps respond to something we support today. So with that background, and I will hand it over to Jeff to continue the demo. Cool. Okay. Just give me a. Yeah. It's one second folks. Use that. This one, perhaps. Oh, I actually tried the other one. Oh, you can try it. That's fine. Yeah, okay. I think it should work. Just look at it. Oh, now do the other one. Yeah. This is good. Did you check to see if this works? Sorry? Did you check to see if this one works? Yeah, this should work. Okay. All right. All right. So thank you, Sridhar. So as Sridhar mentioned, I actually have two demos here today. The first one is going to show a full lifecycle management of a Brocade V router, VNF. And we'll take a look at some of the features that Sridhar mentioned. One being the management driver. So we use a BSE management driver which will help connect this VNF to a Brocade SDN controller. And we'll take a look at some of the monitoring features that you mentioned. And so we can see what happens, how Tacker monitors the VNF and how it can respond and do, perform certain actions in case it detects there's a failure. And then the second demo will be demonstrating how Tacker can not only provision simple VNFs, but also highly complex ones as well. And in this case, we'll be showing how we can provision a Brocade Connectom virtual Evolve packet core through OpenStack Tacker. Okay. So I'll just move straight into the demos here. Yeah, so the first one we'll be provisioning, we'll take a look at how we can provision a Brocade V router VNF. And we'll do this all through the OpenStack dashboard here. So if we log into the OpenStack dashboard, Tacker has a NFV section through and within Horizon. And the first thing we can do here is take a look at the VNF catalog, right? This is a listing of all the different VNFs that users can deploy through Tacker. Okay. So the first step we wanna do really is just onboard a new VNF. This will be for the V router. So it can be, this is an example of the Tosca template used to describe this particular VNF. So if you look at the left side, this is the template that specifies some global parameters. And then there's a section specific to each of the VDUs. So there is a VDU here. And it contains some information like the virtual machine image is gonna pull from the Glance database, the instance type or the flavor. And then if you notice where the red arrow is shown, there is the BSC management driver. So this VNF upon instantiation, the BSC management driver will actually mount this VNF on the SDN or Open Daylight Controller. And then from there it can be further managed and configured through Open Daylight. And then if you look a little bit further down, there's the monitoring policy. So in this case, it's a simple ping driver which will in the background do pings to this VNF. And if it detects any kind of failure, it can do a certain action. And in this example, it will do a respond. The two short files on the right, they're on the upper right. In case you wanna separate data from the actual VNF descriptor template, you can create a separate parameterized file that can be used for each instance of a particular VNF. So we have some user data parameters in that file. And then on the bottom, we have a VNF BSC configuration file which basically contains some of the information required for attacker to authenticate with the Open Daylight Controller as well as login to the VRouter itself. So that's basically the template describing this particular VNF. So first step we want to do is onboard this VNF into the attacker database. So we can click on the onboard VNF button in the VNF catalog. We can give this entry a name and then we're just going to browse and upload that YAML file that we were just looking at, okay? And so now this template is being stored in the attacker database. And so you can see it there. The next section, the VNF Manager, is where we can deploy an instance of any particular VNF. So now we wanna deploy the VRouter VNF. We can click on deploy. We give this particular instance a name. We call it VRouter demo. We select the entry in the catalog that we just uploaded. And then there's two other sections, right? The one is for the parameterized value file that we just looked at. And then the configuration requirements for the Open Daylight Controller, okay? And then so we click the deploy button and so now this VNF is being provisioned in the OpenStack Cloud, okay? And you can see the status is active. So this VNF has been launched. If we move over to the Nova portions, we can look at the instance and we can see the VRouter here is provisioned as a Nova instance and we can get directly to the console. We should probably disable our instant media. Yes, lesson learned. Okay, so yeah, so continuing on. Here you can see this is just the console of the VRouter that has just been provisioned through Tacker, right? So we can log in through the CLI. We can see it's the actual Brocade VRouter, okay? And so if you remember, we were using the BSE Management Driver, right? So after this thing has been spawned, it should have been mounted as a NetConf device within the Open Daylight Controller. So this is the GUI for the Brocade SDN Controller and we can just go ahead and log in to the controller. And once we log in, there should be two applications available here. So there's a topology manager, which we can take a look at first and this will just show us the current topology of NetConf devices that have been mounted. And you can see there's one NetConf device there. If we zoom in a little bit, we can see that's the VRouter that we just launched through Tacker, okay? So this VRouter is now available through Open Daylight, through applications to configure and manage. And we can go back to the beginning. And so we have this other application here called the VRouter Firewall Configurator. And this is essentially just a quick little kind of demo application that is used to basically push down a firewall configuration onto that VNF instance. In reality, you may have your own application or automation from a higher level orchestrator that may automate pushing some sort of configuration onto this VNF. Here we're just, you know, very simple demo. We can go to the Configurator and select the device we want to push the firewall configuration onto. And then you can see it's successfully been created. So now if we go back over to the console on our VNF and we look at the running configuration, you can see there is indeed now a firewall configuration on the VRouter itself, okay? And so the other feature that I wanted to talk about was the monitoring, right? So basically we have that block or that ping monitor going on in the background. So in order to simulate a failure of this particular VNF, I'm just gonna disable the management interface. And I'll just do that by applying that particular firewall role, which is a block ICMP role. I'm gonna apply that role to the management interface on this VRouter. And so once that happens, basically the attacker will no longer be able to monitor this VNF. It will detect that it has failed. And in a second, you should see that this, once it has been failed, it will destroy this VNF and it will respawn it once again. So here I'm committing the action. And in a second or two, okay, you can see so this VNF has been destroyed. And if we move over to the VNF manager section again, we can see this VNF has been marked as dead, okay? So now attacker in the background is going to respawn this instance and create a new one for us. And you can see the status is already in the active state. So it's already provisioning this new VNF. And again, if we go to the instances tab, we can see there is now a new instance of the VRouter that has been created. And again, we can go to the console and we can see that it's booting up right now, okay? So we can log in, we can see that it's been successfully reprovisioned after a failure. And then it would be obviously remounted back on the SDN controller as well, okay? So that's basically it for the first demo. We have one more quick demo. So that was basically a very simple VNF that we provisioned and this case is going to be a slightly more complex one. So in this case, we're going to provision a virtual Evolve packet core, okay? And I won't get into all the details on the architecture of VEPC, but as you can see, there's a lot of different components to it. There's actually seven different VDUs that we'll be provisioning through attacker. So there's things like an element manager or a session database, et cetera. So seven VDUs plus an additional one for the EMS or the management system. So moving along, you kind of go through the same process, right? You log into the OpenStack dashboard and go to the VNF catalog. And here we can onboard our VEPC template, okay? So just to take a look at the template really quick before we onboard it, you can see here there's actually, right? Similar to before, except in this case, there is a separate section for each of the individual eight VDUs, okay? So this is actually a slightly longer descriptor. If we drill into one of the VDUs, in this case VDU two, we can see kind of data unique or specific for each VDU in this particular template. And there's a user data section here, which basically passes some script to this instance upon instantiation. And this will basically configure it for its particular role in the VEPC architecture, okay? So this is our template. We can go ahead and then onboard this into the catalog. We can give it a name. We'll select the template file we just took a look at. And again, this template is being stored in the attacker database. So now if the user wants to provision an instance of this packet core, we can go to the VNF manager and we can go ahead and deploy this VNF. And in this case, there's no parameterized values or any configuration file. So it was just that single Tosca template that we initially looked at. So we'll just select that template from the list and click on deploy. So attacker is now converting a portion of that Tosca template into heat template so that OpenStack can handle it. You can see it's in a pending create mode right now. If we go to the heat section within the dashboard, the orchestration section, we can take a look at all the different resources that are actually being provisioned now. You can see there's a stack that's in the process of being created. And if we drill down into that stack, you can see, initially you see the GUI representation of all the different resources being provisioned. And then you can take a look at the individual resources. And you can see at this point, pretty much all the different resources have been provisioned already. There's just one lagging on a little bit here. But so while that one's still being created, we can take a look at the network topology in Liberty. So we have the new network topology GUI that's available in Liberty. So if we look at that, go to the network and network topology. And here you can see all the instances of all packet core that have been created. So there's a different instances, all eight of them attach to their appropriate networks within the OpenStack cluster. And if we go back to the VNF manager, you can actually see that this instance is in an active state. So this evolved packet core, according to this, has been successfully provisioned within the OpenStack cloud using Tacker. So I'm just gonna run a validate deploy script here, which is basically gonna open up a term window into six of these VDUs. And I'm just gonna log in and basically validate that this has been successfully provisioned through Tacker. So I just connect. There's a validate deploy script available. So I'm just gonna run this on each of them. And what we should see is basically green, showing that this has been successfully provisioned. And each VNFC is in an active state and ready to be used as a packet core. And it just takes a second. So everything is green, everything is ready. Everything looks good. There's one final detail we can just take a look at. And that is to log into the GUI EMS app of the packet core solution. So we can connect to that over a web browser. And if everything is successful, basically we should see that this EMS app has successfully discovered each of the different VNFCs as part of this whole VNF. And it is able to successfully monitor them and view their state. So you can see on the left in the orange tab, you can see seven VNFCs and it lists each of them below, okay? So that's basically it for the two demos. I'll hand it back over to Sridhar for any closing. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff, for the demo. Just want to leave the screen back to this. So the value here, I don't know if we can move back. So if we can get the slides. Oh, the slides? So instantiating a VEPC is usually a very, very high-touch thing. Like it involves a lot of VNFs, VMs to be instantiated. Here the power of Tacker and templatizing is to, you can write that once and you can instantiate any number of times. So Tacker can again maintain a collection of VMs, both simple and complex, and it can instantiate in a push button format. So that's the goal for Tacker. So in conclusion, so the features that you saw here are mostly geared from a VNFM point of view, but we are actually adding a lot more features moving to the NFEO area as well. In fact, it's actually complimentary where currently Tacker is instantiating only in the same VM. We are actually removing that restriction and introducing an ability to instantiate VNFs in any target open stack controller, any target VIM. And we have few other features, there you go. Thanks, Jeff. So and beyond that, SFC service function training is a widely asked feature beyond a simple VNF manager. So that's where a lot of interest, we are actually introducing the SFC APIs in Tacker in the next upcoming cycle. The other important thing for the VNF is not just a simple placement, it need to be placed efficiently. So that's another thing that we're gonna take it up in the next cycle to make it in a way that it's optimal and it's in a performance efficient way. And eventually we also want to introduce a network service descriptor support. This is something called out in the HC Mano. So I guess this is sort of the roadmap, we are working towards, again, I welcome anyone to join the community. This is an interesting space in this old NFE orchestration area and we have a lot of things to do and I believe we are just in the beginning phase of this whole endeavor. Here are some information where you can contribute both on the open source side and you can actually reach out to some of us if you need more information on anything specific around VNFs or broken state controller. Thank you.


Thank you, everybody. So I want to talk about responsive data visualization. And thank you, Irene and Jory, for putting together this amazing, amazing event. I'm already looking forward to next year's. So as Irene mentioned, my name is Gabriel Florete. And I do data visualization at the Boston Globe. Some of you may know that the Boston Globe, it's one of the two newspapers here. And also well-known for probably most well-known in the tech world for being one of the first ones to create a responsive site. And by responsive, I mean, by the way, I have no idea how much of this topic the audience knows. So I'm going to try to err on the side of caution and explain a bit more. And so by responsive, I mean that the content is reflowed, and if you will. And so that using the same source code, you're able to see the same content fitting on all devices. So this could be, if you had a really small screen, like a phone, you'd be able to still consume the content in an appropriate manner. So the Boston Globe, they made this responsive site a couple years ago. It's still very new. And it means that it is a great platform for, well, it's a great enabler for me to do responsive work, but also means that I have to do everything responsive. And so it's a challenge that I really enjoy. And so I want to talk about some things that I've discovered during my time there. And I want to make sure to let you know that I don't think there is an easy solution to this. And we're not there yet. And hopefully we will get there one day. But I don't think we are anywhere close. But so before I begin, I want to do this. Let's play a game. It's going to be a boring game, but I labeled it a game, so it's going to be a game. When you hear responsive, what is the first thing that comes to mind? And shout out. Bousers board? Mobile. Give you one. Media queries. Yes? Yes, hard to test. Yes, good. OK, OK. Well, lots of scrolling. Great. That's a good one. That's a good one. What's that? 10 times the work. 10 times the work, yeah. For sure, for sure. Yes, preaching the choir. OK, well, thank you for being so brave. I heard some good yells from you. And let's keep that in mind later. This was in case none of you felt like contributing. But you did. So the goal is to create data that works on all devices, of course. And I want to refine that and say that the goal is to create data that is of all devices. And by that, I mean something not only that works on the device on my phone, but feels like it was of the phone. To explain that further, you could say that a PDF lives on the web, but HTML is of the web. And so likewise, the goal is to create something that feels like it was meant to live on your browser, on any device, on the device that you're actually using at the moment. Of course, using the same source code. And I think that's where the complication arises. Because we can make things that work beautifully targeting a specific device. But when you're trying to do everything with the same source code, it's tough. If you have more time to do, to have one developer for a phone, one developer for a tablet, then great. And where I come from journalism, that's just not you can't. Unfortunately, that's not how it works. So before the globe, I was in software dev. So that was my background. And so when I came to this, that was my first question, which is, how hard can this be? Surely we can figure this out. Can I add structure to the process, which is a fancy way of saying, can I write a framework? And so I'm going to walk you through my probably flawed thought process that I took when tackling this. And so I'm going to use, as a starting point, a previous graphic that I made. Yes, I should talk about it first. So this is a graphic that I did some time last year. The Boston Globe reporters investigated 21 grocery stores and seafood markets in Massachusetts and found scallops with water levels far exceeding industry standards, which is code for some of these distributors are pumping your scallop with water, so that you end up paying for water. And so we did this. Let me actually see if I can. We're on a smaller screen, but on a bigger screen, there we go. On a bigger screen, this is what you would see at first. How much water is in your scallop? And then you see a little bit of a game. How much water drag? I think my scallop probably has what? 65%? Wrong. The average water content is 77%. And then there's a scatterplot here, where using a very well-known convention, when you hover over these dots, it gives you the name of the distributor. And then on the right side, we have the locator map with some more information here, et cetera. And then some previous next buttons, which perform the same as this. And then as we get a smaller screen, the little shell, the game disappears. And then once you get to phone, we hide the locator map and then previous next buttons on the scatterplot. So this is what I did last year, sometime last year. And so this is what I'm going to be using, explaining the workflow. So that's how it looks like on the iPhone, right? And that's the data set, just if you're curious. So mobile first. How many of you have heard the term mobile first? Since there's at least one person that didn't, I'm going to explain mobile first very quickly. And that is to say that in the world of responsive, the world of web design these days, especially when designing things for all devices, mobile first is this approach that says that you should think about the smaller screen first, lowest common denominator, and then go from there. So in this case, for many reasons, one of them, which is that it really helps you to focus on what's really essential. When you have a really small screen, you cannot afford any junk links, related links, ads, et cetera. You really can only give the user what is most essential. So mobile first is what I'm going to be using for this. And so what I'm going to do is if we don't have JavaScript on the device, and you'd be surprised by 2% of readers do not have JavaScript enabled, whether it's because their device doesn't support it, or because they turned it off, some of them do. So if you don't have JavaScript, the least you could do is give them the data. So I'm going to start from an HTML table. So I think the starting point could be an HTML table, where at least you're giving them the data. There are many different ways to make tables look pretty. And I'm not going to go into them at all. But there's really different frameworks out there that can help your JavaScript less table look really nice on responsive. And at least if you're going to do the least amount of work, then give them the table and the user can scroll. So now let's say that we have JavaScript on a phone, and we have Canvas. And then I won't mention SVG, because most browsers, most older devices, including mine, my phone does not support SVG. But it does support Canvas. And the majority of it is going to be more often the case that a phone will support Canvas instead of SVG. So we have JavaScript, and we have Canvas. Fine. We can draw a scatterplot. So again, just to make sure that you're following along the idea here is that I'm starting from an HTML table. And then with a little bit of code, the code is going to automatically transform my HTML table to a scatterplot. And so fine. Notice these two circles. Actually, there's three circles. I've blown it up a bit. I'm going to go back. The slide that you showed you is this area right here. There's actually, this is the real data. There are four circles here. And one of them you don't see. You can barely see. And that is because they're basically sitting right on top of each other. And that brings us to a very good point, which is data navigation. On the previous, on a big screen, you can use, if you have a mouse, you can hover over like that. You could see that? I mean, it's almost invisible. But at least I can do it. But when you're on a smaller screen, forget it. So in a sense, in a lot of ways, this graphic is flawed because of that. So data navigation is an issue. Like, if I'm on this graphic and I want to be like, what's this scatterplot? What's that point over here? Which is the distributor that was measured that has the highest price per pound of the scale? Well, I can touch it there because there's nothing else around it. But touching here, touching this is already going to be annoying, because my fingers are not that size. And touching this is just going to be impossible. Actually impossible. There's no way that I can beckon that I can call up that information for that point. Which brings me to data navigation. So how do we deal with that? So then I thought, well, how do we navigate between points? And I mentioned this because it's really important. It's one of those things that you don't think about until you have to. So one way would be to add previous next buttons. Like that. So that's what I did on the graphic. I added previous next buttons above the scatterplot. It's a bad solution because the buttons themselves are small. And it's going to be annoying still to touch them, to tap them. But also, what if you're on this point and you want to navigate to somewhere here? You're going to have to tap 10 times. There's 25 points here. I mean, there's almost no data here, right? 24 points is nothing. Imagine 100, and you're on element number 5 and you want to navigate to the 50th element. Forget it. It's going to be so annoying. So it's a bad idea. Make the entire graph two big previous next buttons. At least it improves on the previous one because now there's more touch area for you to tap. So if you can imagine a curtain dropped on top of the scatterplot and then half of the screen will navigate back, half of the screen will navigate forward, at least you can touch. But you're still going to have to deal with the previous next, with the fact that you're going to have to tap a lot. So a way to improve that is to map the graph to data point index. And this is the simplest way I could come up with this idea, which is this. There are 25 points here. And so the idea is that I've divided this graph. I create a curtain on top of the scatterplot and divide that curtain into equal bars, 25 bars. And so then when you're over any bar, say I'm on the last bar, and this bar wouldn't be here in the actual end product. And just putting it there so that you can see what the bars are doing related to the points that are being selected. So in this case, if I were to be touching the screen right next to the end, then that means that I'm on the 25th bar. And so then the 25th element would be selected. If I then go to the 24th area, then the 24th element would be selected, and so forth. And then you can see that as I do that, I'm able to there. So it's just as hard to go from this point to this point as it is to go from this one to this one. So this is a much better solution. This means that I can now at least navigate between data points, which is important. But there's a disconnect between finger travel and selected point. This looks weird, right? I know about you guys, but I wrote this, and it still looks weird to me, that I can go like this. Right here, it sort of feels right. This totally does not. Because my finger is right here, and now it's a little bit further to the right. And whoa, I just went to the next point. So that just doesn't feel right. It is helpful to add a guideline. And so we could do that, one that tracks touch. So in this case, do you guys see that little faint line? Right here, good. So in this case, that guy, I've added a guideline that is tracking selection. So it's simply telling me another confirmation on the element selected. I could also try to create one that tracks touch. And so now, that is nice because, and I've tested this on my phone. I purposefully do not upgrade my phone because, which sucks, but it means that at least I feel like I'm experiencing the common man of pains. And so it works. I can tell you that it works just as fast on my phone. And so this is nice because it means that at least when I'm dragging my finger over the scatter plot, something instant happens. But still a big disconnect because why is that happening, right, or this? So if I were a reader and had not encountered this navigation style before, I would be confused. So another alternative is to add a Zoom-like control. And that is not a bad idea. If there is one navigation interaction that I would say almost everyone is familiar with, it's the Zoom control, especially on phones. Pinch-zooming, we're familiar with it. Non-tech people know how to do the two-finger pinch. So you could imagine that happens here where now I've added Zoom controls to this. And so if I were to start here and I think, you know what, I really need to know what's those two dots. I want to select that one. So then it's just as simple as zooming in and there I've selected it, right? So you could say, well, I think, Gabriel, you came up with a solution. But to which I would say, no, because now look at this. What is this? That's not a scatter plot anymore. That's three circles and a bit of an arc. And I think that's a subtle point but really important, which is that now I have lost context. Now that is not, it's still data, but it's not what I was before. I think it's important to always remember that data points only have meaning in relation to each other. In this case, this data point is meaningful because it's above this one and under that one and sort of to the left of this one. So when I'm zoomed in like this, I've lost track fully of the greater picture. By the way, I have to show you this that, so all these examples, by the way, are on life coding. And I cheated as creating this because this is just a map. And I just clicked on the map to get the lat lungs to create the scatter plot. But there you go. I mean, that's just a map. That's really a map. And I mentioned that because we are very familiar with that, there you go. Now we have the plus, minus. This is really familiar. This way of navigating plus and minus or pinch zooming. So context loss. So data navigation is hard. So why did I mention all of this? Because so that was my actual thought process. I thought, great, I'm going to figure it out. And then I sat down and I had this idea that if you think about, if you look at this, this guy, if you look at this, I thought I could call this a primitive. A scatter plot is a primitive. If you will, a bar chart is a primitive. A line chart is a primitive. A pie chart is a primitive. Primitive in our data of this world, in the sense that it is like a building block. So I thought, well, what I'll do is I'll have this primitive. And then I'll create framework that, depending on the primitive, will add your proper interaction data navigation for your device. So if you're on a small screen and you don't have a JavaScript, then the JavaScript won't do anything. But if you have Canvas, then it'll automatically create a scatter plot. If you're on a small device, it'll use that thing I just showed you, the map width to selection. If you're on a bigger device, it will let you touch. And if you have mouse, then it'll let you mouse. But even on a really small basic primitive, like a scatter plot, I was already running into trouble. There are complexities to navigating between data. And I imagine if I had something like a graph, like some of the coolest stuff that Santiago is going to be showing off. I have no idea how to navigate between data points on something that complex. So it's something that we should not underestimate. And fortunately, I can simply say that since I'm not an expert, someone else is going to figure out. And it's true. Like in data vision and journalism, we're not the ones to be. I don't have any expertise in human computer interaction. But it's definitely something that we need to be thinking about. So something I'd like to discuss that helped me in this thought process, somewhat unrelated to what I just discussed, is a paper written by Segland here, Narrative Visualization, Telling Stories with Data. And in the paper, they discussed the concept of genres of narrative visualization. And then they talk about how they make this effort to categorize narrative visualization into different genres. And here you go, the magazine style, annotated chart, partitioned poster, flow chart, comic strips, slideshow, and film video animation. And I think this is for most part true. This is a good exercise. And I'm not going to talk about all of them. I'm just going to mention I'm going to talk about some of them, the slideshow being one of them. This is a graphic that I did earlier this year. The data here tells a story of a, if you drive a cab in Boston, you need to own a medallion. And there's 1,825 medallions. And this guy owns 372 or 1 in 5. In the 70s, he bought his first medallion. And so he's slowly been acquiring more and more until now, where he owns just about a fifth. And so this originally, I made this as a stepper, or a slideshow, where you have previous necks in each of these slides where there was a next button here and a previous button here. Until I realized that a slideshow can also be brought down. So instead of just going previous next and seeing the next slide, you can simply expand that horizontally and then have the navigation control is going to be scroll bars. And the benefit of that is that it works really nicely on phone. Anytime that you can use something native, and by that I mean something that you're not creating yourself, an interaction control that you're not creating yourself. Like that map graph with to data, and there's blah, blah, I created that with JavaScript. That does not come out of the box with phones. This scrolling, it does. And so it's so nice. And already built into it, it's going to behave better. So anytime that you can, do that. And so that's what I'm doing here. And it just works nicely. The other thing that I want to mention is that small multiples and the combination of small multiples and slideshows or steppers is perhaps the one genre that works best on phones. Because anytime that you show and change over time, or change over anything, change over place, change over x, where you're holding something fixed and then changing something else, that probably means that you have something that itself can have meaning. Like this slide has meaning by itself. It doesn't need this slide to have meaning. And this slide has meaning by itself. And this slide has meaning by itself. And so anytime that you can do that, using small multiples, using a slideshow format, that just works nicely. It's probably the one that works the nicest when it comes to making things just one source code. Annotated chart. So I did this graphic earlier this year, inaugural language, showing the inaugural addresses that have been given by presidents. Going back is the first recorded one that we have, which is Roosevelt's 33. And so each of these dots corresponds to a word that was spoken, the darker the word, the more frequent it was said. And then its placement depends on the first letter of the word, in this case C. And then when it was said, these ring concentric rings denote when it was spoken. So you can see that Obama in 2013 said country several times. And he said equal near the end. If we look at Nixon, he said in 1973 he said responsibility a lot. And peace. Roosevelt was fairly ill in 45, so his speech was the shortest of them all. And then there's another way to navigate here. You can enter any of the words engineer. And surprisingly engineers, only Obama said engineer. You'd think that someone from the New Deal would have said engineer, but it was curious that only Obama said that. So this works well on big screens. We have reports from readers that they spent an hour on this. I mean, an hour is unheard of. When I heard that, I thought I've made, you know, like I won, right? I mean, not even I, the creator, spent an hour playing around with this. And it works really nicely. There's a really nice, this is almost like a, this is so instant, and it works beautifully on an iPad too. Just dragging your finger around. And it cheats you into thinking that this is more important, that this data is more important than it really is. I don't know how important this is actually is. I don't know if I would do it again. Probably not. But it is a failure on the phone. Just to begin with, it's written with mostly canvas, but some SVG. And so SVG, my phone won't display it. And so on bigger devices, I mean on bigger devices, on small devices that support SVG, this is what happens. And that is a failure. The point, all the data is still there. I just shrunk it down, right? I just shrunk down what I did on the big screen like this, and you can still see all the data. But everything is taking such a small space that there's no way for me to navigate between data points, which is what I discussed earlier. And so data navigation, I think, is becoming one of the biggest pains in all of this. But it works really well on big screens. And finally, comic strip. NPR did this thing earlier this year where they worked with an illustrator, Jen Sorensen, to do an illustrator version of Pride and Prejudice. And let's see if I can, there we go. So she made all the panels the same dimension, which means that it works really nice on any screen. And you might think, well, this is great. I mentioned in comics because it has a very applicable to data this, I think. And I want to mention something here, which is, you bear with me for a moment, when I first encountered this, I started reading, and this is what happened. The money Mr. Bingley and his friend Mr. Darcy have come to stay in town soon at a ball, Mr. Bingley and Jane had it off. While Mr. Darcy says of Elizabeth, I made a connection. My eye made a strong, almost causal relationship between this and this. I don't know if it was intended that way, but my eye thought this is very strong related to this. And look what happens when I do this. The money Mr. Bingley and Jane had it off. Scroll. While Mr. Darcy, that is now happening, there's been a beat here. And I think you might say, well, it's really subtle. But I think something has changed. The content of this comic, something here, has been altered by changing the format of the comic. And one more, I want to talk about another comic, Remind. So I got into comics late last year. And so I had been reading about a comic, Remind, and also because the first volume was free. So I just put my daughter to bed. It's late. I'm in my bed. I only have a phone. The light is off. So I had downloaded a comic app reader. And I'm like, great. I'm going to read this. And so this is what happened. And just to make sure you catch up, the comic's about Sonia, the lighthouse keeper at a seaside oil drilling town in Victuals, Hercat. And so this is what I did. This is what I saw. I'm going to stop it right there because there's only 10 minutes left. But you get the point. I actually put it down. I stopped using my phone because I knew that the next day I could go downstairs and use my tablet. And I would be able to consume the content in the way in which it was meant. And yes, you can communicate the same amount of information when you slice things up. But no, it will not be the same. And it just doesn't work as well. And I think it's called data visualization for a reason. My coworker, Alvin Chang, makes a great point, which is it's not data representation. When you visualize something, dimensions matter. We choose to put things the way in specific places for a reason. And so just to have this thought that we're going to adopt the idea that Responsive is going to be able to forget about dimensions and just keep the same communication across all devices. I think that's a mistaken thought. So I think at this point, either you cheat everybody out of something or you cheat some people out of everything. When I did the inaugural address one for that reader that, pleasure or heart, she spent an hour working at it. I don't know you, but I'm so glad you did. Well, that was great. But for people that were looking at it on their phone, I cheated you out of everything. But for that one use case, it worked really well. Back to the word association. Someone said media queries. And I'm so glad you did, because then I didn't have to say it myself. I think that so media queries in this world is something that we use. Media queries, fluid grids, and responsive images are the three things that enable the Boston Globe to be so beautifully responsive. And media queries is something that we use all the time. We are intimately familiar with media queries. Media queries is a way to tell the browser what layout to use with what screen size. And I think that the prevalence of media queries in our world means that more often than not, when we start doing things on mobile, media queries is so big in our heads and our thoughts that we started making responsive design equal to designing for size. I got the phone version done. What's the next break point? I got the tablet break point done. What's the next break point? James Pierce has a great code about this. In 2010, he said, we won't have a mobile web, but merely a 320 pixel wide one, a web for which the humans using it matter less than the width of the glass it is displayed on. And I think he's spot on. Do this, if you can, describe your smartphone. Have you ever done this, actually? I did this two nights ago, sat down and made a list of the things that I think my smartphone does. It is small. It is portable. It can be with you at all times. It has a touch screen. It has sound output. It has a microphone, so it has sound input. It has a gyroscope. It has an accelerometer together. It means that my phone knows if I'm doing this, if I'm doing this. It has a GPS, which means that it knows where I am. It knows where others in my network are. So if I set up the app properly, it knows where my wife is. It knows where my two-year-old, probably not. It knows where my friends are. It has light sensors. It knows how bright this room is, if it's dark, if it's bright. And surely there's more. And as we move on to more interesting devices like Google Glass, there's going to be more capabilities. But we still think about responsive as the screen size. Like 320 pixel, if I designed for 320 pixel, I did it. If I designed for 640 pixels, I did it. And that's totally missing the point. I think that if we equate responsive design with just screen size instead of use case, we're missing the point. I think use case is critical. The use case for someone on a phone is probably much different than tablet or desktop. If you're on a phone, it is more likely than not to get your Starbucks, your Dunkin Donuts, because we're Massachusetts, Dunkin Donuts waiting for your coffee. You have two minutes. So I have two minutes to get your attention, two minutes. And that's a lot. If you have tablet, you're probably somewhere else, maybe like on the T. If you're at desktop, then I have more of your attention, perhaps. But I think to ignore all of those factors is a mistake.  And so we're so sure-tided to just think of what we do and just think about screen size. I want to mention one more thing. So most of you might know this, but Boston Marathon happens every year. There were two bombs that were detonated 31 days ago, April 15th. And so on that Wednesday, I put together this interactive that for Boston.com. Boston.com is the free version of BostonGlobal.com. And so this interactive allows readers to tell us where they were. Were you there? Share your story. Click your location on the map and tell us what you witnessed. Red dots on the map indicate location of explosions. So you can click anywhere. Look, I was here. You can add your story, et cetera. And then, or you can explore the stories. And so I can zoom in and out. And each of these dots corresponds, I've read them all, each of these dots corresponds to someone that was there, someone that witnessed something. And then you can click, and you see what they wrote. And the initial version of this that we launched Wednesday at 5.30 PM, I had not made, I didn't think. So the initial version, the map occupied the entire width. And so when you hovered over the circle, the box that you see here, I was walking down, hunting to nav. That pop-up box contained all the text. And so I just had no clue that people were going to write so much. The longest entry is 757 words, which when you put it in Word, it is several pages. And so we had people that sat down to write for several pages. And I had to rewrite it.  Because it got to a point where when you hovered over some of these, the entire map would be full with text. And there was no way for you to navigate. And so I had to rewrite it. And it works really well for this use case, which is someone that had a desktop and had to write a lot of stuff. A lot of people had to write about what they saw. And I'm glad they did. And so I think the mistake would be now if I were to then think, great, let's make it work on the phone. And so now how do I make this work on the phone? I'm going to, well, surely if you're on the phone, you're not going to want to write 757 words. But not even on an iPad, right? You're not going to want to do that, 757 words on an iPad. So for this use case, it works really well. What I should have done on the phone is take advantage of the GPS so that this would not be very hard to do. I just didn't think of it. So that when you are, as you're walking down Boylston Street and you bring up your app, you can then see only one dot, the one that is closest to you. And then the screen would then show the text of that person that was right there and what that person wrote. So then as you're walking along Boylston Street, you'd be able to see, oh, this person here wrote, this is what she saw here, walk a couple of steps. So this is what she saw here. That would have been a great use of GPS in a phone. What then should you then say, well, that worked really well, make it work like that but on a bigger format on the desktop? No, that would also be missing the point. So I think it's critical to always keep in mind that people are consuming your information in different ways. And that is very, very important. Thank you.


Welcome back to my channel, I feel like my voice is written like plan all the time. Because it is time for my best books of 2023. Are we excited? I'm really excited, I'm nervous. But when we were talking about my top 10 books of 2023, my best books of the year, the books I would most recommend to you. We know I didn't have the best reading year, I had a bit of a lack of five stars. I think up to today I've had 21 five stars this year that weren't rereads. So it's not terrible, the latter half of the year did save an event in terms of five stars. I think it's a really good list of books. I do want to say before we get into it, I would say this is more of a top six. And then the bottom four of the list could interchange with other five stars on a different day. I think I'm fairly honest with you. I do stand by them, but it's definitely the top six of this list are like favorites of all time for me. And the bottom four are favorites of the year. That's the differentiation between the two. But shall we just get into it? We're gonna start with number 10, work our way up to number one. We all know what number one is, we all know what number two is, but the fun is in the journey. Shall we just get into it? Okay, coming in at number 10 is Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson. I read this in a vlog where I read books that one of my favorite authors, Courtney Summers recommended me. It was a dream come true, she was absolutely incredible. I loved the interview that we did together, it was great getting to know her. And Nothing to See Here was by far my favorite from that vlog. So this is the story about two friends who are unlike roommates when they were at school, but they've barely spoken since. And the other gets in touch with the main character saying, I've got these step kids who are coming to live with me. They spontaneously combust. Could you come look after them and like be there, live in nanny. And the other one's like, yeah, all right, you gotta admit this is strange. So it's a story of her looking after these kids who spontaneously combust and trying to teach them love and family. And affection and safety. And I just thought this was such a beautiful book, but it's also kind of funny. It's got this humor to it. And it's also got a dash of weirdness, like there's certain interactions between characters that are a little bit weird. There's certain choices that characters make that are a little bit weird. But I just loved this. I really love books where you never would have picked them up otherwise if it weren't for the vlog that I was doing. And this is one of those for me. Like, I don't think I would have ever really picked this up otherwise. And so it being such a surprise really does make the book for me. But I think this is a very unique book. I haven't read a book like it in a long time. And if you're looking for a little bit weird, if you're looking for a bit magical realism, but with found family with a really lovely core to it, this would be my recommendation. Number nine, we have got The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D Jackson. You guys know I've been here a long time. This was me and Tiffany Jackson's last chance. That's quite dramatic. So it's quite miraculous. This made it on my best books of year list. So I'd given her, I think, a two and a three beforehand, or maybe even a two and a two point five in the books I'd read from her beforehand. And I said if I didn't like this book, I wasn't going to pick up her books anymore because it's not fair to an author if I keep picking up her books and rating them lowly and talking about them in a shitty way to you guys. Like, that's not fair. That's not fair. So this was our last chance. And boy, didn't look at the park. If you're going to read this, listen to the audiobook. I absolutely adored the reading experience of this. I had such vivid memories. I was playing Unpacking. Is that what it's called? I always get the name wrong in that game. Unpacking.  I was playing that game while I was listening to the audiobook of this. So this is a Carrie retelling but our main character is a biracial girl who up into this point has passed as white. But then people find out that she's actually half black. And it's to do with her being ostracised because of that the way people treat her. I mean she's always been treated poorly at the school but that kind of like amplifies things. And obviously, if you know the story of Carrie, you know the plot beats that this is going to take us down. At the beginning there's like a podcast element that kind of comes in and out throughout the book and it's talking about the night of the prom. And I do want to caveat this by saying I haven't read Carrie. I've never watched Carrie but I think part of it is in the reading of elements that I love to this. I don't know how much of it comes from Carrie. Do you know what I mean? Like parts of this book I'm like oh that's so great. Like certain way characters interact or what have you. I don't know how much that is this book and how much of it is taken from like moments taken from Carrie. But I just loved this. I thought it was so fun. It's definitely, is this my only YA? Yeah, this is my only YA on this list for the year. It's definitely my best YA of the year. I thought it was a really wonderful unflinching look of racism that's that exists, particularly within certain American communities like insular American communities. Like some parts of this book you hear and you think no that can't really be happening in real life but it is. Like this is the first time they've had a non-segregated prom. But like that's still, that still happens in parts of America which is absolutely insane. This was like such a gratifying and satisfying experience to finally love a Tiffany D Jackson book because I've loved all of her synopsis forever. So it was really, I loved, I loved, I loved, I loved reading this. Coming in at number eight we have got Bright Young Women by Jessica Null. This could be recency bias. There's a few on this list. No, it's going to be a bit worried could be recency bias but I don't think it is. I really love this. This is the first on this list that you'll see from the Goodreads Choice Awards vlog. You probably can predict there's another one coming. But I wasn't expecting to love this as much as I was. When the top 10 list came out I was excited to read this. I already owned it. So I was excited for it but I wasn't like predicting it was going to be a five star. I was probably thinking oh it's going to be a really good four star, you know? But my gosh, my gosh guys this book is so, so, so, so good. So this book is a fictionalised account following some of Ted Bundy's victims. Now he's never named but the book is very heavily inspired by the events that happened with Ted Bundy. So we're following one girl who was the head of the sorority that he attacked and we're following another woman who believes that a very important woman in her life was one of his victims. This has such a wonderful look at so many elements of true crime of the way that victims are treated by police, by the media, the long lasting mental effects of living through something like this. I just think it was incredibly, incredibly well written. I said in the vlog like you could have kitted me that this was a autobiographical account. You know what I mean? It feels so real. These characters feel so real but they're going through so visceral and there is a scene at the end that I think, oh I still think about it. I think it's absolutely incredible writing, just like a feat of writing. I just really appreciate the way the whole subject was spoken about in this, you know? It examines why people maybe are interested in true crime but also strives to place the victims at the centre of that. You know Ted Bundy is never named throughout the book because he refuses to name him and I just, it just feels so, this is one of the books I've read this year that feels so real, right? Everything that the characters are feeling, you feel with them. I just loved it. Also it's kind of split timeline a little bit and I liked that element of it which is, hi Bray is coming from me. I just thought this was absolutely wonderful. If you are interested in a thriller kind of examining the true crime genre this would be my top recommendation. I think it's so well written. I thought it was a wonderful, wonderful book. Coming in at number seven is Finley Donovan is Killing It by Elle Cosimano. We're not surprised you all done me to read this for years. If you don't know this about Finley Donovan is a single mum. She's struggling girly. She's trying to pay the bills and she's an aspiring author and she's describing the plot of her new book to her editor one day in a coffee shop and a nearby woman misunderstands and thinks that Finley is a hit woman and gives her a lot of money to kill her husband.  So she's kind of like I need this money but like am I gonna kill this man? Like what is the moral surrounding this? We all told me I was gonna love this and I loved it. I am nervous to read the rest of the series. I haven't heard as good things about the rest of the series but I thought this just perfectly struck the balance between like an interesting mystery slash thriller but also having a lot of humor and a lot of heart to it.  Like I like a book that kind of infuriates you where a character just keeps doing stuff that you're like why are you making that decision? Like she kept doing things.   Like you're not doing this right. This is not, this is not going to go down well. It kind of stresses you out. I think that's a fun reading experience. I mean I am not, I'm late to the party here. You know like everyone has loved this and by no means the first to sing its praises. I really really enjoyed it and I'm excited to continue on the series and I'm very excited to see where the series goes because I think the way that this book leaves off is very exciting but it's just fun. If you're looking for a fun mystery thriller this would be my number one recommendation. Um yeah loved it. So now we're into the top six. These are my top top books, the year favorites of all time I would say. So coming in at number six we have got Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brian and Sanderson. This is another one that I was worried was a bit of recency bias but I don't think it is. I have really contemplated and meditated on this and I don't think it is. In the following Tress who lives on this little island and the boy, the man that she loves uh is stolen by this evil witch and she goes on this quest to save him and it's really her on this boat on this boat journey and it's the found family that she encountered on the boat. There's these great characters. There's a deaf character who writes on this like magical tablet. There's a talking rat. Love the talking rat and this just had such a lovely tone to it. I would definitely say this is cozy fantasy. Brian and Sanderson please just write cozy fantasy. Get rid of all these high fantasies. How would you say something so controversial yet so brave? I am going to actually try out Brian and Sanderson now. Next year could be my Brian and Sanderson era and another era which we're going to get into in the next book. It had one of my favorite things where it has like an overseeing narrator with a dry sarcastic sense of humor. So one of the characters who's in the book what's his name? Hoid. Hoid he's in the book and I believe he's in other Cosmia books but I haven't read them. He's in the book and he's narrating this with this wonderful humor. I absolutely loved the way it was written. I thought it was just a wonderful wonderful little book. I think also it says it's inspired by the princess bride and I grew up watching the princess bride. I've never read it but there's just something about this book and it's beats that felt familiar and cozy and I said a lot in that video that this book feels like a book written outside of the pressures of trends in the book world and pressure of what or fans are going to think of it and like having to live up to a previous book. This just felt like a book written for the love of writing right and Brian and Sanderson says at the beginning or in his acknowledgement somewhere he says that he originally just wrote this as like a gift to his wife and she told him to publish it and you can just feel that. This book is brimming with love and joy and fun in it. I really don't like it even when I read books and I can just tell it's written because Enemies to Love is trendy so they've got to write an Enemies to Love's book and this is trendy so they've got to put that in the book. Whereas this just felt completely free of that and I think that's so freeing. It being free is freeing so yeah I loved it. I can't recommend this enough. Is this my top fantasy? No it's not my top fantasy. Get a grip Megan. But yeah I definitely want to try out more Brian and Sanderson. Not only just the one that other people said is more of like a cozy fantasy but I want to start my dad loves Brian and Sanderson. He has all his books so I want to start the whole a Cosmere and Mistborn the same thing or different things. I generally don't know anything so if you want to educate me on like the Brian and Sanderson reading order because I find that a little bit intimidating feel free because I don't get it. Coming in at number five we have got a classic. Who is she? We believe I'm putting a classic on my best books of the year list. I'm gonna complete state of shock I forgot what I was gonna say. And it is Emma by Jane Austen. So I read this for my Patreon book club one month so you guys actually haven't seen me even read this in a vlog but I adored this. I think this is a genius genius genius genius book. Oh Jane Austen your mind. So I want to give you my my my background going into this. So as a kid I loved and I still love but I loved the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Me and my mum would watch it together whenever I was sick of school growing up I know it's a bit maybe a bit of a weird thing. I also loved watching like the History Channel when I was off school as a kid. I watched a lot of like Tudor I don't know but we watched that together growing up and I think I did read Pride and Prejudice growing up with my mum but I haven't read it since I was like eight or ten. So that world of Jane Austen of the regency of the kind of characters the kind of tropes is very familiar to me. I've watched that BBC adaptation I don't even want to know how many times I've seen Colin Firth come out of that lake. I refuse to watch the Kirinati one I don't think I've ever seen it I'm sorry don't try and convince me it's not it's that is not my Pride and Prejudice this is my Pride and Prejudice. So I love that growing up and then in terms of other Jane Austen I've only read Persuasion which I didn't love and so I was a bit nervous going into this but I think this is a wonderful wonderful book. So if you don't know the plot of Emma basically you need to know as Emma is like a matchmaker she wants to like pair people up and like finds fun in doing it but doesn't always go about things the right way. If you've seen Clueless Clueless as a Emma retelling and I just think this book could be written today it is so modern on its observations of human nature and the way we interact and the way that we love I just think it is incredible like Jane Austen in your mind like wow she's incredible she's a beautiful person her talent and brilliance is beyond and it's funny this is Jane Austen's I think her most like comedic book and this book is just so funny it's so humorous oh I loved the way that characters spoke and interacted and just the depth oh I just think it's incredible I think it's an incredible incredible book I think it's an absolute feat and it set me down a bit with Jane Austen rabbit hole like I watched a lot of Jane Austen documentaries after watching this I want to read Jane Austen like nonfiction Lucy Worsley my my favorite nonfiction author wow I've never read any of herself my favorite historian she's my favorite historian has written a Jane Austen book which I now have to read I just think this book is absolutely wonderful and it's humor and it's tone in the character development oh my god the line if you know the line if you know the line who's confessing his love what how did you write that in like 17 whatever Jane Jane oh no 18 sorry 1816 Jane how did you how did you cut to the core of love and oh I believe in love and it's funny it's so funny I would I would really recommend getting the audio book for this because it really does help uh can be the tone of a lot of what I said but I absolutely love this so just as I'm going to be in my Brandon Sanderson era next year I'm going to be in my my classic slash Jane Austen here because I just thought this was absolutely wonderful coming in at number four is a graphic novel and it is the tea dragon festival by k o nil so I read both this and the tea dragon tapestry this year but this was my favorite this is the second in the tea dragon series this one is actually a prequel and I just loved it I've spoken about this series so much so you don't really need to know too much but it's this magical world the tea dragons are little characters in it but they're not really the main characters it's more about these families and these found families and these friends that exist in this world interact and I always just say if when I have kids the attitude that these books have towards the world towards life towards community is the attitude I'd want to impart on my trilogy right it's just such a beautiful view on the world that I think we should all strive to have just its outlook I think is wonderful so these graphic novels to me are just like a hug in a book and I cannot wait to reread them and reread them the drawings are absolutely beautiful these books are very inclusive in this book there is a deaf character who the whole town has learned sign language for to be able to communicate I just love it I just love it I just love it these filming was such joy I cannot recommend picking these up enough okay everyone we're into the top three my next one is controversial I told you guys this is gonna be here but did you think it was gonna be this high up but number three is the writing retreat by jillian pot okay I know a lot of people haven't liked this but you're wrong I love the writing retreat so this is about these women who go on this writing retreat but it's a very renowned author she's published like a few really incredible hits of a book like incredible popular like think donna tart I think like only right to book every five to ten years but they're a big hit kind of thing a bit reclusive no one sees a you know out in the normal world they go on this writing retreat and it's a bit unsettling from beginning this book does I mean it's nobles by the end we're going we're going in a direction right but at the beginning it there's always a bit there's a bit unsettling this writing retreat is very isolated and it's really has to do with female friendships as well and kind of the like sapphic like romantic slash sexual element that can exist within female friendships as well and um I just absolutely loved this I absolutely loved this I loved its weirdness but I think it has just enough weirdness that like it's not a barrier to entry right some books I read that are really weird I'm like this is beyond me trying to fit I can't figure out what you're trying to do don't mean it's not that it's it's a followable book but it's just wild it's wild from the get go I think the way the characters interact is so interesting the book is talking about it's so interesting and I just love that it committed so often I read books it's often I read books guess what guys I read books no so often I read books that don't commit right that promise me a lot they have like in the synopsis it seems like it's going to be really dramatic and big and then it kind of like fizzle out you know this goes for it and I just love the commitment I love the commitment to the cause I really appreciate it I just I just think this was great and for a debut oh I just loved it all of you hated it wrong you're wrong you're wrong you're wrong I'm sorry you're wrong it's so good no it's true oh it's true this cross is a lie go ahead no this is real I am so excited to see what else Julia Bartz publishes because this oh guys it was just so fascinating to me this book I just how does it have such a low rating you're wrong it's wonderful okay my top two are a league of their own you know one of these books was my favorite book for most of the year and then one just snuck in at the end so these are like top top top top top we've had layers like a layer of an onion to this list so coming in at number two is legends and lattes by Travis Bowdrew I loved it this is my first book of the year I always strive to get a five star I almost every reading year I've had since 2018 I've had a five star at the start of the year apart from last year and that was a bad year so you know in order to have good luck I must read a five star start of the year I loved this you all know what this is about it's one of the biggest books you know around at the moment in terms of hype but we're following Viv who has hung up her sword she was like a little fighter and she made oh my god even talking about it I want to cry make us a coffee shop and it's like her trying to set up this coffee shop and try to be successful and it is just the perfect low stakes gentle cozy but oh my god that's real even though she's fictional it's real and that's important to me you don't understand you don't understand how much I want to read about characters making coffee and thimble designing his cakes and getting so excited people like his cakes you don't get it you don't get how perfect this book isn't everything I want I'm going to have to reread it at some point but oh my god it was just incredible it's so lovely and I'm so glad it's had the success that it has I do own bookshops and bone dust I'm not I'm trying to like get rid of the expectation that I'm gonna love this as much as I love this I hope whatever Travis Baldry publishes next is actually away from this series I want him to write a different standalone because I feel like there's just too much pressure I don't think I'm gonna love this as much as I love this because can you love anything as much as I love this it is just the perfect book it's so wonderful wonderful oh it's just incredible what a feat what a feat to write a book this small and have it take up so much place in my heart and then my final book the best book of 2023 the last ever to dive I rich toss men we all knew it was coming even before I read it we knew if anything was gonna dethrone legends and lattes it was there so this is the fourth in the Thursday Meta Club I read it recently in my Goodreads choice of was reading blog and generally I don't feel like it's much point reading the rest of this year because like I'm I'm still kind of in a haze after reading this book if you're here you know what this is about why don't I need to give you some upsist but we're forming these early group characters who have this Thursday Meta Club where they used to try and solve cold cases when the first book a case lands on their doorstep and they try and solve it and then by the time this book there's they've got enemies they've got friends all over and mysteries keep turning up to them people keep dying and this one it's a kind of acquaintance of theirs is murdered and they endeavor to solve it and it's a lot to do espionage and drug money and smuggling and all that shit in this one but this one take off I know I don't look upset don't go upset don't worries I haven't cried like this at a book in a long time so because these characters are old it's dealing with death a lot right but not just death it's dealing with how you live when you know you haven't got a lot of life left and frankly we're all dying do you know what I mean like I think we should all live as as though we haven't got long left I think it teaches you so much about how how you should live and the life you should endeavor to live full of love and care for the other person and I have not cried like this I'm sorry to cry calm down I think if you read the third book you kind of know where this is going and my god it is just a beautiful look at humanity I think Richard Osman first on the big stuff like the stuff that made me cry is it's a big topic it's a big human experience it's it's a terrible thing to go through but even the small stuff Richard Osman like taps on the door of what it means to be a human so well like even just the the things we like to watch all the things that make us laugh all the little quirks that we all have but don't really talk about he often it's just a line like like blows me away I Richard Osman the man that you are I love you we are not getting a Thursday murder club book next year and he's gonna be starting a new series which I'm equally excited and nervous for but this series is just incredible and this this fourth book is definitely the best in the series it's my best book of the year I just love it I love that it's a mystery I love the characters I love everything about I love the humour these books are funny oh it's so good guys it's definitely my best book of the year and I cannot wait I'm gonna have to reread the whole series soon sometime next year since we're not getting a book in it or maybe the year after I don't know how do I pace myself what's the correct way to do this I loved it I loved it I loved it I loved it so there we have it that is my top 10 books of 2023 let me know what you thought of any of these I mean the one you're most gonna disagree with me on is the wrangler tree I can accept that but um I think these are all wonderful books and I cannot recommend them enough let me know what your favorite books of the year have been I'd love to know for future reference or just kind of I just love to know what your favorite books of the year have been um but thank you guys for watching this video if you got to the end comment a star emoji and I'll see you very soon in another video bye


Last man, last man, last man, over here. Is that confirmed enemy? Left window opened up, you see the Martinez? Alright, keep watch on that. Damn, damn, oh my god.


My name is Krishna. I study molecular genetics and biotechnology at Curtin University. Allow me to elaborate or share different aspects of what my culture is and what it's taught me about the learning process. Indian culture and heritage, we have what's known as the Guru Shishyaparampara, which means the passing down of knowledge from one generation to the next and to remove the darkness and ignorance from the mind, which literally is what the essence of a Guru is. So the direction that you want to go down, you must remove your ego in order to grow and prosper down the route or the pathway that you really want to decide to become. Viramealinger guys!


Freedom! Today I wanted to talk to you about your channel art. Now, channel art is kind of funny because it can look awesome right about now. However, in three to six months, maybe a year, it's kind of grown out, and it's starting to look a little shabby. So occasionally you've got to update it, and you got to make sure that everything on your past catalog also matches your new branding. That's always a decision you can make. Sometimes you want to let your old stuff age with grace. So you don't want to redo your thumbnails. You don't want to redo some stuff. That's completely up to you. Today, I'm going to redo my channel branding, and also a few other things that are shabby. And now, don't worry about my channel branding, or just my regular personal branding. So you would be right to ask, why in the wide, wide world of sports did I just make you watch me get a haircut and a shave? A couple of reasons. One, sometimes it's not just as easy as, you know, updating your personal branding by going to Crib, link in the description, community.tm slash crib, where you can update your branding using templates and stuff.tm. Sometimes it's not that easy. Sometimes you have to work with people, and I'd like to point out, while I was working with someone on updating my personal branding, I not only knew what I wanted when I went in, I gave him a slight bit of creative license so that he could also bring in his mix, and I didn't really bother him with the details. He obviously knew more about updating my personal branding than I did. So I let him do his thing, and I think in the end we ended up with something that's pretty darn cool. Let me know in the comment section down below if you agree and also let me know what you think about this particular line I'm trying to draw between the way that you present yourself in real life and the way you present yourself digitally. Yeah, anyway, till next time don't forget to like, subscribe, and do all those things that make me love my job. Also, be awesome to yourself and amazing to each other. Bye, Freedom Family.


And this is one of the reasons why I'm so passionate. Because of one of my first clients. I was able to help him overcome his chronic illness that ruined his life. Because he was in pain every day, he had no energy, he was always in a bad mood and his relationships suffered because of it. And that lasted for over 20 years. But ever since he started using my technologies, slowly but steadily, his condition improved. And after a few weeks, his wife couldn't even believe he was the same person. You see the pain that he suffered from for over 20 years was gone. He became happier again, more positive and productive. What if you or someone you know experienced a transformation like that? How would your life improve? How much more money would you make? So if energy is power, then Chi energy is your superpower.


Yves Pouny, welcome to Eden. Thank you for your keynote presentation this morning. One of the things you talked about was digital competency. Could you tell us a little bit more about what you mean by that? Thanks a lot also Steve, first of all. So first of all I wanted to argue in my keynote is indeed that I think learners and citizens need digital competences to participate and to live and to participate in our society. Now obviously people speak about digital competence, digital skills, illiteracy, e-scales, etc. There are many, many different terms around. And what we did actually at GRC is we did a research project to try to define and describe more exactly what digital skills are. And we define it as digital competence because competence is a broader term than skills. Competence means knowledge, skills and attitudes as defined in the European Qualifications Framework. So it's a bit of a broader kind of term first of all. And then secondly, so we did a lot of research and then we did also a lot of consensus building to somehow agree upon the question, what are the most important digital competences that people need today? And we came up with a list of 21 competences. We structured them into five areas, five competence areas. And very briefly I will talk you through them because I think they're also important for learners, not just for citizens, for everybody, is that first of all is being able to deal with information and data, being able to find information, being able to assess and critically evaluate information. So that's one competence area. The second one obviously is being able to communicate through digital means to be able to communicate and collaborate and share with other people. That also has to do for example with the nitty-cat, with the norms and values because if you engage in an online conversation you need to understand also the norms and the values and the cultural concentrations as well, which are important. So you need to know about these things. The third area is content creation. I mean people more and more upload information, videos, photos, etc. So that also in the learning environment of course becomes more and more important, so how to create content and how to share and collaborate together, create joint content. The fourth area is about safety, which is of course very important. It's safety about data, personal data, safety of privacy, but also physical and health wellbeing because we know they are examples of youngsters being addressed through online means and so we need to be able to deal with that and make sure that people don't get into problems related to that. Safety of devices as well. And then the fifth area is what we call problem solving, which comes, goes from the most basic everybody has to solve some technical problems when we engage with digital technologies, but it goes more also to think about what are the digital skills that I need today, so also to become more reflexive about your capacities to use digital technologies in the modern world. One of the surprising statistics you mentioned this morning, Yves, was 37% of the European workforce are lacking in digital competence. What can be done to address that problem? Well, you will continue to have significant skills mismatches, where companies will not find the people with the right skills and competences to do properly the jobs they have to do. Now probably there also on the one end you could say that education has to provide the solutions to that and that's partly true, but there is also I think a role for companies to play as well. It's too easy to say and to blame everything on education. I mean, especially also companies also need to train and retrain people and give the opportunities for people to retrain. For example we have some data in the survey we did with MOOC learners and there actually surprisingly we find out that there's a pilot study about 3,000 MOOC learners, about five, six different MOOCs, is that almost half of them, who are workers, they follow MOOCs without their employer knowing about it. So that's a bit of an intriguing kind of result. And on the other hand what we find out is that in those cases where the employer knows about or supports learning training opportunities of their staff, actually they engage less in MOOCs but more in traditional physical kind of training opportunities. So there are still some challenges to address as well. Many challenges I think that we have to face. I think Derrick Bock once said if you think education is expensive then try ignorance and I think this is exactly what we're talking about here isn't it. Eve, thank you very much for your time today. It's a pleasure. Thank you. Steve.


If you're not feeling, you're not getting paid. Want an insurance company is willing to pay you, right? At some point, it could automatically deny and not even read the 79 modifier since you're still in the post-op period for the first time. But if you file it like this, the patient comes in to get puncto plugs. Within a few days, they are back in your office with a totally different chief complaint. When you're submitted, the other 30% are denied or just simply lost and of that 30%, 60% of those are not even resubmitted to insurance. That's what sitting in the accounts receivable means more than sitting in the bank.