Hello everybody and welcome back to the Think Tech Hawaii studio for another exciting episode of Security Matters. And I hope you're joining us today because of our guest, not me. Janet Fenner is amazing and the one benefit of COVID is that she got stuck someplace long enough. I could get her on the screen. She's a busy woman. Janet, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks so much, Andrew. I definitely appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for that great introduction. Well, I just see you everywhere in the industry. You're really busy. I know doing so many things, right? And so now I understand you're stuck home when your teenagers are eating your refrigerator, picking it clean. Yeah, seriously, you can't keep up with them at all. Every single time you turn around, you're like, I have to go food shopping again. I don't want to do that. I live in New York. The last place I want to be is anywhere near the food market. So yeah, so I'm like, calm down, settle down. Good. Well, I'm glad you're safe at home. You appear well fed, so you're hanging on to the crumbs that they're leaving for you, apparently. Exactly. So for our audience who may not know you enough, because I think most of our industry does. But anyway, give us some sort of your history as much as you'd like to share and then kind of bring it forward through the industry and bring us up to sort of where you're at today. Sure. So I started the industry probably around 1997, believe it or not, that long ago. I'm dating myself. So it has been an incredible ride. I have basically started with a small company called Temtech, who actually developed color changing technology on identification badges. And they actually were acquired by the Brady people ID company. What was interesting is not too long ago, I had a meeting at the VMware building in California and their actual badges were the identification badges that I started the industry with. And it was pretty cool to see that that technology was still around as non-technology driven as it is. It's just color changing. And so that was interesting. And then from there I moved on to, yeah. So I moved into companies like Identicard, Brady people ID, Jam Plastics, Identicam. So it was all under the Brady people umbrella that I represented about five different brands, including Stopware, who are still a company in the industries. I love to see them at trade shows. I love to see their growth. I still follow them. I still have really good networking relationships with them. And then from there I went to go work for Frank Defina at Samsung when Samsung was just starting out in the industry, which is interesting because I remember even when Samsung had their first trade show, we had people come into the booth and go, can you fix my phone? Do you have a charger? And you're just like, that's not what we do here. So Samsung had no presence in surveillance at all. So it definitely took a little while for us to, even though we had the brand, which was fantastic, it took a little while for us to brand that company into the product line that it basically served. And that was a great ride with Defina. He was an incredible person, great mentor. And then from there, Samsung sold their division to a company called Hanwa. And then Hanwa was a big entity, loved working for them as well. And then from there, I wanted to continue my career and started working with Dawah. And they were definitely very interesting. They just, they had a lot of hurdles to overcome. And it was very challenging. The team there was great. I still have good relationships with them. But unfortunately, it was a definitely hard product to position with all the laws that were against them. And then from there, ISS came and I ended up going to work for them for a little while. Awesome. So yeah, so you were at Dawah, I guess when the whole NDAA thing, when the FedGov was looking at those companies and going, oh, we don't know about this. Yeah, that's difficult. How do you message that, right? Yeah, it's hard. It was definitely hard to, you know, well, it was great. I love the challenge of branding a company that for me, I absolutely love is one of my favorite things to do. The challenge, the branding, getting the name out there is my favorite thing to do out of anything. And it's something that Dawah needed and I loved positioning them that they ran into that whole big hurdle, which was a hard thing for that company to face. It was very hard. Even though they had a strong product line globally, it was still a hard challenge here in the United States. Sure, yeah. A lot of companies have had that when they came here. I remember companies have come out of Australia, companies have come out of Asia, and you know, it's not the same here. There's different rules that they have to play by sometimes. It makes it tough. And so how did the branding, you know, how did that passion for branding, because it's sort of a unique piece of marketing.  And so I think in marketing, it's the cool thing about it is you can take a piece of it and actually, you know, if you're passionate about it, that can become your expertise. And it seems like that's sort of what you've developed over time. How did it first come to that? Or was it just naturally in you to want to, like, shout it from the mountaintops? You know, what's interesting is I actually started my career as an art director. So my experience comes as a foundation of a graphic designer. And then along the way, one of the mentors that I had in the field by the name of Dana Milky, he basically saw that I was doing more marketing than I was doing when I was positioning for graphics. And he saw that I had a really good knack for it. And he actually took me and transitioned me into the marketing realm, which was something that completely opened my world up. And it was a really great fit. I absolutely loved it. And he really took my hand into it and said, listen, he's like, this is what we're going to do with this. And he basically on the field training and he was a great mentor along the way who cemented me in marketing. And from there, you know, this is why I always tell people, if you're going to hire somebody, don't always just judge them by their college degree or foundation. Don't judge them by who they are because they will surprise you with what they can bring to the table. And just having somebody have the confidence in changing my career path has been astronomical. And even to this day, it's been probably about 15, 16, 15 years since I've worked with him. And I have Dana to thank for changing my path. Wow. So did you have an art background as well? Yeah, I do. I have a degree in graphic design and concentration in that. And so I use that for the first probably about eight years of my career in growing as an art director and graphics and then graphic manager and then art director. And then from art director, I transitioned into, I stepped into marketing and it was fantastic. Because did that inform it? Because it seems to me to have an artist's eye, right? When you talk about the passion for branding, right? You had to, you know, there's some imagery that goes along with that, right? To help with the messaging that you create. And so did that inform it?  Like for these companies that you worked for and say, look, here's the image we need. And you know, or was it like a group thing thing?  No, it was, what was great is having the ability to, I think the creative end of it really lent into the vision, the execution of the vision is saying, what are we about? What do we position ourselves like this? Why don't we think outside the box? And really would tie everything together. One thing that I recommend for any company out there that has a marketing department, you want to be successful. And I swear by this is have your marketing team go into the field with your sales team. Because sales and marketing seriously have to work hand in hand. And if that happens, marketing gets to learn the pain points that sales are trying to solve in order to communicate. If you can help the marketing team understand what it is that you're positioning, you're going to have an incredible time selling something. So the more you can bond marketing with sales, the more successful your company is going to be. Working in silos is not going to work. A lot of times I find companies that their marketing departments are like, well, why does he need budgets for that? Or why do they need this? Or why do they have to attend that? And they get very particular with their budgets instead of saying, how can I help you in the field? What is it that you're doing and showing them and taking their hand and walking them through to a customer, getting them to see firsthand what they're trying to do is definitely going to increase the efforts of what marketing does with sales. That is a golden nugget that I think a lot of people miss. The sales person is called upon to solve some sort of problem. So when the messaging behind the products are offering those solutions, more people are going to pick up on those solutions that they're looking for. Because a lot of times most people have sort of the same problems when they're calling integrators up to get help. That's insightful. Were you able to spend that time in the field yourself? Or was this something that you just sort of pioneered and said, hey, here's how we're going to do this. We're going out with sales and let's gather our info first before we get started with even creating the brand. Yeah. One of the companies that really helped my career grow, believe it or not, was Dahua because they actually moved me from marketing over to business development.  And being in that sales role from a marketing viewpoint, it opened up an entire arena that I was just like, wow, almost to the point that I'm like, I really like business development. I mean, you don't know it. At first I was like, well, I don't want to do business development. And they're like, yeah, that's what you're going to do. I'm like, well, I really, you know, but they're like, then finally, like, do I have a choice? And they're like, not really. So you move into it. And sometimes the most amazing things happen outside your comfort zone. And I definitely learned that hands on. And I do thank them for exposing me to an incredible business development world that I absolutely loved leveraging the network, talking to people, trying to gain the sales, building the relationship. So I love that. And it's something that even when I went to ISS, I brought that business development mindset with me. And whenever our sales team had to go meet with other people, I was there along with them to help them understand our product line, lend the efforts of the sales process from a marketing standpoint, from a business development standpoint and from the growth standpoint. So it was definitely every path that I've had has been so instrumental and educational. And it's been such an incredible learning experience. So there's a theme that's come out here. I don't know if everybody, if my viewers have picked up on it, but people see, you can do stuff that you didn't know you could do. And they're like, hey, you're going to go this way. And next thing you know, you're doing it and having fun. What do you think about that? Is that a, do you think more people should try things or not afraid of it?  I think you'd be good at it. Yeah, never, never settle for the words. That's not how we used to do it. There's a lot of mergers going on. There's a lot of changes going on. I don't recommend anybody changing fields right now.  You've got a job. Enjoy it. Kind of thing. But as far as career path, definitely get yourself out there.  You grow so much, whether it's positive, whether it's negative, whether you say, I shouldn't have done that or I shouldn't do that. No matter what it adds to who you are and who you can become. So for sure. That's awesome. I love, I love that, that optimism perspective.  Okay, we're right about a good spot for a break. We're going to pay some bills for a minute. It'll be right back with Janet Fenner. Don't get lost. Rusty Kamori, host of Beyond the Lines on Think Tech, Hawaii. I was the head coach for the Punahou Boys varsity tennis team for 22 years, and we were fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championships. My show is based on my book, also titled Beyond the Lines. And it's about leadership, creating a superior culture of excellence and finding greatness. I feature a wide range of amazing guests who share valuable insights about how going beyond the lines leads to success in everything you do in life. I'm looking forward to you joining me every Monday at 11 a.m. Aloha. Hey, Aloha, and welcome back to Security Matters. We're live from the Think Tech, Hawaii studios today with Janet Fenner. Janet, thanks so much again for joining us today. I appreciate you being here. You were sharing like your secret sauce for marketing there. So thank you very much for that. And I know you also contribute to a lot of other industry organizations. So I know you're on the board of Security Industry Association. And what an amazing organization. I mean, in this time, they have stepped up massively to get out there to share information with our integrators and with our community at large. I love the leadership they've taken on. Have you had a voice in helping Don and the team over there get some messaging out the door? Well, it's great. I love it when they reach out for different ideas. One thing that we're doing is we're getting ready to hold a kind of like an open panel discussion regarding how to market and how to take advantage of marketing in these times right now because everybody's online. Everybody's paying attention. Everybody's strapped to this computer at home. So how to make them best of it with little resources and how to go ahead and do some branding and do some communication out there as best possible and what to look out for. And we're going to be discussing that. We're going to be discussing that and Cia's giving that platform, which is great. I think it's important for us as an industry to really take advantage of as much learning we can do right now or how do we get through this together? So anybody who can lend their expertise as to how do we get through this tough time because it is tough, it is fantastic. And Cia has been putting a lot of great resources out there as to what companies can take advantage of, what's offered, what's happening, and they're a really good sound board. Yeah. A little bit to your earlier point. I've been listening to a lot of this and a lot of the integrators and manufacturers people talking about what they're doing to get through and some of their strategies. But we haven't heard much from the customers and what they're suffering from to your earlier point. Maybe we need to identify some of this stuff now so that we can help them be a little better prepared next time. A problem like this comes around if it hopefully, whatever it does, I guess we're not immune from future episodes for future events like this. Sure. Sure. It's a good point, Andrew. It definitely is. We have to definitely keep the customer in mind. I mean, Cia represents about over 1,100 companies now and they're doing as much as they possibly can to help the smaller and the big companies get through a tough time like this. Do you know of the companies in New York? You're not far from Manhattan. Are they working? I mean, we're working because we're DOD and critical infrastructure. So the necessary services are the companies that are in New York proper or is everybody in the security industry busy and contributing? I was thinking of how do you secure these pop-up hospitals and things that they're putting like a Javits Center, for example, things like that. That stuff needs security wrapped around it, yeah? I know there's a lot of companies out there that are building campaigns right now to address the healthcare situation and to provide immediate help and immediate assistance for products and allocating resources. So there are companies right now, especially distribution companies that are actually positioning campaigns driven to address healthcare needs. But everything in Manhattan, if you go in there, it's a ghost town. It's very, very eerie to what lack of, what's going on. I have to plug in my computer. Oh, awesome. I told him you're always on the move, see? Oh, there you go. Proof positive. No worries. So the, is there, or have you heard of like municipal government planning around? I've been on a bit of a platform about our industry not being engaged necessarily with the national security discussion, primarily because we are at the infra-guard level and we are at the defense industrial-based level and critical infrastructure-type companies, but a lot of our industry doesn't work there. And I didn't know if you'd seen or heard of any security types in the media there in New York that are, you know, posh mix, an example of someone who sort of tends to get his voice at his company elevated in the national security discussion. I see him on the DHS discussions on the news and things like that from time to time. But, you know, I haven't seen much of it out here other than our company. And I just didn't know what you're seeing in New York. You know, is the industry represented as a, one of the, you know, solid pieces of industry that we need to rely upon when things go bad? Oh, those are just the security guys. They'll come back and sell us more stuff later. I tell you what I have to say. I, you know, I try to, the only piece of news that I listen to right now is when our governor addresses the situation in New York.  He's doing a great job in communication. He's putting the political needs aside and he's really doing a great job of communicating. So I listened to his communication and then I basically, I don't, I don't get wrapped up into it at all. I've got two kids at home that are constantly with homework and assignments and, and then the other stuff that I'm working on. So right now I've been very, very siloed as to what I do listen to on the media. So let's talk a little bit about what you've been doing because you were sharing that you've got, you may have a crossroads type of discussion, or, you know, a self-discussion. I'm not sure who will decide. I presume it's you. Talk to us a little bit about that. What that's like at home when you have a lot of time to really consider it. Yeah. So I'm like, hmm. So lately what I've been doing is I've been actually doing a lot of marketing outsourcing for a few companies. I've gained a few clients, which has been really, really great. And I've been very much open to head hunting positions. I'm not actively going out there and looking for a position, but I have been reached out to regarding a few open positions within the industry. Because one thing that I am certain of is I do not want to leave this industry. I absolutely adore it. I've built my career around it. And there's, I will try until I can any longer and then I'll decide to leave. But really I want to stay embedded within the industry. So it's like a part of your family. You've known it for so long. Yeah. And I love the people in it. And I love working this ecosystem that exists. So I'm at a crossroad right now is to do I, you know, do I take a full-time job or do I continue outsourcing and creating an agency type of career out of this opportunity. So it's a good win-win kind of situation because I do have the ability to say what kind of position I want right now and where I want my career to go. So I can get a bit nitpicky and say, yes, no, when an opportunity does present itself. But I absolutely love marketing and being able to outsource to different companies and different messaging for each one of them is such a refreshing role. I absolutely love it. I have to say. And each one is treated completely different. And it's kind of like, here's what you can do. It's like, oh, my gosh, we can do this and we can do that. And it all started because I did a post on social media saying, hey, take advantage. I've got time right now. Anybody wants help on marketing. I'll be more than happy. I mean, Andrew, that response has gotten almost 19,000 views, which is awesome. And I know, I was like, wow. And a few companies did take me up on it, which was great. And so I was very grateful. And a lot of them turned into potential opportunities that we're exploring right now, which is, it's been really great. So I've got a few clients that I've got on board and I'm loving it. But I have been interviewing right now with a certain company. And so let's see what happens out of that. Good, good. It's so fun to have options. And I think our industry is full of them. And I hope that our women in security form and that other people that are looking at our industry don't know much about it. Listen to Janice's story because truly you can move around and do things that you possibly never even imagined yourself doing. And you can contribute and be part of an amazing team in an amazing business, right? This industry protects lives and people at the end of the day. I've never met anyone who's in it that wants out. Let's put it that way. Right. And there's so much amazing technology in this industry. It's like there's nothing boring about our industry at all. I think maybe it's from my viewpoint. I think this industry is super sexy because the technology is so amazing and what it does and how fast it's moving. It's such a speed that we're changing technology right now that it's amazing. It really, really is. So the best thing you can do is network, network, network, be a part of something.  You really do. And I am proof positive that that's why. I've built this network. I've grown this network. And now I'm leveraging this network. And it's really working to my advantage, which is fantastic. Yeah, it's important. It's fun to have all the right problems. And this industry is really forgiving. Even in times like this, probably we will grow as an industry. In 0809, we grew as an industry. I think something like since 1972, we've grown into double-digit percentages like every year as an industry. So you can kind of make mistakes and kind of play around and still keep moving forward.  So let's briefly give a shout out. What do you think some of the things that our Women in Security Forum should be working on? I know we've got a scholarship committee started, which is really fun. What else, what other kind of initiatives do you think we could do to sort of impact the industry, maybe in a place that's missing? Well, I know that we're working really hard on doing presentations on diversifying the industry because it's really, really important. I know that a lot of people listen to Women in Security Forum and they're like, oh, women, it's not like that.  It's not like that. It's very important to have the female voice in your company. I mean, there are studies around it as to if you balance your company correctly and you give more of a female voice to it, you really do a great job at learning more about your company and how to position it and how to move it forward. Just segment it to a less diverse experience. You're going to miss out on certain voices that could really lend and make your companies profitable. And there's studies on that. It's not because we're just saying it. So we want to help companies out there diversify. And that's one of the things we're doing. We're helping those women who actually sit in the background and say, hey, you know what? You're talented. This is your worth. Let's get you out there. Let's connect you. Let's move your career along. We're all about advancing the women in our industry along or any individual in the industry along, be it women or men, but we're doing it collectively. We have an incredible core of women that I'm so incredibly grateful to be a part of. And we're an incredible pride, basically. We have each other's back. We support each other. We give advice. I mean, I'm on chat groups with these women about career, about family, about balance. And it's important to add that to your company. It's important to be a part of something that can really be beneficial if you look at it in the right light. That is awesome advice. Janet, we are out of time today, but I really want to thank you for sharing. That's from the heart. This is a great industry. Please come and join us. Janet, we'll see you sometime soon, somewhere, I'm sure, in the flesh. I hope maybe to fall before we all get out again. I don't know, but I will see you out there. Yes, I'm dying to, man. I'll meet you at the bar for sure. Okay. Thank you so much, Andrew. I really appreciate you taking the time. Mahala. All right. Take care. Aloha now. Aloha, everybody. We'll see you.


Hi and welcome to the session. I am Purva and I will help you with the following question. Evaluate the definite integral, integral limit from 0 to pi by 2 cos square x upon cos square x plus 4 sin square x dx. Let us now begin with the solution. Let us denote this definite integral by i. So we have i is equal to integral limit from 0 to pi by 2 cos square x upon cos square x plus 4 sin square x dx. This is equal to integral limit from 0 to pi by 2 cos square x upon cos square x plus 4. Now we can write sin square x as 1 minus cos square x dx. This is equal to integral limit from 0 to pi by 2 cos square x upon cos square x plus, now open the bracket we get 4 minus 4 cos square x dx and this is further equal to integral limit from 0 to pi by 2 cos square x upon 4 minus 3 cos square x dx because cos square x minus 4 cos square x gives us minus 3 cos square x. This is equal to now multiplying the numerator and denominator by minus 3 we get minus 1 upon 3 integral limit from 0 to pi by 2 minus 3 cos square x upon 4 minus 3 cos square x dx. This is equal to minus 1 upon 3 integral limit from 0 to pi by 2. Now adding and subtracting 4 in numerator we get 4 minus 3 cos square x minus 4 upon 4 minus 3 cos square x dx and we can write this as this is equal to minus 1 upon 3 integral limit from 0 to pi by 2 4 minus 3 cos square x upon 4 minus 3 cos square x minus 4 upon 4 minus 3 cos square x dx. This is equal to minus 1 upon 3 integral limit from 0 to pi by 2. Now canceling numerator and denominator here we get 1 minus 4 upon 4 minus 3 cos square x dx and we can write this as this is equal to minus 1 upon 3 integral limit from 0 to pi by 2 dx minus into minus will become plus so plus 4 upon 3 integral limit from 0 to pi by 2 dx upon 4 minus 3 cos square x. This is equal to minus 1 upon 3 now integrating 1 we get x and limit is from 0 to pi by 2 plus 4 upon 3 integral limit from 0 to pi by 2 dx upon 4 minus 3 cos square x and this is equal to minus 1 upon 3 now putting the limits we get pi by 2 minus 0 because the upper limit is pi by 2 so putting pi by 2 in place of x we get pi by 2 and lower limit is 0 putting 0 in place of x we get 0 plus 4 upon 3 integral limit from 0 to pi by 2 dx upon 4 minus 3 cos square x and this is equal to minus pi by 6 because pi by 2 minus 0 is equal to pi by 2 and pi by 2 into minus 1 upon 3 will give us minus pi by 6 plus 4 upon 3 integral limit from 0 to pi by 2 dx upon 4 minus 3 cos square x. This is equal to minus pi upon 6 plus 4 by 3 integral limit from 0 to pi by 2 now we divide the numerator and denominator by cos square x so we get 1 upon cos square x upon 4 upon cos square x minus 3 cos square x upon cos square x dx and this is equal to minus pi by 6 plus 4 by 3 integral limit from 0 to pi by 2 now 1 upon cos square x is equal to sex square x so we get sex square x upon 4 sex square x minus 3 dx and this is equal to minus pi by 6 plus 4 by 3 integral limit from 0 to pi by 2 sex square x upon 4 into now we can write sex square x as 1 plus tan square x so 1 plus tan square x minus 3 dx this is equal to minus pi by 6 plus 4 by 3 integral limit from 0 to pi by 2 sex square x upon now opening the bracket we get 4 plus 4 tan square x minus 3 dx and this is equal to minus pi by 6 plus 4 by 3 integral limit from 0 to pi by 2 sex square x upon now 4 minus 3 is equal to 1 so 1 plus 4 tan square x dx this is equal to minus pi upon 6 plus now we denote 4 upon 3 integral limit from 0 to pi by 2 sex square x upon 1 plus 4 tan square x dx by i1 so we write plus i1 now we consider i1 so we have i1 is equal to 4 upon 3 integral limit from 0 to pi by 2 sex square x upon 1 plus 4 tan square x dx now we put tan x equal to t so put tan x equal to t differentiating we get sex square x dx is equal to dt now when x is equal to lower limit that is when x is equal to 0 we have t is equal to 0 because putting here 0 in place of x we get tan 0 which is equal to 0 so we get t is equal to 0 and when x is equal to upper limit that is when x is equal to pi by 2 we have t is equal to tan pi by 2 and tan pi by 2 is equal to infinity so we get t is equal to infinity putting all these values in i1 we get i1 is equal to 4 by 3 integral limit from 0 to infinity dt upon 1 plus 4 t square this is equal to now multiplying and dividing the denominator by 4 we get 4 upon 3 into 1 upon 4 integral limit from 0 to infinity dt upon 1 by 4 plus t square cancelling 4 numerator and denominator here we get this is equal to 1 by 3 integral limit from 0 to infinity dt upon now we can write 1 upon 4 as 1 upon 2 whole square plus t square now since we know that integral dx upon a square plus x square is equal to 1 upon a tan inverse x by a therefore we can write this as this is equal to 1 upon 3 into 1 upon 2 tan inverse t upon 1 by 2 and limit is from 0 to infinity so we apply this formula dx upon a square plus x square integral and this is equal to 1 upon a tan inverse x upon a so in this taking a is equal to 1 upon 2 and x is equal to t we get 1 upon 1 by 2 tan inverse t upon 1 by 2 and this is equal to 2 upon 3 tan inverse 2 t and limit is from 0 to infinity this is equal to 2 upon 3 now putting the limits we get tan inverse infinity minus tan inverse 0 because we have the upper limit as infinity so putting infinity in place of t we get tan inverse infinity minus a lower limit is 0 so putting 0 in place of t we get tan inverse 0 and this is equal to 2 by 3 into now we know that tan of pi by 2 is equal to infinity so we get tan inverse infinity is equal to pi by 2 minus and we know that tan of 0 is 0 so we get tan inverse 0 is equal to 0 and this is equal to pi by 3 so we get i1 is equal to pi by 3 therefore we have i is equal to minus pi by 6 plus pi by 3 and this is equal to pi by 6 so we get i is equal to pi by 6 thus we get our answer as pi by 6 hope you have understood the solution bye and take care


Welcome back to the channel. Today I have an awesome guest for you, another amazing story about someone who is able to get a tech sales position in a very short period of time. Thank you so much for coming on the channel, Joseph. I really appreciate it.  Thank you, shape for having me. I appreciate it as well. Awesome. So let's go ahead and get into it real quick. So let's go ahead and start back at the beginning. Maybe just give me a little bit of a background about yourself and how you discovered tech sales. Sure thing. I mean, I want to start from where most people start from Brooklyn, New York. A lot of people from Brooklyn, New York are very proud to say that I was born and raised there for most of my life with parts of Queens, moved out of the United States for a couple of years as a teenager with my parents. They have actually a home for street children in Guyana, South America, and they do that amazing work. In fact, they're still there to this day. They've been there for about 17 years and they just keep on going. And then I came back for college. I laugh because it's college. I came back for college and I went and got married after college and had kids. And so it led me to this path of basically kind of trying to find my way in this world in regards to providing and being a father and a husband. And so it basically landed me to the point where I am at today where I was looking and searching for something. And I saw Anthony O'Neill's show that he has the table where he had a guest, Cyrus Harbin, who was there and he was telling his story from how he started off basically doing Uber, among other different things. And he in his mind, he was struggling, right? And so he ended up taking a tech bootcamp and becoming a sales engineer and literally night and day story, you know? And so when I saw that out, like most people you see and you say, oh, this is this is pretty cool. All right. This thing's kind of fun. But something was different about this. Something really resonated with me. And so I ended up going and watching what he basically did, seeing all of his videos going through basically any video that he had, I probably saw twice or three times. And so from there, I got introduced to you. I got introduced to Anton Wade. I got introduced to Dressel and others on YouTube who are basically providing an education about this industry that honestly, I wasn't aware of, you know?  And then eventually I started working for churches and even I worked in as a patient care coordinator. And then lastly, I worked in inside sales as a solar company here in the Northeast. And so the funny thing is that when I talk to my wife about all my journey, I'm just reflecting. She's like, man, every single thing kind of worked up for this moment. And truly, truly it does. And so after watching that, again, going back to Cyrus Harbin, after watching that, I started to develop a hunger, a desire to say, I have to get into this. I have to get into this. I have to change the trajectory of my life and my family's life. And so that led me to to doing the course. And I literally did it in 45 days. I'll keep in mind, I'm not just working in inside sales and solar from home. I'm working and I'm watching two of our youngest kids at the time. And it was a toddler who's three, four years old at the time. And then was also our one year old. I don't know how I did it, but I did it. And so I literally like, there's times where I'm putting the one putting the baby to giving them a nap and then I'm reading a book or I'm driving and I'm listening to the audio book of how to win friends and influence people. And I'm just like, I'm all overplayed listening to different lessons here and there because of that hunger, which I learned was great. Just having that resilience. That's what I had because it wasn't about me. It's about my generations, generation, my kids, kids. I'm trying to change things for them. And so I did the course and probably I started like the beginning of September and then I finished it in probably about 30 days. And keep in mind, I, we didn't have just one or two kids. We had five kids at this time. So talk about the house being chaotic and crazy, cleaning up, listening to it. I'm cooking. I'm listening to different lessons. And then on top of that, my wife is pregnant with our sixth child. And so what ended up happening was, and this is a funny story, but during the interview process after I finished course careers, I actually had an interview with the company that I am working with today, Frisha. And my wife's about seven minutes away. My wife's like, my water broke and I'm driving. I'm like, what? Oh no. Oh my gosh. And I'm like, what is going on? I'm driving. And then three minutes away from the emergency room, she said, he's here. The baby basically delivered himself. And so I open this. I pull over to the side. I opened the side door. There's there's a person honking behind me saying, what are you doing? I'm like, call 911 call 911. And so they just thought I was crazy. But I ended up grabbing the baby, putting a robe around that baby, putting the baby with the bilica cord and everything on her lap on her chest. Wow. And honestly, it was a little scary because the baby wasn't even like really making a lot of noise at first. I had to kind of like gently shake it. The baby. Yeah. And he eventually started to make some noise. And again, three minutes away from the house, the ER. So we got to the ER. I ran out, said, hey, the baby is here. And so about 30 doctors, nurses and medical students all came to see my wife and I. And thankfully, the baby was fine. Honestly, that was that was my biggest concern. But it was funny because I'm on my way there and I'm like right when I'm leaving, I'm like, I'm sorry, I got to reschedule the babies here for my interview. So it was quite the time. But below and behold, here am I, I'm now in tech and tech sales. And I'm excited to continue this journey. Wow. Well, that is one of the coolest stories I've ever heard. You're basically the ultimate multitasker at that point. You're doing everything. You're cooking. You're you're cleaning, making sure the house is clean. You're taking care of the kids. You're taking sales calls, which I've taken sales calls before. That is that that's tough to take care of kids. At the same time, you're taking sales calls. Oh, man. Good. I can distract them other times. It's like, oh, hey, yeah, I have a guest with me. He's my son and I introduced them to the client and they start laughing with me and they're like, oh, this is mine. Or they're like, this is unprofessional in their mind. And they just kind of say, OK, I'm going on. But sometimes life is like that. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, but you you made the most of it, which is awesome. And that just shows the grit.  So that's that's awesome. You mentioned college really quickly. I did want to talk about that. Do you think that somebody has to go to college in order to land like a high paying job like tech sales, for instance? No, not at all.   You have a medical license. That would be a problem for everybody involved. But for for for sales, not at all, not at all. Got it. Got it. OK. So you discovered course careers through that Anthony O'Neill show, which, yeah, a lot of people have done that. That was massive for course careers. That absolutely blew them up. So that was awesome that that happened. And so you enroll in course careers, took you about a month and a half or so to get through it. How was the curriculum? Like how how was the experience of going through course careers? Can you kind of talk about that a little bit and what your experience was like? Oh, yeah, it was great. It was really good. And the one thing I love, which I think everybody that goes through course careers would say, being that it's self-paced, there's not that pressure on you to have to, you know, attend a class and have to be able to to do this and that, because that's a lot of pressure for me as a father of as a husband and a father to six children now, that would have been that would have been an issue for me being able to sustain that. But because it was self-paced, I could push myself. I said, OK, man, I just did two, three chapters of for that go prospecting, let me do three more, you know, and I could really stretch out that process and the material itself was robust enough where even though I have a background in sales, I felt like I was learning things. I was putting language to things that I was already doing. So, for example, in the position that I had, I did a lot of, you know, cold calling. And so I'm like, OK, in the sales cycle, this is called outreach, you know, or if I was doing a lot of vetting of appointments, I'm like, OK, this is a little bit what I'm doing is actually discovery. And I did not have a language to necessarily put it to that. But it kind of goes to a quote that I have here for Warren Buffett says you should find yourself in if you should find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leads. So, for example, and it's not this is not to speak badly anybody who's in other sales positions, but I was in that position where I was in sales, but the boat itself wasn't necessarily the best boat and I feel like tech sales is truly the best boat. I digress to go back to this. The reason why I say that is because a lot of times you may be dealing and again, you may be selling cell phones, you may be selling furniture, you may be selling vacuums.  But sometimes we may be in if we just take those same skills and move it to a different boat, we could experience a whole new world that we never never knew existed. And so that's what that's what I learned from the course itself. And yeah, I totally agree with you. I mentioned this to you like I went to a business conference last month, there was about 500 business owners at this conference. And I kept asking people, what's your biggest problem? What's your biggest problem? What's your biggest problem? And because that, you know, obviously that's how you make money in businesses by solving problems. And their number one biggest problem was was the sales team. It was all about sales. And a lot of them were in SAS, a lot of them were in tech. So it's it's tech sales. This is a skill that business owners who have millions of dollars in free cash when they're going to sleep at night, they're like, oh, my sales team, I have to get another salesperson. All right, I don't have enough salespeople are right. So this is one of those things where if you get good at this skill, they're just going to throw money at you. And this is why you see people like Antoine making 500. I think he's probably going to hit like 700 this year, $700,000 a year is because they've mastered this skill of sales. And in particular, it's it's tech sales. That's where there's the most opportunity is because it's probably the best industry to be in with the best possible skill you could learn. So when you combine those two things together, it's like it's like magic. I mean, there's employees that are making more than most business owners out there. And yeah, it's it's just absolute magic for sure. So you went through the course. It taught you a lot of really good lessons. Can we talk about that that first job offer? It took you about 45 days, which is awesome, about a month and a half. And you're working a full time job. You're you've got you've got six kids super busy. So a month and a half is great. That's a great amount of time to land an entirely new career. How can we talk about the money a little bit? What was kind of the range for that first offer that you got? So it's so funny, as you're talking, I'm like, let me find out exactly what the offer was so I could say exactly how it reads. So I have it right in front of me right here. Basically, the offer was and I'm going to read this to those who aren't familiar with tech and what they could provide. 100 percent remote work from home plus home office expense reimbursements, competitive compensation plus equity grants for all employees. You know, this is unlimited PTO included in this, by the way, plus eight company holidays, monthly allowance for cell phone, internet and wellness. A hundred. This is for me because this is remember, I just had a baby. 100 percent paid 12 week parental leave to all of the US employees as well as a generous parental benefit for those in Canada and variety of insurance coverages for people and pets, as well as they help you to pay for continuing education and professional certification reimbursement. All this is included with an 80 K salary. So I think you kind of went into this a little bit, but what was your lifestyle? I kind of just want to contrast the lifestyle, job satisfaction, work, life balance, all these things people talk about that are outside of the money that you make and that sort of thing, doing solar sales versus tech sales. What could you kind of contrast those two like the lifestyle difference? Yeah, let me let me let me be the first to say because I don't sometimes look at my LinkedIn and try to try to say something negative about the company that I was with. But the solar company I was with, actually, I really do applaud them because they kept us employed during the pandemic. So I can never speak negatively about them. What I would say, though, is because the type of industry that we're in, where we're really in demand, we're actually kind of in a way, a utilities company as well, because if something goes wrong, it's an emergency we have to come out. So so the hours were like I had to basically do like 10 to seven pretty much six days a week, get a day off at a certain point. And then when when the pandemic kind of calmed down, I was back to five days, but it was still later in the day, still working a weekend, one day or another.  And imagine my wife trying to, you know, walk around all these kids by herself. She's like, looking at me like, oh, that's a little bit of a problem. But I could tell you right now, working in tech, boy, it's a totally different, totally different experience because it's typically business hours because you're speaking to businesses nine to five, and it's not a culture where they're expecting you to work over time. That's never been kind of encouraged since I've been here. It's always been like, hey, we know how much kids you got.  Go home like it's five o'clock. We don't want you to work over over that time. And I really appreciate that because it shows that they really kind of respect and they really cherish their workers in and something that we discussed before is that, you know, you're the ultimate prize, you are the ultimate prize. And so and so you feel that when you are working in tech. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So what would you say to somebody who's kind of on the fence right now? They're thinking, you know, should I go into tech sales? Should I use course careers? What would you say to that person? Maybe they're a little bit skeptical about this because, you know, as they should be, right?  But what would you say to that person? I would say look at me, look at others that have gone through the course. There are plenty of testimonials you could find online from students that have gone through the course and say to yourself, is my situation going to get better if I don't do something to change it? Like that quote that we said earlier about from Warren Buffett, you know, the boat is leaking and sometimes it's just best to go to another boat. You know, that I would I would ask you to look at your life and say, hey, what's I need I need to fix something. You know, I was reading the book, how to win friends once people won the books that we do in the course. And before that book, I was stressed out. I'm not going to lie. Well, not going to lie to you, Shane. I was stressed out. But one thing that reminded me is to smile. Yeah. And reading that book, it brought my smile back. It really did. And so when I could I could talk to people on the phone and smile through and they could hear, OK, this person's happy, the person I'm talking to. But it wasn't always there. And sometimes your smile might be gone because you're dealing with a lot of stuff going on in life, let's just be honest, we're humans and go through stuff. So you want to be able to change the directory of your generation to generation. And you could do that through sales, specifically through tech sales. So you have nothing to lose. That's awesome. Did you there is a there's a free course, basically, Troy put together a free course. Actually, it's it's Trent now. Trent does a free course, which it's actually better. They just revamped the course. And it basically is going to be sort of like the entire course in a nutshell. It's going to give you the nuts and bolts of the course. And it's going to tell you the different career paths in tech sales. It's going to tell you what exactly you're going to be doing on a day to day basis in tech sales. It's going to explain all the logic behind why it's such an in-demand skill. And if you want to check that free course out, it will be linked down in the description as well as the pen comment below. And if you choose to buy the full course, I do have a $50 off coupon. It's going to be Shane 50, which I'll put down there as well. Joseph, is there any like last moments sort of tips, tricks, maybe like some pearls, some pro tips that you have for anybody who's watching this? Well, yeah, I would say for me, if you're in that place where you're looking to get into tech sales, obviously, I'm going to say take the course because I went through it and it was dynamite for me. But I'm also going to include that once you get to the end of that journey and you are, you know, about to actually apply, you got to put them through a sales cadence. Whoever you're applying for, you have to find out who that person is. Do research on the company. Make sure that you are being organized in regards to who you're reaching out to what their position is, what is the ICP or the ideal customer profile for this particular company?  And I'm going to wrap it up with this in regards to the people. I see a lot of people struggle with this and it's because they lack confidence. It's because sometimes they lack skill and knowledge and understanding. Course Careers provides you that knowledge that you need, right? So Course Careers provides that for you and now it's your job to take time to get the understanding and to develop the skill. Therefore, if you have the knowledge, understanding and skill, the natural where there should be, I should say, you're going to naturally have the confidence to do what you're setting out to do. Gotcha. OK. That's awesome. Hey, Joseph, thank you so much for taking some time out of your very, very, very busy day with the family. And taking some time out of your evening as well as your job. I really appreciate you coming on the channel, sharing your story. I'm sure you've inspired a ton of people out there. So thank you. Well, thank you for having me, Shane. I appreciate the offer. I'm glad I'm here.


Hello, everybody. We are back. Lady, what is this? Hey, everybody, and welcome to show and tell. This is our live 30-ish minute long show where people from around the makeup community all over the world in the known universe beam in and show us on the viewfinder screen. What is it that they're working on? Were the coding, 3D printing, soldering, blinking, and more? I'll check in with some Adafruit folks and then any other visitors who come by. We're on Discord. Programming it last week. We took the week off.  Then we had family visit on Sundays, so it was no-descalated, but back to our normal schedule. Next week, show and tell, some 30 p.m. Eastern time, come by, and then next week, special Adabox unboxing. Adabox is back after the- But we'll still have show and tell. Yeah, we're still going to do show and tell. But after the long park shortage, and people being super patient and super cool, Adabox shipped all the folks got the Adaboxes, so next week is the unboxing brought to you by JP. With that being said, let's kick off our show and tell this week with Liz. Liz, what's going on this week? Behind me is one of the Elgato key lights, and these lights can be controlled over HTTP with an app. But we thought it'd be cool to try to control it with Circuit Python using this feather. When I press this button, the light comes on. And I can press it again, toza. So put it there, and then I can control the brightness or the color temperature with this rotary encoder. So right there, the temperature is going up, and I'll put it all the way up so that you can really see the difference, such as how it goes. And then make the warm. Oh, I see, so it's going to be cool, okay. Yeah, and I'll put it all the way back down to cool. And then you can also change the brightness. So I'll put up to 100. Super bright. Oh my goodness. Yes, and then back there. So you figured out the protocol, and theoretically, do you need to use the app at all, or now you can just not even use it? You don't need to use the app. A lot of folks have done a lot of protocol sniffing on it, so I found two really good resources that I'll link in the guide when I write this up. And another thing I added, because I do have the app on my computer, and I'll just quickly change it to warm. I also am reading from it, so if I press this button, it will, whoops. Oh, you can say it. It will crash. Yes, it will crash, but it should in theory read the data back from the light. And so on first boot, it reads from the light and should go there. But yeah, so I'm going to be writing a guide for that, and it got the new value there. Yeah, we have a look, too, and it does. I thought this would be useful for you, because this could make a thing that we could, what have you, having to plug stuff in, maybe we would have a little controller. Yeah, just for folks who have all these type of lights and systems, one of the things about rolling your own software is handy, is operating systems change, you get updated, the apps don't always work, so if you know the protocol, you can make your own. Also, if you're an old timer, kind of like me, you know how you'd buy a laptop back in the day, it'd be like Sony, and it would come like a ton of apps, and you'd be like, I got to get rid of these apps, and it would be like bloatware. Not that Elgato's software is bloatware, but it is another app that you're going to be running, and it's nice to not have to run someone else's app, and you also know what it's doing. So that's kind of cool that you can do your own app, but also make some physical hardware stuff instead. Yes, definitely, yeah. So, and it's a cool project. And I thought maybe it would be good for you to have this light, and you could use it for like your video, and I was like, yeah, that's fine. Yeah, advanced things that you could do with this, you could have a sensor, so you just moved your hand over something, and it sends the same type of things like, oh, turn these lights on, turn them off. You can do all sorts of stuff with it. Yeah, definitely. Right, great project. And I really like using the feather with the TFT built in there, and then there's the buttons, so. You can tell what's going on. Handy, and then, yeah, solderless project is everything, so you can just stem a cute one. You can also do things like, have it do ambient stuff, where the lighting of where your app changes, it changes. Although it can't do that, but you could do that, you could have a sensor go in and have it change it based on that. Exactly, yeah. Cool. All right, thanks so much for this. No problem, have a good one. All right, JP, what you got going on this week? Hey, so it's been family visit time. You guys had a visit. I actually went out and saw my folks for a couple of days, and I came home with a piece of gear, then this is something I wanted to show. This was my dad's first real camera. He got this in 1960, in somewhere near Lubeck, Germany. He was stationed there in the Army, and he got this super cool Kodak Retina Reflex S, which was made in Germany, designed and made in Germany. There was a German camera company that Kodak had bought at one point, and this was an interchangeable lens SLR, so you can look through the lens and then it has a mirror that lifts up the, lifts up when you're taking the photo. And there were two cool things I wanted to show about this. One of them was just the analog light meter. So this thing that looks like a bug eye, this camera takes no batteries, and yet it has a light meter. And if I take a little piece of paper and reflect some light onto bounce off of here, you'll see that little meter going up and down, and that's, I think it's just essentially a super sensitive magnet, what's the word I'm looking for, like electromagnetic coil that the light is actually exciting causing that little meter to go, which is pretty amazing. And there was a little diffuser, you can slide onto that too, if you're looking for a different type of light metering, I think on a sunny day. Excuse me, the other thing I wanted to show, which is I've been doing a lot of photography with our Memento camera lately, and the things that really come up a lot with getting the lighting right and the focus right and the sharpness right in your photos is typically the shutter speed, the aperture, and then the focal distance of the lens. And so one of the really neat things they did on this was just to be kind of extra, I think, and help you out, is you can adjust things like focus with a little ring here. And so that number you see there is essentially how many feet away we're focusing on. So for focus on something seven feet away with the aperture, which is what's letting the light in at its current setting, we should actually get things that are maybe as close to six feet and out near 10 feet. That's what these two little red lines indicate. Super cool thing is if you change that aperture using this little wheel at the bottom, they coupled that to those two little indicators there. So you can see if we're letting more and more and more light in, so this is the widest the aperture can get down here at 2.8. I don't know why it says 1.9 because this lens only goes to 2.8. It is now basically just gonna give you eight, 10 inches of focus, everything else will be out of focus. As we get a smaller and smaller aperture all the way down to a little pinhole at 22, now we're gonna get a really deep focus there. And so I love that they put that extra touch in there. This camera and the line it's from has been described as being wildly, German-ly over-engineered and it's built like a tank, it's heavy, it's a beautiful camera. I think it may need a little servicing. I don't know that the shutter closes every time properly. I've been kind of peeking in there, but I will see if I can get it working and put some film through it. I love it. This is so brawn-esque, you know. It's like the metal, the brushed metal with the little red and black markings. It's... They even have this nice embossing back here. And this was the case that it came with. This is the top half. There's also like a sleeve that goes around it. Is that real leather? It's leather. Yeah, it's gorgeous. You can see it was probably heated and formed. Yeah, there's no cracking on it this video. No, it's in great shape. My dad, I'll tell you, he keeps things in immaculate condition including all the instructions in little. This is in that. So I'm really excited that he made it. Look at that red and the logo. They're just like... Yeah, it's gorgeous. Here's the little lens cloth, some little booklet. And this is the diffuser. So good. This is a camera that looks like what people design 3D icons to look like camera. Yes. Yeah, it is iconic. Yeah. All right. So nice. Very cool. What's your schedule for shows in the next week? I've got a workshop show tomorrow and then I'll be back on Tuesday with a product pick of the week. So I'm back to my usual hijinks and then we'll have the unboxing on Wednesday. So I hope people come out for that, especially if you've got an eight a box in the mail and you wanna check it out and unbox it with me, please join. Yeah, right on. And we'll show your product pick of the week from the week before on Ask an Engineer tonight. Hey, how are you today? Next JP. All right, next up we're gonna go to Sun and Moon and then we'll go to Mark and then Nanographics. Take it away. Hey guys. Today, I wanna show you this fan. I'm just setting it up real quick. This was originally a design by WoW Electron. He usually makes like a mask to go over your face. It's very nice. It opens and closes. He actually sent me the PCBs for this and I have since modified them, but I can show you. I did not know how to do PCBs until he sent me these files. This is what the one in the fan looks like. And those are WS2812s. And what's cool about this is so you have voltage data ground at the bottom. The data out on the top actually loops back to the bottom. I'm holding this upside down. Actually loops back to the bottom. So that's what allows you to daisy chain these with wires just at the bottom. So I got into easy EDA so I could order these from JLC. And then once I saw the files, I was like, I can modify these. So this was the new version that I used for the, where'd they go? Ah, for the poi that I think I've shown on this episode. And I just ordered a new version that came here in a giant box that was about the size of my X1C. And I don't know why they did that. This is a tiny, tiny little, this is actually a flex PCB. Well. I've now got it up to 116 pixels. And these are SK9822s. So they're gonna be really high refresh rate. And these are gonna be the new version in my poi that eventually when I'm done, hopefully we can open source this design and you guys can make it at home. Cause it's, it's again, it's based off of the EDA fruit like the Genesis and the dot the old. What was the other one? Supernova? Yep. All right. Very cool. We'll keep coming back and showing these. If folks want to see kind of the collection you can probably go to the last few show and tells and scrub through and do like a little bit of a super cup. But do you have fan poi? Sure. Show me things to mention. Yeah. It'd be interesting to see what other shapes and form factors you continue to do as like now there's flex PCB available. Oh yeah. Easily. Now that I know how to do PCBs as well just sky's the limit. Right on. All right. Well, great stuff coming back. All right. Thanks. All right. We're gonna get a mark and then nanographs Mark, what you got going on? Hi. Just a quick update on a couple of weeks ago when I was working on the controller for flight simulators, I managed to hook it up just on a 3D printed back plate and added extra buttons that now, I don't know if I can zoom in further here just slightly, that are now replicating this whole area on a controller or on the flight simulator controller which is really useful for setting your flight plans. Now I'm too zoomed in. But makes it really easy to control it all but I basically showed all that last week and the only addition is buttons and that's not that exciting. But I did just finish writing up a playground guide on how I did all this and how it's hooked into Moby Flight. Really easy to do. You don't need to build something this complex. You can just use some buttons. There's lots of buttons and switches on planes that you can map to wherever you want. It's a good practical use for using the game controllers that CircuitPython lets you build. And this actually goes well. I also wrote another playground guide that you guys I think featured a couple of weeks ago that talks about how to create the device descriptors for your controllers. So using the two of those, hopefully some people can make their own controllers for flight simulators or other games or whatever else. You could compete against Boeing, make your own planes. Mine don't fall apart as easy. Actually that's a lie, mine do. Your playground nets are really good. Thanks for putting them up because this is a common thing people want to build. And I was like, I don't play these games or sims.  Yeah, the trends I've been seeing for all the sims that are out there is people want hardware that goes along with the sim. So if they're like doing a truck simulator or a car simulator or a plane simulator, they want actual physical buttons to go along with it. But that's really hard to do. There's some commercial stuff. There's some closer stuff. There's some like keyboard mapping stuff but nothing like this where you're actually making your own devices interact with it directly so we have all the HID support. This is really cool. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, the circuit Python makes it really quick and I think it's a lot more accessible to beginners. I know that's not a good thing but it's now maybe too easy to make your own controller. It's easy, it's easy. Yeah, you know what maybe one of the things we'll do down the road too is make some like control panels for folks so they can like make their own. Like maybe there'll be some dials and knobs and like you can like mission control type things or something like that and you can put it all together in some type of standard but we'll see. Yeah, there's lots of opportunities. One thing I like about Moby Flight I haven't got to try yet is it can actually support outputs as well. So people will map say your radio frequency back to a seven segment LED display. Yeah, but like a little gauge that we sell those in the store. So you want to have like an old school altimeter or whatever.  I mean, we can make some Yeah, maybe not. Doing stuff like this. All right, thanks so much, Mark. No problem. All right. Yeah, graphics. Hey everyone. Would you like to go on? Yeah. Yeah, cool. Small. The microscope was only a little bit cranky turning on today. So I am still changing the sample out but that gives me kind of a chance to show you all what that is. Yeah. But this is the sample exchange rod. This microscope is kind of nice because we don't have to vent the entire sample chamber to get a sample out. So I'm pulling out the AMG-8033 thermal camera we had last week. Yeah. Gonna put that in a case. And I've got kind of a weird sample today. Instead of looking at the sample with the microscope we're going to use the sample to look at the microscope with the microscope. Well. I'm putting in what's effectively an electron mirror. Yeah, so I'll show you that on camera real quick. It's an electron mirror.  Yeah. And we're going to hit it with the electron beam and the electrons are going to get stuck in it because electrons need a conductor to go somewhere. And without said conductor they are not going to have a path to ground. And if they don't have a path to ground they are just going to get stuck in the sample. Okay. So I have got my sticky tape on this thing. So I'm going to just stick that on. Now my sticky tape is kind of weak. So I'm going to put new sticky tape down. There's nobody after me, is there? Nope, no, no. Okay, cool. Yeah, we tried to, when I see you on the chat I try to give you a bucket of time because you're usually showing some tiny things and some demos. I really appreciate it. You got some room. So I got my new sticky tape on. Did you see the movie interspace where you get shrunk down and they go inside the human body on Martin shore? I've seen a little bit of it, but yeah. So there we go. We've got our little round plastic ball on the end of my sample exchange rod. So I'm going to put that in. It's a little bit taller than it's supposed to be. So I have to be really careful to not hit it on anything when I put it in. So then I have to wait for this red light to turn off. I think you can see it. It's barely right there, a little red light. This microscope doesn't really have any interlocks. So it'll just let me open this door and let all the air into the vacuum chamber while it's under vacuum. Which is not good for the vacuum pumps. So you just kind of got to be careful. It won't let you do it out of atmosphere because it just takes a lot of effort to do it. But when you're at these kind of intermediate vacuums, it's really easy to cause issues. Luckily it's only 30 seconds. So I'll get my screen share going here. My light turned off. Put the sample in. There was a question in chat. What's the plastic sphere made out of? I don't actually know what type of plastic it is. But I've actually used several different types of plastics to do this. I've used an airsoft pellet before. These are ubiquitous sample holders you'll see in microscope labs all the time.  So I've used those as these before. This is actually a pretty useful way of just kind of in general inspecting the microscope. Okay. So I am going to share screens here. So that should be going. So we've got our software running right here. If I can see a signal, excellent. We'll turn on the accelerating voltage. So I'm going to start at kind of a high accelerating voltage. I'm going to start at 20,000 volts. And that's because we need to hit the sphere with a high enough charge to kind of get the electrons implanted in it and stuck in it. And then once we've implanted it with really high energy electrons, we'll kind of turn the voltage down. And then instead of the electrons just hitting it, the electrons will, in theory, bounce off of it and give us what we're looking for. So we can kind of see the sphere here. You can see there's the background of the sample holder. Oh, me. It's as far out as it's letting me zoom right now. In the hand. Yeah, so we're just going to turn the probe current up and we're going to start to see some kind of things changing shape as we do that. We're really going to turn the probe current up. We'll zoom in just a little bit on the sphere just to really make sure that we get the sphere fully charged up. So I'm kind of, actually what we're seeing right now is the reflections we're seeing. Actually, that is like the internals of the microscope right now. These kind of shapes over here, these are some electron detectors and whatnot. But at this kind of this higher KV, it doesn't. But I can see some texture of the. Yeah. And doing a little bit of beam alignment here. So that's what's making it way brighter. So I think that sphere is looking pretty charged up. So now we're turning the accelerating voltage down to like, we'll go, we're down to 3000 volts. So that's pretty low for this microscope. So now things are looking different because we're at a much lower celebrating potential. So we can see the, you can kind of see the, so that's the sample holder behind it. And so every way that the sphere is now is like actually like a really good electron lens or electron mirror. So that hole we're looking at right there, that is actually where the electrons are coming out. So that is the bottom of the column. Oh, neat. What a cool hack. I love this. Yeah. And then that. It's such a sharp image too. It's amazing how clear it is. So this is the door that I did the sample exchange through earlier. So that's where the sample came in. Those springs are part of the stage. That's kind of what prevents backlash on the stage. And then I've got, so this over here, that thing that's sticking in, that is at the end of this white box here, that is the X-ray spectrometer. So we can get the, we can determine the atomic composition of the materials in the microscope. And then we'll start at the base of this thing. This is the electron detector. Oh yeah. I'm gonna make sure I'm at the right setting. So I don't fry the detector when I look at it too closely. There we go. I turned the beam current down a little bit so that when I go to the front of the detector, I don't like just completely fry it. I can stigma it a little bit, make that a little bit sharper. There we go. Ooh. So it's a, so that kind of curved tube covered in that woven material, that woven material is a copper braid and that curved tube is an acrylic light pipe. So at the very tip of this thing inside that kind of that white disc, that's the actual electron detector. So that is a disc of phosphor and the cage around it is biased at about plus 400 volts because electrons are negatively charged so anything positively charged will attract electrons. And then the disc inside of it is charged to 10,000 volts. So that like really accelerates the electrons and it slams the electrons into it. And then when the electrons slam into it, it turns the electrons into photons or it doesn't turn the electrons into photons, the electrons generate photons or as the orbitals, as electrons lose energy, they generate photons but we can get into that more later. So those photons then travel through the acrylic light pipe that is underneath this braid and then kind of through this part at the end here is where the photomultiplier tube is, which is this tube on the outside of the microscope and that's what amplifies the photons back and it actually turns the photons back into electrons via the photoelectric effect. And then that's how we generate our signal. So I can zoom in on part of the stage mechanism here. I believe this is the stage rotation. What's the thing that's doing the XY scanning? Where is that? Is that like? Yeah, so the thing that's doing the XY scanning is our board right here, the open beam interface which is our open hardware project. Yeah, like where mechanically is that within the chamber? Like is that within the chamber? Yeah, yeah. So the scan coils are actually located kind of right on the inside of this tube here where the electrons are coming out. So there's no mechanical movement, luckily, because the mechanical movement can be like far too slow. So we're using magnetic lenses. So there's a series of four magnetic optics and that's one of the deflectors. And then so opposing pairs can be used to deflect it in one direction and the other set of opposing pairs deflects it in the other direction. But there's actually kind of two of those. There's an upper and a lower set. So the upper set sends the beam out like towards the edge of the column. And then the lower set directs the beam back towards the middle of the column. So it kind of reverses the angle because you always want to travel through the center of the objective lens, which is the very last optic in the microscope. And so above the microscope, you go out and then back in so that when the beam like pivots around one point in space, that's a very sensitive magnetic field. So that it goes through the center of the aperture but then it crosses over and hits whatever XY coordinate you want to scan at. Yeah, yeah. And actually, so some microscopes that hits the center of the aperture. So some microscopes you'd actually see a really small disc right here. But with the way the electron optics work, you can actually like kind of like put the aperture on any of the focal planes. It doesn't have to be on the final focal plane. So in this microscope, the aperture is actually about eight inches above the bottom of the column. Just because you can kind of like, if you're in the same focal plane in the optical path, you can kind of do the same effect in multiple places. So having the aperture above kind of gives us more flexibility to have like a larger diameter hold down here and do more with that. So let's see here. I think I'll be able to show, I think this right here is rotation or it's the Z axis. So that must be rotation. So rotation, so if you look at that universal joint in the top left corner there. Yeah. We can see that rotating a little bit as the sample is moving and all those gears are moving some. Hmm, yeah. So yeah, so that's how you can use a sample as an electron mirror to inspect the inside of your electron microscope. I learned so much today. Yeah, sample is a mirror. This is neat because there's so many things that people are probably familiar with like MRIs, they hear about CERN, like they hear about all the things that you can do with particles. Yeah, this is it in action. What's interesting is that electron microscopes were like it's kind of like this weird black box but now seeing it I'm like, oh, not like seeing like I could build it but I'm like, I see how it could be built. Do you remember? Yeah, yeah. It's like I understand each piece and also understand what your board is doing. It's like, oh, it's controlling those coils and then it gets the reading from that opto sensor. From the photomultiplier tube? And then it just, you know, Coralus, the only issue is you have to like do a lot of calibration to make sure that, you know, your XY maps pixel by pixel but that's how you're getting the signal out. It's just cool. It's not easy, it's hard, but it's like I get it. And then as time goes on here, we're gonna be building more and more open source electronics so that we can start to actually kind of like drive those like deflectors directly. So currently we're relying on the microscope itself to do all of the like balancing between those deflectors to make the signal well aligned and everything. And we're just telling the microscope like, hey, put the beam in X and Y here and then it uses a bunch of like analog math to figure that out. And so we're gonna figure out kind of a better way of doing that where we just directly talk to each individual coil instead of letting the microscope do that. So. This is outstanding. All right, well, keep coming back every week. You'll look into chat later. People really like this and they have some questions that you might be able to answer later. I still do. Yeah, I think it's kind of neat. You're using open source hardware to look at the ultimate open source hardware which is the standard model. It's out there. It's out there waiting for you to discover more. It's available, it's there, it's math. We could build anything with it. Anyone can do anything with it. You just have to know the code. Okay, enough. Yeah, just have to look for it. All right. I think somebody was so obsessed with like, how do I look at tiny things that they invented this machine? Like that's, or like a Goopa people were like, so they're so like entranced with this idea. I think electron microscopes are neat too because it's not that necessarily it was invented as much as the things were discovered and then enabled the hardware. It's like, we're getting blasted by neutrinos and everything right now. This is all going on everywhere, but this is a way to work. Yeah, and electron microscopes really like grew with electronics too. So at first we had electron microscopes that couldn't scan at all. You could just kind of do like a 2D projection of a really thin sample. And it was like 20 or 30 years after the first invention of them that we were able to like have electronics that were good enough to like make them scan. Yeah. So that's, so yeah. I really think they're like, it's everything that particle accelerator does just in like a package that's like the right size. Yeah. So it's really fun. It should be all salesman for your own like scan. Like door to door salesman. That's it. Not to ding on CERN and everything, but I don't know if they're going to find anything else besides the Higgs boson. So this is actually kind of more useful, more useful thing to, if you want, if you're interested in this stuff, this is something I think obtainable that people could potentially do. Yeah. We're trying to make it more attainable. Like before this thing existed, you couldn't save images off of any microscopes without spending a lot of money or getting really, really lucky on eBay.  So I think these things are going to start to become a little bit more assessable as it is. All right. We'll come by next week and thank you so much for sharing. This is great. Well, thank you so much. You have a good evening. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much everybody. This is the tiniest, best thing I've seen today. So charged. We'll see everybody next week. Ask an engineer starts in just a few moments.