Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our London webinar for Google Pay. I'm over here in the London office I'm joined by Natasha and Jam and Dom as well And we're also joined by Tony over in the New York office So let's jump straight in to introduce myself. I'm Rowan. I'm a developer advocate for the web and Chrome My team focuses on e-commerce. So obviously payments is very interesting to me and hopefully it is also interesting to you Now if you have got this link from a contact at Google Then they are also your link for following up after this We're on the live stream if you've never been on a live stream before then you should see on the right hand side You have a place where you can chat So Natasha is watching that chat for your questions and towards the end of this She'll be relaying those to myself and Tony and we will be doing our best to answer those for you Let's jump in then with an agenda for the session today We're gonna start with an overview of Google Pay kind of a bit of history and where we are now We'll take a look at some of the design Considerations both inside of Google Pay and for your own checkout Then we're gonna take a look at the implementation on web and once we've done a quick run through of that We're gonna go into more detail and actually just go into some code and a live demo and finally we'll wrap up with Q&A at the end Okay, to set the scene a little bit for you to show you how much of a priority is that this is for Google here's a quote from Sundar CEO of my most recent earnings call and Inside of there you can see that he's really talking about the importance as we move from just being a search engine that answers Questions to really providing complete actions for users and of course that includes transactions And a big part of that is making them frictionless across all of Google's properties Now Google has the ability to reach users at a tremendous scale We've got over 1 billion users on Chrome and over 2 billion Android users But previously with Android pay we weren't really tapping into all of this scale We were only surfacing tokenized credentials and that was just on Android devices as well Now what we're trying to do with Google pay is really take advantage of that massive scale and this is how it works So any time a Google user Transacts on a Google property and has chosen to save their payment details with us And that means on properties like YouTube Chrome the Play Store and so on We are now using Google pay to tap into that collection of cards on file and also make them available to partner Applications and partner sites to create those transactions That means we've really increased the scale of our payment product to now include Hundreds of millions of users who are ready to pay right now We've also really focused on making it easy to use that means if a user has a card on file with Google They're ready to go. They can use Google pay to pay for things now to give you some context This is a little different from how it used to be where maybe you'd have to download the Android pay app Or maybe you'd actually have to actively re-add that card back to your account to make the payment So now stress that again Nothing is required on behalf of the user if they have a payment method saved Then they can go on to one of these properties and they can start making transactions And to give you an idea one of the phrases we have here is eating our own dog food So we've actually started really migrating all of our first-party products to use Google pay as a touch point So that means when you're going through YouTube when you're going through the Play Store You're going to start seeing the Google play the Google pay brand there So we're really looking to make we raise the consumer awareness for this And it's not just surfacing that on sites and apps and inside of Google properties We're trying to make Google pay available on all the surfaces where users interact with Google That means if they're using a Google home then they're using Google pay to complete those transactions If they're using NFC for tap and pay in stores, then it's Google pay that they're seeing on their phone when it makes that payment We're really focused on creating this delightful simple experience for users across all of these surfaces where they interact with us And as well, it's not just about making it easier for our customers We want to make it easier for you our partners and developers to actually build these scalable solutions So Google pay means that we are now available with a single API integration across web And a very similar API for Android globally in over 60 countries And that web API is across desktop and mobile web and is supported in all major browsers so Chrome Firefox and Safari And again, this is the change from what we used to have before with Android pay Where the user was having to download the app rely on adding that card as well Okay, so if that's the scene set, let's talk a little bit more about what it means to use Google pay on an online store Now If we look at the problem, we can see the checker is really a huge pain point for our partners As you can see here 69% of users will abandon a site or an app because there are too many steps in purchase So if we can improve that by just a few percentage points, then that really represents a pretty big win for transaction volume And let's take a look in a bit more detail about where those problems come So here's a kind of average checkout example You can see the multiple steps all of the decisions that we're asking the user to make and a lot of people will just abandon this With the intention to maybe come back later, but generally they don't One of my personal favorites on this is when you're trying to enter your credit card number and someone hasn't actually marked up The field is a number correctly. So you're trying to convince your phone not to keep swapping back to the letter keyboard and so on So on average when we look at something like this to complete a checkout it can take the user about 120 taps or clicks which is like three to five minutes of their time to complete that flow So you can start to see why people are dropping out of experiences like this Now with Google pay when I was talking about those saved payment methods before it's not just the payment method That we're trying to do here We're really trying to improve the checkout experience and provide that consistent seamless Experience to the users so you can see that when I come in with this I'm selecting my shipping method and when I tap something like the G pay button It's popping up with the saved payment methods. I have but inside of Google pay You can also ask for additional details like the user's email address their telephone number their shipping address their billing address So we really provide a uniform and consistent method for getting that entire checkout experience into just one set of you guys You can also see in this screenshot If you look closely that you can link your PayPal account into the into the Google pay app as well So again, we're really trying to streamline this to make it a single experience Okay, so to recap on that This is all about that consistent and seamless experience for users That means if the user is logged in and has a card on file with us Then they are ready to pay with Google pay We have one API that enables that across web very similar API that enables that across app And also it is incredibly simple. I know we have a bullet point here That says integrate in just a few days which everybody always says that about their product But we have some partners who have actually done this It is one developer week of time that it has taken certain partners to implement. We're available globally The checkout we are really streamlining this so it is becoming just a few clicks to get through And we also really want to state that we're fully invested in this We're moving all of our first-party products to be Google pay So you can expect this brand to be future-proof and be a good investment for long term And finally, we don't charge any fees on the transaction in this so Implementing this is no additional cost beyond the development investment Okay, and a few examples of people who have got this out in the wild already These are a few this is a bit American centric on this side But you can see a couple of Mia partners in here as well So Airbnb is is one of them hotel tonight in kayak I think as well just eat does this who I use more than I would like to admit And I'm joy I will pay makes that a little bit too easy Okay, and a few things that our partners are saying about this as well So you can see that customers who are using Google pay here was 65% more likely to complete their booking flow We've also found as well that the ease of Google pay means that users are coming back And they're actually using more inside of the app. So their order amount is increasing And you can see as well that it's much easier for new users to come into the app There's no more additional adding of a payment method saving of a payment method in putting your address again All of that is saved So it's just a couple taps for the for a new user to be acquired and get their transaction in this department. Okay Let's go into what's involved in doing that integration on the web then so to give you a very lightweight idea So three-stage process look at the design as in how Google pay is going to fit into your existing checkout Do the implementation, which is really two main steps. You check if they're ready to pay Ie is Google pay supported on that platform for the payment methods you care about And then you load the payment data and that's where you're expressing your configuration and the transaction that you're using And the transaction that you want to do and then finally when the user is completed that you use your payment processor to process the transaction Okay, let's look at design first then One of the things we recommend is to display Google early and prominently as a payment method This is because the user has the recognition that when they start the process That they are going to be able to get to the end and just tap the button to complete the transaction You also want to make sure that you are displaying all of the relevant purchase information The price the items and services before confirming the transaction because as we'll see what the Google pay interface shows the user is The information they are sharing with you not the transaction that you are completing And also it's always a good idea to ensure that the information you get back in the payment API You echo that in your site as well So display that back to the user and when you send them like a receipt email and invoice email You may also use the Google pay logo there to let them know that that was the payment method They used and we also say use only the official bound styles and logo assets in your app We'll provide links to the documentation where you can find all this guidance and these assets Okay, now let's actually dive into a little bit of code and look at the implementation on web The first thing you want to do is load the Google page on the script client library This is pretty straightforward if you've used any of our APIs before then you'll be used to this pattern as well You specify the payment JS the page as library and then when that's done You can specify a callback for on load, which is where you'll initialize the API Inside of here you can see that we are creating a payment client Just go back a minute because that's a little bit corrupted on the screen We are creating a payment client So you can see here that we're passing through the environment test This is the only parameter to the creation of the client at the moment So it's either test or its production Then you make the API call is ready to pay now what's this this is doing is taking the payment methods and the The transaction information that you have provided and telling you if that browser is ready to make that payment This is supported as of June across Google Chrome Safari and Firefox and this is on desktop and mobile So these are your options for the Google pay button We have both long and short versions and black and white versions So we recommend to use the black button on a light background and use the white button on a dark background Okay, now this is an example of the data that you're actually passing through when you're setting up the API You specify the types of cards that you want to accept. You can either accept generic cards So this is much like autofill that you would receive in the browser We can accept a tokenized card So this is the standard tokenized card that is saved within Google Pay You can then also specify the card networks that you accept So you can see here American Express Discover Mastercard and so on and then below you specify the tokenization Parameters for how you're going to process this So hopefully or the majority of cases you'll be using a payment gateway You can see here. I'm just using the example one, but on the site You'll see the supported gateways such as world a strike and so on We also have a direct method here where we will return the details to you You are responsible for decrypting those passing those on to your payment processor And this also means that you're responsible for the PCI compliance on that side as well Now finally, you're going to add the transaction info to that request as well You can see here that I've specified a final status But you can also have a non-final status here if you don't actually know what the price is going to be Now this could be for a number of reasons because as I said you can also request the shipping address From Google Pay and once you get the user shipping address that might affect the final price that you need to charge them So once you've done this, it's always important to make sure that you display that updated version The updated final total to the user before you actually complete the payment Okay, and this is the final bit when you get that response back from the Google Pay API It will include a payment method token inside of there And that is what you are passing on to your processor library to make that actual payment Okay, so with that done we are going to go into a live demo without any safety net or anything So let's see how this goes. So I'm just going to stop screen sharing for a moment So I can switch over to the demo Actually, you just give me one sec because I need to reset the demo for you so that it's Makes a bit more sense than just showing you the finished item In the meantime while you're waiting for me to mess around This is a good point to get together any questions that you might have and start putting them in the chat So that we can answer those in a little bit Oh another interesting point on this one as well is what I wanted to do in this demo was show you this on an actual phone but conveniently When you see the google pay UI on a phone This is actually marked as private or sensitive inside of android Which means that you're prevented from screen sharing Which is a very good feature, but it does make it a little harder to demo for you So since on the live stream you are no doubt on your phone at the moment anyway You can actually just follow this link to go take a look at the demo on your phone while we go So let me open up the screen sharing again Okay, so I've got a demo here, which I'm just using glitch to host so that can show you the changes fairly quickly So if I jump in to start with if I go up the top You can see that all I've got here is an empty div, which is where we are going to put our google pay bar So if we go right back down to the bottom again The first thing I'm going to do is import the library. So like you can see it's the pay.js file there And my callback is going to be on google pay loaded So let's make sure that we actually have that method available And just to reiterate as well what I'm doing is I'm going through the tutorial that we have available on the site So after this you can actually go along to the tutorial and this is exactly the same code that I'm using there So you can see in here the the first thing I'm doing is getting the payments client And I need to do this a couple times. So we've actually wrapped this up in a function of its own for here So let's uncomment that so we can take a look So you can see it's the google payments client So we're calling the library that we've just imported And as you can see I'm asking for the test environment So just in case you're worried about clicking the button when you're playing along at home I'm not going to be charging you any money for this demo Okay, so let's take a look at what we've got over here and make sure we've done it right Okay, so you can see that what's happening is inside of here just in my console I've just got a response result equals true And that's because what I'm doing is I've got the payment client and I'm calling that is ready to pay method So you can see in here. I'm passing through the allowed payments parameter Let me show you the allowed payment methods, which I've saved at the top So for allowed payment methods, I've said I accept both card and tokenized card So that means that we're pretty likely to be ready to pay on one of these methods So let's jump back down again Now is ready to pay is returning a promise And we use the then keyword to resolve that promise and inside of there We're getting a response and the response is what we're examining the result inside of the response If it's true, we know we're ready to pay. We're good to go ahead and show the button So let's do that. I've wrapped that up in the add google pay button Which I'm going to open up here So you can see here again just calling get google payments client And then create button which unsurprisingly is going to create a button for us The primary thing on that is we need an on click handler So I've got that just up here Let's comment that I'm just going to keep it empty at the moment just so we've got a function that it can call And you can do some configuration on the button. So let's just verify that we're actually Showing the button first. So there we go. We've got a short black button there But like you can see I can go in And I could change just mom and white here Refresh that and we've got the the longer white version But if you were paying attention during the slides, we said that this is against the design guidelines So we're going to change that back to be short and Dark to match our white background And you can see here as well that the create button method is just returning a button element for us Which I'm just depending to the container element that we created earlier on So let's just refresh to ensure that that's working There we go Okay, the other thing that we want to do as well alongside creating our button Is just kind of warm up the api as well so that it's going to be super quick when the user actually taps on it So we can actually prefetch some of that information from the api. So I've wrapped that up in my prefetch function up here I'll just show you that So what i'm doing is i'm getting my payment data configuration Which I've wrapped up in this little function here Now effectively this is the configuration for your site. So you can see my merchant id You can see the tokenization parameters, which are specific to your network So if I jump up here tokenization type as payment gateway could also be direct and see in here I've got example a merchant id now each of the gateways except their own set of parameters here So you'll do something different depending on the configuration I also pass in my allowed payment methods again from the allowed card networks And you can see here as well. I'm actually requesting some additional information I'm going to comment this out from now so we can see a basic request first and then we'll see how that changes as we make some calls Okay, and so with that in place even though we're prefetching we do need a transaction attached to that But we're basically just saying we don't currently know what it is. It's going to be in pounds We get the client again, and we just say prefetch the payment data. That's one of the things that for us So let's just hop back over to our demo and make sure everything is still working Which is so we've got our button But as you can see if I tap it nothing happens at the moment because we've just got that decal back So let's actually go ahead and Respond to that tap So over here, I'm going to get that payment data configuration again So it's the same thing I got before including my tokenization parameters my payment method and so on But this time I'm actually going to add the real transaction info to it So you can see I've saved some transaction info up here in this case. I'm saying it's final and I'm setting a total price This is basically you go and get the contents of your card and pass this through to the transaction Okay, so now I've got that I can call the load payment data method And this is what is going to trigger the google pay UI for the user and that's another promise So when the user completes that either they accept it or they cancel it and the promise is going to resolve And we're going to get the payment data back for us to process Now in the process payment method Since this is a little demo you can see that I'm not doing very much at all All I'm doing is taking the payment data and I'm just logging that to the console So now that we've got all that together. Let's take a look at what that looks like This is the moment of truth I press pay you can see the google pay UI popping up if you're playing along on web, you should see something very similar happen here And you can see that because I already have a payment method saved That this is appearing in here if I didn't have a payment method saved already Then I'd get the in the insight UI to actually add a new card and save that as well So I'm going to say continue here and make the payment And you can see the response that I'm just logging that I get back That has the card info class This is just for display purposes So you can show this back to the user to confirm the payment method and the transaction that they make And then you can also see the payment method token here And this is the actual tokenization the token that comes back Which is what you are going to pass to your processor to make that payment Okay, hopefully that was pretty straightforward and you've been following along So let's take a look at what happens if we ask for a bit more information in there as well So if I say ask for email required Then you just take a look at the data that we've got there currently Which is our card info and payment method By refresh now And I press pay And continue You can see in here that now my email address has been captured and passed back in the response as well And likewise I can keep going I can ask for a shipping address And if I refresh Pay You can see that now the UI has changed to show me my address selection I can either select from multiple addresses or I can add a new one And if I just do continue inside of there I come back and now I've got a shipping address added in there If you take a look through at the documentation You'll see that there are actually a number of things you can ask for You can ask for phone number, you can ask for billing address as well There's a lot come back in exactly the same format Okay So with that You've done our demo That will remain live for a little bit So you can continue to play with that or grab the glitch link and remix it if you want And now we're on to the Q&A So Tony, we're going to hand over to you to answer a few of these and then go back to the Q&A Great, thank you so much Rowan for a great presentation So yes, so it seems that we do have a few questions here And so I'm going to just read around and try to answer So folks, if you have any questions, please leave them in the comments So folks, if you have any questions, please feel free to send that to our way So the first question that we got is So somebody asked if there is a discussion forum for Google Pay API So the short answer is no currently we don't have such forum, but then You know probably in the future we're going to have one But then we have a very good development Website where there's also a form for you to submit questions to us And so if you run into any problem try to integrate in Google Pay to your existence solution You can just also Through our depth site submit question to us and we'll try to answer get that back to you as soon as possible And the second questions that we receive is somebody asked if You know, can you call is ready to pay even without having applied to production access? So he also he giving us a context here says that I would like to check to see how many of our users could benefit from using Google API There's a great question. So So as you can see Rowan just show us a demo without even having a production access so you can use a You can connect to the test environment and then from there you can call uh Called the is ready to pay API So in order to connect to our production environment, you have to have a you have to apply for production access first But then you still can use is ready to pay by connecting to the test environment. So, yeah And I think a quick note on that as well, Tony is We'll notice if you tried the demo on a mobile device if you actually Have to bring up the payment sheet It does provide a little disclaimer saying that this is not a trusted application for you as well So users indication that you know, they they are in a test environment. And this is a real check out Exactly. And you know, also when you are connecting to the test environment um, you can only um the the payment token that you return will be a Kind of like a test token. So you won't be able to pass that token to your payment gateway processor to process that So only when you will have a production environment access then Google pay will return a a valid production payment token for you to pass that to your gaming processor And um, the next question that we got is somebody asked if this worked on any Operating system. So earlier we're rovin already mentioned that we support all the major browser on the desktop and mobile devices, so um, so the question is kind of is it a yes, so because it's um, it's a browser dependent Um, when we're talking about a web, um, so, you know, it support windows Mac linux, so as long as with the um, the browser is supported by google pay Then you shouldn't have any problems. So on the mobile side when we currently google pay api only support android So no ios at the moment yet and um We got another question here, which is um, is um, can payment detail be saved From google pay to own to your own back end system For example, if a user check out with google pay Can they occur details? For example, then be saved for future use in that user account. That's very good questions So, um, if you are using a gateway, um integration meaning that the The payment gateway that um that you are using is supported support google pay Uh, the the payment token returned by google pay Only um has the expression date of about seven days So that's basically they're talking only can only be On the we expire after seven days. So you cannot really save that And use it beyond the seven days Now if for example, if we want to do something like a recurrent payment Is it possible? But then that is outside of google pay already So you will have to work according with your payment processor to handle that because um google pays we return a payment method back to you and then you know Then you will according, you know, what were your payment processors? We're using the api to do a recurrent payment now if another case is if your payment Gateway is not doesn't support google pay. You still can use google pay But then the integration would be a little bit more involved as we mentioned earlier. We now when you use google pay You have to pass the direct Um, there's a parameter called tokenization time. You have to tell that okay, it's a direct meaning that you have to implement the description of The the payment data payload that returned back to you in a pc i compliance environment from there You will see, you know, then once you decrypt that payment data You can see the um the credit card information, right the whole credit card number Expression they um and then all those information and from there you can you know save that and process it for your recurrent payment Um All right, so moving on to the next questions. We have printed question. Very good questions. So um the next one is um somebody asked if um, you know, um They want to do um a and b a b testing Um first before rolling out to auto user Do I have to do anything different than the tutorial suggests? Um, I would say it's um, no Because so for mb testing now you have to design, you know, uh, which subset of user would be using uh google pay b i basically if this user you Whatever criteria that you design, you know, you will show that uh google pay But then for the people that you don't want them to use google pay b i then you just don't show that buttons That's yeah Yeah Page that details of the payment gateways that are currently supporting google pay and the answer is yes Yes, there is you go into the payments documentation Um scroll down a little bit and you will see the full list of processes that are supported And hopefully that will be growing less over time as well The next one This is a good one Tony. I think I might actually have to bounce this to you Is it possible to change the language of the button text? Yes, yes, so it is possible. So, um, um, I think right now we are starting moving out at six or seven different languages So when you call that create button functions In the javascript library it will automatically detect what language to um that it can use and then it will localize that So instead of like for example, if a presence is let's say um Calling google, you know, it's your your your customer is, you know, doing that transaction in germany, for example, and then The google pay api will be able to detect that what browser what localization language they are using and then automatically switch The language to german instead of using english on that buttons. So yeah, it's possible So if that is handle by the um the api automatically You should be able to try that out on the demo like you switch your browser's language The button actually picks up that language change Um, there was another question here that is there an option for the customer to use the saved address? In the account that will overwrite the existing address on the workshop Um, and if yes, is there any address check or validation planned? So what I would say here is this is actually down to your implementation So you're going to make the you're going to request those transaction details from google pay Those are going to come back to you and it's up to you Whether you decide to present that to the user to say would you like to make this your default address? Would you like to save this as an address in your account on the shop? um The other question was about validation on there as well Um, we do we do some validation But like with all of these things anything that's coming back from a third party always validate it yourself as well Don't just always assume that we've done the right thing The other thing that I would double check here is Um, you should also be able to you can request the billing address not just the shipping address So on that the billing address is obviously linked to the card So that's a bit stricter in terms of validation that's happening All right, and I also want to just elaborate a little bit on the address validation too. So, um, You know when you making the the call to google api you can set that okay Requesting address and uh, even though google on the pop-up chooser the payment method pop-up chooser um, uh, when he asked for the user for your customer to enter a Shipping address does not like validate The address but then when they entering the address the google api would use The google map api To make the address entry much faster much quicker and you know, and so that helped the user enter a you know Like a correct address easier And one of the other things we we didn't cover but you can look at the api as you can you can set the The country codes that you want to accept But for example, if you are asking for a shipping address and say it's a you know You're in a very large country and you don't ship everywhere You are going to have to do that validation as well when the shipping address comes back You need to ensure that you can actually ship to that location If you can't you're going to need to bounce the user back and have them either cancel the transaction Or run through it again to select a different address The next question was uh, the whole demo was presented as a front-end integration So is there a way to implement calls in the back end with php instead of javascript as an example So not as far as I know, we don't have like a server side rest api for this because you are You're relying on accessing the user's information. So obviously that's that's quite privacy sensitive It's linked to their google account in the browser hence the the front-end nature of this But at the same time there is nothing say limiting this just being like a Fully single page app or anything if you're doing server side rendering This kind of javascript is going to work in exactly the same way As most of the other payment providers work great. Um, so um, our next question is somebody asking us For the link to the documentation So on the end of the the presentation that here we we're going to give you a a link That point to our development Documentation website. Oh you if oh if you just google You know google pay api and then you will see that right away pops up on the top of the search result I'll just click next on the slides as well.  Thank you robin and um the next question. Um, this is a very good question Somebody asked how the refund work and or some other transact, you know, all the operation works, right? So that's um, so that is outside for google pay already The google pay api the google api pay api will return you the payment method So once you get that payment methods, then you will just process, you know Use that payment method to continue with the with the buy flow, right? charging, you know charging the customer, you know doing the um and then later on capturing the payment after the whatever Um, think that the your customer bot is shifted and now for refund you were going to use that would be would be depend on um on Your payment you know your payment gateway depending on the api that they use So I would say there's there. There shouldn't be any changes on the On the existing way that you know your system is working with handling, you know, we regard to handling of the refunds um The next question is that we receive is what is the process flow when 3d secure jack is requested By the bank either any example process flow documented um So that's very good question. So we currently we don't um the process flow in term on the uh google pay api Is is the stem? But then um, there's um on the doc on the development documentation. There's some um additional parameters that you will have to pass um Then um, yeah, so if you you can check that the documentation for more detailed information on that And Yes, so we got another question. Um, which is are you Able to change the value of the transaction for example adding an optional delaying chart Yes, so um, you can change that after you receive the payment methods back from the google pay um But then remember during the demo robin show us that you Yeah, this um when you make that uh payment data request There's a parameter for the price status that you pass to google pay So if so if you know that the um the final amount of the transaction will be changed depending on the shipping address because the The sales tax or the shipping cost we we get it depending on you know, we change then you would instead of passing final You can pass, you know unknown status or some other value to tell that um, you know The the total amount would change But then we do recommend you to show, you know, um the total Amount before your customer confirm the order Um, all right, so we have another question here which said um from um Calling is ready to pay but doing but not doing any payment. Let's say we have a 10 000 customer I want to find out how many of them could benefit from google pay bi Will they see at calling these functions? uh So when you call Is ready to pay um, there's no ui. There's no pop up that we show the user that you're calling it. So um So yes, so the short answer is no the user The end user won't see that you are calling is ready to pay Yeah I will say though If you take a look at the demo if you open up the google console and say comment out the The actual payment result You can see the calls that are being made when you load the api and when you load ready to pay And obviously if you're adding that to your site, then anyone looking at the developer console will be able to see the calls that are being made as well right exactly All right, so we have an um the The follow-up questions from the question that we just answered. So that's google pay api actually do the payments Oh, it can also be used to just request payment info and we handle the payment um, so So the the answer is uh google pay api doesn't do But if you say um by saying that do the actual payment, you mean, you know Capturing and doing the resettlement. Um, so if you're referring to that part of the um the transaction So um, so the answer is no google pay api doesn't do that google api only return the payment information Back from um to to you and then you will have to you will have to handle all those um payment transactions Yeah, any other questions I think that's a very good question I think that brings us up to the end unless we've got any any final pieces We just uh, we're looking at the live stream here while it just catches up so we can see if there are any last questions before we go Well, no, hopefully hopefully we've explained everything to you So thank you very much to tony for joining us early in the morning in new york And thank you to matasha for really wrangling the live stream to get the questions in front of us as well Uh, thank you to dom for the expert camera control. Thank you to chan for being the moral support here as well We have recorded all of this so this will this recording will be made available So if you need to share this or a reference back to anything And of course the links here for the documentation and for the sample as well So with that, thank you very much. Uh, and we hope to hear more feedback from you Bye


This book, without question, falls into the category of cyberpunk, which is a category that did not exist in 1954 when it was first published in book form under the title Tiger Tiger. Like all cyberpunk, it is very fast paced and very busy. There's a lot going on in this book. It takes place in the distant future when a guy named Gully Foyle survives in deep space among the wreckage of a destroyed starship and he makes his way to Earth and everyone in the solar system wants to know how he did it, but he doesn't know how he did it and he doesn't really care because he's bent on seeking revenge against the people who could have rescued him and didn't. Whether you end up liking the book or not, it's very memorable and very important and you should give it a look.


Okay, welcome to our QWERTY meeting in April. It's been, yeah, the last meeting we had was to kick off the hackathon two months ago, and I think the world's turned upside down a bit since then, but hopefully everyone's doing well and safe. I think I talked to a number of you either on the phone or Slack or Gitter. Things are going okay, and I appreciate you guys responding to my comments on issues, MRs, or responding to my Slack messages when there are obviously other things going on. We obviously skipped the meeting last month. We thought we'll get a chance to meet face to face, but that obviously didn't happen, but have several items that want to go over. And then have an item under any other business under number four, but we can certainly discuss other topics as well. Let's see. Let me go into the presentation mode. So first is the scale retrospective. This is an event about a month and a half ago. It seems like a world away when we actually had events. And I'll talk about you efforts to move a lot of the events online or virtually, because obviously we're not going to be able to have a lot of traditional events at a location face to face. So Gill Lab Marketing Team has actually been looking at this for a while and wanted to support this with meetups and hackathons for wider community members as well. And there's been a, oops, sorry, advanced too fast. Talk about new core team members that we have a confidential issue that's open that's being discussed. We'll quickly talk about that. And then in time remaining, we can talk other topics besides the next meeting in May as well. Before I go on, like any other topics that people want to add here before I continue or plow through, then I guess I can get started. Ray, can I ask about the virtual contribute that is going to happen in April? Yes, I don't have a ton of information on that. But yeah, I haven't, like I've been out for a few days, so I haven't been like on top of things on virtual contributes. Like if things are being like discussed in like a Slack channels or on issues, but yeah, I don't think, I think there are like some talks that are being lined up in April. Renmi, I don't know if you know more than I do, but I've sort of been away from that for at least a few days. But happy to follow up on Slack or other avenues, but good question. I'll make a note of that too for myself. Okay, so the first agenda topic, scale, this is an event. This is the 18th edition of the open source event that's been happening in the LA area. And it was actually my first participation at the event was last year. I just went there as an attendee. GitLab also had a booth for in the expo area, so I helped out a bit, but I just mainly went there to see what the event was about. And I mean, I really liked the event when I attended last year. It was pretty similar to PlazaM that a lot of you are already familiar that I'm a big fan of. So we organize a GitLab community day on a Friday. And I mean, we had a room for, I mean, it was a decent size room for about 100 people for half a day in the afternoon. And then basically addressed two main topics. One was basically introduce all the programs under the community relationship, not just for code contribution, but for evangelist program, open source program, and education program. So you see a picture of all my colleagues, you know, presenting their programs to the audience. And then we also had Francis Potter from the sales team that actually walked through all of the DevOps stages of GitLab. So basically gave an overview of not only of our product, but also community programs. And because of, I mean, this is before the state was basically shut down because of COVID-19, but already things were, I mean, people were already starting to cancel their trips. So the number of people that were in the room were, I think we had about 40 to 45 people in the room throughout the whole afternoon. So it wasn't, it wasn't that bad attendance wise. But the room was able to fit about like 100 people. So it was about half full. And when we sort of pull the attendees, most of the people were from the Los Angeles area. Because I think a lot of the people, like a lot of the companies were already starting to like to cancel all the travels and conference attendance. I was told that typically 15% of the people come from outside of the United States. But I'm guessing it was a lot lower than that. It was mostly what the sense I got was a lot of the folks were local. And I mean, I know Ben's on the call. I mean, thank you Ben for coming over and joining us in the afternoon. It was definitely great having you there. And it was definitely great having, we're able to like introduce somebody to get lab heroes that were in the room, not just Ben, but we have a couple other like the heroes that were in attendance. So we were able to point those people out. And then Ben, you also help people with, because we also had like an hour workshop where we walk through different areas where community members can contribute. And then I mean, four people actually submitted their first MRs to fix some of the documentation. So I sort of listed on the Google doc. So I want people to be familiar with like opening an MR and getting those reviewed MRs. So that was pretty cool. I mean, four new contributors were there. And then I know Ben, you had to help like one or two people out. So I appreciate you being there for that. If you want more details, there's a retrospective. If you click on the retrospective link. So I mean, pretty much all of us that were there, we had sort of pros and cons of how the event went. I mean, you're assuming like events continue like it has in the past, like next year. This is something that we probably definitely want to go back to. Good way to sort of engage with community members, not just in Southern California, but if people are traveling, they definitely get a lot of people from outside of California as well. So something that we'll be strongly consider. And then if you want more photos, I added a link to the Twitter moment there that you can check out. Ben, did you have anything else that you think I missed anything, or feel free to add anything that I forgot about? No, I mean, I think overall it was good. Minus the fact that it was starting to be affected by the virus outbreak. Yeah, yeah.  Like the Saturday keynote was like absolutely full with standing around me. And then like Sunday was pretty, was already starting to thin out. And then I've never been to a conference where like the conference schedule was just being adjusted throughout the event because a speaker weren't able to travel and have to cancel their plans. But yeah, I mean, despite that, we can definitely see the type of audience that typically attend the event. So we'll plan on going back with this.  Yeah, I mean, let us know if you have any questions. Especially if you look through the retrospectives, feel free to comment directly there and let me know if you have any questions. Cool. All right, so moving right along. So hackathon in a box. And I think I talked about this. I can't remember whether it was in January or February. What I started doing late last year was sort of creating a package or content that people can use if they sort of want to organize their own hackathons during like meetups. So I was thinking mostly like pretty much all face to face. People might organize. We have 30 plus meetups that are happening around the world. And one of the topics could be encouraging people to contribute to get led.  So I wanted to provide a tool to sort of replicate that and call the hackathon in a box. But with the recent events, obviously we're kind of pivoting towards focusing on like a virtual events. I mean, a lot of marketing folks are working on this and give up. And we wanted to sort of focus on virtual events, not just for industry events, but also for meetups as well. Because so John's done a great job of sort of pivoting his meetup programs to support virtual meetups. And you can click on that link. You'll see the new virtual meetups page. And as we did at scale, we kind of piloted like a hackathon in a box at a Hamburg meetup that actually happened the same time as a hackathon in February. I'm not sure if anybody actually made contributions, but David, myself and John were able to sort of attend a meetup for about 30 minutes. I think their meetup was like a 90 minute, but we carved out like a third of the time to encourage people to contribute. So the content material was there. So we just want to make this also available as a tool for virtual meetup. So the first link there is I just made a handbook update. I just asked for a review from John and David to update handbook to include a section on a virtual hackathon. And a couple of things I wanted to point out.  This is sort of to supplement like what's going, what's happening every quarter. And then the expectation is to rely on wider community members to organize this as they're doing their own meetups in their locations. I mean, John or myself will be able to support and provide materials that are needed to support the virtual meetups. But we're not going to be that hands on. We'll provide the necessary support like John does with the meetups. And the main target will be like a first sign contributors. Like a lot of people who've never done it before. So we want to keep things simple. And then we even want to make the issues like pretty simple enough for people to work on like we did at scale. Like a simple documentation fixes. Those are where this sort of get people get started. So that will be the focus. We'll still have the quarterly hackathon. But this is just a tool for wider community members to do something locally or virtually if they want to organize something. In the first event, I mean, I mentioned that the expectation is to have wider community members sort of organize this, but sort of to kick things off. I'll be the first host and we'll do this in about two weeks on April 29th. And you'll see an issue there. So we'll get that going. And then hopefully we'll get other community members expressed interest in organizing something like this going forward. Yeah, because even meetups, what we notice in early March was that a lot of like an in-person meetups are getting canceled because facilities weren't available. People weren't going into work or travel is being severely restricted. It's the case in most places around the world right now. So we'll see how it goes. And the next couple of meetings will provide an update on how things are going. Any questions or comments? I mean, Takria, you've been very active in organizing meetups in Tokyo area. I assume like meetups are not happening in person anymore for a while, right? Yeah, I assume like you're not able to organize like meetups like in office locations or buildings. Yes, we can have a meetup in person. Yeah, I mean, yeah. So hopefully, I don't know how successful it will be in a lot of places. But I mean, if you're interested in sort of piloting this as a sort of a virtual thing in Japan, I mean, let us know. Yeah, cool. Thanks. All right. So yeah, any questions or comments? I mean, even on the MR, if you want to provide your feedback on that, that would be appreciated. Cool. All right. So moving right along. So new core team members. So and this is one of the discussions that Ben and I had while we're at scale. Because we, I mean, we both realized we haven't added a new member in probably well over a year. And, you know, we've had a lot of good contributors that have been contributing to GILLAB since that time. And then quick reminder in the process, I just basically cut and pasted these sentences from the core team page. I mean, current members like to nominate a new member from the wider community and with the confidential issue that that's been open. And, you know, there will be like a two week window where people can either vote or raise any concerns or objection if there are any concerns within a two week period. If there are no objections within two weeks and there are at least two positive votes, then, you know, I basically reach out to that candidate and then see if they would be willing to join the core team. So that's that's sort of the reminder in the process. And, and Georgie opened the issue, I think, sometime last week and right now the due date is set to 22nd, but I think there's been discussion about extending that because you opened it like right before the Easter holidays, right? Exactly. I think it's wise to extend this for two more weeks just to make sure that most of the core team members to get to see this in time. Right. Yeah. I mean, the last time I checked like maybe it was about an hour ago, I think there were already like a three or four upvotes. So I think about roughly half the people already voted, but yeah, one or two weeks, I think that's completely fine. I mean, the other thing I think I mentioned this in a different issue is that, you know, we could obviously invite like more than one member, you know, if there are other deserving candidates. So, I mean, if people think of other people that you think would be a good fit, I mean, feel free to open up like another issue and then we can discuss it there. No, cool. Sounds good. Yeah. Two questions here, right? Yeah. Do you have feedback from the request to replace Winnie from the team members? No. Yeah. I mean, yeah, thanks for the reminder. I haven't gotten like a, I need to follow up on that discussion on Slack, because I don't think, I mean, I got one feedback from ZJ, but I think he was, I think he actually recommended somebody that's from like from the wider community. But I need to follow up on that. If I don't, I mean, I've got a couple of names that I've heard from people, but I wanted to like open it up to the wider members of the company. But I can start, certainly start reaching out to folks or, I mean, George, if you want to chime in there and encourage other people to come forward with candidates that we appreciate it. Yeah, I completely forgot about that. Yeah. Maybe make it clear what's included. I mean, being a core team member for the team and why I named this. Maybe it could help. Right. Yep. Yeah. And the second question is about the scale event. Could you, was the, what about the, the audience, what the diversity of the audience that you have contributors from mostly females, females, something? Yeah. I mean, Ben, you can correct me if I'm wrong. I don't think the, I mean, the diversity of the audience wasn't a whole lot different from traditional technical conferences. It was, you know, I mean, a lot of, I mean, I think at some point I counted like a high many female attendees were there. I mean, there were, I mean, it was, it was more than a few, but it's, it was probably definitely less than like 10 or 15% is my guess, if I remember correctly.  Yeah, not, not that I recall. I mean, yeah. I mean, Ben, am I remembering that correctly? Or I don't think it was any different than other tech conferences that we typically go to, but in terms of diversity of attendees? Yeah, I would say, and diversity wasn't great. Yeah. Right. So, I mean, the interesting thing, I mean, this is sort of off the topic, and this isn't like the question you asked. Like one of the things that we asked to the audience, because I asked like how many people are from the area. And the other question I asked people were, how many people already have a gilab.com account? And I think like 100% of the people said yes, which kind of shocked me to be honest. Like, I mean, I expected a high percentage of people, but I didn't expect like close 100% of people having already having like gilab.com account. So that made the hands-on exercise a little bit more like, we're able to kind of jump right into it. So, but yeah, I mean, diversity, I think it's just a, it's a challenge. So, I mean, there were a lot of like a female presenters in other sessions that I attended, but in the room that we're in, unfortunately during our community day, it wasn't, it wasn't that stellar. So, thanks for the questions though. So, the final thing on the core team membership, I mean, this is sort of the question that I wanted to ask, because right now, what we have is, you know, if there's a single objection, then it can block a candidate from becoming a, becoming a core team member. And I think this was fine when the core team was like relatively small, like they had like a four or five people. But as we're growing, I was concerned that is it going to be, is this going to be, you know, potentially discouraged having a, having a diverse group of people in the core team? Because I mean, I just wanted to like, you know, ask people like what your thoughts are.  You know, I don't think this has been a huge issue, but I just wanted to sort of raise this and see what people's thoughts are. Like no opinions or... That's good. Yeah. Yeah.  Like I can start an MR to sort of update the core team handbook and suggest some texts and see what people think. If there are concerns with what I'm proposing, I think that's probably a good way to discuss it there. Sounds perfect. So I think it sounds good. Yeah. I think if we do it, you know, somehow similar to how it would nominate someone or, you know, MR works too, we could vote on it there. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Let me start like an MR. I mean, I don't think this needs to be private. Like, I mean, we can have a public MR to sort of discuss this. And if there are no objections, then we can merge it into the core team page. And I think that he sort of makes things easy. Cool. Okay. Sounds good. Whoops. All right. So, oh, Hanna said it on note here, which is cool. So, I mean, first thing, I assume this is going to be quick. I thought combining the kickoff of the hackathon and the court team meeting worked out pretty well. So I was going to propose to do the same thing in May. Because I thought, I mean, they've brought a lot more people to the court team meeting. People that are not on court team members to the call. So if there are no objections, I'll just plan on combining the kickoff with the court team meeting next month. I thought the meeting was more interesting as well. So, cool. And then I don't think Hanna is on the call. But let me go to that issue that he opened it and I commented on. And yeah, I think he was suggesting like a badging for hackathon. I had some couple of clarifying questions that I went to ask. I mean, I'm assuming like people who get MRs merge during a hackathon get some sort of a badge. But I'll wait for Hanna's feedback on that. But people have any, like a strong opinion on this? Because I added in a comment, because interestingly enough, about a month ago, I was listening to a podcast from featuring actually John O'Bacon. And then he actually didn't have a very high opinion of badges, because there are just too many of them. And people may not value them as much as they used to. I'm not sure if I 100% agree with that, but I thought it was kind of interesting that he wasn't quite sure if badgings were very effective anymore. But I don't know if people have any thoughts or, I mean, obviously we'll wait for Hanna's like the clarification. But do people have any thoughts on this? Or I mean, I don't have like a, I don't think I have a strong opinion one way or the other. Because I think he opened, like he says, he opened a similar issue on heroes. Like, I don't know, I know we have a graphic for the heroes, but I don't know if it's like you want to call that a badge. But people have any strong like a positive opinion on this? So I don't necessarily have a too strong opinion, but I guess my thing is like, why should someone get a badge for participating in the hackathon versus just a badge for contributing to GitLab in any way, any time? Right, right.  I mean, obviously I have a top contributor's page, which features many of you on this call. So I have this like a little icons for SuperSara, Sara, and the well.  But yeah, so yeah, I think, Ben, you bring up a good point. Like if we create a badge for hackathons and we need to have, we probably need to create a lot more or a lot of different badges for people that have been contributing on a regular basis. Right, I think that's, that's, is that what you're suggesting, Ben? Right, I mean, I guess in a way a hackathon is a, seems like a good time for us to, like encourage people to participate, but we also want people to participate all the time. So, you know, it, like, because I, I think some people probably end up participating in the hackathon sort of accidentally, you know, just because the timing winds up, right? Right, yeah. I mean, there are, there are definitely some of that. Like, I mean, I'll get a comment about, they didn't even realize what the hackathon was going on and just a happy accident. But yeah, I mean, I, yeah, so I, I definitely see your point and tend to agree with you that we don't want to devalue the people that are contributing on a regular basis outside of quarterly events. Oops. I was about to edit the slide. And George, I didn't want to forget about the virtual contribute. So, I'll follow up on this. Thank you very much. It was about us. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Any other topics or anything else? I've also added the question about, not sure about the virtual, it's, this is related about, with the virtual hackathon, about guidelines from the team to host the virtual GitLab Meetup. I know it was, a GitLab Meetup in Greece was about to happen one of these days, but does the GitLab team provide any guidelines how to host the virtual GitLab Meetup? Yeah, I mean, let me go back to the page. There should be a checklist on like a hosting virtual Meetups. And I know there's like a checklist on, yeah, there's a checklist if you click on this link, and it takes you to, I think, John's like a handbook page. So, yeah, so there is a definitely a checklist that you can take a look at. And then, yeah, and then if you open up an issue, and then just flag John, and then, I mean, I mean, you're probably, you probably did the same thing for the, for the original Meetup as well in Greece, right, when you open, you open an issue. Yeah, John Bing Bing means that this, yeah. Yeah, right. So, yeah, I think the process is, it's probably not a whole lot different, but he has a little bit more details about like your conferencing tools, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But, yeah, so, cool. Hopefully, yeah, that was relatively easy. Okay. No, cool, you bet. So, yeah, I mean, John got this up and running like last week, which was awesome. So, cool. Anything else? Like, are people surviving being indoors all the time? I'm like really tired of running the same trail like over and over again. I don't know what else to do, but hopefully people are staying healthy and insane, like, yeah. Well, things will start to get back to normal soon. Hopefully. Cool. Yeah, cool. All right. All right. Well, thanks everybody for your time. It's a pleasure as always, and we'll, I mean, I'm sure we'll, well, most of us will talk before, but at the latest, we'll talk when we kick out the hackathon next month. All right. Thanks everybody. Have a good day. Bye. Yeah, bye. Have a good day.


This is a truly beautiful celebration and we're all so grateful that you're here to be a part of this. So you all have heard me speak so many times about so many things. And what's more important right now is that we hear from the voices of Vermonters whose voices are not usually heard, as well as those who should be celebrated and elevated. We should know their names, we should know their stories, we should know their histories. And that's really at the heart of this work that we're trying to do today. So it is absolutely my honor to emcee this piece. I'm really not saying much because I want to listen and I want to learn, as I hope you all will. So our first speaker today is Ezra Totten, who is here representing from the LGBTQIA Alliance and is a local Vermonter. Welcome up, Ezra. My name is Ezra Totten, I'm 15 years old. I attend Burlington High School and I identify as a transgender male. This historic legislation will help create an environment where we can truly share our histories completely and with pride. Acknowledging the contributions of everyone is the first step in full inclusion, equality and acceptance. LGBTQIA history needs to be taught because we know many historical figures such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Josephine Baker and Bayard Rustin and many more have had their sexual or gender identity erased from their story from our shared history. Erasing or hiding away someone's identity means we keep the truth hidden away from all of us, making it easy to erase our stories from not only the history books, but to keep them from being discussed in our classroom every day right now. Having a deeper knowledge and better understanding of LGBTQ figures and their importance in history will help to drive ignorance and prejudice out of our textbooks, our schools, our classrooms and to work to make our schools safer for all of us. Thank you. Yes, yes, for our youth. I'm so excited we're speaking up. So next we have Mary Ann Songhurst, who is a student from Montpelier High School. I am pleased to be here in the Vermont State House to celebrate the enactment of House Bill Number 3, an act relating to ethnic and social equity study standards for public schools. As a black female Haitian-American high school student who has spent my entire educational career in the Vermont public school system, I have directly experienced racism and discrimination at the institutional and personal level. Therefore, I am proud to be here today to see the start of the important changes in the educational space that will be made through new ethnic and social equity study standards as outlined in the bill. As written in my testimony, I feel that it is always extremely important to have student voices or a person who has actually experienced harassment as a member of the marginalized racial, ethnic or social groups, regardless of their degree or credentials, to be directly engaged as part of the advisory working group because of their personal experience in the school system. I am proud to have been part of the discussion around amending the bill to include my recommendation. I am excited and very hopeful to see how the work directed by H3 evolves over time, not just for myself or students today, but for future generations to come. I would like to take a second to thank all of the people in the House and Senate Education Committees who invited and encouraged student voices as part of their discussions. Also, there are so many dedicated individuals who have put countless hours of labor into promoting racial justice this bill and have continued to support the necessary changes to make Vermont's education system include and recognize different narratives that should be part of our curriculums. I would especially like to thank the members of the Coalition for Ethnic Studies and Social Equity, Amanda Garces, Kaia Morris, as said, Kaia Morris, and Sariqa Tandon for their work with ensuring student voice. To conclude, I look forward to the long overdue recognition and inclusion of intersectionality through equitable action in all Vermont public schools. Thank you. Thank you for that. That's amazing. We have more incredible speakers. So up next we have Bruce Pandaya, who is a student from U32. My name is Bruce Pandia. I'm a sophomore at U32. Last month I sat before the Senate Education Committee to speak in favor of H3. I spoke of my experiences with racism in school and about the fact that I felt that my Indian heritage was not adequately represented in our curriculum. I said, a curriculum which focuses largely on the dominant groups in society while downplaying or reducing to a footnote the history of marginalized people is a curriculum which is in my view guaranteed to foster hateful attitudes. Today Governor Scott put his signature on this historic piece of legislation which was passed unanimously by the General Assembly. Vermont has taken the first step to begin committing itself to countering that historic bigotry that has for too long affected the outcomes and attitudes that are shaped in our schools is the responsibility of every person in our society to fight inequality wherever and whenever it manifests itself. Prejudice is a travesty in itself and even more egregious is prejudice which goes unaddressed and is allowed to affect school curriculum. In my view our sense of what is wrong and what is right is one of the most powerful things we have. And I hope we can agree that prejudice is wrong, inequity is wrong, erasure is wrong and recognizing those things will put us one step closer to creating a more just world. But we cannot without a fundamental change the way we structure the systems of our society. The systems of oppression that create those inequalities are antithetical to regressing as a society. Vermont as well as the rest of the world has a lot of work to do, that's for sure but I know that we have many people who are dedicated to the fight against bigotry. If all people are united against systemic prejudice in all its forms it cannot be maintained. I hope that Vermont can be an example to the rest of the country in how to address these problems. I believe firmly that equity is achievable if we put in the work as a collective. It's not easy to address such deep-seated problems but I'm confident that we can continue to do it if all of us commit to the task of creating a more equitable society. Thank you. So, so gorgeous and that's so important and I hope that you all are listening and will hear and I hope that you're also going to start asking the youth in your lives about what this bill will mean to them and how it will change their school cultures and their school climates and their educational experiences. I'm sure they'll have a lot to say. So, up next I would love to welcome Chief Don Stevens of the Nohigen Band of the Kosuk Abenaki Nation who has also been a incredible support and member of our coalition. Thank you. Everybody hear me? Today is a milestone in the history of Vermont. The signing of this ethnic study bill H3 is an acknowledgement by the state of Vermont that the social and ethnic perception of Vermont's landscape has finally turned a corner. People of color, which includes the Abenaki people, have waited for this moment for many decades, if not centuries. Most Vermonters have not had the opportunity for a consistent learning experience about the Abenaki or marginalized people through the traditional educational system. Through caring teachers, educators and school districts interested in educating about the rich culture of the Abenaki people, we have managed to share our love of the earth, family and connection to all living things. My hope and expectation is that this legislation will standardize curriculum across all educational institutions. We have much to share from the teachings of our elders and our culture, our heritage and the contributions to the original fabric of Vermont. Even though we celebrate this milestone today, the final test on success is when the state of Vermont and educational institutions accepts and implements the recommendations of this working group in two years' time. No longer should the Abenaki voices be considered extinct, minimized or marginalized by dominant voices. It is time to heal old wounds and continue to provide pathways of cooperation. Without education, there is only fear and ignorance left to fill the void. Education fosters understanding, respect and the opportunity to embrace one another. Society benefits as a whole when diversity flourishes, openly acknowledged and is accepted. Vermont has been labeled as one of the whitest states in the Union. To some, this has been a badge of honor. To others, it has been a deterrent to live in our great state. We see and experience the hate that infects our national news and local conversations. Let the signing of this legislation be a beacon of hope, a light in the darkness for others to follow. We are demonstrating to the nation that working together in partnership provides endless possibilities and overcoming challenges that face our great state and the greater society as a whole. Thank you to the governor, the legislators and to all who celebrate diversity. Thank you. Thank you so much, Chief. And as we always should remember and acknowledge that we're standing here today on Abenaki lands. Up next, we have one of our most beautiful and beloved elders, Ms. Shahan Bouliet, who is the co-founder and co-contributor to I Am Vermont 2. Good afternoon and thank you for being here. My name is Shahan Bouliet and I live in St. Jay. I'm here as a mother, a grandmother, an educator, community organizer and coalition member. I stand on the shoulders of many. Paige Wadley Bailey, who was the director of VAROT, Vermont Anti-Racism Action Team, founded back in the 90s was one. VAROT, along with other organizations around the state, was created as a resource for schools, communities and educators. At the time, there were efforts, programs, etc., by individuals and organizations. This is a statewide coalition led by a multicultural and multi-generational group. I'd like to thank Amanda and Kaya for their leadership, energy and commitment. Amanda, for bringing the coalition together around this most needed and important legislation. Kaya, I'd like to thank you for advancing the coalition goals. Vermont Education System failed my son over 30 years ago. At the time, I thought it was because we didn't have any resources in the Northeast Kingdom. As I was coordinator of the African American Alliance back of the Northeast Kingdom back in the 90s, I became aware the schools didn't have the resources. Today, as I stand here, Vermont schools are failing. My grandson, who lives in Burlington, where there are more resources. The signing of this bill and the work of the coalition will make our stories visible, our narratives. It will validate the various experiences we have as well as demonstrate the value we bring to our communities. Participating in the coalition work has been a blessing for me. Working with the coalition members has been a refreshing process. I have made friends. I have broken through the silo of isolation. I look forward to what lies ahead and I'm grateful for the opportunity to bring equitable and ethnic studies to our schools where all our students can flourish. And before I end, I just want to say this was the first time in sharing the legislation and how it passed. I was ecstatic. Throughout the country, the feedback that I got, that we are leaders. We have people across the nation who are looking for us. So I would like to thank the legislation. I'd like to thank you all. And yes, thank you. I hope you can see how much this hits our hearts and our souls and our spirits. This is not just an exercise and whether or not people know how to add numbers or can recognize names and symbols on a periodic table. This is about our lives. Up next, it is my pleasure to welcome Sarah Launderville. From the Vermont Center for Independent Living. I just wanted to honor her contributions, her husband's contributions, the amazing work that Peter did before. And may he rest in peace. And there's a lot of people that are watching, a lot of ancestors that are watching us doing this work right now. So thank you, Sarah. Thank you so much. I have to take a breath. So we in the disability community applaud the Vermont State Legislature and their action of supporting and passing this important legislation. We want to highlight and thank the governor for signing this into law and doing it publicly in a fashion that shows his commitment to us moving forward. We also want to thank profusely Amanda for her leadership within our coalition work and her sincere dedication to this labor. I'd like to highlight our beloved Kaya Morris who works tirelessly as a leader and mentor tying together the intersectionality and purpose of this effort. And to my fellow leaders within the Vermont Coalition for Ethnic and Social Equity in Schools who are always careful and meaningful in our decision making process. Who took the responsibility seriously and came together in true coalition. The disability community became involved in this coalition because our state has an awful history of oppression and torture of individuals with disabilities. As a leader in the eugenics movement, Vermont sterilized and institutionalized individuals with disabilities and other ethnic, social and racial groups in hopes for a quote good Vermont stock. There is an extensive history of warehousing individuals with developmental and psychiatric disabilities as well. These are important parts of our history and largely underplayed because of the bias of policy decisions and systems set up in our state. The context of history is important in terms of those of us who have disabilities and work on policy issues. Believe the need to change and encourage a world that is accessible to all people with all different types of disabilities. I saw a sign today that we celebrate youth with disabilities. This sign signals an importance of this celebration today that all young people with disabilities fully included in our education system. Inclusion is not about the individual with disability, but it allows for individuals who don't have disabilities to gain a broader understanding perspective which in turn changes our communities. Having a system that highlights all sides of our history, all sides of our hopes and all sides of what can be done allows for the crucial changes that we believe will have impacts that will be far reaching. This law allows for more significant change to happen around addressing issues of ableism. The faults of low expectations of our systems can be addressed through this work. The commitment and action of addressing systematic policy issues of biases and discrimination will be addressed in this work. And the rising up of individuals who have been historically cast aside in our society will begin to be addressed because of the passing of this meaningful and vital law. We have a curriculum that will be brought to the table called Include that can be found on the Vermont Statewide Independent Living Council's website and is already connected in some of the schools. We are thrilled that H3 has been signed and we celebrate this legislation. More importantly, we commit ourselves to the hard work ahead. We look forward to the rich conversations that will lead to a more robust educational system which in turn will build a stronger Vermont community. Thank you so much. Thank you Sarah for that. And as she mentioned, there are schools throughout the state who are trying to dive into this work and what this opportunity does is provide a mechanism for people to come together and do this in a really systemic fashion. There have been schools that have placed themselves on the front lines. I know that we have Principal Mike Wraith back there and knowing the things that he and his students went through in trying to declare that Black Lives Matter at Montpelier High School is very much indicative of so many of the issues that we're talking about today. So it is also, I can't tell you how much I love these books. It is also my pleasure to welcome out my brother Wafiq Faur who is the founder of Vermonters for Justice in Palestine and has been one of the most amazing mentors and supporters of this work in helping to ensure that we are not forgetting voices that need to be heard. We did it. Salam Alaikum Warahmatullah. My name is Wafiq Faur, member of Vermonters for Justice in Palestine. As a Palestinian Arab Muslim, first I have to say we are standing over indigenous people land and this people house on the ground of the Apanaki people. Fifty years ago there was another bell called Greenup Vermonters. Vermonters saw a lot of trash around them, a lot of junk on the highway. This building passed a law to clean up this state and this state looks beautiful now. Today we passed another bell to clean up this state from racism, discrimination, prejudice against black, Latino, Arab, LGBTQ. We have to stand together and we have to stay together. People of this land, they didn't treat their history well. From today on it's the law to correct this mistake. Amanda we did it. Thank you. And our final speaker and we will have questions afterwards if people would like to ask of the speakers. We have Alyssa Chen who is not only a coalition member but a dedicated educator up in the Burlington area. I just want to name what an honor it is to be here today and I've appreciated being able to like learn and work with all these elders here and all the youth in the room. Let's give them another round of applause. And really name and think about as we move forward it's really about like who they are and what their needs are and what their voices are and to really see them and take them as leaders. I appreciate you all leading the way in today's press conference. Just a little bit about my background. I grew up in Rutland, Vermont and went out of state for 10, 12 years. I was teaching out in the Bay Area and I honestly got exhausted with having to fight the level of racism in those schools. And I thought oh I'll come back to Vermont. And I think when I was growing up in Vermont I didn't have the same level of awareness of race and racism. So I thought I'll come back there. I'll like be able to take a break.  And the number of stories I heard just of horrific things that were happening in our schools. I think the level of lack of inclusion in the curriculum is one level. But then there's other things that produce even more violence in our schools. And so it's super exciting to see this bill pass. And at the same time I kind of want to put a call out to my fellow teachers that we really need to be using this as an opportunity to organize. And to really recognize that what this bill does is it creates different standards and curriculum. But if you give like a racist homophobic classist teacher like a new curriculum and they still have that in their heart it's not really going to make any changes. And in fact it can actually end up doing harm. And I've heard this from different students of color when teachers are forced to just change the curriculum which is happening in some of our colleges. But they're not changing their mindsets of the hearts. It can it can reproduce the same harm. And so I want to put a call out to teachers to really use this bill and this momentum as an opportunity to organize to educate ourselves. To to call out to our leaders for the training that we need to build relationships and accountability towards our young people our students our community members our parents from marginalized groups. And to build those relationships to kind of hold us accountable in this work. But I just kind of want to name and kind of put that out and really encourage teachers. This is like again a huge opportunity to build that those relationships and do that work together. And thanks so much to the coalition for making this happen. We have to do this together. This is a journey. It doesn't have to take 50 years. But it has to take all of us. So I want to thank each of the speakers that were here today. So many of the coalition members so many supporters from throughout the state. The people that are rooting for us across the country. Let's show them how we get it done here. Thank you for that.


It's now time for members statements the member from the p.m. Carleton. Thank you very much speaker Rare in a city of almost a million people that its entire population would agree that one man Was the heart the soul and the pride of its community? But that's Ottawa's max keeping Born a proud Newfoundlander. He took the nation's capital by storm Max never forgot what Ottawa gave to him or for that matter who he was What he received he gave back tenfold? He was a philanthropist donating many hours and millions of dollars for charity Including our own children's hospital of Eastern Ontario He was a children's champion. He supported organizations like children and youth friendly Ottawa and made his newscast kid friendly It was the first in Canada to do so He was a broadcaster the public face of cgoh now ctv Ottawa and Max was a guest in Eastern Ontario homes during the supper hour news for almost four decades He was a trusted face Even when the toughest news was about to be delivered It was also a family man He was devoted to his sons and his grandchildren Although max was the most important person in Ottawa He never once had an error about him Instead he made every single person he spoke to Feel that they were the most important person in the room And when he passed last week fellow broadcasters politicians NHL players hospital CEOs farmers Speaker everyone had a max keeping story He was a celebrity we all knew personally and that was a real credit to his humanity And his humbleness His life how we embraced others his kindness and his love of community is now our lesson one Which I know will be honoured by max's family as well as all of us in Ottawa on behalf of the Ontario Legislature I want to thank max for his lifelong contribution to the city of Ottawa and I wish My most heartfelt condolences to his family and his grandchildren there will never be another max keeping. Thank you Thank you member statements from London West. Thank you speaker I rise today to share reflections on two conferences. I attended over the weekend in London The first was manufacturing matters organized by the London Economic Development Corporation Bringing together more than 400 manufacturers and service providers This was the largest gathering ever of Southwestern Ontario's manufacturing sector Demonstrating that manufacturing remains vital to London's economy The second was called the future of work organized by the London Poverty Research Centre to leading economists Arminial Neeson and Mike Moffat presented data showing that in Canada's changing labor market A job is no longer a ticket out of poverty in a region that has lost one third of its Manufacturing jobs over the past decade This is a trend that took root early and deeply in London at the first conference We heard about the demand for skilled workers to fill new jobs in advanced manufacturing and the value of co-ops and Internships to address workforce needs at the second we heard about the twin forces of globalization and automation That have led to plant closures the displacement of skilled workers and a generation of young people Facing precarity as the new normal my takeaway speaker not only must we provide young people with Opportunities to participate in paid co-ops and internships, but we must also support older workers whose jobs whose skills are less easily Transferred we must create more affordable housing increased childcare spaces and build transit to get people to work While doing everything we can to spur innovation We must also ensure that no one is left behind that every Ontarian has a place in the new economy. Thank you. Thank you Remember from auto ourselves. He very mr. Speaker. Thank you very much, mr. Speaker And I'd like to join the member from the PN Carlton in saying a few words about max Last week Ottawa lost one of our two leaders max keeping max was a journalist a Philanthropist and a true community builder as anchored for cgo h nightly news He found his way into our living rooms for over 30 years And he and the news always included community He had attended thousands of events for charity over that time in his career. He raised more than 100 million dollars as a builder He reminded us that all that community matters and he knew how to bring us together Max could throw a good party However first and foremost he was a champion for children as a cheerleader for the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario and other causes He've helped us find our way to our pockets to support children's needs Saving the cardiac program at chio more support for children's mental health or scholarships for children in care He wanted every child to have an opportunity to succeed. I Had the pleasure with working working with max on many occasions, and it was never about max. It was always about someone else Communities need individuals who give expression to our collective desire that all of our children have a chance to thrive Max was ours Max thank you for your unwavering commitment to our community and our children to his family our condolences Max we will miss you. God bless Thank you speaker falls in the air and because it is that can only mean one thing another round of cuts and staff uncertainty at Quinney health care hospitals to make up for an 11 and a half million dollar funding shortfall created largely because Ontario's liberal government can't manage money Jobs and services will be cut at hospitals in Picton, Belleville, Bancroft and Trenton Money is being spent on debt that people in Prince Edward Hastings want spent on the services that they need in their hospitals This morning we learned that in order to close the 11 and a half million dollar shortfall QHC is proposing a reduction of nearly all surgery services at Trenton Memorial Four and a half million in direct care cuts and changes that one QHC executive calls very hard on our staff During the years of this government QHC has been the recipient of almost continual funding shortfalls from the ministry So speaker if I could I'd like to direct some comments directly to my constituency back at home The deficit this government is running is costing you your health care services QHC has had to come up with 25 million in cuts over four years to make up for funding shortfalls Because the liberal government at Queens Park doesn't have any money left The government says money is going into better home care services But the auditor general says services are being cut there too to pay for fat cat salaries The third largest expense in the budget is how much we pay to service our debt And it's also the fastest growing That's why cuts like this have gone from being rare to happening annually Mr Speaker Thank you Member Stavis the member from Bramley Corral Thank you very much Mr Speaker I rise today to raise the concerns of taxi drivers and limousine drivers Across my constituency and across Ontario Taxi drivers are raising concerns around Uber Their concerns are that Uber perhaps doesn't pay HST Which means lost revenue for the province and the country They're concerned that Uber drivers often don't claim that income And that's another source of a loss of revenue They're also raised awareness and concerns around the fact that perhaps Uber drivers don't pay for commercial insurance Which may leave drivers and passengers unprotected They continue to raise concerns around the lack of training That perhaps Uber drivers may make roads more unsafe in our province They also raise concerns regarding the lack of accountability That drivers are not accountable against specific complaints Again and finally they raise concerns around the safety of vehicles Which aren't subject to municipal standards Our taxi and limousine drivers provide an essential and important service in our province They are well trained professionals whose vehicles meet municipal standards And they provide an important service which must be respected by this government This government has a responsibility to address their concerns And I ask the government to address the concerns raised by these drivers They certainly provide a very important service They are well trained professionals that deserve that respect Thank you We can't further remember Stingless, the member from Beecher's East York Well thank you Speaker I want to spend a little moment here to tell you a little bit what I did During the opportunity during the legislative recess over the summer And certainly a great highlight for me was when the Premier of Ontario Premier Kathleen Nguyen came to Beecher's East York during her visit We went to the Toronto East General Hospital where she made a very significant funding announcement 125 million over the next year for improvements for hospitals across the province Including 1.7 million for Toronto East General Hospital to renew its aging infrastructure So the Premier and I toured the hospitals new in the very unique chess centre It's the only facility in Toronto providing various lung health services Under one roof, the new CEO Sarah Downey Who's been there for about six months is just doing a fantastic job We then went on to Centre 55, a great community hub in Beecher's East York And the Premier and I met some of the hundreds of campers from across the community We were greeted by Debbie Visconti, Nancy Culver and Jason Blagapole Who run the place The campers were very interested in the Premier's visit And they asked her lots of great questions like how did she get into politics It was excellent We then went down to Queen Street where we went to the Beecher's Cafe Thank you so much to Kumiko Martino and her staff Who made our visit on the patio such a great experience I was also pleased to take the Premier out for some main-streeting on Queen Street East We dropped in at Tori's Bake Shop, Arts on Queen And the remarkable being, a wonderful coffee shop in the writing But we held off on not going to the Matt name movie at the Fox Maybe we can do that another time So my appreciation to all the residents that have been there We interacted with that day, it was a wonderful, wonderful visit Thank you Other members, the members from Stormont Dundas and South Gungari Thank you Speaker I'm proud here to stand today to commend the organizers of this year's International Ploughing Match and Rural Export I'll then finch Ontario on the great riding of Stormont Dundas and South Gungari We started as a dream for Stormont Ploughman Association's member Jeff Walbridge Turned into the largest event in the history of Stormont Dundas and South Gungari Great job I want to commend Jeff and IPM Chair Jim Brownell For organizing such a great and extremely successful event Almost 83,000 people attended the 2015 IPM Good numbers, good numbers And the committee assembled over 1200 volunteers Excellent Over $500,000 in donations and another $600,000 in in-kind work Wow The event was capped off with a terrific weather that allowed the visitors to take in all of the many sites Whether it was the Dancing Tractors Woohoo There were many exhibitions, farm machine receipt companies, service delivery companies Dealers of all kinds It really was a great event and it was a chance to showcase What we feel is the best area of Ontario, eastern Ontario People came down and saw the great crops, agriculture and its finest And we're looking forward to next year, it's in Wellington, Ontario And it will be another great event Great job Great job Thank you Thank you Members from Davenport Thank you, Mr. Speaker And I rise today to recognize a fantastic organization in my writing of Davenport The Davenport Perth Neighborhood and Community Health Centre The DPNCHC as it is so fondly referred to Supports people in the Davenport Perth area Who are suffering from economic and social barriers And empowers them to enrich their lives through the community It also provides a space for people to meet and connect Across all ages and cultures From the Ontario Early Years Centre To the Youth Leadership Program for teenagers To computer training for seniors To the Edge West Clinic This facility prides itself on providing services to everyone On August 20th, I was honoured to invite Premier Kathleen Nguyen To DPNCHC for a tour and host a community roundtable meeting With her and community organizations To discuss issues that we face in Davenport Events like this show how our government understands the importance Of health and community centres like this one And I'm proud to continue to uphold this commitment By supporting the DPNCHC through the Ontario Trillium Fund Mr. Speaker, on September 12th of this month DPNCHCHC celebrated their 30th anniversary I was humbled to be a part of the celebrations And to see a whole community come together And recognize the wonderful work that this organization does For Davenport I want to thank Executive Director Kim Fraser For leading this organization into its 30th year And ensuring that it continues to be such an integral part Of this community Thank you very much DPNCHC For all the work you do Happy anniversary Last Thursday was the International Day of Older Person As a former social worker and a co-owner of a retirement residence I understand the value seniors provide to our communities It is their contribution we can build upon And their guidance and experience we can learn from To improve our society We must appreciate the contribution of seniors The wealth of knowledge and wisdom they bring To our province and the community The Canadian population surpassed a milestone last Tuesday For the first time ever They are more senior citizens than children It is expected that the name of the person Older people living in Ottawa Will double in the next 20 years With a forecast of 500,000 people So we have planned for this That in 2013 the city of Ottawa was inducted In the global network Of age-friendly communities by the World Health Organization This is thanks to the city's older adult plan And age-friendly Ottawa An initiative led by the Council on Aging With the first term of the older adult plan Plan finishing at the end of the 2014 The city of Ottawa is currently refreshing The action plan for the 2015-2018 period This year the Council on Aging of Ottawa Received over 200,000 people This year the Council on Aging of Ottawa Received over $18,000 Through the Ontario age-friendly community planning grant To collect data to measure the city's progress In achieving their age-friendly community goals This is a great initiative on the part Of the Ontario government and I hope Other communities take part and take advantage of Merci Monsieur le Président Merci beaucoup, thank you I thank all members for their statements