Welcome to Toffy TV. I'm joined in the studio by Sarah Halpin for the first time in a very, very long time. It feels like it doesn't it? But then I suppose, I suppose with lockdown and everything, you forget how long things have been. My little sister, bless her, she was put on furlough and she's just started back at her job and she's made up because she's been tearing her air out thinking what to do with herself. And it's been really challenging mentally. And she rang me the other day and said, oh, Sarah, I'm made up. I'm working again. She's going to the office next week, I think, but for the time being, she's like, and she went, you know, it's been five months because I was with her when she got the call to say she was going to be furloughed. She was like, that was five months ago.  But five months you're looking at like nearly half a year. It's mental. Absolutely mental. But we're still here. We're still here. And we're just going to have a chat about Everton's women's scene, which I find the project very, very fascinating. Sarah is, of course, the roving reporter, the pitside annoyance, I imagine. The girls will back you on that one. Social media, the lot when it comes to official as well. Official. Does it offer Everton ladies? Sorry, Everton women. You can't call it Everton ladies. What is that like? What is that like going up and down the country with the team and being part of the setup? Ped, as you know me, like fanatic Everton in all my life. So to be in a position now where the club have gone to me, yeah, you can work with us and produce the content and media stuff and travel on the team coach with the players and the management and that. And basically be a part of the team because I know I'm not there every week through Finch Farm and that, but as far as match day and match, especially a ways where we're away for the weekend, you know, to be a part of that special team is just amazing and I'll forever be grateful to Everton for allowing me to get involved, to be honest with you. But I think it's something that's worked out well for all parties involved and yeah, I'm just loving it mate and it's something I've missed so, so badly. For me, you're the perfect candidate. You are fanatical. You massively want to be involved.  Do you know what, you can have all this. You can keep all your degrees and your bells and whistles and your journal is a school. Passion is what it's all about. That's what it's all about.  I might not have all the pressure and stuff down to a T and this, that and the other but what you will get the same as yourself is just raw passion, a genuine love for something and I think that communicates with a certain audience that, you know, you don't always necessarily know what you're going to get but you know it's going to be authentic and it's going to be real and it's probably going to be. I think you definitely don't know what they're always going to get. I know that for a fact. It's been a bit of a weird spell for the women's game as well because it really did take the brunt of what has happened with Covid where this football, men's football came back and played behind closed doors. Women's game went into hibernation essentially and you know, due to things like the testing and being that being affordable. The season was curtailed, it obviously went by expected points which meant Liverpool got relegated. I'm heartbroken on that front. But just tell us the situation with what happened to Everton with that. Yeah, so we ended up finished in sixth position in the league due to expected points per game and in my honest opinion I think had the season been able to be played out as usual I think we probably would have got that top four. In my opinion I think Chelsea Arsenal and Manchester City would get the top three and then Everton would probably be the best of the rest. It wasn't to be the last game that kind of done us over in that sense was we played Manchester United and we lost to them at home in a frustrating game. But sixth place is not bad given where the team were the season before that, you know, sort of not far off getting relegated to be honest with you and you know to now be in a position where sixth place and now with the business, the club have done over the summer very, very much looking to improve on that and you know try maybe even try and break that top three, try and knock one of them out of there. It's a big ask but you know I think we've got the squad, we're starting to see the squad to do that now. Yeah, I mean the last couple of years it really has changed and Willie Kerr came in, system manager Manchester United obviously was probably promised a lot of things that there was going to be an improvement. Plays have started to come in, there was an improvement straight away last year although Everton lost the best player didn't he?  Her overall plays she's a proper baller so it was never going to be in doubt that the biggest and the best were going to come chasing after a signature. I know Chloe really loves Everton but I think at the position we were in at the time not able unfortunately to offer European football and in the women's game I think it's quite different. You know sometimes you feel you have to take these opportunities so that was a massive blow, wish her all the best but I think what Everton have done since then and the announcing and you know all the players like Hannah Cain and Nessa Cagman and Kirsty LaValle, Taylor Hines there's been a few out goings but the players of which we've brought in I think has made up for that and then something that the fans can clearly see we're investing, we've brought in a lot of international players, well known players from different countries and I feel like our squad's gone up a level. Having so many internationals is a great thing I think as well. Well we've seen the pictures of players coming in early, a lot of internationals but then three or four weeks ago I've seen this rumour about Valley Gouvant and I'm going to say we're the best French accents against Gouvant. Because I'd watched the Whale Cup a couple of years ago and I know you went over for it, I remember this girl's name, this lady's name and I was thinking I was just like if I remember this player's name then she must have impressed me during the Whale Cup and for Everton to be bringing it in I thought that. I first want to see in the room and I was like oh that sounds interesting but the fact that it actually happened that's a brilliant buy and a real statement of intent for the 17 moving forward. Yeah it's a belt in sign in that added to the other internationals, a couple of Danish internationals and Norwegian, England under 21 as well, Hailey Razo Australian but Gouvant you're right is a real stand out. The stats of this girl are incredible and as you said she had a really impressive world cup for France, somebody that as you say if anyone watched the world cup that might not necessarily follow women's football I think she's one that when you see you're like oh that is the French choker that was fantastic and brilliant from Everton to get her in and I think just the way other clubs and the press are talking surrounding the women's game about Everton now I think everyone's really starting to take them more seriously. As you said Willie Kirk's come in a couple of seasons ago really done well to turn things around but what you've seen the club have obviously promised him investment which has been delivered upon. I think we're starting to see Willie's team now, this is the team that he's been trying to build and he'll be happy with the team that's now at his disposal and looking to build. The challenges that you've got now for each position is incredible, nobody's guaranteed again, that's something that we've been sorely lacking and competition's going to be mental for places next season which is what you want. Yeah definitely at any level and I just thought as mentioned before I find the project really interesting because they brought in six players haven't they and they're all seem to be top players. The stadium obviously which Everton went into last season only actually played one game and got beat. Nothing more evident than that is there but the fact that they've got their own stadium, they're looking for their own sponsorship for the shards as well. So their own investment, the whole thing is getting run by Alicia Uzmanoff's nephew which is really interesting. Very interesting. Samar, I'm yet to meet but I'm very excited. I'm yet to meet Samar this year so don't worry about it but that's really interesting and it just seems like there's a real project happening there like Everton are obviously taking it serious but doing it like I always felt like years ago almost like and this is probably not right but I always felt like this, they're almost like Everton ladies where it was an extension of like Everton in the community. Like it was just like a thing to have like it was like a box taking exercise and now it does feel like a proper thing it's own little entity like they're putting money into it like they've built the stadium. You know they're bringing quality players in the one to compete especially when the women's game is starting to take off and people are starting to invest in it. Obviously there's two leagues now you've got teams like Manchester United have only just really come into it in the last two or three years. They're putting money into it and obviously we've got the big hitters of Manchester City, of Chelsea, of Arsenal. Manchester City bringing in players like Rose Lavel, there's a real top US international. These are probably names that maybe people don't know but. In the women's games. But in the women's games they're like they're massive aren't they? It's interesting that Everton are trying to compete and I just find that like I think a few people have made the joke about this so I was like you know Everton are bringing in all these players for the women's team but bringing in none for the men's team. I just find the whole thing quite interesting where it's going because it's almost like saying this is what we'd love to do with the men's team if we had like a blank piece of paper but in the women's game because there's no fees and that kind of thing. You're almost allowed to do that and I think you know it's just going to be really interesting where it goes. Yeah it is and as you say I very much feel like Everton now even changing the name from Everton Ladies last season to Everton FC women or Everton women FC just to differentiate of course between the men's and the women's team. It's more all-inclusive of course the fact that the women's team train and work at Finch Farm I think is a massive thing. They've got Walton Hall Park now you know when I first started working with Everton all our home games were being played in Southport which had a mega impact as you'd expect on spectators etc. Now I think season to get holders whoever when it's of course safer fans to come back and my personal opinion it'd be easier to start doing that with the women's team than the men's obviously given the smaller attendances and stuff so far but I think people are going to be wanting to go to Walton. You know that's where a lot of our core hardcore fan base are in around North Liverpool and L4 and around Goodison and then Wales and to be able to walk there on a Sunday and take your kids and a lot of the things we talk about we complain about in modern day football. You know the kind of massive gap between the players and the fans and it feels like they're in a totally different bubble whereas with the women it's so great you can stand up on the terraces you can see you're right up close to the pitch they're getting stuck in and their people you know it's boss. Well the funny thing is that's basically how you started you were doing guerrilla journalism at the matches you were going down grabbing the players and getting interviews with them and then suddenly someone at Everton realised that maybe you know you could do that for them which would make more sense so that shows you but no it is like there's no way I would ever have gone to Southport or up to witness to watch you know to watch. It's a long way isn't it? It's a long way to almost like for something that you don't know what you're going to get but let me just like let me just just put like you know a thing on that is that I wouldn't go and watch the Everton under 23 isn't those places are there? 100% So it's not like I'm not just saying that because I wouldn't go all that way. When I was a lad a lot of people got introduced to like Everton by going to goodness and to watch like the reserves and you'd watch sprinkling of kids and senior players and that's how a lot of people got into it and then that's being lost a little bit because we still have under 23 games but not all the time and obviously because it's under 23s now but it is a good introduction into it and I feel like with the ladies being at Walton Hall Park. And I genuinely hope that not to rain on the parade of the women's team but I hope like maybe the under 23s end up there as well or some of the under 23 games end up there as well because to make use of this like little mini stadium where players are close to the fans. It's a boss as well, it's a boss facility. But I think that helps though. But I think the idea of like say you know someone who wants to get their daughter or their son into the game could take them up to Walton Hall Park and you know kids may never have been to a game of football before, never been to see Everton before and the next time they're seeing a team whether it be the Everton women's or the Everton men's playing in the Everton game you've got zed cars and it's like that mini, mini feel of like you know and what's great about that is that you've got a lot of people in the game. It's inclusive. You go to go to some park and it's going on the 23s game and it's just a normal game. There's not many people there and you're stuck up in a stand and I feel like.  Exactly. Whereas I feel like when you go and watch these games, you're part of it. It's right there. The game is right there. You can reach out and touch it and I think for a kid that could be, can't be anything better than that. Surely it can't be anything than reaching out and touching you know being right there. I can't listen. I can't not going to know the difference. They're really not. And if that gets them to the love of Everton and the love of the game and hopefully the men's teams and the women's team then I think that's a brilliant thing. So I think hopefully this season once we are allowed to go, used to say that going back to watch the women's team might be the only Everton team we might be able to watch you knows. Because the talk is that they're going to open the stadiums up for non-league football which would be similar.  And if that means that people can go, you know what, I won't be able to fix, I'll go and watch the ladies, the women's team, then hopefully that happens and hopefully that happens quite soon. I hope so, Peddan. You're right as well. We talk about the business, the kind of lack of business thus far touch wood that will change soon for the men's team. I think everyone is looking at the women's team and there's genuinely something to really get excited about. People are seeing these new players coming in and going, ah, you know, go on, I want to go and watch her. Hopefully people watch this today and hers you talking about Govan and you know thinking, ah, Ped doesn't really watch that much women's football but he said this girl was boss. So do you know what, I'm not a massive fan. But I wouldn't mind checking them out or following some of the footage at the start of the season and yeah, just even things like he said, you could take your kids to the game. Obviously, I'm no at the moment, no fans and social distancing measures but when it's all safe to do so, you know, these kids go and watch their heroes play every week because they become their massive idols and the girls are amazing with the kids all the time in the world from, we'll talk to them, talk to them about, you know, what's going on with their team that this kid's playing for, what they should do, offer them advice, give them an ear, get a selfie with them. And these kids are just made up and they've got all the time because they know, you know, often these girls, it's a relatively new thing that being able to play football professionally and make a living out of it. When I was a kid, it was like I played in a men's football team to have these kids being able to see like, you know, this could be a career for you. You know, when I was little, I used to want to play for Everton but I didn't think I'd have been able to play for Everton. Little girls in the night, you can go on and play for Everton and make a career out of it. And the thing about it is, well, you have to separate the two sports as well. They are two different sports. I think far too many people look at the women's game through the eyes of someone watching the men's game. We don't tend to do that for other sports. We don't tend to watch, say, athletics, the World Championships or the Olympics or whatever and go, oh, why isn't she as fast as Usain Bolt or whatever. We understand physiology. We understand that. Science. Science. Yeah, we understand that. There's differences in the games. We understand the money also that's put into the men's game. It isn't put into the women's game. Not even close. Exactly. Not even close. Not by a long shuttle. And I know, listen, in the last couple of years there's been, since that World Cup, since Megan Rapina came out and she was sort of courted, by saying certain things. And then there was the court case saying that the women's US team should be in more money than the men's team. And that allowed people to take offence at that, even though the women's team make more money than the men's team. That's what I couldn't understand. People were like, well, it's the men's team. Yeah, but the men's team are rubbish. When was the last time the American men's team won anything? Well, it's not even that they win anything. It's that the women's team can fill stadiums. They're so big over there and that's not even a dig at the American men's team either, by the way. It's just like, there seems to be a problem with recognition of, like, they're representing, and in what they do they are representing their country at the highest level and winning it almost every time. And it's not even like people go, yeah, but the men's are so much harder than the women's. Well, I understand that. But the point being is, certainly on that case, the women are really, really good and they are selling out stadiums. So financial, and they have their own shares. And people, I think the women's share for the World Cup two years ago was the fastest selling share on the Nike website for any share anyway. Yeah, like at the time. I don't know whether that's been better, but at the time. So in terms of money made, they deserve the money. But people took offence to that. How dare they ask from them? And these are the things I just don't understand. Like, I don't quite understand why people have to have that outlook on things. Why can't you just go, that person really wants to play football. Imagine if they just went, well, actually, you know what, we're not having any women's football. But women can play in the men's game. Imagine the outrage of someone did that. Honestly, this is the thing. I think some people just for whatever. And I know it's not all people and there'll probably even be some comments to me saying this, but there just are some people whose ego must be that fragile that they can't bear to see a woman playing football, earning money, doing well.   It's still such a big thing of like inequality. And I see posts all the time from people in the women's game. And sometimes I'll just click on the comments just to see some. And you would not believe the things people say. And they're like, no one cares, but they're saying these utterly outrageous things. I'm like, well, you must care a little bit, sweetheart, because it's ruffled your feathers and you really seem to be having a strong...   Exactly. Do you know what I mean? So there's all this. And I think that it's, you know, I think that people need to just get used to the fact. It is a different thing. And as you said, people didn't go in the London 2012 thing. Olympics go, oh, we're going to, we're not, Jessica, and this is, we're going to turn that off. She's going to go, who cares? It's just obscene. And I think it's just such an old, like fossilised way of thinking that, like, has to, well, he say has to change. There's some people who just won't ever change. We will change, because everything changes. But I just think the games on the up, there's plenty of space for it. There's plenty, commercially there's plenty of space for it. That's why I haven't won their own sponsor for the women's team. There's an audience for it. There's a growing audience for it. And let's hope that, like we said, if the women do get the chance to have spectators before the men's game, that us as fans utilise that and go down and support them and get our little fix. Because why not? Why not? And if you can take, if you can take a daughter or a granddaughter or a grandson and open them up to, or son and open them up to the game and go, well, this is a game of 40 and that's Evan. And that's why I think when they change there from being Evan ladies to just Evan, what that says is that we're just an all-inclusive club. Just a different gender. It's just a different gender, so just support them. And I don't go on not supporting the men's team because they're men and I'm not a man.  You can't say that! You can't say birds, but this is what I mean. This is the kind of thing you say, I'm not watching them play footy. I'm not. And it's like, it doesn't work like that.   And you'd be surprised. I want you to enjoy it. No, the main thing is those. The main thing is Sarah, right? If everyone did get successful and they did win a trophy, plenty of people would be there to see them win a trophy. Of course they would. If there was a final or something down, you know. Look at the derby was meant to be at Goodison, we told out the derby that was at Anfield. I'm glad you mentioned that actually because I'd forgotten about that. That was again one of the real sad things of it, wasn't it? It was that whole build up to that Sunday. It was going to be a really big thing and then it got called off. Now we can't because they've been relegated. Oh, I'm heartbroken by that. Maybe we'll get them in the cut. Yeah, maybe we'll get them in the cut. I'm heartbroken by that. No, so the first game is a week Sunday, is it? Yes, it is a way at Bristol, which actually was the last away game we did in the FA Cup. We won 5-0, so. So it's the beginning of a brand new season, isn't it? The beginning of a brand new WSL season. Although the FA Cup is the last seasons? Yes, so that's just reminding me actually. So we played Bristol in the FA Cup last season. We won 5-0, progressed and we had a tasty tie against Chelsea women for the quarterfinal. Now the season obviously was ended early. However, that is going to go ahead. The FA Cup is going to go ahead. So Everton, I think, are playing Chelsea in last season's FA Cup quarterfinal on the 26th of September at Walton Hall Park. So although we've got a very exciting season to look forward to, we've also got still the potential of some silverware. Chelsea's going to be a big ask, but if we were to go through, we're looking at semi-final of the FA Cup, one game away from Wembley.  I don't know if you know the answer to it. Are we allowed to play on new signings? Weirdly, right. This has been a kind of thing that's been causing a bit of frustration. I believe we can. So Haley Razo and Izzy Christensen, we'd signed them in January, but they're both yet to play because they were injured. I believe they can definitely play, but I actually think our new signings can play as well, because otherwise a lot of teams, for example, I think Birmingham, I don't even think they've got enough players to put a team together at the moment. So do you know what I mean? There's all this has been so much going on that I think, for me, I think they're going to have to, but that's honestly an answer I'll have to find out. Keepers updated. I'll try. OK, so it starts a week on Sunday. I don't think there's any clarification yet of when fans will be allowed back in the stadium. Not just yet, but it won't be for the first two games. But I do know that the non-league teams in men's games are allowed people back in the stadium soon, I believe. So I imagine there can't be much difference because of the stadiums the clubs play at. So just keep an eye out for the Everton women's team. Hopefully it's going to be a great season. Hopefully it's going to be an historic season. And, you know, just get behind, support them. Get behind them. They wear the same kit. They wear the same kit. Do you know what I mean? If you've already got the Everton kit, you're basically halfway there. Exactly. If you've got your season ticket as well, do you know what I mean? Also, I've just got to say when they played City the other day and because they haven't got the sponsor yet, they've got to wear this kit without the kazoo thing on it and just there's something without a sponsorless kit. Especially that kit, because it's such a traditional kit. This is an iron ball in it. Although they did wear blue socks, right? They did wear blue socks. But they look smart, don't they? They look very smart. So, yes, just keep an eye out for all the news. There's news all the time. They're like just shining players. It's like they've got Steve Walsh in charge. They're just shining players everywhere. Well, that's where it knows. That's a joke. That's a joke. That was just a joke. Say no more. I think if you want to check out in the build-up to the season, go on the club's website, look at the new signings that we've made, loads of internationals, a couple of you-fingolin players as well. Obviously Valerie Gavan. Just get to know the squad. Because I think that gets you more excited as well when you do a bit of research into the team. You find out a little bit more about them. But do you know what? If you get the chance to go to games, go because you will be invested in it then. You will be invested in the team. You will be right there. There'll be an investment right in it because you'll be there. I think the problem with the women's game is is that because the highlight is to shove to half-eleven on a Sunday night or whatever and you're not really bothered. But I think if you can make that trip when you can make that trip, to go and watch them, I think you'll be invested in it then. And once that dead card kicks off and the hair's in the back of your neck stand up and you're like, it's an evident team, I think all those issues will just melt away because all you... Listen, we've watched enough players from whatever level and everything, and we still support them. So you might just be pleasantly surprised by tearing up and going, it's evident, let's see what happens. And you could have a nice little cheap day out. That's it, exactly. Get down when it's safe to do so. And I always make the point of, as fans, we're often disgruntled by feeling sometimes that, like, we care so much.  But whenever you go and watch the girls, like, they care, let me tell you. And you can see in the way they play. And I feel as an Evertonian and the pride Evertonians get from seeing someone pull on that blue shirt and give it their all, you're going to get that every single time you go and watch the girls. And if that's not enough, then I don't know how to help you. There you go, keep it out. A week on Sunday. What date is that? I think it's the 5th or 6th of September. You might be watching this game after Sunday. It's like, yeah. It's the first Sunday in September, which is like the, I'm going to say the 6th. Right. So keep it out for Everton women's team. Get behind them. And hopefully we'll have Sarah during the season to give us more information. And let's get excited about the team. There you go. Make sure you check Sarah out on her channel as well. I'll put a link in the description to her channel. Check that out. I'll give us this video a like. Subscribe if you haven't already. If you want more great videos, join us over on page. And see you later.


Hi folks, what follows is the teaser trailer for update 17 to the Elite Dangerous Live game that Frontier released at Pitcon over the weekend. We've not had a chance to forensically deconstruct it yet but there does appear at first sight at least to be some intriguing details in the trailer for the next stage of the Thargoid War. We'll be back on Friday after we've had a good look at the trailer with which space news. Until then, O7 Commanders.


All right, I have greased my biscuit pan. I use a brownie-sized pan to make a two-cup biscuit recipe. It works great, okay? So I've greased it with some Crisco or vegetable shortening. And this is sour cream biscuits. We're gonna be using white lily, self-rising flour. We're gonna use two cups. There's one. Self-rising flour already has the baking powder and the salt in it. And now that's a sour cream biscuit. So I have got an eight ounce container of sour cream, which is equivalent to a cup. So if you have a larger container, just measure a cup. And then we're gonna be using a half stick of butter. This is gonna have a lot of butter and cream in it. So I'm anxious to see how these turn out because I've not made this recipe before. So we're gonna be using a stick of butter. And it should be room temperature. And I'm gonna take a blending fork and I'm gonna blend it in to my flour until it's about pea size. So it only takes a minute to blend in, shortening or butter when you are using a blending fork. They are less than, I believe, $10 on our website. If you wanna get to one, there's nothing like it. They're wonderful. It goes right through there. And I know sometimes people grate butter and I have done it even in the past and even have a recipe to grate butter, but I would rather use the blending fork than have it to grate it. So once they look, there's no real big pieces left, it's ready. And now we're going to add the sour cream to it. We're gonna see what consistency this turns out to be. All right, so you can tell that's not gonna be enough sour cream to incorporate all of our flour. So I'm actually going, I think it should be about eight ounces per cup of flour. So we're gonna add another eight ounces because they got to be consistent so that you can actually pat them out and make a biscuit with them. This is gonna work perfect. So it's eight, I think it's, so I think it's eight ounces per cup of flour. So if you wanted to make a smaller recipe, you could use one cup of flour, half a stick of butter and one sour cream packet. But this is a two cup recipe. I'm gonna go ahead and use my hand, y'all. That's the perfect consistency for a batter, for a biscuit. So let me get my sifter and we're gonna pat these out and make some biscuits out of them. I'm curious to see how they turn out. So they got a lot of fat in them. They got all that sour cream and they got double the butter that a two cup biscuit normally has. We're gonna put some self-rising flour in this sifter. Move our mess out of the way and get some flour out on the counter. Be generous because this is pretty sticky. Gonna get our biscuit dough out on the counter. Very curious on this biscuit recipe. Very curious. It's a fluffy dough. So I'm gonna knead it a few times. So I've kneaded about 10 or 12 times and then we're gonna pat it out. All right, so now we're gonna cut them out and I'm gonna use kind of a larger biscuit today. Now these are really sticky in the inside because they got a lot of fat in them. So I'm not sure how they're gonna rise or anything but we're gonna see. I think they're gonna be good though. I think they'll taste good. And I cut these pretty tall. Let me show you about how tall they are. They're about three quarters of an inch. So this makes more dough than a regular two cup biscuit recipe because a regular one only has a quarter cup of shortening. We're gonna get these in the oven and I'll do a video so y'all can watch them rise up. Okay, here they go. I'm gonna bake them at 450 degrees. They sure do look pretty. They're big and fat. Now I made these bigger than I normally make biscuits and I typically flip my biscuits upside down after they come out of the oven. So we're gonna flip them upside down right quick. Do it cause Granny did it. That's what Granny did. Then she'd put them back in the pan. Pull these apart. Let you see how they look. And these look good, don't they? Very soft. They'd be good with gravy. We're gonna pull them apart. It's hot y'all but it's not crumbly or anything. It looks really good. Can't wait to try it. I will put a little butter on it and try it. Well I guess I should taste it without butter first. These just might be my favorite biscuits so far. They ought to be with sour cream in them and butter. Man, that would be amazing with gravy. They're super soft like the mayonnaise biscuits are. They're really easy to make. So you're gonna use eight ounces of sour cream and a half stick of butter per cup of self-raising flour. That's all there is to it. Man, these are good. And pretty, they're beautiful biscuits. Let me taste one. Okay. All right, let's see. If you've tried the two ingredient biscuits and stuff like that, they don't taste like this. This tastes more like a buttermilk. It's not quite as strong as a buttermilk biscuit. But it's better than the two ingredient to make. If you like buttermilk biscuits, you'll like these. Yes, they're delicious. I would say they're really good. I'm ready to eat one. But now I would make sure that after I mix them up, that I do put some flour in them and knead them 10 or 12 times before you cut them out because they're really sticky and pasty.  These are absolutely beautiful biscuits. Nice and fluffy and soft. And I really think they're probably, I'm not kidding, my favorite biscuit. Out of all the biscuits I make, I will definitely be making more of these. I can't wait to make them for the kids when they come. So if you need a good biscuit recipe, I'm gonna tell you this one can't be beat. And you don't have to measure anything. You don't have to measure out milk. So that makes it simple too. And it's already got the butter in it. A lot of people can't even get buttermilk. That's true. So if you can't get buttermilk, you can get sour cream. Yes, so this is the biscuit for you if you can't get buttermilk. This is the perfect biscuit for you. And it really is to me, more like homemade buttermilk biscuits than the two ingredient with the whipping cream. So give this one a try. And I think you're really gonna enjoy them. We thank you so much for watching Colored Valley Cooks where we cook like our mommas did. Bye y'all, y'all have a great day. Love ya.


Hi everyone. My name is Abhi Morris and I'm very excited to be here today. I am excited to talk to you about managing stakeholders as a product manager. I'm particularly excited about this topic because this is a topic that's not discussed enough in the product circles, but it is something that we use every day. And it is something that it's a very common aspect in our day-to-day lives as product managers, but we deal with different kinds of stakeholders both within the company, outside the company, within our team, across teams, cross-functionally. And it's something that's very, very important. And not enough light has been shed, so I'm very excited to talk about this. And hopefully you'll enjoy this session and learn something from it. I thoroughly enjoyed making this one. So I hope you enjoy it as well. So what should you listen to me? Well, I am a product manager by trade. I work currently at Amazon. More specifically, I'm a product manager at AWS. And prior to this, I've been at Facebook, more specifically Facebook connectivity, the goal for Facebook connectivity is to bring more people online to password internet. So I was at a very exciting few years that I was there in working on various different products that we were trying to improve internet speeds and trying to get more people connected to the internet. So it was fun doing that. Prior to that, I was running product for most of the security suite at Ruckus Wireless. Ruckus Wireless is an enterprise company basically making enterprise wireless care. And I was responsible for most of the security portfolio, including some of the federal certifications and such. And prior to that, I was working in a company called Aruba Networks, which is now part of HPE. And I had a pretty long time in Aruba where I joined in as an engineer. And I wore multiple hats and transitioned my way into product from there. So yeah, it's been a very interesting ride. And I believe the opportunity to wear multiple hats and different roles in different companies and experiencing different cultures, company cultures was very useful to me in dealing with different kinds of situations. And of course, along the way, I have made a lot of mistakes. And I have learned a lot from a lot of my mistakes and tried to culminate some of my learnings over the years into into this session so hopefully it'll be useful for you. So a little bit about me. I'm a huge Marvel and Star Wars fan. So if anyone wants to geek out a little bit on some of these, I'd be more than excited to do that. I'm also huge into electric mobility. I have multiple forms of modes of transportation that are that are electric. And I really enjoy and truly believe that's the future. So I'm very passionate about that. And I am a biker, I bike. What about I recently did a century ride was very exciting and interesting experience I learned a lot in training up to be able to do 100 miles in a single day. And even the whole journey of getting myself up to shape and actually the day of the event itself was very interesting and exciting a lot of learning moments within that as well. I'm also a huge coffee buff.  For those of you who are looking at the picture and saying that's just a cappuccino is not it's very different. It's it's definitely one of my favorite drinks, especially in the morning. So here's how we're going to give you up the session. So we're going to talk a little bit of basics first. Let's, let's talk about some of the basic items of who we're who we deal with and what are the typical passions we deal with. And then we're going to do we go get into more strategies which I think is a more meat of this presentation if you will. And then we're going to talk a little bit about some of the things that we need to be mindful of when we are when you're going to buy our day and dating with multiple situations and people so what are the pitfalls to one and such. And then we'll get into other topics. So, you know, one of the one of the interesting things is I wanted to find out what exactly is the official definition of a stakeholder. And this basically interestingly enough captures exactly what what I thought it was and also in our job what it is. It seems trivial and kind of silly but I think it's very important to know that when we talk about stakeholders oftentimes I've seen a lot of people approach it with caution or approach it with, you know, how do I get them to do what I want. Oftentimes people forget that stakeholders are essentially people with the same interest as as you have in the product and making the product successful. And, you know, they they share your concern and your goal of making something successful. So, it's very important to understand that we are all in it to win it. Oftentimes, that approach, at least to me has made a significant difference because a lot of times I approach stakeholders as like how do I get my idea across and convince them and not paying enough attention that that they have the same end goal as well. These conversations are actually something that's helping us both. And that is something very important to realize that we're one one big team and we have the same and go. Especially this is true in a project management or program management world where you know the colors came to not showing properly but you know the x axis is basically traditionally defined as power the stakeholders and the y axis is defined as level of interest that the stakeholder has in your program or project. I'm not a big fan of that definition of traditional thinking. I'm not saying that it's not valid. I'm just saying as a product manager. Everybody's your stakeholder. The only difference is basically your stakeholders or the attention you need to pay to the stakeholder changes as you go along the project timeline. When you're in an ideation phase, you're probably spending more time with engineering. You're probably spending more time with customers trying to understand their pain points. They're probably trying to talk to sales to understand how would you go to market you're basically forming a map within your head. And that ideation phase the kind of stakeholders you spend more time with is very different than the than the kind of people that you would spend time doing an execution phase that an execution phase you want to manage closely. The process of producing the product which is mostly engineering and other functions associated around it.  So, I personally believe that looking at it as a time horizon of a program or project or product and changing your gears depending on what phase you are in is a lot more easier and effective method to look at your stakeholders, as opposed to looking at it from a traditional project management discipline where you're just looking at giving up people based on based on their power or based on a level of interest so this has been very useful to me. And I'm hoping this could be useful to you as well and let me know as well if this is something that you share. You know, one of the things that I feel is basic to a product management individual is KYS and if you're wondering what KYS is just know your stuff. There is no excuse to this and there's no substitute for it as well. If you want to run an effective program or product, I think it's very important to know your product very very well. And it's not just a product you need to know your customer as well. And that will take a long way because as a stakeholder you need to talk to multiple people. And those multiple people have different levels of understanding of the product, the program and the overall function. They all have their specialties, but you as a general manager for your function or your product. You got to have your pulse on the whole organization and that is helping you make this product. So it's very important to know your stuff and to have very meaningful conversations with your team. Unfortunately, no substitute to it. And we got to put in the work to understand our product very very well. And something that I would say is is the first thing you should start with is to understand the product. Talking about strategies, one of the strategies that has helped me a lot is this concept called Concentric Circle of Influence. As a product manager, you have a lot of people that you need to influence and convince whether it's a brand new idea or if it's a feature that we need to build within a product. Or even changing up how we are positioning a product or whatever you're trying to achieve, there are obviously a lot of stakeholders. And one of the effective ways that I have found, especially when you're dealing with a mountainous activity of convincing a lot of people is start small. Like identify a closed set of individuals around you that are very important and effective for the program and get them on board and then slowly move out. So expand slowly and expanding stages. So first get the feedback in a circle first, get them on board, learn from them, discuss with them, and then do the necessary adjustments and then move to the next stage. And rinse and repeat. So every time you expand your circle, gather feedback, iterate and then expand again. That way a couple of things. And this one sounds a bit trivial and something that what everybody will do, but I've been in a lot of situations where somebody took an idea to a very large forum and automatically it went in all different directions and it was not very effective. I think approaching this in a more strategic way of concentric circles of people. I think it's very effective strategy because it helps you to contain your blast radius. And also have more meaningful discussions on what would be the right thing to build and who did for and such so I find having this concentric circle approach is very, very effective. Something that we highly recommend as well because it's also an iterative process. And as you go to the next circle, the circles before that are completely aligned with you. So it's no longer only your objective of convincing the next circle but all of the circles before that circle is now working for you to expand to the next circle. So I think that's a very effective strategy. Think about this as in some loose term or compound interest, right? So every time you go to the next circle, your idea has compounded to all the circles before it. So that actually is helping you to convince the next circle. I think that's worked out very well for me and I would highly recommend to think about this as a strategy when you're looking at launching something or trying to take it to a larger audience. The other aspect or strategy is also building a lot of social capital. So if a little bit of social currency goes a long way, oftentimes we're so hung up on a particular objective or a particular getting something done that we don't build or spend time building that social capital and I feel that that social capital is very, very important. It's often ignored and it's very easy to push it away, but I think it's very helpful, especially when you are in tricky situations when you have disagreements with the team that trust that you build with the team comes a lot of times from the social capital that you build over a period. It's not something that can happen overnight. It's something that you need to put in the work unconditionally and, you know, having that really that trust in the team and putting that social capital or currency goes a long way in actually getting the work done. So there's a lot more trust, there's a lot more belief that that gets built in and that makes life very easy, especially when I'm trying to launch something new or when we're trying to make decisions along the way. Another interesting concept that I've found very effective personally for me and I've learned this the hard way is what I call the 50% rule. You know, if you're walking into a meeting where some decision needs to be made. And if more than 50% of the people are not already aligned with you. There's a very, very high chance that that decision meeting will take weird turns and it can get into a lot of rat holes. And oftentimes we walk out of these kind of decision meetings very unsatisfied because the objective was different and the outcome was totally different. I do say that those conversations and radicals are not important, I think they are important, but keep in mind as a product manager, you're responsible to guide the whole team in that room to make the right decision. What I always do is I make sure at least half of the people in that particular room, of course now it's all virtual but in that metaphysical room are convinced and already know about the problem statement already know about the thought process already know about decision we didn't find them. That actually helps to keep the meeting more focused. And for those of you or those of them who are new in the room or to this idea or concept that you're trying to pitch a position. I think we'll get a lot of guidance and help from the rest of the other half of the room which already know about this. So definitely something that I would recommend you to experiment and play with as well. There's of course adds a lot of work because you know if you have 10 people in the room you need to make sure five more than five of them are already convinced or know about it and you know they have some sort of awareness and in the directional direction you have what you're thinking. It takes a bit of work but it actually avoids a lot of work later on. I mean imagine if the meeting could easily rat one into something else, and now you come up with more action items, more data to crunch. And if you don't even believe that additional data crunching is useful, you're just putting more work that's not that could have been easily avoided. So doing some work upfront in prepping people getting into that meeting is very helpful. And it doesn't always have to be within your immediate team. This could be from outside the team. This could be XFNs like make sure you're picking people that can help you, especially in that room. The other strategy that that's of course has been evergreen is data. And I'm putting this, even though we know a lot about this, I'm still putting it because it's important. And this become more and more important over the course of time. Always use data to help drive stakeholder behavior. Oftentimes it's very easy to, you know, people to think about opinions, but a lot of times having data even remotely related is better than having no data. And this is especially true in some of the non analytical aspects of product building. Think about naming exercises as one where a lot of people have opinions, but having some sort of data behind it. And then naming is an interesting one because you don't have much data behind it. But you can always gather data from feedback, like it could be customer feedback at the opinion polls, it could be any sort of feedback that you collect. If you're an enterprise business, it could be from your sales from your sales engineers, it could be from your existing customers as well. Having some sort of data, whether it's feedback, opinions, etc. gathered that could help make the decision is very effective strategy. And of course, if you're building, you know, if you're building any sort of product which already has some of the data that you can already leverage, that is very, very useful. Pricing is another classic example where you've got to go with a lot of data. You've got to know your computer's price, you're going to know what people are really paid.  I think having that data and guiding the room to make the right decision is extremely important. And every time I have gone with data and I've used data to form both my opinions and also guiding the room to make opinions. I think the outcome has been very different and positive as opposed to when I have gone into the room with just an opinion. So something that I would highly recommend. Most of you do to use as well. The other strategy and this might seem obvious, but I think a lot of times we fail to do this is, is oftentimes you don't sell the vision where we were always trying to sell an idea or we're always trying to focus on the very specific thing that we're trying to do, whether it's a feature, whether it's, whether it's even if it's a product. We're trying to approach it in a very use case-centric way, but a lot of times we don't sell the broader vision. Selling the broader vision actually helps people, especially the stakeholders, as you would know, to think broadly, to expand the horizon a little bit more and think about what the end state looks like. And oftentimes it's always easier to know the end vision and work backwards from it as opposed to trying to form ideas as we go. So it always helps especially in tricky situations that when you're breaking a new concept or an idea always sell the vision first. If we want data science to do something or we want a specific team, cross-functional team to do something, it always helps to first sell them the vision, you know, give them an idea of what you're trying to do, and then work backwards from it and as to how that particular activity or that particular function fits into the broader vision. The person or the team also feels part of this grand vision and it seems that there's more to it than just that. It also brings in more perspective and I think that's where people do give more respect because of, you know, you've considered broader vision and then you're seeing how this particular function or team or individual fits into that broader vision. So something that we typically don't tend to do and then, you know, life gets on and we are so laser focused on getting something done. We oftentimes forget that we need to sell our vision more often than we do and sometimes it's very helpful in getting cross-functional alignment and also contribution to the project. Because everybody wants to be part of something large and this kind of helps them to understand what's beyond the small effort or work that they're putting in. So there's a few other things that I have experienced as well and trying to kind of run through some of those here.  I always read escalation as a lifeline. I rarely use it and I don't know the last time I've escalated something. It's often a bad idea if a recipe for disaster. Of course, I totally understand that it needs to be used in certain situations when you're not getting the help that you need and when you've tried different strategies. But I think if you've tried any of these strategies that we talked about till now, escalation is very, very rarely needed. But you use it extremely, extremely cautiously because you don't want to keep in mind this is your, you have other programs and products that you'll run. So you want to make sure that you have the trust and support of the whole team with you. So try to avoid that. Also try to understand what your stakeholders want. It often helps to do your homework before walking into a meeting, especially trying to understand what are their concerns, what would they object to. Oftentimes I find that we are so busy convincing our ideas and our concepts that we fail to look at the problem from their side. And oftentimes taking a step back doing our homework anticipating what their concerns are and addressing that head on gives them a lot of comfort and then it gives them that comfort that they've thought about it. Like this other person has thought about this idea, this product manager knows my problems and he's proposing a solution to address my problems. And a lot of times you may not have answers to the problems that they may have to the objections that they may have, but even acknowledging it without a solution and then bringing it up front sometimes helps and comforts other people to know that you're thinking about it and it's not that you don't recognize that. So always understand what your stakeholders want, what their priorities are to do some homework before you can do these situations. And I've also seen in many of these review style meetings where people get a lot of feedback. And a lot of times people tend to be very limited about some of these feedbacks because they are like why would the person think about it in this way and try to find the intent behind the feedback. There's always different perspectives there's always different diverse opinions of things so always try to find the intent behind the feedback and especially help the next iteration of the next time you go in front of the same audience, where understanding the intent and taking that head on actually is quite helpful. The other aspect also is up leveling and down leveling messaging for your audience and oftentimes I've seen this especially happens as product managers and traditional companies where you want to use certain slide decks or messaging and you just want to rinse and repeat. So for terms of the recipe for disaster. Now would say always try to up level and download the messaging, whether it's an idea concept product, an objective, or some numbers that you want to finance ideas or anybody to run, always up level and messaging for your audience. That helps a lot, because if they don't, they don't, if they're not able to absorb everything you're trying to say and understand the border picture. It's the outcomes not going to be how you would want it to be. And there are always times when things will go sideways, no matter how much you strategize no matter how much you anticipate failure there will be situations where things will go sideways. And it does. It's okay. Find common ground, find out where can you get back with this other person or team or member where we can find common ground again and then start building from from there on. And that common ground could also be going back to our strategy setting the vision make sure that you know when things go sideways, go back and realign on the ambition like let's start from this is what we eventually want to be this is how they should look like and then work backwards from there and see where where you're branching and try to address that branch. So that's sometimes a lot of times just help me in the past. Next, I also want to talk about company culture. This is something that I believe it's been important to me working in different kinds of companies and different styles of operation looking at different sorts of company cultures. I've seen that every company is different. They operate differently and embracing that company culture is very important if you're if you take up a new job. It's important to know how that company works. Then trying to bring in something. So, bottom line is don't don't fit a ground hole in a square peg so it's trying to make sure that that you're flowing with the company culture. Not to say that that it's bad to bring in great ideas always great to bring in great ideas. But if you're finding a lot of friction. You can consider that like reconsider going back to how this company works and see how we can optimize that if there is a lot of resistance for fresh ideas. So it doesn't mean you should stop but it just means that you need to change the change the approach. Another thing I always see is like even the title of this session, as we originally call it was managing stakeholders it's well yes it is but it's, you know, it's not really managing the stakeholders. To me managing means collaborating with your stakeholders learning with your stakeholders and building with them. I think that approach also changes quite a bit in me like how do you work with your stakeholders. So, and I don't think you're trying to force them into doing something. You're not trying to convince them to do what you want, but all together trying to build something that works for our customers for our users for our partners. And in the process doing something great for the company and poofing your own career objectives as well. So, so always look at this as a collaborating learning exercise. There are some role specific items that I've learned as well as I've gone along. I tried to make it very long but just to summarize some of the top four roles that product managers typically interact with and what the common pitfalls that we do and I have done almost all of it. You see on the slide which is why I made it a point to call it out, especially with engineering, you know, don't tell them how to build me especially transitioning from engineering into product I've done this mistake. Especially initially, in my original days of product management where I used to tell engineering how to build it. Like it was very, very hard for me to remove my engineering head and put on the product head. So always try to stick to the why, like why you want to build it. And then let them figure out how to build it. If there are feedback, always provide feedback on some of the things. But, but don't, don't, don't tell them how to do it. That's what recipe for disaster. Especially with executives keep it very high level. A lot of times we tend to delve in details because we want to show that we have thought this through and we have all the data we need and like we've done our due diligence and I think that's great. But unless you're asked for, I would keep the details very, very high level when we're talking to executives. And if there are questions of course dive deep, but don't dive deep without being prompted to and keep the focus on the company level and especially the executives you want to paint a picture and a vision of how this thing is going to help the larger company. So stick to broader outcomes for the company with this, as opposed to outcome of the product itself so oftentimes for an executive outcome for the product company is far more important than the outcome of a specific product. So something to keep in mind and again up level and down level messaging based on who the audience is. And then we deal with sales show sales how, how this works how to sell like and give them broad guidance and also don't ignore some of the suggestions and feedback again from sales especially in an enterprise company. It's very different if you're in a consumer world. But in an enterprise company, you got to listen more to sales because there are obviously boots on the ground and you get to know exactly what's happening out there in the field. Oftentimes I've gotten rumblings and feelings way before things blew up and pay attention to what they're saying. So everything that they say is is useful but but I would definitely recommend it to the due diligence on some of the things that they're suggesting. Also with marketing, I would recommend collaborating early. A lot of time for managers make this mistake of collaborating with marketing only at launch. I feel that it's a little too late. I think I would recommend collaborating with marketing a bit early. Basically as we're getting into ideation or execution mode. It's probably a good idea to collaborate marketing just because it helps in getting a better understanding of what this is going to do for a customer and kind of painting that story a little bit more clearly. And it also helps in building more cohesive launch plan so definitely recommend doing that a little bit earlier.  And there are times when things don't go as planned and things will fail like you won't be able to convince stakeholders or or they fail to see your vision like it always happens. And think about it as first attempt and learning like if there's always situations when the outcomes are not as desired. But they're always always a good learning exercise so keep that in mind and don't lose heart because guess what there will be around to. It's the same product not the product same feature different feature but there's always going to be another situation that will manifest soon as well and the learnings here would really help that. And with that, happy building. I hope I hope you've had fun on the session as much as I had making it. And, you know, I'm a true Steve Jobs fan and the true Steve Jobs style have one more thing before before we close for today and then that's, you know, remember that this is this is a marathon or sprint. Oftentimes when we are in situations of a particular release or a particular feature or a particular cycle. We often forget that this is a marathon, it's not a sprint so to keep that in mind. It's it's a long journey so bigger relationships along the way and these relationships will help you and things will spoon out and it'll get much easier. As we adopt some of these strategies and also practice because a lot of these strategies are not like on off switch. It's it takes practice in implementing some of these strategies and and you know it says sometimes it's also the way we think. So keep that in mind and and good luck with with with everything and happy building.


Hi everyone, my name is Steph, this is Little Bookish Teacher and welcome or welcome back to my channel. Today I'm here to review Smartie Pop 2, JJ and the Giant Panther by Arndo. This is a really gorgeous series written by Arndo that is junior fiction slash middle grade age or younger middle age because there's quite a lot of text in here and some really great themes that are explored. The Smartie Pop series is the only of Arndo's series that is published in full color illustrations the whole way through. The very first story we're introduced to JJ and his owner Lily and one night JJ happens to get some intergalactic slime on him and wakes up and is suddenly super smart and can talk and is sort of the brains behind any operation that he and Lily get involved in and in this particular book, they're going camping and at first JJ is not allowed to go on the camping trip because he's not a person but the kids all want JJ to go along with him and so he's eventually allowed and this is a camping trip that encourages kids to work together and to be brave and try new things. And so JJ and Lily are in a trio as they have to complete various challenges while they're camping. And despite the fact that JJ is very smart and thinks that he's very brave, he is utterly terrified of cats and he keeps thinking that he's hearing a Panther in the bushes, which terrifies him. This is such a fun little story and it's got some great messages around friendship, around being brave and courageous and encouraging other people when they're feeling uncomfortable in new situations particularly as all of these kids are exploring and trying new things that are kind of scary for them like abseiling. I also like that it explores different types of bravery and that bravery is not just doing the scariest thing for anyone. Sometimes bravery is quiet and sometimes it's just about knowing what you can do and doing the little things to help other people that may not necessarily be showy and out there.  As I said, you've got full color, bright illustrations the whole way through that make it really entertaining. You also have keywords that have a different font or have been made bigger or bolder to help point them out and make sure kids know that those are important. That's also really great for when you're reading aloud so you know where to read with expression. It does have the cute factor because lots of kids in this age category which is probably for seven to 10 year olds, they love dogs, they love animals. JJ is a talking dog who's very cute and gets into all sorts of mischief. I suppose the other thing to mention in here is Lily and JJ live with Lily's dad. So this is a single parent story and we know from the first book that Lily's mother has passed away previously that's all happened off page but she is mentioned and Lily does have memories of her mother. And I think it's really great because it shows how a child is still grieving the loss of a parent but is also remembering the positive things and remembering the positive impact that her parent has had on her life. And with that theme of bravery, sometimes being brave is just being strong and thinking about the way that you can be the best possible version of yourself which is some of the memories that she has of her mother. This is a really fun series. I know lots of kids who absolutely love it and they'll be really excited to see book two come out because it's been a while since book one was first released. And also here in Australia at least they also get a set of stickers at the back of the book which is always fun. But yeah, like this is one of my favorite of Ando's series just because of how adorable and entertaining it is and how can you pass up something that's in full color? I will leave links and information for the Smartie Pop series down below. I'd love to know if you've read it or if you're planning on picking it up or if you just want to let me know that you're here but you don't want to leave a comment feel free to leave a puppy emoji down below. I hope that we're around the world just staying safe and healthy and I will see you in my next video. Thanks so much for watching. Bye everyone.


from the Regency Center in San Francisco, it's theCUBE.  Hi, I'm Stu Miniman and you're watching theCUBE here at Serverless Conf 2018 in San Francisco. Happy to welcome to the program Michael Garski, who's the director of platform engineering at Fender. Thanks so much for joining me. Thanks, Stu, thanks for having me on. All right, so, luckily I don't need to introduce Fender because I think most of our audience would be familiar with Fender, guitars, music, all that stuff, but we're going to talk a little bit about the tech side. Okay. Even though, let me ask, there's a question I usually ask. Most companies, going through the digital transformation, lots of changes there, how does digital impact Fender? Fender started a digital division in late 2015 and it was a focus on all new digital products to complement our well-known physical products. And since then, we've launched Fender Mod Shop where a user can order a customized guitar online, have it delivered in a month. We have a single sign-on solution across all of our web and mobile applications, a guitar tuner, we have connected amplifiers with companion apps to control amplifiers remotely, and our flagship product is Fender Play, which is an instructional app which allows a user to learn to play guitar, ukulele, and coming soon, bass. Love it. I'm guessing that has something to do with what you're involved with on the cloud and serverless side to enable those technologies on the mobile side. Exactly, we've fully embraced AWS Lambda to support all of the services for the web and mobile applications. Okay, so A Cloud Guru is a training company and we've talked to them extensively as to why serverless was a good fit for them and enable them to do it, but bring us through what led to your adoption of AWS Lambda. Give us a little bit about what kind of technologies you were using before and how you got to this solution. Well, we started out building services and go to standard EC2-based microservices, and then we started tinkering a bit with Lambda. We had to ingest a product catalog from SAP. They could deliver a file, drop it into an S3 bucket, so it was simple enough to create a function that can process that file and ingest it into Elasticsearch. From there, we used custom authorizers with API gateway mapping templates to save custom tunings for users. And then as we started building for Tone and Play, Tone especially is a very limited audience. It's whoever buys the amplifier. So we're not talking millions of people, it's gonna be hundreds of thousands. So it was a very good use case to go ahead and do that. And same thing with Play, when you were starting a new business, that's a great model for us that we can just pay for usage. All right, so yeah, it sounds like you were using cloud and they've used its model fit for what Serverless was built for, correct? Exactly, yes. All right, how much is management aware of kind of the underlying technology? Is your group kind of just allowed for free reign to kind of deal with this? Or are there anything you need to go to the CFO and be like, well, are billings going to change a little bit compared to what you might have known in the past? It's, we pretty much have free reign. And our biggest AWS expense is actually what we pay for an AWS Glacier for storage for the raw footage of all the 4K footage from the instructional video shoots. And Lambda on top of that is simply a rounding error. Yeah, excellent. And the mobile apps that you've built, is that a, are there trials on there? Is everybody up to sign up to be able to use it? Is it a freemium model or is it a paid model? The tuner is a completely free application. There is an in-app purchase for like board and scale libraries and some pro features of the tuner. Custom tunings are free. The play application comes with a 30 day free trial. So a user can sign up either on the web or via the Google or Apple app stores on their mobile device. Okay, so with that kind of model, I would think that Lambda would be nice. There's, you know, you said your expenses aren't that high using this kind of service. No, not at all. Like in the month of June, we spent, I think it was like $132 for 68 million Lambda invocations. And to kind of put that in perspective of it, it's what we pay for some EC2 services, EC2 instances that support our legacy authentication service. But we're also moving that over to Cognito now so we can get rid of all the EC2 instances. Okay, when you started using this technology, how'd you first learn about it? How'd you get up to speed on it? Tell us a little bit about kind of training adoption. There's a lot of experimentation. So we have it set up where we use one account for our QA and production environment and another account for our development environment. All the engineers on the team have free reign to do whatever they want to in the development environment and spin up whatever they need to. So we just started playing around with things and experimenting like let's hook up Lambda functions, API gateway, oh, this is going to work really well and just kind of proceeded down that path. All right, great.  Tell us what worked, what didn't. I would say about the only thing we found that really doesn't fit within Lambda and serverless would be really very low latency applications. Like you're doing an autocomplete for a search system. You want that snappy. It's, humans observe, I think it's about a hundred milliseconds, things seem instantaneous. And that's going to be very challenging to get from API gateway Lambda to get that consistently. Great, and you're speaking here at the conference. How that ended up happening? What are you looking to share with your peers? I happened, I was, I submitted a talk for a conference and then Drew from A Cloud Guru approached me and asked me to submit and to tell him I already did. So they went ahead and approved it. And I'm sharing what we've done and built at Fender Digital and sort of what we found as far as tools for monitoring performance optimization as well as some things to really be cautious of when you're dealing with Lambda, especially with regards to concurrency controls. Great, and how have you found the show so far? You were at the keynote, got about 500 people here. Yeah, it's really interesting. I'd really like to focus all on serverless. You see, go to a lot of other conferences there might be one or two talks that kind of focus on that. It's nice to have something completely focused in that space. All right, and from a maturity standpoint, are there things that you're looking for in the roadmap from Amazon? They've been baking serverless kind of into all of their services. So do you expect to stay on Lambda or are there other services that kind of fazz or serverless built into it that you might be using? We expect to stay on Lambda for the near term. I don't, we don't have any plans or looking at anything else like the Azure or Google Cloud functions. Our intention is to stay with AWS. They have a lot of other services. They're new machine learning services. We use DynamoDB quite extensively and so we're probably going to stick with them. Yeah, but it's inside Amazon. They've been expanding their serverless portfolio as it was. Oh, yeah. And I remember when I was at the show when Lambda was announced and then it's Aurora with serverless underneath all those. So do you expect to adopt some of those other services that have AWS serverless kind of baked into it as opposed to just using kind of the Lambda tool? Absolutely. Especially, we just mentioned the Aurora serverless model. That's one that we're taking a look at and evaluating is we've got some data in DynamoDB but as requirements have shifted in the business over time it's really become very difficult to model in DynamoDB. So we're going to kind of take a look at that and possibly move to Aurora serverless. Yeah, I'm curious, you know, how does Fender think of the data involved? Is that something that you mentioned AI? Some of these, is that something you'll be able to take the data and leverage that potentially even make new business revenue streams out of that in the future? We're doing some of that already by just watching user analyzing user behavior so we can improve our products internally. And we're looking at adding more features to where we can really understand what people are doing and then make our products better. All right. Michael, want to give you the final word for your peers out there that might be saying, hey, I've heard of serverless. I'm kind of thinking at it. What advice would you give them? Just dive in, get started. Don't hesitate. It doesn't cost you anything really to experiment with it. That model works very, very nice. Yeah. And it's one of the things that's great. It used to be you would take a lot of peer-to-time and some big investment to be able to try a technology out or maybe you'd get some demo but serverless is pretty easy to get started. Exactly. Especially if you're using a framework like say serverless framework or maybe using AWS, excuse me, AWS's serverless application model that really helps as far as setting up all the resources that your function needs as well. Well, Michael, really appreciate you ripping with us on your deployments with serverless and I hope your peers will definitely check it out. All right. Lots more coverage here from the serverless conference here in San Francisco. I'm Stu Miniman and thanks for watching theCUBE.