All right, hi everybody. Welcome to Boston my name is Peter pull out. I work for Microsoft and I work on the open stack integration of Microsoft Technologies and the larger open stack ecosystem and I'm here today with my colleague and friend Alexander Pilati of Cod Bay Solutions. Yep, and we're here to discuss the latest and greatest for this release cycle for the windows platform and open stack. All right, so we will start with killing these things here. Just a second is fantastic. We try to look good at all times. Anyway, a little bit of history. This is actually I'll take over a little bit history. The open stack on windows project is pretty much run here out of Boston are continuous integration infrastructure for all the Microsoft technologies is Roughly about what five. Six blocks over the river that way. So yeah, this is our home and you know welcome for being here. My first open stack summit was Boston. The original Boston summit. So we've been working to bring Windows technologies into the forefront of open stack for quite some time. And if my friend Alexander here can ever There we go. All right. Okay, let's resume the slides. Okay, here we go. All right, so our goal from the get go has always been to ensure that Windows is a first class citizen, both as a guest and as a functional component and open stack. And you know what we're here to do and sort of prove to you today is that, you know, Windows is actually a first class citizen and there's really no difference in managing your windows instances and open stack as there is to managing your Linux instances. So our goal, as I said, has always been to make sure that your open stack experience with Windows is an open stack experience. So we tend to plug in seamlessly with all the necessary sort of layers that one would and practices that one would typically use for managing their open stack infrastructure. Now we're we go ahead. So how many of you guys are running Windows instances in open stack today? Yeah, yeah. All right. And how many of you are using cloud based in it? Good. So cloud based in it is the factor standard today in deploying Windows instances in open stack. Okay. It's modeled conceptually, let's say like cloud need for Linux. So the main idea here is to make sure that when people deploy an experience, let's say the usage of Windows instances in an open stack context, they have a very familiar framework. Okay. So it's have to be something that is not something completely independent as somehow fits, you know, battling side of a completely different type of framework. But it's something that has to be very natural, both coming from a from an open stack direction. So from, for example, Linux experience for cloud need and everything, and also from a from a Windows direction. So coming from a type of Windows, Windows server re-entercise admin model. And that's that's how actually we work cloud based in it. It's fully Python code. So it fully looks and feels like like like an open stack project basically from that perspective. It's wrapped in a Windows service. So if you are a Windows is admin, you will just be able to to see it as a normal as a normal service. It works on any supported Windows version, including nano server. It has a very extendable model based on plugins and supports basically every possible cloud. Open stack is of course the main one easy to Azure Azure stack cloud stack open nebula mass GC Oracle cloud and so on. Okay. So the main idea is that you could even create a single image and running tonight with cloud and cloud business will take care of everything for you. Here is a very limited list of the things that cloud business need can do for you. Okay. A lot of those things are new from from the attack. Okay. A life cycle and and of course also extending into the pike one. So what what can you do setting host name, creating username and passwords, managing of course your admin password, setting static networking, even on ironic, for example, to connect to the previous session, managing public keys, automatic volume expansion, you know, when you boot different flavors, configuring the HTTP listeners, configuring the time service, automatic updates, sound policy, licensing. So for example, you can move your VM from Prem to cloud. Okay. And get and get already your licensing configured if something that you need. Okay. Setting NTP services, setting the right MTU for open V switch and of course running every type of user data scripts that you might need. More details, there is a full documentation link that you can see there. Okay. So this just like scratching the surface of what club club is in it can do for you. How do we ensure that testing works testing is fully based on a continuous integration framework based on tempest, which is based on Argos and Arrester, which are names coming from the Greek mythology, that we use to test cloud business needs on every possible Windows version. So imagine when you have to test every single patch that comes in on Windows 7, 8, 8, 1 and 10 twice because it's x86 and 64. And then again, Windows Server 2008, 2008, 2002, 2012, 2002, 2016 and even nano server, which has a completely different, you know, surface from this perspective. So this actually the tools that we run, which we run also part of the Cambridge facility, right Peter? Yep. So, yeah, as Alexander said, we take the approach of basically scientifically proving the value of the work that we do through our testing, right? So we assure you that this is all extremely high quality. These aren't toys. This is all enterprise worthy and worthy of being consumed in your open stack deployment to make sure that your Windows instances operate as sort of best as they possibly can. And as Al's Andrew said, we try to do that for every supported release of Windows that Microsoft currently has available today. Before you ask, yes, it ran so some Windows XP in 2003 and no, we don't support XP in 2003. So if you want to run it, it works. We provide it, let's say, as consulting services, but we don't have intention to support this as an upstream feature for the simple reason that it's also not supported by Microsoft, right? Out of those projects, for example, RESTor, which is the project that simulates all the possible cloud metadata API interfaces, that's new actually in the last cycle, okay? It's all, of course, open source and all available on GitHub. This is all news here. There is a Windows Server open stack evaluation image, right Peter? Yep, that's currently available for open stack testing only. We were able to get a special license out of our legal team to allow for that. So I give you, please take it, try it, test it out in your open stack environment if you want prior to baking and rolling your own images. You might be curious to know how many people are actually using cloud-based in it, you know? And of course, like with every open source project, it's quite difficult to determine the real usage, okay? So we have some basic statistics, basic downloads, update requests and everything. And I can tell you that since we started checking, let's say, the amount of instances and cloud-based in it runs that we were collecting, from late 2015 till today, there are 8 million of them, okay? So whoever is telling you that open stack is not real or is not really getting into enterprise, and to people which are saying that open stack is not really Windows-friendly, well, 8 million instances to me seems quite a big number, right? And once again, he did say since mid-last year. So it's quite huge. How to build Windows images? This is also something that everybody is always asking. And again, Windows instances that can run on every possible hypervisor, right? Not only on Hyper-V. Most people, of course, ask about KVM, which is, of course, the most popular platform for open stack, but it works also on VMware, on Xenseraver, and so on.  There are, of course, a lot of updates in the last cycle, even there. They support for Nano-Server and so on. Okay, and it's likely deeper in repository, but let's say this is the main one. And you can basically run tools that will generate the images for you. Basically, they generate an offline Windows image, and then they run it in a Windows machine to apply all the Windows updates, okay? Plus additional scripts that you might have. It includes Virtua.io or VMware tools for whatever drivers you need. Windows updates, custom drivers, custom applications, and so on. Another very common question is how do you run custom user data? You can run partial, basically, CMD, meaning old school, you know, common-prone batch files, batch or Python. In order to determine the content of your user data, it's very simple. The first line will start with PoundPS1, okay? That's pretty simple to the model that you might be familiar with, with, of course, with Linux, right? So actually, if it starts with a typical shebang, then we know that it's a batch script, okay? We also support the syntax that the EC2 folks use, which is simply a PowerShell tag, and then the scripts end, okay? So both of them are supported, meaning that you can have the same identical user data script work in an Amazon EC2 and also on cloud-based init. Here are just two very simple examples of things you can do, you know, just creating users, assigning local groups, domain joins, and stuff like that. If you get more complex, of course, you can run everything inside of a user data script, and, of course, you have only the limitation of the size of the user data that you can have in metadata, but, of course, we accept also gzip metadata, so this means that it's fairly unlimited amount of data that you can run. But if you're serious about, let's say, orchestration, I would strongly recommend to use something like hit templates, do-do over there, okay? So here there are some good examples about how to create an active directory controller. They are all upstream. I think I can even open it here. Let's see if I can even go here. So you see that there is a typical YAML file on a hit template.  And at the bottom, you will find also the scripts that are being executed. Get back. Okay. And here you have a PSM1, so a PowerShell module, and you have also a script that will perform actually the actual configuration. It's here. We are importing the module, and we are simply saying, hey, install active directory domain controller and performing the rest of the operations that we need to do. And here there is a bunch of PowerShell that will show you how to, no, sorry, the other one. There you go. And here there is a bunch of PowerShell that will show you how to actually perform the work. And how to synchronize with the remaining system. Okay. Let's go back to the templates. There is another example for SQL Server. But, you know, at that point you can do really whatever you want there. So we get a lot of questions around Windows licensing in OpenStack. And, you know, it's basically the same as licensing any other Windows instance, right, in your environment. We typically, you know, recommend people if they're going to be deploying Windows Server as a component of the underlying OpenStack infrastructure that you use data center licensing. And in fact, it's probably your best solution in all cases. And if you're going to be hosting other people's content on Windows Server, then you will need the SPLA licensing set. You know, obviously this works regardless of, you know, the Windows licensing is really kind of regardless of hypervisor. And it can be extremely cost effective when choosing, once again, the right licensing model for your deployment.   And, well, the reality of the situation is that Microsoft will support Windows guests when they run on Hyper-V specifically, or they support Windows guests when they're using a certified VertIO driver stack, which today, in order to get a certified VertIO driver stack, you have to be using an Enterprise Linux from one of the vendors you see on that list. And you will get that driver stack directly from that vendor, okay. It is not the Fedora VertIO driver stack that you are probably familiar with that's available for free.  How many of you guys are using the VertIO upstream drivers? So they work perfectly fine. The only issue, remember, is that Microsoft won't support them, okay. So that's the only thing to remember. Of course, with Hyper-V, you don't have that limitation, meaning that the stack is anyway supported. But the alternative is to go with as Peter was saying. Once again, if you're already paying a customer support subscription for your Linux distribution, you might already have access to those drivers already. So now, what happens if you need help directly from Microsoft? Well, you can reach out to our team, our OpenStack team app, Microsoft, by emailing OpenStackapp, Microsoft.com. And that will come directly to myself and other individuals on our team. And we can try to direct you in the best possible way to get your assistance. Okay. Now, let's move to the outside of things. So OpenStack plus Hyper-V, we came, let's say, a pretty long way. Around that, we started in Folsom, right, Peter, for that. And well, we did quite a lot of work. It started a little longer before that. But essentially, since 2010, there's been a Hyper-V driver. So shortly after the original release of OpenStack, with the current iteration, as Alziter said, has been since 2012. Yeah. All right. Some unique Hyper-V plus OpenStack features. So just to make it clear, you can run Windows gas perfectly fine in OpenStack on KVM, okay? There are, of course, some advantages in using Hyper-V as a hypervisor. Now, we live in a world in which hypervisors, of course, nowadays are very commoditized. So it's not that it's the end of the world. If you're not using Hyper-V, use KVM for you running Windows gas. Actually, as Peter was saying before, they are perfectly supported. But there are some specific advantages that you may find useful for Windows, no? So one of them is Windows failover clustering. So people are using, asking, hey, what can I do with my virtual machines, which are leveraged, for example, anytime of host level, high availability, okay? Like VMware vMotion or Windows Server failover clustering, and they want to move them to OpenStack, which traditionally is a platform more oriented at a cattle compared to pets, no? And the good thing is that we have also a driver for the Windows failover clustering, okay? So hopefully, we'll be able to demo it to you pretty soon. Plus, we have remote effects. So if you're running VDI workloads, that's definitely the right thing to do. And there is a new feature, again, okay, that time frame, which is shielded VMs that basically allows you to do full VM encryption and isolation and also having a completely independent security model, to say so, from the underlying host. So even if somebody takes control of the underlying host, your VMs will anyway be safe, okay? There is quite a lot to discuss about this topic, so we wouldn't be able to introduce it only in a short session like this one. But please feel free to come to our booth or to ask at OpenStack at Microsoft.com, as Peter was mentioning. And trust me that that's a feature that really changes the way in which you can consider security for virtual machine in the computing world, no? Now, some people like to ask us, you know, well, who supports using Windows and Hyper-V inside of OpenStack? Well, these are some of the ones that support. We've been working with all major OpenStack vendors from a platform perspective pretty much for the last four plus years. You know, we've often been told, you know, pretty much if you look at the ecosystem, the Windows guest is the only guest platform that's essentially supported by all those vendors, because in some cases they don't support each other. So that leads me to believe that we've got one of the best supported guest platforms on top of any OpenStack distribution today. So we as cloud-based partner with all the names that you see there. So if you want to deploy and then Hyper-V nodes to an existing OpenStack deployment, it's designed in a way in which you can just add the node and make it work, okay? Hyper-C. Hyper-C is a fully converged Windows Server in OpenStack-powered cloud infrastructure. So we use the best things that come out of Windows Server and the best thing that we develop upstream in OpenStack, you know? So Nano Server 2016, storage spaces direct, scale-out file server, Hyper-V, of course. Windows Fillover cluster, OpenV switch, and so on. How many of you guys are running Hyper-V? I forgot to ask you. All right, good. Nice. Thank you. So one thing that we did was to port OpenV switch on Windows. So OpenV switch is, of course, let's call it the lingua franca for software-defined networking in OpenStack. And we knew that it was very difficult for Hyper-V and Windows Server to have a future in OpenStack without porting this. So we made an effort. We worked together upstream in the OBS project with the folks at VMware and the OBS community in general, and we are extremely happy about the results that came out from there. Great interoperability. It works. You can have a KVM and Hyper-V nodes in the same identical cloud. All tunneling supports VXLAN, GRE, STT, GNEV, and so on. The same ML2 OBS agent that we have and also very important, we support OVN, Open Daylight, NSX, and let's say every modern type of controller. Just to be clear, that's KVM, Hyper-V, side-by-side, without any extra really configuration on your part from a networking perspective and delivering a 100% seamless interoperable network for your guests. All right. Okay. Demo time. So what you have here is a fully hyper-converged OpenStack running on top of this Nuke. So those are Intel Nuke's here. We usually keep them at the boot, so this time we decided, hey, let's try to see if we can throw them on stage and make it work right away, okay? We encourage anybody who wants a closer look to move forward and take a peek. So the idea is that those are four hyper-converged nodes. So you have compute, networking, storage, and everything on them, running, of course, Hyper-V, Storage Spaces Direct, OpenV Switch, and so on. They don't have IPMI because they are, as I was saying, the six-generation Intel Nuke doesn't have an MTV Pro model. So what we have here is what you normally would do to simulate an IPMI on a regular machine, which is pressing a button and releasing a button. And since we didn't have any other simple way to do it, we used Lego with EV3 Robotics. And with a custom firmware, of course, and there are some motors under here that will simply press the button and automate the full thing, okay? Then if you want to see more, you can come later and have a booth to see it. There is a controller here. It is running Ubuntu with Ubuntu Mass, which is performing the bare-metal deployment of all the nodes, the only automated deployment of the entire OpenStack. So this simulates what normally happens in the real data center, in which you have, of course, your Mass node. You must control your deploying, of course, the entire nodes inside of the stack. So you don't have to install anything managed. So if you think about the old-school way of installing Windows Server, in which you had to install next, next, and so on, forget about it. It's everything entirely automated. Okay, I guess I can connect to it. So those are the Ubuntu Mass nodes.  What else? Here I have my OpenStack. Let's see if I do an overlist. I should have everything. Yep. Now let's do some demos. Well, first thing I want to show you, I'm just RDPing into one of those machines. Almost. I have no networking. Demo effects. Let's see if we have them. So if you guys are familiar with Windows Server for lower cluster, this is actually where we have the cluster manager just showing that we are connected there, no? Now. And this is just one of the many compute nodes that we have. Many. Four. And I'm just RDPing into it, okay? Now let's get back to the demo. Just fetching a network, which is called Private VXLAN, and just doing an overboot. Overlist. Okay, so I'm just watching my novelist. Spawning. In a few seconds it will be up and running. So what's happening is that the scheduler choose one of those nodes with all storage and compute networking and some nice handle there, no? A bit of suspense. General. In the meantime, what I can show you, if I do here, I'm on a compute node, on one of the compute nodes. I just did an OVS VSC show, exactly like you will do on any, let's say Windows Linux machine, and you can see all the flows and all the configurations that we have there, okay? So all the flows, all the configurations that we have, including all the tunnels and everything. Okay, machine is up and running. So I should be able to go here, and you see that it's here. So what's happening here is that the novel compute driver coordinates with the cluster, so that the cluster knows that the machine exists. Now, if I... Okay, machine running. If I migrate it, for example, well, before I migrated it, I'm assigning a floating IP, and I'm just RDPing into it from another node, from another, sorry, from another shell, but you can see that the machine is here, and I can ping, no?  So now this machine is running on the nuke number four. So if I go here, I do a getVM, I can see that the machine is running, no? And even here, it tells me the cluster that it's on nuke number four. So I'm live migrating it to the first one. So now on the cluster, I should be able to see that the live migration started, and as you can see, the novel driver is synchronizing with the cluster to tell it to go to the other side. And voila, it's running on the first one. So novel show, it tells me that it's on VM1. As you can see, the ping didn't care, it's still running, no? So all this happened automatically without any interruption for the user. Now, let's see what's happening if something more brutal happens, like a full failover. So let's migrate it back to nuke zero four. And the next thing that we're going to do is to brutally shut down the node where it's actually is hosted. Can we spell the name? That's right. You change nuke four, and now nuke four is with capital. Oh, now let's see where it's running. Okay, nuke one. Okay, I'm migrating to nuke four. I misspelled the name of the node, so obviously it didn't migrate. Okay, it's on four, and now what I can do, so here it will tell me that it's active, I can go back on mass and tell mass to brutally power off that machine, okay? So it will talk to the Lego nodes. Hear it? It's pressing the button, releasing the button now, and the machine is dead, no? What's happening is you can see that the virtual machine already recognized that they, sorry, the cluster recognized that the node is dead, and the machine has been live-migrated automatically on the other side. So me, as a user, I'm able to simply reconnect to the machine and be able to access it, no? Because if I look at a novelist here, the machine is happening up and running on VM one, no? Here you go, nuke zero two. Here you go. If you want to see more of these things running, you can come to our booth and show them, okay? So this is a big advantage, meaning all your workloads even if they don't have an application level failover. They work just also based on a host level failover. So essentially what we're getting at here is with Microsoft technologies and OpenStack, we can basically suit the needs of your pets and your cattle. Yeah. Okay, time to resume our slides. If you just want to see how OpenStack works on Hyper-V, there is another open source project called Vimagine that runs on everything running Hyper-V. So even if you have a Windows 8, 8.1, or 10 laptop, it even runs, for example, on a surface or anywhere, or just a Windows server running around, you can just run it and you will get a one node OpenStack fully functional on Hyper-V, okay? It's extremely simple to use. It's just like an X-Nex experience. So the ideal thing for people having to learn how OpenStack works. So we also got a lot of questions about the performance of Windows and OpenStack. And over the last two years, we've spent a significant amount of time ensuring that we can perform as well as Linux in an OpenStack ecosystem. What these fancy colors and numbers show you are the results of the rally test that we did for an Apples to Apples comparison of both KVM with Linux workloads as well as Windows Server 2012 R2, as well as Windows Server 2016 with both Linux workloads. And as you can see by just the nature of the colors, Windows Server 2016 basically slightly outperforms KVM for Linux workloads in an Apples to Apples tempest comparison. There is a series of blog posts on cloudbase.it where we explain how all this works, all the tests that have been performed with rally, so open source or classic OpenStack tools. The last ones are particularly interesting because they are based on a Hadoop cluster. So real enterprise workloads on this scenario. What we're trying to show here is that Windows is a viable alternative as your hypervisor platform. So if you have those licenses, there might be a reason to use it. We already talked about the continuous integration, or you want to add something more now? Yeah, well, basically, you know, we have about 13 different drivers that we currently test in our continuous integration today. You know, we're on, from an ongoing perspective, we're constantly advancing that and adding new technologies to it as we have time and have need to. So, you know, our goal is to assure that, you know, Windows is a viable alternative to Linux in your OpenStack ecosystem. And the best way we can do that is to assure that we're as well tested as everything else. You know, I would like it if you go and take a look for yourself on Stack Analytics and you can easily look for the cloud-based solutions under CI Boats and see how we compare to the others, but I would guarantee you you're going to be extremely surprised. So, from that perspective. So what's coming next? I mean, how do we plan to deploy Windows components going forward? Well, we like a lot the color project, I think, which is brilliant. And we are basically containerizing all the Windows bits as well. So, Windows storage, Windows compute, of course, as in Nova compute, and networking for VS, for the Microsoft network controller stack, and so on. So, and we will have a unified deploying model based on color. There are already patches, which are currently in the process of being reviewed and merged for an initial release, and then we will continue adding more, okay? There is also a blog post available to get an initial idea. If you look at the modern type of Windows workloads on OpenStack, Azure Service Fabric, it's probably what you're looking for. It's working perfectly fine on OpenStack as well. Fully automated, including auto-scaling and everything else. Docker is, of course, one of the big things that came with Windows Server 2016, and before, of course, on Windows 10 as well. And lots of people are containerizing their traditional applications and new applications in the Windows world. Think about ASP.NET and so on. So, of course, we are going to help a lot in that direction as well. On OpenStack and on Kubernetes. So, at Google, next, there was, of course, a presentation together with Apprenda, in which Apprenda showed actually a full Kubernetes deploy using our OpenStack, sorry, our OpenV-switch and OVN model, okay? So, we are now in the process of making a CNI driver for that and the preferred networking model for Windows containers in Kubernetes will be, of course, OVN and OVS. We have a session about VDI, if you are curious, including a fully open-source VDI project that's going to be tomorrow, Wednesday. Thank you. Here we have actually a co-speaker. I have something like five or six sessions this time, so I completely messed up the order. Okay, Peter, I want to say something about... So, for, you know, we got a lot of questions about OpenStack, AzureStack, and SCVMM and WAP. And, you know, traditionally, those are really suited for different purposes and, you know, from where... The work that we do here at OpenStack, we don't really see it as competitive. And, you know, and this is a quote from my employers. AzureStack and WAP have a different purpose, right? WAP is a great solution to build I, as an AzureStack is great platform to run Azure services in your data center, right? And we look at OpenStack as being the solution if you want to have open-source, open-cloud technologies and soft technologies alongside, right? So, you know, from that perspective, you know, OpenStack does bring the standard open-source cloud I as APIs, right? And AzureStack isn't only about IAs, but it brings the Azure services experience into your data center and into, you know, your private cloud space. Okay, I think we can wrap up with one last slide. So, again, this is not a comparison between apples and apples, okay? Those are really apples, oranges, and bananas. So, don't think that you can put AzureStack and OpenStack in the same comparison in a sentence, okay? Because they are completely different things as Peter just said. You get an idea of also the pricing model there. So, AzureStack will have a pay-as-you-go model based, of course, on Microsoft announcements, okay? The hardware will be quite hefty in order to deploy it, okay? So, you have to consider the fact that in order to have OpenStack deployments, at least based on what it's known publicly at the moment, and I put a bunch of links there about what the sources that are publicly available, not necessarily from Microsoft. So, again, this is not, of course, a statement from Microsoft. You will have to have a significant investment in hardware. While for OpenStack, you can start as small as you want. I mean, as you can see, you can have even a small proof of concepts multi-node on just some simple nukes. Lots of people are asking about how does that compare also with a system center, and again, even here, there is no comparison. System center, at least how our customers typically see it, is more like as an alternative to VMware, okay? So, not a real cloud alternative, not even with the web portal on top. So, really, you have three completely different spaces. One where OpenStack excels, one where AzureStack excels, and one where System Center excels, okay? So, we have customers, and quite a lot, that are expecting to deploy both OpenStack and AzureStack in the future. Of course, they can also communicate among each other, okay, migrate VMs among them, okay? But most important, don't think that they are mutually exclusive. They are perfectly valid choices that you can have at the same time in your data center. I think we can wrap up here. So, as we said earlier, if you have any questions for myself and want to see it, come from the Microsoft email address. Feel free to email OpenStack at Microsoft.com, and you will get in touch with myself and the rest of our team. And then for cloud-based solutions, feel free to reach out to check their website or come see us at the booth for the rest of the week. Yeah, we are at the booth, of course, the cloud-based booth, and there is also an ask.cloudbase.it, where people usually ask questions related to our product or OpenStack involvement and everything, and of course, the upstream ask.openstack.org. If anybody has any questions and preference of time and to not step on anybody's toes, we'd be more than happy to answer your questions on the floor later. Or now. Go ahead. Yeah, I got a question. I'm an OpenStack newbie. We've had it for about a month, so a good portion of that time has been spent trying to get images presented to the environment. I've stumbled across cloud-based tools, and I've been able to successfully use them to create 2016 standard and nano-images. Nice. That core is a totally different story. I'm curious if you guys have support for core image generation? We don't have a core, definitely, and that's what we do most of the time, actually. Yeah, I keep getting the boot-res DLL error, but I think I'll follow up. Okay, did you ask a question on ask.cloudbase.it? No, I won't. I suggest you come down to the booth and we'll have you talk to an engineer. Okay, thank you. Awesome. Anybody else questions? Then we'll see you all later and have a great week here in Boston. Thank you.


Aloha. Welcome to Condo Insider, our weekly show about association living, both condos and homeowner associations. I'm Richard Emory, your host today. Been doing us about three years now. And the topic today is to be proxies and voting. But before I do that, let me just say to you that we're about at the midway point for our legislature. By that I mean, the legislature is in session, and bills are introduced both in the House and in the Senate. And at some point in time, they have to be completed in one of those chambers, and then they cross over. That's where we are today, where bills have been introduced either in the House or Senate have either been deferred, amended, or have crossed over and passed out in some form or another. We began the year with this legislative session, I should say, with about 150 bills that affect associations. Now that's because our legislature is a biennial legislature, which means it's a two year period. So all the bills that weren't heard and nothing happened in 2021 were still technically on the agenda in 2022, although experience says that they weren't heard in 2021. They're not going to be heard in 2022. And that's exactly what happened so far. Anyway, well, we know that that's not going to happen because we're at the halfway point. So of the 150, they were kind of alive, which means all the new ones as well, is about 15 left across which means the other 135 have been deferred and have died for this, this legislative session, which means next year they have to be introduced from square one again, because the biennium ends at the end of this legislative session. There really isn't a lot to report about those bills or some interesting bills out there, some good, some bad, but in one of our other shows a little bit down the road, we'll be talking about the status of these, but most of them, if they didn't pass, we would never know the difference. But there's some good things out there and some things to improve it. So we'll do that. We'll deal with that in another show. What gets me started is this type of thing called proxies and voting. What got me on this subject was an article that was recently written and a star advertiser. And the title of it was proxy voting can distort homeowners associations election. I'm going to put it in front of me here because what it basically says is that, you know, because you have a law that says you can, you can't make the meeting in person, you as an individual can assign your proxies in one of four ways. And I'll get back to that in a minute. That that distorts the election results because, you know, you're not controlled by just those and attended for the meeting. And I think the big rub that they say is that under the state law and proxies, you by law are given four choices. One is the board of directors as a majority. So you can say I'm going to let the board of directors who are at the meeting. So if you have a nine member board and five members attend the meeting, three of the five could decide how to vote your unit's percentage of common interest. Two, what they call board majority or board equal equal means that there's five board members, they take your percentage of common interest and divide it by five. And that's voted by each person as a fraction at the meeting. And again, that's of directors that attendance at the meeting. The third is you can choose individual can be anybody you want can be a homeless person, but it can be anybody you want. And if that person doesn't show up, it's counted for establishing a quorum. And the fourth is what they call quorum only, you don't really want to have anyone vote for you. But in fact, you're authorizing them to have the meeting. So the percentage in attendance will make many of the decisions, although depending on what the situation is, example, many of the bylaws, you need 67% of the entire ownership, whether they're there or they're not there. So there's all sorts of rules, whether it applies or not applies. But the essence of that article was that it distorts the election. And they have put bills forward. And one of them died this year, basically eliminating what they call the board of director majority. And what the concept behind their thinking, not mine, is that people who run for the board, if the board doesn't think they're going to be a value to the association, may vote their proxies for the board of director majority, or someone other than that person happens all the time. And they're saying, Well, that keeps me from getting on the board because if the board didn't have the ability to vote those proxies, then I might have gone on the board. The problem with that thinking is, let's kind of put this in perspective. Where do proxies come from? Well, proxies come from basically the law for corporations. All of you who may own stock and an entity. Yet proxy solicitation is all the times that business meeting can be conducted by a corporation. And believe it or not, in those proxies, you can give it to the board of directors or an individual or something along that line. So it's no different than what you see in all the corporations across the state of Hawaii, and across the America for all that purpose, that you as an individual are smart enough to pick who you want to have your proxy. And maybe you're an absentee owner here in Hawaii, and you don't know who is running for the office, the background is, and what they stand for. You like the way your association is being done. And so you support the board of directors making decisions who they think is the best person to serve on the board. She's pretty basic to me, but for years now, I've seen every year a bill come forward, where they try to take away your rights as an individual of who you give your proxy to. It's just nonsense to say that because what they go on to say in this article is, let me read as one of their rationale. The state with much larger number, with much larger numbers of home interstations, such as Florida, California, Texas, prohibit the use of proxy voting because of the potential for election fraud. False. Florida, California, Texas all provide for proxy voting.  Proxies are the most common way to have a meeting and allow people to be represented at that meeting. And so when they write that, it's just flat false. There's no truth to that whatsoever. Now, there is truth in all the statutes, including Hawaii, where, for example, if the board wanted to proffer a bylaw amendment, which was required by the owners, before they could do that, they would have to publish notice to the owners. So you couldn't use a proxy for voting for a bylaw amendment proffered by the board at the meeting, because in effect, the statute provides for that. The same is true in Florida, I believe it is, where you can't have a proxy used for something that wasn't published in advance notice to the owners. But to say you can't have proxies is not true. They have proxies all over Texas included. And the specific language in the statute, their statutes regarding proxies. So there are provisions even in Hawaii that proxies can't be abused. And that being said, let me say one thing, our condo statute says that at any meeting of the owners, remember it's a meeting of the owners, the stakeholders in that association, and owner can proffer a bylaw amendment, which means I could be an owner and I am an owner of condo meeting. I can go to the meeting and I can say in the new business, I'd like to amend the bylaws to do the following. I propose this language. And someone in the audience yells second. Now in that case, the amendment to the bylaws was not proffered by the board of directors. It was proffered by an owner. And it was properly seconded. And yes, the board can vote its proxies on that particular bylaw amendment. I see it all the time. Because you see, we have to understand as the purpose of a annual meeting or a special meeting of the owners is for the owners to conduct business as prescribed in their bylaws and within state law. So it gets down to the basic issue about whether or not you can, whether proxies make sense or not. As a short reminder, let's just remember some things about meetings in Hawaii. First of all, you're required to have an annual meeting. Some of you may have said, well, we didn't have an annual meeting for the COVID wrong, you had to have an annual meeting and there are ways to do it. And the governor's proclamation allowed for certain electronic means to do an annual meeting. So those who said, well, we're not going to have an annual meeting, you may have deferred it or delayed it or postponed it for a date in the future, by calling the meeting order and fix the date in the future. If you didn't have an annual meeting, you violated state law in the bylaws period, then COVID didn't give you an exception. It may have been a reason you couldn't get together in person, but then prevents you because of the governor's proclamation from having a meeting. And under the situation of all meetings, in the state of Hawaii, are governed by Robert's rules of order. And so there are protocol and procedures. And it's important you follow those protocols and procedures, because someone could argue the meeting was not conducted legally and theoretically try to get you to have another meeting and call that meeting improper. We follow a lawsuit even. And so it's important that you understand that there are reasons there are required notices you have to give to members or owners. There are requirements for the proxy and who you can give it to and when they have to be submitted. And so a proxy itself to be valid has to have minimal information on it. You know, people always ask me because the association usually through its managing agent, mails out the proxies at a point in time. And it's very legal looking. And it's a for all practical purposes as a limited power of attorney that you can vote for that owner at that meeting on that date at that time. And so it's limited to that purpose. And so proxies are very standardized. And then you have to have a quorum for the meeting 50.01% of the ownership. And you can have that without having 50.01% of the ownership and voting power there because we call a quorum only rule. And and then you then you conduct the meeting. So when you go to these meetings at the condominium, particularly, you're essentially trying to accomplish the order of business prescribed in your bylaws. In simple terms, beside reports, you typically have the election of directors, you have the approval of a resolution to file your state and federal income taxes. And then you may have to in some cases, not all approve the management company and or the auditor. And then you have new business where members, owners can make motions that are lawful within the bylaws. Example, when I teach this course on meetings, I use all the time as an owner goes to new business and says, I make a motion to cut the maintenance fees to half by 50%. Second, sure, everybody wants to pay less money. However, in every case, the chair then says, I'm ruling the motion out of order, because the bylaws prescribe the authority of the board. And this is the authority of the board. And therefore, this would be considered an amendment to the bylaws and therefore is out of order. You see to do any business at all, I mean, any kind of meeting, I've done some guidance and counseling on parliamentary issues. You have to have the authority to do what you're going to do under your bylaws or state law, or some document founding documents that charter whatever my big. So it doesn't mean you can do any thing you want. But it angers me in a way when you get these. And I don't know why the newspaper doesn't do any kind of research. But these people write these things and say, I'm going to tell you that we shouldn't allow board of directors majority proxies. They're basically saying they couldn't get elected. And so they're blaming on the board who may think that that person shouldn't be on the board. I've seen a lot of boards suffer because they have people who are don't have the right attempt to have a single agenda in mind. But on that note, before I come back, and you can see I'm angered about this to the great, we're gonna take a one minute break, and we'll come back in one minute, we'll talk some more about what another article called the homeowners plight. We'll be right back. On April 1, at 10 a.m. Hawaii time, think tech will be presenting a 90 minute webinar panel program called Burning Global Issues. This will be an examination of six continents by thought and community leaders living in or expert in those continents, discussing burning issues affecting each of them, how they relate to the prospects for functioning democracy, and what we can learn from all of that. The moderator for the program is Pamela Spratlin, a 30 year foreign service veteran who has served as US ambassador and consular official in a number of overseas posts. The panel is comprised of Carl Baker, senior advisor of Pacific Forum on China and Asia, Rupmati Khandekar, director of Global Relations Forum on India. Elsa Jark Hadean, a consultant with Project Expedite Justice on the Middle East. Ilbert Nuagira, an economist in Kampala, Uganda on East Africa. Carl Ackerman of the Social Studies faculty at Punahou School on Eastern Europe and Juan Telo, a business attorney in Bogota, Colombia on Latin America. The program is sponsored by Project Expedite Justice. We hope you will attend and that this program will help you better understand these important global issues. Please go to our website, thinktechhawaii.com and register. Mahalo. I'm back. We're at condo insider talking about proxies and voting. And I wanted to summarize what I was saying that this column in the star advertiser written by this person who professes to represent lots of people in condos says proxy voting can distort homeowner association elections. Let me just say proxy voting is common. It's a way to give not distort association elections to give every individual a right of representation with someone they trust. The proxy, the owner gives the proxy to the person they want to give it to. They don't have to give it to the board of directors. But in many cases, you have people who don't know, but they're satisfied, and they're going to trust the board to make the decision that they feel is in the best interest of the association. We should remember the board is no more than homeowners like everybody else. And to say it distorts the election, it's just simply not true. And this article seems to say that somehow the industry or the management company or the lawyers have some interest in the outcome of the election. Our only interest is to make sure you have an election and the votes are counted accurately. And people are heard and have representation. We have all these arguments all over the country today about voting rights, and proxies assures that every person has a way that they can be heard. And because the condo issues are a little different, that they can appoint someone when they're on the board, or anybody else, just to go to the meeting and make judgments on their behalf. And that's just, that's just how it is. And every year we go through the same argument that, well, I didn't get elected because the board of directors have proxies and they voted somebody else on. We know why they voted somebody else on because they picked the person they thought was in the best interest of the association. And that may not be the person who didn't get elected.  And I get tired of talking about it because it's very easy for people, they all have it right under the statute to include proxy solicitation notices every owner can do that in the annual meeting mail out, there's all bunch of things they can do. But at the end of the day, it's the majority gets elected. And, and I just believe strongly in representation by all owners, and that proxies are a very valuable process. And if you didn't have proxies, you just had the board running out and saying, well, we want you to get the proxy to John, the president, so that we can. So he will represent the board, even though he's representing was john, the john, the owner. It's not going to solve anything.  But in the interest of excitement, my, my, my continued discussion, that this same group that just wrote another article for the Star Advertiser said, state must address homeowner association owners play arguing that the laws need to be changed to protect the homeless. You know, we have some of the most robust laws in the country here in Hawaii, because we're in Ireland, we have so many condominiums. I serve on the recently served on the National Task Force, for reserve study public policy, which was all of the reserve specialist across the country on this panel, talking about what happened in Florida and the collapse of that building and what we need to do to strengthen our reserve study laws, and make sure such a tragedy can happen in Hawaii. What came out of that was Hawaii has some most advanced leading reserve study laws in the country. Is there needs to improvement? Everything needs to improve. We need to be more in line with some national standards. One being our law requires if you pick the cash flow funding analysis, you have to look out 20 years while national standards is 30 years. It's not any harder to take the computer and click 30th of 20, but take about five seconds for every association to make that change and look at a little further and there's reasons why that makes sense. So yeah, we can do this thing we can do to improve it and House Bill 2272, currently alive in our Passover here to the crossover, I should say, is still alive. Requires associations to look out 30 years, not 20 years, because we want to be closer to national standards. And there's a lot of reasons not enough time to discuss why 30 years makes more sense 20. But let me read another sentence or paraphrase other sentence in here. And basically, as you may know, we have people who have licenses in Hawaii. You have real estate licenses, they're real estate broker, for example, an condominium managing agent has to have a real estate broker at the helm. It's a requirement under the statute. So we're licensed as such as a managing agent, because we have a real estate broker. But then you have other dealers have licenses, hair stylist have licenses, masseuses have licenses, car dealers have licenses. And in fact, Rico administers the lemon law obligation, Rico is not just for condominiums. It is for all the licensees throughout the state. But the article goes on to say that more than 50,000 requests for assistance from condo owners and interested parties. That's about the nonsense. Think about that 50,000 complaint. That's about 150 a day, maybe 200 a day work business days. I can tell you last year, we have several forms of mediation and dispute resolution to Hawaii law. Of the 2000 plus condo association, representing about 40% of the population, where there's a provision, if you want to dispute your board's actions, that you can go to this one of these dispute mechanisms. And they're published in the real estate commission's newsletter. For the year last year, we had about 75 for the year, I don't really estimate 300,000 units. So where does this 50,000 think about it? You know, there's only five investigators over Rico, and they have to do all the rest of that stuff, but they report to the advertiser that 50,000 requirements for assistance from condo owners.   The statistics don't support that. But they're trying to create the illusion that there's a bigger problem than there is. So that's just nonsense. They talk about reform is needed. And what they have done in past, not this year, they have suggested that we have some kind of new governmental authority. I reported on this a couple of years ago that one of the bills suggested that the state establish a new department to be headed by the bill's exact words were condo czar. I know I actually liked that because I always wanted to be a czar and I was gonna apply but only all kidding aside. So what they wanted to do is have some state agency, or some person maybe a junior lawyer, or somebody with minimal experience has the ability to overturn any board decision and has the ability to void bylaw declaration rules, make them move. So let me see if I understand this, you have an entity association typical here, a non profit association regulated by a real estate commission, called an AOL, A-O-U-L, whichever one. Some person, one person is going to be able to overturn the board's decisions and or declare your rules, your bylaws and declarations void.  You know, associations are businesses when you buy in to the association, you're given advanced the rules. And you have a declaration was defined kind of the elements and the bylaws which tells you how to govern us and the rest of it. So this whole idea that we're under some kind of plight, because someone was sued and follow the rules and the board's enforcing the rules. They don't think it was fair. So they want to say the whole industry is down the toilet.  So my advice to all of you as we kind of wrap this show up is don't believe everything you read.  But there's nothing wrong with proxies. It's a way to give each person the right of representation. And it's their choice, nobody else's choice. And the association industry doesn't have 50,000 complaints a year. It has known dispute resolutions with 75 last year for the whole year. And so that's just a bunch of BS and and you got to understand that all the cyber rattling and excitement and exaggeration doesn't help the industry become better. And on that note, I want to thank you for listening to my lecture today. You can see I had a little women figure on it today, because I get tired of having to spend a lot of my personal time dealing with things just have no truth to them whatsoever. On that note, hope to see you again in the next condo insider show. And thank you for watching.


In the same vein, access to good and quality education for the go-child in Nigeria has been identified as a key factor for sustainable growth and development of the nation. This was the consensus of stakeholders at the round table on mainstreaming the go-child education, challenges and policy recommendations organised by KUKA Centre in Kaduna. Plus, the beneath-correspondent Habilah Dorefai's report is presented from our studios. The focus here is to address the challenges faced by go-child in northern Nigeria and the need to promote their education and empowerment. The program officer, KUKA Centre Methodius Café says prioritising boys' education over girls has negative impacts and requires a change in societal perceptions. Girls, how parents and teachers can be empowered in order to ensure that the girl's child has adequate education, but that is not enough. That is why the Centre has decided to come up with this program in order to emphasise, to reiterate the importance of the girl's child education and how can a girl's child have an equal opportunity as the male child in our community. For us to have that successful mainstreaming of girls' education, all of these barriers need to be eradicated, some of which early marriage, like we mentioned, we mentioned long distance of schools in communities where it affects girls' access to education. We also mentioned poverty rates, we mentioned the mindset of community people, even of parents who believe that the education of a girl ends in the kitchen or ends with her husband. The stakeholders say insecurity, domestic violence, poor learning opportunities and gender discrimination have limited go-child education in communities, hence government and policy makers need to address the challenges. However, Kadna State Commissioner for Human Services and Societal Development says the government remains committed to providing access to quality education. He adds that they have partnered with Google to train 5,000 women and girls in information communication technology. Religious and traditional rulers have a role to play in ensuring that their society, their communities are safe. Teachers also have roles to play that when you are in school, what is your conduct? How would you encourage the girl child to stay in school? Educator boy, you train a man. If you educate a girl, you educate a society. The government is committed to eliminating challenges for accessing education in every field. Train 5,000 women and girls in data science, artificial intelligence and entrepreneurial application of digital technologies. Some of the girls say their gender does not connote weakness but strength, noting that the imbalance and inequality affect them negatively. They called on the government to provide an enabling environment for girl child education to thrive in the society. In so many households, they don't really educate their girls because to their belief that a girl's education will always end up in the kitchen. A girl's education is useless but I feel great because it's a privilege for me to be educated. My message to them is that they should try their best to get educated so that they can become good wives and good mothers to their children. An educated female child is a good mother. She is always respected and given that dignity and she holds her pride at all. They should figure out a way to send their children to school since they did not go to school. So let your children to go to school and enjoy the benefit of living a good life. Without education, you cannot be able to mingle with people. Even if you mingle with people, you will be afraid of speaking. So please, the Beggin Government should help and try to help with my education. To promote access to education, stakeholders insist that government, parent, religious and community leaders should increase attention to girls and leverage on their potential as future leaders and change makers.


Hi everyone, Joe for JazmiceCaseRakes.com coming at you with 2023 Bowman Chrome Baseball HTA Edition, 12 box pick your team at number 9, 12 box is just 3 cards a box, all autos so basically all the Bowman Chrome autos without the other stuff, the inserts and the other base cards and what not. Michael you ended up with last spot in Mojo with the Marlins, now most of you have a rooftop next to your name, that means you won that spot in the team random filler that we did. So congrats to that we did a two for one on that as well, if you're wondering hey I only got one spot why do I have so many teams, alright there's the case and good luck everybody it's Bowman we're prospect hunting, so let's see if we can find some nice prospects in here, empty box and good luck, so what I'm going to do I'm actually going to just to make this go by a little bit more quickly, I know it's a little later at night for everybody but I'm going to open up half cases at a time here, they're in those slider boxes, we got an Emmanuel Torero that's going to go to the Pirates, it's going to go to Kyle, ooh some color here gold shimmer 41 out of 50, Junior Marine 41 out of 50, it's a sharp looking one for Eugene and the Royals, then we've got Robert Moore 11 out of 250 purple chrome autograph for the Brew Crew and it's also for Eugene, there you go nice start and a quick break right there we'll save these slider boxes they'll eventually get recycled back to you whenever we do a break that requires these slider boxes and we've got a Christopher Torren for the Snakes, Matthew S with the Diamondbacks and we have another Diamondback, Christian Serda, two of the three Matthew, almost a personal box for you and then we've got Justin Henry Malloy speckle auto 36 out of 2.99 for the Bravo, that's gonna go to Michael, there you go Michael, Michael L with that one, Lucia, next auto is Robert Moore, another Brewer autograph for Eugene, we see some blue down there too, we got Griff McGarry for the Fightin' Phil Zack with the Phillies, fourth rated Phillies prospect nice and we got blue nice Brandon Maia, 144 out of 150 blue Raywave autograph, one of the bigger names in this set, Ivan with the Yankees, number nine international prospect in that class, congrats, got another Diamondback Junior Franco, a few different Diamondbacks from Matthew, we got another Diamondback Christian Serda, Matthew with the Diamondbacks and the green is gonna be a Dodger, Junior Garcia, 65 out of 99, green chrome autograph for my Dodgers, Tim picked up the Dodgers straight up and auto revealing itself early, I think the sponge has gotten caught on there a little bit, all right so there's Torren Montgomery you want to pop out early, 80 out of 250, that's for the fish and that's last spot mojo, Michael Langer with the Marlins, 70% of the time last spot mojo hits 100% of the time, and your other autos we got Eddie Beltre, Padres that's gonna be for Matthew and then we got Joey Esses for the A's that's gonna be for Ivan, number 12 A's prospect, always good to see that, then we got Leonardo Bernal, Cardinals, Zach Gwynn with the Redbirds, ooh more Cardinals, Luis Rodriguez, Gold Shimmer, 26 out of 50, Gold looks really sharp there, another Cardinal for Zach, then we got Kennedy Corona, 275 out of 299, speckle autograph for the Astros, that's gonna be for Brian Crouch, won that team in the filler, and the next six, good luck everyone, we got a Jesus Galiz for the Dodgers, that's for Tim, then we got Samuel Bezalo, Bezalo, nice that's one of the bigger ones for the Orioles, Kyle, your number 13 Orioles prospect, 13 out of a really great farm system out there, and Carlos Ella Cruz, 339 out of 499, another great prospect, that's for Zach and the Phillies, nice, big dude too, 6-8-2-10, did you sue the doctor for malpractice? I'm just gonna tell you that until you're like 45, Miguel Tomaras, trust me Michael, you're just like, I'm 50 years old now doc, Reyes, that goes to King D, there you go King D, right and he's like, he's still there, they're Yosfer Zulueta, that's another nice one, Michael Ossia with the Bluebirds, that is the your fifth ranked Blue Jays prospect, and we got BJ Cook, 140 out of 499, A's, Ivan, cooking for the Twins, Ohmari Daniel, great use of the canvas there, nice big autograph, that's going to be for Jared and the Twins, we got Dario Barrero, that's for the White Sox, that's going to go to King D, both his team's hitting, got Last Bond Mojo in the team random, rewarded with a couple autographs, and a Hendry Chevilli Orange Wave, 12 out of 25, nice Jaspy Orange parallel for Jared, seventh best talent in that international class, always good to see that, we got Jordy Vargas, Bowman first autograph for the Rockies, Ivan with Colorado, we got Hans Monteiro for the Yankees, another Yankee for Ivan and the Yankees, Yankees, Yankees, Yankees, Green, another Yankee, wow, Luis Cerna, 70 out of 99, nice, so two-thirds of the box for you Ivan and the Yankees, that goes along with that Blue Ray Wave Maia from earlier, nice break, we got another BJ Cook, going to Ivan, Ivan cooking, middle card is Daniel Guarte for the Brew Crew, that's going to be for Eugene, number 16, Brewer's Prospect, and we got another Griff McGarry, this one is 217 out of 499, Zach Gwynn and the Fightin' Fills, the Phillies, all right, final three autos, thanks for the fill everybody, appreciate you, more baseball on jaspyscasewrakes.com, check it out, I think we got a hobby version of this with no filler, so you can pick your team straight up, Everett Cooper III for the Nats, Anthony with the Nationals, and then we have Kenny Gomez for the Astros, that's going to go to Brian Crouch, and the final card of HTA, pick your team nine is going to be for the Brewers, Carlos Rodriguez, Refractor Autograph, 129 out of 499, and that is Eugene with the Brew Crew, there you go gang, thanks for watching, thanks for breaking with us, more Bowman Chrome in the store, hobby edition in the store, so check that out, jaspyscasewrakes.com, and I'll see you next time for the next break, bye-bye.


complete and total character immersion, okay? When playing the game at the highest level, it's all about the complete and total character immersion, all right? So that's the plan for today. We're going to completely and totally character immerse ourselves into the game.