Hi, everybody. I'm Peter Diaz, CEO of the WMHI. I'm here with Amy Golding, the Director of Psychology. We happen to be married, but that's not why we're here. The reason I'm here today is to tell you that I come from a long line of warriors. No, not this type of warriors, but the type that worries a lot. We have a PhD in negative thinking, going generation after generation. PhD in negative thinking. I was so good. Ever since I was a child, I could walk into a room and notice anything that was wrong with that room, or even slightly dirty. In fact, my mother used to tell me a story, which I don't actually remember because I was so little, in which she took me to a friend's place, and a friend was offering me biscuits or chocolates or something, and I would keep declining them. And my mom, when she came out, she said, why did you decline everything that lady gave you? And I said, as a child, because everything was so dark, meaning dirty. As a little child, I was already so aware of that. Well, do you think that I grew up as a very happy child or as a very anxious child? I grew up as a very anxious child. And my relationship to the world was not a good one. I could hardly go out the door. I could hardly have friends. I could hardly relax to go out and make friends. Let alone go to school. That was a horrible, horrible experience. And if you see pictures of me when I was little, very often I have dark undertones under my eyes. I'm not a very happy look to me. I've changed. I have grown up.   And this is why we are talking about anxiety today. We want to talk to people about what is anxiety? How do we know if we have it? What are the symptoms of it, right? Signs and symptoms, and what can we do about it? Is that right? But we do want to talk about that anxiety because it's the number one mental health issue around the world. So the research, it differs a little bit from country to country, but in the US they're saying 19% of adults experience anxiety each year. Severely. Anxiety enough that it could be classified as a disorder, that it could be diagnosed, because a little bit of anxiety is normal. It's huge. 1 in 5. That eliminates people that have got high anxiety, but it couldn't be diagnosed. They're kind of handling it. But it's still horrible. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, a little bit of anxiety is normal. We all have some. We want to have some. If you don't have any anxiety, then that actually becomes a problem because you're not safe. But that's another story. This is severe anxiety, the kind that you're describing here, which you had for about 40 years, I think you said. I grew up with it. A huge sense of dread that obviously made me very sick. I had asthma. I developed rashes because that's what happens with anxiety. I remember when I was in my early teens, developing huge stomach pains, really, really bad stomach pain. I remember when I first went to do my license to drive. I got so sick. I got so sick. I could barely move in the stomach and it was all nerves. It was very, very disruptive. It's not a nice experience. That's why I like to help people get a handle on it.  It does.  You've learned how to overcome that completely. But the impact I think is often underestimated. I've worked with a lot of young people especially that are really struggling with it and it impacts their schooling. It impacts their social situations. It has a flow on effect going forward as well. So it's something that we definitely want to nip in the butt and address as soon as possible. One of the questions that a lot of our audience have, people have asked us in training as well, is is it worse now than ever before? Has it always been this way and we just didn't talk about it? Having been now a few decades, at least three decades, observing from a mental health perspective the world and trends, I have to say that the last three years, ever since we got locked down because of the pandemic, the rate of you know, the signs in people of anxiety, irritability, frustration, the willingness to have lash out at people, definitely has tripled or quadrupled. And we're getting reports from other psychologists around the world saying the same thing. It's not just us. It's not just our own anecdotal evidence. But definitely we have seen an increase. Not just individual anxiety. I also have a post on the collective or global anxiety. And we definitely, there hasn't been a moment when we have not been bombarded by a crisis. If it's not the virus, it's the fluid. If it's not the fluid, it's Ukraine. If it's not Ukraine, it's Gaza. If it's not Gaza, it's chaos farting and ruining the planet. There's something all the time trying to get our attention and freak us out. And I'm seeing this, had a conversation just this week with a manager at a call center. And they want to upskill their staff around how to handle their own emotions when people are screaming down the phone at them because so many of those customer facing roles are seeing increased levels of irritability and aggression and anger from people, which we know is anxiety related. They want to know how do we not let us affect us so we can keep doing our job. That's true. We have had an inordinate amount of inquiries from call centers. Yes. Yeah. And customer facing roles retail, etc. Anywhere where you're dealing with the public. But interestingly, one of the things he said is that some of the research that they've done has found out that in election years, it's worse. Right. And this goes to the core of anxiety. It's about doubt. It's about fear. It's about uncertainty. And haven't we have had a lot of that over the last few years. So but I thought that was very interesting data election years. And this is one. Yeah. You know, this is an election. So the US anyway, which impacts the rest of the world. So something to be aware of. There's definitely a higher levels of anxiety. And people are watching. I mean, we've got right here in Europe. We have the farmers on the streets right now in almost every country. Talk of food shortages. Water shortages. You know, so there's there's a lot of things in people's minds that it's logical it's going to be driving them inside. We do think that there is a very real increase in the amount of anxiety. There is also more awareness and that there is also lowered criteria. But I think it's both and happening here. That's my assessment of the situation. The umbrella for the diagnosis of anxiety has become bigger. So more can be included. We are more aware. We are more likely to say we're stressed. And when people say I'm stressed, it means they're experiencing anxiety. It's another word for anxiety. So people are more likely to use the word stressed rather than pressure, which is a problem. And I talk about that in another video. Is it stress or is it pressure? Yeah. But even even with those distinctions, I think we still have more anxiety. And what are some of the common misconceptions about anxiety? Because for those who don't experience it, it's very easy to say, oh, well, just, you know, get over it or put it out of your mind or, you know, don't worry about the things 95% of them are never going to happen. I mean, all of that sounds and it's true. It's but I think I think for me, the biggest misconception of people, I mean, there's many, but the biggest one, the number one misconception that people have is that anxiety, that they shouldn't have any anxiety. Okay. Anxiety is a natural emotion. It's there to protect us. If, you know, a mother is supposed to experience some anxiety about where her baby that is just starting to crawl is putting their fingers. That is normal. That is good. Of course, it's not normal if she can't sleep because she's freaking out about the baby dying next to her. That's become a problem. But, you know, at a normal level of anxiety, it's fine. So how do you know what's normal and what's not? Are you able to function? Is this serving you or is it getting in the way of good functioning? By the way, the other misconception is that anxiety is a force on its own and people have no control. As an anxiety, PhDs, self-suffering expert, I can guarantee you the anxiety was mostly created by me not controlling how I was looking at the world. Okay. That was one aspect. The other aspect had to do with the food that I was getting, that it was impacting my gut. So it was a bit of both. But the number one was my mindset and how I was looking at the world. So anxiety is not a monster that has a grip over you. It's a tool that we are not using adequately. And this is really important. I remember an interaction I saw in a workplace recently because it can be something as simple as the language that we use around anxiety. And what happened was the manager was very much aware of mental health and well-being, which is great and fantastic. And they knew that this staff member had problems with anxiety from time to time. And so compassionately, very careingly, she was checking in with this staff member every day, how's your anxiety today? And it was meant to be supportive. But as a psychologist, I looked at this and went, oh, okay, if you really understand what's going on here, what we're doing is you're encouraging the worker to check in physically and mentally internally for them and go, where is, first of all, my anxiety as if it's like something that you own and that you cling to and that is almost a part of you. And so where's it at today? And then immediately you start looking for it and you start searching. Oh, there it is. What you look for, you'll find. It's a bad idea. So there it is. Oh, yes. And today it's at a seven or it's an eight or it's a 10 or it's a four or whatever it might be, but immediately you start over monitoring it. And that's going to make it worse for the person. Not just that, but then they start talking about it. And so they get to have a lovely, you know, conversation rapport building conversation between the two, but you emphasize it by focusing on it. So we, one of the things that we did was sort of educating the manager around what are other ways that you can show that support and show that care that aren't going to actually make the anxiety worse for the person. So it's a real change in thinking that's required sometimes, but just something as simple as the language that we use can have a big impact. And I think not a day goes by when I talk to a manager that is having problems with their staff in which I walk away thinking that at least 20% of 10 to 20% not a lot, but just some keywords they're using on an everyday basis is contributing to the negative results that they're getting. They're really good managers. They're really good managers and beautiful people that care because otherwise they wouldn't be talking to me or even putting up with me because I talk very frankly. So these are these are really good people and really skillful, really prepared, but they have a blind spot as to certain words that they're using that is contributing to the anxiety of the team. And you don't know what you don't know. No, you don't know. And this is where we come in to train them and they do. And this is why people report such good results from a from workshops because they walk away saying simple changes that I can make that are going to have a big impact. I can't believe I wasn't using these words and or I was thinking in this way. So you said before, you know, sometimes people say, you know, 95% of the things that you're afraid of don't come true. And if you say that flippantly, that's a bad thing to say. But you know what, that was a very useful thing for me to it was a sobering thought. Because what am I afraid about? You know, if most of the things I'm afraid about won't come true, why do I even give them time or space? You know, so that was deal with them when they happen if they happen, if they happen, but they're most likely not going to happen ever. And and another coach once held me sober up a little bit, because I was he was think I was talking about a problem. He said, Okay, well, let's say that what you are afraid of happens exactly how you're thinking. Okay, okay. He said, And what's the problem then? Oh, I thought, Oh, okay. I hadn't thought about that one. I was focusing on the first problem, but not if it actually happened. So I thought, Okay, well, I guess if that problem happens, I'll be destitute, I'll be on the street. And he continued. And what's the problem then?  So if I'm destitute, I guess I'll look for a bridge. Okay, so what's the problem? Sleep under sleep under. Well, the first, but I don't I'm exaggerating. I could I could go to a friend's house. I'm sure for one night that would be okay. So I started finding solutions to the worst problem that could happen. And it was great. We do the what if exercise. And so what if that does happen? What if, what's it? Oh, well, I have a plan. Because what if I lose my job? Well, I would get another one. Yeah. Oh, okay. Well, it might even be better than the last one. And and people too often we end up what if and we don't actually answer the question. We just say what if and then anxiety instead of actually going, Oh, okay, I have a plan now, if that was to happen. So like, and then I can put it aside. But this is interesting, that ability to put it aside is crucial because and this kind of relates to some of the gender differences that we see. So statistically speaking, women tend to experience more anxiety than men. Now there's questions around is it just women are more likely to talk about it or to express it in a way where they get a diagnosis. But let's say for, let's say that it is a real significant difference in the actual experience of anxiety. We also know that the way women's brains work, there's more connections between the different parts of the brain. So one topic relates to another relates to another relates to another and it's very easy to get caught in these rumination patterns. Whereas men and I'm speaking generally here, of course, there's always exceptions. Men generally are better able to compartmentalize and put something in a box and file it away. That's actually a really good skill that could benefit all of us to learn how to do that. Now, of course, sometimes we need to go and open the box again and do some work with it. But that ability to focus your mind on where you want it to go, I think is the core of dealing with anxiety. See, this is where I was failing most of my life. If I was anxious, I couldn't even sleep. I was not able to compartmentalize anything. So it would all get mangled up. And that's why the anxiety. Yes, absolutely. And this is the challenge because sometimes everything is easier said than done. But it's a practice and it can be achieved. It's absolutely a practice. I mean, someone who's in the grips of a panic attack and anxiety to say, control yourself, that's not going to help. But outside of those states, practicing that ability to direct your attention to, all right, I'm going to lean into the what-if question or I'm going to stay present in the here and now. And to be able to direct that focus is crucial. And, you know, from life experience, I'd have to say that there's no silver bullet and there's nothing, not a complete wrong way to do it. I have seen some people react really well from somebody coming and say, stop it right now. And they've gone. The shock factor. Have stopped them. It's a patent interest. Some people go, that would never work. That would make it worse. Yeah. Well, some people, that would make it worse. But for some people, it works. So don't knock anything out. Because it doesn't work for you. It doesn't mean it doesn't work for the rest of humanity. It just means it doesn't work for you. Find something else. Or it doesn't work for you at this point in time. Yeah, that's right. But sometimes something you've tried before didn't work them, but it does now. Because things change. We change. To me, the miracle thing for me, if I have to look at one thing that has helped me, was gratitude lists. I did them for five years straight, every single night. And that was a game changer because it taught my brain to focus on the nice things in a room, the nice things in people, the nice things in life. And studies have shown that to a woman that you teach your brain to focus on the nice things, it forgets how to do anxiety so well. Yeah. And that's a good thing. Absolutely. So that's what worked with me.  Well, I couldn't create them. But that works for me. It sounds so simple and so cheesy, but it's like proof. And it's hardcore evidence. Hardcore psychology behind it, right?  Let's not also forget the biological, the physical aspects, both internal and external. Diet has a huge role to play. Hormones have a huge role to play. Maybe that's part of the male-female differences there as well in how we experience anxiety, at least, because I think my suspicion is men do also experience a lot of anxiety. They just express it and show it differently, or they express it and show it less. But I think, and I do think it's different between the sexes, but I also want to draw attention to the role of women at certain times in their cycle. And there's a lot of people that, again, we don't talk about it much because it's kind of personal, but there's a lot of women that really will acknowledge to themselves at certain times in my cycle, I feel highly emotional, highly stressed. Is that you experience too? Oh no, not me, never. I'm perfect and always balanced and reasonable. And yeah, I'm talking about other women. But the anxiety grows up, you notice that? Oh yeah, you know, well, most people will say they can notice. I know you can handle it. I mean, irritability is a big one that's related with anxiety. So stress levels rise, it comes out in irritability, normally with those closest to us. And some women do seem to be more susceptible to it than others. And if you are one of those people, then you've probably gotten awareness of it. And you've got to be able to coach yourself through those periods and saying, you know, this is just going to be, you know, just going to take it easy on myself for the next couple of days, you know. That's very insightful, because I never thought about it that way. Because as guys, every guy that I talk to that is in a relationship, we experience the irritability, right? But I never thought, and we've never discussed it, that it might be an issue of fear behind that, like anxiety. I'm worried about something, and I kind of express it, so I lash out. But not necessarily that you'd be worried about something, just physically. Your body is giving you those chemicals and those signals and those hormones that you're on edge. So there's something that exists in the out, the dish is not being washed, for example, or something small. You're layering it on top of that, I'm already on edge, and now there's this, and I'm already on edge, and now there's that. And so it overwhelms your system. So what do you find that helps then in that situation, just waiting or? Well, the mental stuff that we're spoken about, the patience, the tolerance, don't make a decision in a crisis is one of the sayings we have in psychology. So being aware and having a supportive network around you, where if people know what's going on, they can say, all right, I'm not going to react to that person quite so much. Never say, never say it, but just know it mentally. All right, I'm just going to be patient with this because I know it's not the norm. Well, I've never experienced a period in my life, so I can't speak from experience. But I have experienced anxiety and delusions because I eventually was diagnosed with bipolar depression. I had delusions, severe enough in which my technique was to rely on a trusted friend, somebody that could tell it to me straight. So if I'm thinking, at this person is whatever paranoia thought was invading my mind or I was producing my mind at the time, I could trust that this person would give me good little advice, saying, no, don't worry, it's not exactly like you see it. It's just wait and it'll be okay. And that was very useful. So maybe sleep on it. Don't make a decision in a crisis, just sleep on it. But I can sleep. Why do I do this? That's a big one. For me, I tried volume, temacepan, which is stronger than volume, just double the doses. And I didn't like the feeling of it. It helped me sleep, but it was a very interrupted sleep. I tried drinking that didn't help very much because it's interrupted drinking. So I moved on to meditation, gravity lists, breathing, brain and training technologies is where you put sounds. I tried everything. Camel mile, three or four bags of camel mile that different things work on different nights. You know, sometimes even even making sure that you're not too hungry before going to bed helps. And I think on top of that is you don't layer it. So and by that, I mean, don't get anxious about the feelings of anxiety. Because then you've got two layers of anxiety. So or about not sleeping. You know what? I'm doing this. I'm doing this. I'm doing this. And just the ability to kind of accept not being at 100%. And say, there's nothing more I can do at this point. It's okay. There's no point being stressed about your anxiety and then you just said something that reminded me this idea of being at 100%. I was always perfectionist. If you're a perfectionist, you think that there's this ideal feeling that you should be living in. After many decades of life, I can guarantee you there's no such thing. Nobody ever feels the 100% unless they're on drugs. And we do not recommend them. But nobody feels that 100%. It's not possible.  You know, a good day is not something where everything is perfect. A good day is a day where you focus on the perfect. But I have heard myself saying something and it feels like some of that, all that, that ancient wisdom from our grandmas is actually so relevant.  Tomorrow could be better. So simple, but we forget that sometimes it's okay to go. Well, today wasn't the best, but that's okay. Tomorrow I wake up again. Tomorrow's a new day. Tomorrow can be better. Having said that, even within those bad days, if you can find something good, the silver lining from the day, you know, at least I was able to get out and go for a walk. At least I went to the gym. At least I did something. Well, that's where I graduated. You at least helped me a lot because you helped me realize of the thousands of little good things that are in every day.  They're there. And when you start realizing of how much goodness, how much good stuff is surrounding you every day, that's when the negative things take a second place. I hope there's something useful in there for you. Let us know which piece you like the best. What strategies you use. Yeah, remember, we're not perfect. We deal with the same things that you deal with every day. We just work on it every day. And we encourage you to do the same. You know, take care of yourselves. Love yourself and love each other and we love you. Hi, I'm Amy Golding, Director of Psychology for the Workplace Mental Health Institute. We hope you liked the video. If you did, make sure to give it a thumbs up. We have more and more videos being released each week. So when you subscribe, you'll get a notification letting you know when a new one's just been published. So make sure to hit that subscribe button and don't miss out on this vital information for yourself, your colleagues and your loved ones.


The answer is very simple. More than 25% of the world population of the world is under 25 years old. And more importantly, the youngest one are digital natives whereas we, the adults, are digital migrants. So those are the people who are the future in the hand. And it's happened that those are the ones who are really bringing a lot of innovation. You will see that all the innovations now in the area of ICTs are in the hands of the young people. So this is why really I'm very happy to be the patron of this innovation challenge that bring a telekom the young people who have shown bright ideas in term of innovation. My key message to young people is that we ITU and me particularly at the right of BDT, I do believe in them. And my second key message is that they should be aware that there is a shift in the way our society is working now. In the past the adults have got the knowledge and the wisdom to direct the young people. It happened today with the ICTs. It is the young people who have got more knowledge than the adult. Then at the same time I'm telling them you have the responsibility to craft your own future and you will be accountable of your future. So take it, innovate it and make it work for you and for the generation to come. This event is important and unique because this event is bringing together the leaders of today and the young people who are the leaders of tomorrow. And bringing them under the telekom is giving an opportunity for both sides to talk about the future together. Using the wisdom and the knowledge of the leaders of today and using also on the other side the knowledge and the innovation potentials of the young people who are the leaders of tomorrow. So in so doing we together with them are designing a future that will be bright for them.


When I became Premier, I made a commitment to change and open up government to British Columbians. But what exactly is open government? To me, open government is about a different way of communicating. It's about using all the tools at our disposal to connect the public to government in new and meaningful ways. Making it easier for citizens to connect and share with us and with each other as well. The end result is that the people of this province can participate in improving the policies and services that impact their lives. I believe how we talk and how we listen to people are both important. And since becoming Premier, I've held five town halls in meetings in corners all across the province, hearing directly from people about their concerns, their frustrations and their aspirations. We've been using telephone town halls to connect with British Columbians as well, and they've all been very successful. And today we're taking three new significant steps that will help open government to British Columbians even more. The main government website has been redesigned to put services for citizens front and center. We wanted to make it easier to contact government to find the right forms to learn about government programs. We've been putting the information that people need right at their fingertips without having to search through a whole load of different websites and different ministries. We'll also be the first province in Canada to launch open data, and our new DataBC website is starting. We're opening up government's data and information to the public to allow them to create value from it, to have informed discussions with us on issues, and to spark discussion about potential solutions that they see to those issues. The initial data sets are just the beginning. We'll be constantly adding more sets as we go along. And finally, we've launched a new website where we'll post freedom of information requests and proactively publish ministers and deputy ministers monthly expenses. These actions are a start, and we'll build on them in the months ahead. I've issued a direction on behalf of Cabinet outlining how ministries will sustain each of these initiatives. And while these three actions involve online technology, open government isn't just about technology. It's about a lot more than that. It's a real change in how government works with citizens. Whether we're discussing climate change or the impacts of an aging population, we need people to work together to be a part of the solutions. Open government is about giving people access to the information that they need to participate and to help us find solutions to the issues that affect us all. After all, it's taxpayers' money and it's taxpayers' information. We'll be introducing even more open government initiatives in the coming months and we'll be adding to the existing ones that are already there. I recognize that this is a shift in how we do things and there might be some growing pains, but government will support you as we move ahead. The BC Public Service does first-rate work and I'm so proud of how you've embraced the changes that have already taken place, but I also want to challenge you to go further. Take risks. Be open to new ideas. Fuel a spirit of transparency of connection and collaboration in everything you do. It's time to open government to connect and communicate with the people that we all serve. Government belongs to the people and by working together we can engage British Columbians and get more of them involved in making our province an even better place. Thanks so much.


Sylvain Hagen? Thank you. And thanks for organizing this event. He comes from Zurich, he's very active. He's seen and also in the working team. Sort of. He's going to be very active next year. Hopefully. He knew his story, so he basically was part of the event he required. Exactly. And one of the founding partners. Founding partner and took a different route. Yeah. And looking forward to hearing it. Thank you. So good afternoon and welcome to work at Loza. I hope you have a good time so far at the talks you already saw this morning. There was a bit of a mix up with the talks. I think, but luckily it seemed to be turning out well. So everyone, every empty slot was filled after all. Is that correct? That's correct. As Florian said, hopefully I'll be part of the team. Whoever wants to join me, Andrew already did. We will try and organize another work camp in Zurich next year. I will not be the lead organizer. This position I guess is still open. Nobody wants to? No? Oh, Nick will do it. So yeah, welcome to my talk. This is a different talk than I usually give. It's a very personal talk. So yeah, let's get started. If this thing will work, it doesn't. No, I turned it off. Obviously, but it still doesn't work. Do it by hand, which doesn't work either. Maybe it's for the best turn of the lead organizer next year. I can't even organize my slides somehow. That doesn't work. Is it just a screenshot? It's just a screenshot. Don't even have a talk. What's one of the co-founders had required? Three of them are here today. Also going to their sponsors booth for fresh chops and play the games. It's difficult. It's more difficult than it was last time at the FrommingCon. What am I doing now after leaving an agency that I co-found? At the moment I'm working part-time for Switch Plus, the hosting company everyone hates, especially around here, because I know it's many episodes here, but I'm not part of the hosting. I'm the team lead for a product they're building. We built a tool kit, a marketing tool kit for small, medium-sized businesses, of course with the WordPress website at its core. But besides that, I started doing something completely different. I started working with my hands again and not just typing on a keyboard, like building products, touching stuff. I started gardening with a couple of friends and we're building some weird gardening products, but I'm going to talk about that later. So what's in it today? What am I going to talk about? Like I said, it's a personal WordPress story. I'll touch on a few or all of these issues during this talk. So let's get started. A bit of a backstory. I started quite early with creating websites even way before 2005. I was lucky enough to have a teacher at school who was very interested in the web early on. So around 2001, he already gave us courses in Adobe Go Live. Who here remembers Adobe Go Live? Who remembers Microsoft from page or something? We're all glad they don't exist anymore. But yeah, that's how I got started and how I got hooked into building websites. Shortly thereafter, a friend of my parents who had a computer teaching business asked me to build his website.  So yeah, I wrote a bit of PHP code, which was embarrassing, obviously, but it worked. Also, this was my first experience with a really shitty client. I wanted to do the site for free because it was like my first project. But he was like, no, no, no, I'm going to pay. I'm going to pay until the site was live and then he didn't have any money anymore.  But nevertheless, I still hooked with this internet thing. So after that, I was looking for an apprenticeship that had something to do with online stuff, media, online, whatever. This stuff was still sort of new, not super, super new. But yeah, I decided to do an apprenticeship called Media Martica. I think it still exists. It's a weird mix of all kinds of office jobs and then on top of that, a little bit of electronics. So it was like accounting, marketing, a bit of coding, but not much. So after four years, you basically knew a little bit about everything, but not enough to start a career, I would say. Well, I was lucky enough that I had a cool boss during my apprenticeship. I worked at a large corporation in IT support and it was so boring. Like, yes, I'm going to reconnect your keyboard now, but you're back from your travels. Yes, oh, someone unlocked your computer. That's why it won't start. Oh, there's the paper jam and the printer. Yes, I'm going to fix that. So basically, I didn't have too much to do. But I had a cool boss. He realized that I wanted to do more and then I was really interested in building stuff. And of course, large corporation behind a huge, huge crazy firewall, very weird computers where you could not install anything, basically. So he gave me a custom internet connection in our office and the computers. So during my off time, which was like six hours a day, I had the chance to learn JavaScript, a bit of PHP, and also I designed sites in Photoshop not great looking sites, because I'm not a designer, but I tried to find my way around Photoshop. Back in those days, you were still doing slices for sort of things. Weird times. So before I finished my apprenticeship in 2006, in 2005, a friend of mine asked me to join a competition. And together with Felty, who would later become one of the co-founders of Required, we decided, let's go and be part of this competition, let's build a website. And so what we did, we created a website that was very accessible and taught you how to build accessible websites. We were young, unexperienced, and I was like, yeah, there's no CMS around to do this. So I'll write my own. I can do it better.  So yeah, within a month, I built a PHP-based CMS where you could create pages, add your content, upload images, and add some navigation items. On an old, old backup, I found the code very embarrassing. But of course. And it worked. So I created a hot little mess. And we actually won some primes, not like the main main prize, but our site was super accessible. And we did win some money, which of course, what do you do when you're young? We spent on beer the same night. All the money we won. But it was fun. And it was fun. So please, if you're young, very young, or inexperienced in this field, and you're thinking about writing your own CMS please don't. There's tons of great CMSs out there. Many of them open-sourced. They work well. And most of them have a huge community around it. Because that's the thing. Technology is just a tool. The code is just a tool. What actually sets things apart is the community around it. Like people gathering here for a work camp. And that's what makes a huge difference in an open-sourced project. So basically, yeah.  And for some people, maybe it makes sense for me. It never did, even though I did it. But shortly after that, it was like, oh, no, that wasn't a good idea. So after we won a bit of money, we decided, oh, maybe there's a business inside. We could build websites for clients in our spare time. So we were looking for a proper open-sourced CMS.  Our idea was it had to be a CMS where we were in total control of the market. Because many CMSs back in the day, still to this day, the code for the front might be a bit bloated, unnecessarily bloated. So yeah. We were looking for one that was easy to use. We tried Joomla. Not happy with that. We tried Type-O3. Sorry, also not happy with that. Very difficult to install. Too many options, too many conflicts for us, for what we needed. So we didn't decide on WordPress. We decided on CMS Make Simple. Anyone ever heard of? Oh, three or four people. Have you ever used it? No. No? Yes? You do? Okay. One site? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a simple CMS. It was easy to use. It was to have full control of the markup it created. It already offered CSS styling. And it was an easy to stay still on the development. I checked yesterday. So it wasn't too bad, but it wasn't too good either. The releases were very slow. Like the community wasn't big enough. So there were many, many bugs in their extensions. And it took it sometimes months to get stuff fixed. Which was a bit of a downside. If you wanted to use that in a client project. So, then we decided to build a website for our own small site business. We were looking for a CMS again. And then, Glory Phone WordPress. It was, at that time, it was a two point something. What took me initially was like regular updates. Already many, many, many plugins out there. A pretty easy theming system. But then I tried to set a static front page. Didn't exist at the time. Like it was not an option baked into WordPress. So there was a plugin out that promised to do this. We got it working after a few days. And things were great. So we had our site with WordPress. And I fell in love. I started building themes. I started learning more things about how the API WordPress works. And for the first time, I was really happy with a simple and easy to use CMS. But first, before I really, really got into WordPress, things took a different direction. After an internship in the U.S., I landed my first full-time gig as a web engineer at a small, small HSE. They had their own proprietary CMS, built in .NET, and it was surprisingly good for the time. It had some sort of a block editor. Not like Gutenberg, but more like a page builder where you could define, this is like an area for this, this, this, that. There's the table, there's that, there's that. And I learned a lot about building larger sites for bigger clients. But I also learned how to not do business. Like, the way we were treated as a team was sometimes not so cool. And it took me a while to figure out why this was. One of the reasons I think is that the founders of that company, when they started out, they wanted to sell ERP systems. So basically resource planning and management software for your resources in a company. But back in 2001, clients asked for websites, not ERP systems, or they wanted a website on top of an ERP system or vice versa. So they quickly switched their business model completely, didn't offer ERP systems anymore and followed trends, which in my opinion wasn't a good decision for them. But nevertheless, it was an interesting company and I learned a lot, but there was no trust to the team. There was micromanagement everywhere. And I left after we figured out that one of the co-founders started to alter our locked hours so he didn't have to pay overtime.  Very smart or not. So yeah, I learned quite a few things at this company on how not to do it in my opinion. In 2008, I had the opportunity to join the largest Swiss web agency and I was still a front-end engineer and still part of their .NET team. And here I also met Perrin, the now CEO of Required. Hello! And back in those days, IE6 was still huge in banks and insurance companies. It was a nightmare.  I don't know. It was very weird. So we had to use jQuery to enhance, for example, SharePoint front-ends. Pure horror. It was actually a really bad time.  Like it was really difficult to actually do anything with it. But yeah, one point that I learned there is that if you're a technical consultant in a large corporation, please take a technical person with you to the meetings with the client before you promise anything. Just a small tip on the side. Things got better for me at the agency after I switched teams. I then built front-ends for Sitecore CMS, which is another .NET CMS, Magnolia, and even WordPress. To this day, nowhere on their website except for their blog will they say they use WordPress because they only build super-large sites. But some clients asked specifically for WordPress. So I got to work with my favorite CMS at a paid job on an enterprise level. That was really, really interesting. During that time, I learned a lot from very, very smart people and that helped me a lot on how to build stuff quicker, how to test stuff more, and so on and so on. But nevertheless, I still had this dream of running my own company or having a company together with friends.  We discussed with a few of the speakers there how they set up their company, how they work as a collective or distribute the teams, and we thought to ourselves, hey, that's cool, we want to do that, too. So I still remember sitting next to a coffee, no, not a coffee, that was a closed restaurant that offered free Wi-Fi, registering the domain on our phones. First iPhone was out, I think. Yeah, that was fun. So after that, we switched to part-time to 80% work, and I remember my grandpa called me. My grandpa was this business guy, like he was an architect and when he drove me through CERN every now and then, he was like, and I built this, and I built this, and I built this, and he called me and was like, you're 20-something, are you already retiring? So it took me about an hour to explain to him, no, I'm just using this one day to build something else. But he had a hard time understanding how he could do this, why would he do that, that was a really interesting thing. But what we set out to do was explore how we could work in a different way as a distributed team. So what would later become required? And at first we were a collective of about 15 like-minded people, and the idea was that we helped each other out during projects and got to work with bigger clients. What happened was we started working on projects, but basically the same four people always worked on the projects. So we got rid of the rest, and the gang of four future founders, yeah, that was us. So a few years later, still at the agency, while the agency, the big agency grew very fast, sadly their culture faded, but that gave me the option to leave. So I decided to leave and go freelance full-time as the first of us. I was still young, thought I knew it all, and I knew everything better, but I already had this list compiled with things I learned at the agency jobs that I will never do when I have my own company. So I started out working from home, coffee shops, from home, pens were optional, coffee shops not so much, and there were already a few co-working spaces popping out, and I really enjoyed this new freedom. I was working hard, sometimes seven days a week, but I didn't mind it. I had amazing clients that supported me early on when I started this, and whenever I needed help with code or with design, I could ask one of my colleagues that required they were still working their jobs, but they had some time in their spare time to help me out. Simply put, it was a very liberating feeling to be your own boss, even if that meant working a lot. And it worked well, working with others. So in 2013, we decided it was time for the next phase. We had this idea by now, required turning to this idea of building a remote company, so Karen, Felty, Stefan and I found it required. We initially set out to make this a lifestyle business, not that you think that we didn't want to work hard or didn't want to take things seriously, but the idea was to support our individual lifestyles. Because we believe that this gives you the best results, like, for example, some people like to go out in the morning and work from their home office. Other people want to be flexible with the way they spend their time so they could spend as much time as possible with family and kids or traveling the world, going surfing and biking. And remote works allows you to do that, which is great. So for me, it was traveling and also working from new places that gave me a lot of freedom. And at around the same time, I started to get interested in gardening. Some of my friends infected me with the gardening buck, growing your own food. So the business grew. We traveled a lot. We worked a lot. Things were great. Here you see the first hire on the right, Pascal. And we got to work with bigger and bigger clients. So after one very difficult project for me, I should have taken time off. I only took two weeks off and my batteries didn't recharge. That was a weird feeling for me. For the first time I felt like it's weird I'm having issues sleeping. I had anxiety attacks, something that never happened to me before. So, yeah, I thought I was slowly burning out. But I never took the time to recover because every once in a while we like to think for ourselves as machines or robots, we're not. So after a while, my business partners took me aside and we had a chat about it and I promised to get help. At this point I still thought, yeah, yeah, I will recover. It's just a phase. Everything will get better. It did not. So in 2017, my business partners pulled the emergency break and asked me to see a professional. It hit me very hard at first because when you're in this weird mood where you think, yeah, you can still do it, but you never can recharge your batteries, you sort of lose yourself in a way. So, yeah, I was really grateful for their support, especially in retrospective. And I went to see my doctor and he immediately put me on sick leave. So I started seeing a therapist and went to my doctors every few weeks and I had some time off.  And I did. I started biking with my brother, growing even more food in gardens and that helped me keep going, at least for a while. But in summer 2017, I was still in a very bad place. I had mood swings all the time. Sometimes I wouldn't want to get up for days. I just didn't like life very much at this point.  Thank you. For the gentle or for kicking? Both. Both. And that sent me out on a search. What is it that I actually want to do? What is it that makes me happy and keeps me going? And I started searching. I started thinking about it, writing stuff down, going out more, going more into the gardening thing as well. And it helped me a lot. And I, sooner after I realized I was not completely burned out and my therapist later confirmed this. I was just very, very tired of the way I worked before because it didn't suit me anymore. Like I was tired of this agency grind. Just thinking about it was like for me, meetings and pitching and even coding lost its appeal. It's hard to explain, but things that you love so much before and then all of a sudden it's like, ah, it feels gross. I don't want to do it. It's very hard. I was not happy anymore with that kind of stuff. For me, that's one of the things that I remember very vividly when I was thinking about projects with clients. Not that it is that way, but for me it felt that way. It was like, ah, we're just building the same marketing bullshit over and over again. Of course it wasn't, but it felt like this. On the other hand, I was not happy with clients not taking risks or trying to be bold, looking at the competition for inspiration instead of trying something new. Of course this is overstated, but this is how this type of work felt to me at the time. After I started the search and started gardening even more and going out and not spending time in front of a computer, I started to trust my inner voice again and my gut feeling for the first time in months. So me and my friend Dave, we started visiting food gardens in and around Switzerland, taking notes, pictures, videos and at the same time we started putting some effort into building gardening products. So we spent days at the workshop refining parts, building prototypes, testing different types of soil and other weird shit and it was a lot of fun. So I was happy again. I didn't mind the hard work and I could finally fall asleep again at night and it was like, ah, this was a great day. We accomplished nothing, we broke thousands of parts but let's do it again tomorrow. So it looks like I found my new passion. So before 2008 it became clear to me that reaching tech and gardening is a thing that I wanted to focus on next. So by the end of 2017 I informed my partners that I will be leaving required. That was a really tough time and a tough decision for me especially if you're leaving a business that you helped build and I still miss the team from time to time and I see them from time to time but I have no regrets over this decision. It was like really liberating for me to actually do this. Luckily Switch Plus offered me a part-time job, a former client of required and I had the opportunity to start a product business in gardening. Product takes a men's amount of time. So unlike the website where you can build, ship and then refine if something breaks, a product if you ship it to your client, it's there and it has to be perfect. So it's a completely different mindset but also very interesting. So we're on a good path for that now. This year we started to sell the first few products and next March we will start to sell and market some more. Is that one of your products? Exactly. So what kind of products am I building? This here is called a geodome. It's a weird looking greenhouse. Basically it has better shape so the sun can go in from a different angle and some other weird stuff. It's a super robust structure and you can grow tons of food in there and you can stretch the seasons by the bit. Like you can start earlier and you can end the season later in the year. So as a driven personality I'm super happy that I found something that not only interests me personally very much but also on an intellectual level. It's very interesting to work with some stuff that's completely different than what I did before. And gardening gives you the opportunity to move fast and slow and it made me more patient because food takes a lot of time to grow. You cannot just sit there and look at it. I mean you can but you will stay there for days and days and days. So this is one of the early prototypes of raised beds we built. They now look much, much more polished and what we did is a special type of inlay that allows you to store water for 10 to 20 days. So you don't need to water them for quite a while even during this hot summer we had. This was the first of those geodysic domes. The specialty here is that we have a fish tank. The fish grew in the water. It's called an aquaponics system. You pump that water into the plants and they take the nutrients out as a fertilizer and enrich the water with oxygen and give it back. And we're going to build a web app for that because we are collecting data from 12 sensors. It's very interesting to see temperature, pH level and oxygen levels change during the day. Tomatoes! This is the largest one we built so far. This is going to be a combination inside of with soil and then also with an aquaponics system. So to wrap things up, it was very difficult to leave a company but sometimes change is very necessary. So please, especially in remote teams, watch out for each other and talk to each other more. Also about personal stuff. How you're feeling, how you're doing. Every once in a while someone has a bad day. That's normal. But if this prolongs over a long period of time, maybe some change is necessary. And it's absolutely no shame to get help. I know robots are cool, but we are humans, not robots. It's hard, but not listening to yourself will finish you in the long run. Thank you. However, it's a break now. So if you have questions, feel free to ask. Yes. We are new products on the website. Yes. But we'd love to see that. It's F-O-E-E-S dot C-H. Please dot C-H. Well, I think for me it's pretty awesome. The WordPress changes you to love the life and make your living an awesome lifestyle and even become a biologist. Now, really? Yes, but I really want to say congratulations on this. Thank you very much. I think it's difficult for people to make changes, but yeah, it wasn't easy. It's cool. Thank you. It's already three minutes late for your break. Sorry, let's thank Sivan again.


We're conducting some permissive survival training. We've got a group of 11 marines, and we're showing them basic shelter, fire, water collection, food procurement principles, specifically tailored to a cold or arctic environment. We prioritized that shelter was first, and then we showed you a number of different ways to build fire. We showed you some other things, food and water procurement, and just how to stay alive in the pretty much the most hostile environment on Earth. I feel like we're all learning a lot from each other. This is skills that everyone should have. In my personal opinion, every member of the military should get these skills. The skills we're training are for both combat and non-combat.


What's up, guys, and welcome to Trendy Updates, our SPM buzz. Now, unto the trending news today is a comedian, Eric Komondi, and a girlfriend, Lynn, who did the agenda reveal during the weekend, but this agenda reveal has sparked conversation online because they did it on a waterfall. Now, sudukamu liya zakwona agenda reveal that happened during the weekend, and of course they sparked outrage after they died a local waterfall, pink, to announce the gender reveal of their unborn baby. Now, of course, some of the netizens have termed the act as water pollution. Kamu liya zakwona hii video sudu yuuna fiki ria aji. Mi keza kusoma kama comment ya maisha word ana sema cute, but you guys, this is so bad for the environment and wildlife in this area overall. This was painful to watch. Y'all please don't get ideas to do this nonsense for your babies now. Now, this agenda reveal that was happening during the weekend, ilikuwa pale, ni kama tika kidogo pale kwa waterfalls and you know they died that waterfall, pink, just to reveal the baby's agenda. Nasa sa ini kitu ambay kunoato aji afuraya, na kunoala inginia wana wambia. Kuna organic dyes, they probably used that. We need to give it a benefit of doubt. Nita eza piya kusoma zile comments pwale watu ama eza kwaandika. Ana jili kama tumbili the comedian ana sema haters will hate even an unborn baby. Potatoes are now potatoing. We pollute the environment every day. Sasahi indyo wana zingatia sana. Ana jili kama baby ras says, oh it was heartbreaking to watch, just killing marine life for clout. Ala fukuna max tiv ana itua ana sema congratulations I recommend ieya memwambia evyo. Ala fukuna maina ana sema kumbem toa kipata pesa ana eza rent waterfall. Ni kama kidogo aku jua lafu faiza lana sema. She has a point, but we have bigger fish to fry. Smithham says the fish using the opportunity to hope into the baby trend. Abu yana ana sema apelike ujinga uko si piya nde nai rubiriv. Ade komento jui ahiyo. The dye dissolves almost in few minutes. Uyo ana support, you know the act. Ana itua why Jimmy says is you think, if you think she got jealous of what they did, button. Oh ana sema ukomento pwale ukitani, you know ni jealousy. Kuna katen kei ana sema uki onamto anongia vibhaya it's either a mesota ama ako dry spell. Izo vi tumili ndo uleta makasiriko kwa everything. Aia basi. Tombie kwenyo comments section, what are your thoughts about Eric Komondi and the girlfriend Lynn you know, putting showing the gender reveal during the waterfall, you know. Eric Komondi a leza kwa update status a kasema my girls. Gender reveal done. Now we need a name. Please suggest for us a beautiful name. Ni kama umneza komento pwale piya umneza kupa Eric Komondi ideas. But in the meantime, let us know what are your thoughts about Eric Komondi and girlfriend Diana local waterfall pink to announce the gender of their unborn baby. But in the meantime, keep it trendy updates hapa SBM buzz.


Mr. Bundy, I have the secretary on the line. Happy election day, Mr. Bundy. How are you? Fine, just a moment for the president. Outside, outside of Vietnam? Uh, nothing out there. We have, uh, recommendations and, uh, going back and forth, but there's no further advance about yesterday worked out. How's she? The military have accepted that, as I understand it. Uh, well, that was, uh, it was, uh... it is back and forth, so good humor. I don't think he had trouble, but I think they're, they're operating under the assumption that, uh, uh, we're really getting ready to decide the decision. So, Max, let's just know how sharply and clearly you educated your intention to General Wheeler yesterday. We just don't want that in the tables, so we're ready to go. Do you, are you less sharp on it? Uh, Mr. President, I feel, I feel in a way that we didn't, that nobody should ask you to make any decision until you're acting with today behind you. Yeah. If I were deciding it, yes, I feel about as you did yesterday, but I don't think anyone should decide anything until you're, until you have this day under your belt. Have you heard from any, uh, the politicians today, any of the writers, uh, Leppmann's or the rest? Uh, all that's been around. He's, he's at the mood to, uh, work on this problem, uh, right away. Uh, Leppmann talked to Bill Moyers. I haven't got back to Bill, and I don't know what he said. Uh, all of them, of course, as usual, uh, want us to make up our minds and put it the necessary amount of time in Southeast Asia. Walter does really think that's problem number one. I think he thinks the utmost important problem is to get you to take time to think about the problem in the new perspective that today will give. That's what he did think when I had lunch at him two days ago. He wouldn't put, uh, East Asia first on the, uh, on the agenda, although I think that's because he's not really as close to it as some of the rest of it. The press generally, or all of the views that you're going to get, a very shillam, for example, came in this afternoon, or the view that you're going to get such a mandate that you will be able to set any course you want in any part of the world. Uh, I'm a little less of the view that our elections decide thoroughly events everywhere else, but I am too. And I'm less of the view that it's going to be that big. Well, I just don't know, yes. Did they run three or four full page ads a day and then saturate the television? No, they haven't. The television's not here. The papers in New York were full of ads, but mostly about Kennedy Keating. I, uh, Bill would have more direct political news than I have, but, uh, when I had talked to him this morning, he sounded very un-worried. Uh, and the view that the thing really was, uh, had come down to the last two or three days, a very good way to put it to me was he did not have the worries he'd been having two or three days ago. We're in a situation now where we'll know a lot more in an hour and a half, and we'll really know something from Connecticut and something from the model precinct. My understanding is that the CBSS, at least this is what they... I had lunch with the wife. I saw her door, absolutely, in the bag. Uh, they say to watch Blue Harris because they've been up and down it in every, uh, primary and in every 162 elections, and he really does know how to get it very close. You want to marry there, marry in Washington, would you? Yes, there she is. Give her my love until I've seen her in so long that I... No, Mr. President, and how have you been? It must have been a long day for you. I just fell apart, Mike. I just fell apart. My back is killing me. My head is hurting. I haven't been up all day. Well, you didn't, but you... I gather you had time to show the boys how to draw water from a well. That hit the tickers nice and a little sharp. Well, I did there this morning. I got to bed late and no one got up early, but we had a... Oh, we had a... People are so good. They're so good. I'm sure you've had the most wonderful wealth down there. We never had anything in 100 years, like it's probably 125,000. That's as far as you can see. Had as many almost as the town's got.  And we didn't have any bitterness in our head. We just said that to here we are, and we prepared for this. And if you're well, we continue okay. We've got great country and we've got... We're blessed and... It was just wonderful evening. It's very touching air evening, but I got so sorted that I didn't realize how much I'd been doing and how high I... up on the mountain had been. I've been keyed too high. Well, you've just been living on air and on the curve for a month now, and I can promise you, Mr. President, that we are all right here and we're none of us going anywhere any further than our deaths over the next few days so we get sorted out. And there isn't anything that needs a hurried decision. My own judgment is that, A, I think it is going to be a big victory and I think it's going to be a stronger one, stronger than I'd been guessing until the last two or three days. There is some gossip that the posters have all shaded their heads their best and that their private betting is that it's going to be even bigger than they published, but I don't know how much truth there is. Trance, tell Mary hello for him, and we'll get together and get back and transfer him into bail if you can. If the operator comes back on. Can you get... Which tech point house is this? That's fine. Mr. Moyer, President wants to reach. Thank you.


From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE conversation. Analysis from company earnings reports and customer survey data continues to show that Microsoft Azure and GCP are closing the gap on AWS's cloud dominance. Now while reporting definitions of the cloud remain fuzzy, it's very clear that clouds steady march into the stronghold of on-premises computing continues. The global coronavirus pandemic has only strengthened the cloud's position in the overall marketplace. Now, as you might recall, we reported last week the story of the haves and the have-nots and that's playing out in several sectors and in this breaking analysis, we're going to take a closer look at the big three cloud players and we'll do a brief investigation of AWS specifically in a short drill down. Welcome everyone to theCUBE Insights powered by ETR. Today we're going to try to really accomplish three things. First, we want to quantify how the cloud is impacting the on-prem business. As we enter this decade, let's take a snapshot of some of the vendors that are well positioned and maybe some of those that are facing greater headwinds. The second thing we want to do is we want to update you on the latest market share data for the big three cloud players. And then finally, I want to dig into the business of AWS and a little bit more depth to see where they're seeing the most strength and where perhaps maybe there are some cracks in their substantial armor. Now let's look at the IT landscape where we are in 2020. The first data point that we want to share really tells a familiar story and really drafts off the theme that we've set for the past several weeks, which is the bifurcation in the marketplace. Now if you take a look at this chart, what's really showing is it's sort of ETR's version of the Gartner Magic Quadrant, but it uses survey data to plot the vendors. So on the Y axis is the metric of net score, which is a measurement of spending momentum. And just to review, each quarter ETR surveys more than 1200 CIOs and IT professionals and asks them, are you essentially spending more or less on a particular supplier? And what we do is we subtract the less from the more and the remainder is the net score. So it's sort of like NPS and I'll go into that a little bit later. But that's the vertical axis. Now the X axis is called market share. You know, it's really not market share like IDC measures, rather it's a market, a measure of pervasiveness in the survey and it's calculated by dividing the mentions of a particular company by the total mentions in the overall survey. And you see that's plotted on the horizontal axis. So several points here that I want to note. First is remember, this is April survey data. So for more than 1200 buyers. And you can see we've plotted several companies, including the big three cloud players. You got Microsoft and AWS in the upper right and Google with much lower presence but decent spending momentum. And we've plotted a number of other enterprise players including several on-prem leaders like Dell EMC, IBM, Oracle, and Cisco. And we've also included some of the companies that are showing real promise from a momentum standpoint and penetration. These are business models that we like and they include Snowflake, the analytic database disruptor, UiPath, who's the RPA specialist, Okta and CrowdStrike who are really killing it in security and Datadog who provides cloud monitoring services. And as you can see, we've superimposed in the upper right a table showing the net scores and market shares for each of the companies. And the story here very clearly quantifies that cloud is winning. And we think it's likely to continue to grow fast and penetrate the enterprise. Now, as we've reported many times, downturns tend to be good for cloud. But the on-prem leaders, as you can see by Cisco's position, for example, they're not going to just roll over. And we'll be covering winning strategies for legacy players in a later segment.  Okay, let's take a closer look at the big three. I want to update you on their IaaS and PAS numbers as best we can. All three recently reported earnings and this chart shows the data for each of the companies. Now, as you can see, each of them has substantial businesses with AWS by far the largest. GCP is growing the fastest. What's notable is that AWS in 2018 was 2.7x larger than Azure. And today that Delta is under 2x based on our Q1 estimates. It's just about 2x on a trailing 12 month basis. Now I got to caution you that the AWS numbers are the cleanest. AWS reports religiously and easy to understand revenue and operating profit number for its cloud business. Every quarter, Microsoft and Google are much fuzzier. You know, for example, read through Microsoft's 10K reports and you'll see that their intelligent cloud revenue comprises public and private clouds, hybrid, SQL server, Windows server, system center, GitHub, enterprise support and consulting services and oh yeah, Azure. So we have to estimate how much of that hairball is actually comparable directly to AWS. Now Google similarly just started breaking out its cloud revenue and bundles more than just IaaS and PAS into its cloud numbers. Now having said that, both Microsoft and Google, they do give little, you know, 10 bits like canceling grattle of guidance in the form of growth rates or commentary on growth rates in their respective IaaS and PAS businesses, i.e. Azure and GCP. So this is our best estimate. Given all that is reported and what we know from survey data. Now I also want to point out that these clouds are really different in quality and they have different fits for different use cases. For example, Microsoft is building out a cloud really to support its huge install base of customers and really make it easy for them to tap into the Microsoft's cloud services. But it may not be the most robust cloud as has been widely reported and analyzed in the press. You know, Microsoft is struggling to provide adequate capacity for its customers. It's kind of using the COVID-19 pandemic as a bit of a heat shield on this issue. Microsoft put out a blog post essentially saying that it'll prioritize first responders, health workers and essential businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Oh, and Teams customers. So, okay, that's one of those caveat emptor situations. You know, if you're not one of these camps or frankly, maybe if you are. But it's unquestionable that Microsoft has strong momentum across its vast portfolio, including cloud. And really that's what I want to get into next. So let's take a look at some data we've been reporting for quite some time based on the ETR surveys that the big cloud players, you know, have very, very strong momentum as measured by net scores. So what this chart shows is the most recent survey results. Again, more than 1200 IT buyers, 1269 to be exact. And you can see broadly that all the big three are well in the green for net scores, as we show in the upper right-hand box and well over 50% net scores for all three. And Microsoft Azure is in the 70% range. So very, very strong demand across the board. Now remember, each hour is asking buyers to comment on the areas with which they are familiar. So a buyer might be interpreting cloud to include all those things in Microsoft and Google that may not be directly comparable to the AWS responses. But it doesn't matter. The point is they all have momentum and you can see, you know, even though there's a slight dip in the most recent survey, you know, which ran during the peak of the shutdown in the US. So even as a small dip relative to other parts of the survey, cloud is very, very strong. Now, let's dig into the data a bit more and take a look at the Fortune 500 drill down. So of course, this is an indicator of larger companies and you can see AWS overtakes Azure in this segment by a small margin. You're noting the same caveats that I mentioned earlier. But the strength of the net scores for all three is meaningful as they all increased within these larger buying bases. Now let's take a look at this next chart. If we extend that cut to include the Fortune 1000, you can see here that all three companies, again, continue to show strength. But you know, there's a convergence which really says to me that this multi-cloud picture that's emerged and that CIOs are really now starting to see that whether it's through M&A or maybe it was shadow IT or whatever, they're faced with a variety of choices that are increasingly viable. And despite my previously and sometimes snarky comments that multi-cloud has been more of a symptom of multi-vendor versus a clear CIO strategy, that maybe is perhaps beginning to change, especially as they're asked to clean up what I've often called as the crime scene. Now, I want to close by taking a little bit of a closer look at the AWS business specifically. And I want to come back to this notion of NetScore and explain it a little bit. So what we show here on this wheel chart is really a breakdown of responses across more than 600 AWS customers in the April survey. You remember, again, this survey ran at the height of the lockdown in the US. It's a global survey with well over 100 responses outside of the United States. But really what's relevant here is the strength of the AWS business overall. This chart shows how NetScore is essentially derived. ETR ask customers, are you adopting new? Are you increasing spend, meaning increasing by 6% or more? Are you keeping spending flat? Or are you decreasing spending by more than 6% or are you chucking the platform, i.e. replacement? So look at this. We're talking about nearly 70% of customers spending more in 2020 on AWS than they spent last year. And only 4% are spending less. That's pretty impressive for a player with a $38 billion business. Now the next data point I want to share really shows where the action is across the AWS portfolio. So let's take a look at this. The chart here shows the responses from an end of more than 700. And the NetScore or spending momentum across the AWS portfolio with the comparison across three survey dates last April, January 2020 and April 2020. And as you can see, the very elevated spending momentum across most of the AWS key business lines, including cloud functions, data warehouse, which is EDW, et cetera, AI and machine learning workspaces with the work from home pivot. And there are some areas that are maybe less robust, but nothing in the red zone. Meaning, NetScore would be like below, let's say 25% NetScore. And you can see there's really nothing close to that in the AWS portfolio. So you're seeing very, very strong momentum for AWS, specifically and of course the cloud in general. Now as I said, the pandemic has been good for cloud. Down turns generally are a tailwind. So if you're building data centers, it's probably not a good use of capital, so server huggers beware. There's an attract of this more so than ever with this COVID-19 pandemic of that dial up, dial down service. Watch for software companies starting to use that model, whereas today they often try to lock you in to a one year or a two year or a three year license. Increasingly we're seeing companies investigate and actually go to market with a true cloud model. Okay, thanks for watching this episode of theCUBE Insights powered by ETR. Remember, these breaking analysis segments are all available as podcasts. You can check out siliconangle.com, I publish there weekly, they have all the news, and I also publish on Wikibon. So don't forget to check out ETR.plus as well. Get in touch with me at D-Valante or you can email me at david.valante at siliconangle.com. Stay safe everybody and we'll see you next time.


I know that some of you were probably looking forward to me reading Warbreaker Next, but I've recently gotten a couple other books here that I want to just add to the pile, so I'm not waiting on them forever. So at the top here we got Doppelgangster, under that we have The Name of the Wind, and then we have How Few Remain, which I know I did a video on the World Building for that, and I have read it before. I just want to read it again before I do a review of it.  So that is A7, so next I will be reviewing Doppelgangster. This is the introduction song, it's not very good, but it's not too long. Okay there is a scene near the end of Doppelgangster, where the main character Esther beats an evil sorcerer using a dead chicken. I'm not making that up. She picks up a dead chicken, starts hitting him with it, and they spend several paragraphs describing it.  Really I mean it.  The plot of this book is that there is an actress slash waitress named Esther Diamond, a name so aggressively Jewish that it seems mildly anti-Semitic, but whatever, we'll leave that alone. And she, oh yeah, apparently this book is actually a sequel to another one, I didn't know about that to begin with, but it does a pretty good job of explaining the plot of the first one. And so Esther is already familiar with like, okay there's secret supernatural stuff going on in the world, so when it starts going on in the story it's not really a surprise to her, but anyways she is working at a restaurant which is frequented by mobsters, by mafia members, and one night one of them claims that he saw his doppelganger, he claims he saw someone that looked exactly like him in every way, and he thinks that that's an omen of death, so he's freaking out and she tries to calm him down, but then he immediately dies, gets killed. And the police can't figure out who did it, the scene looks really weird, and so Esther immediately suspects magic is involved, and so she starts investigating and I don't want to give away any more than that because the mystery of this story is one of the genuinely good parts of it, like, well I mean there's a lot of genuinely good parts of this, but I mean the mystery is something that you can take actually seriously and be really invested in and not really know what's going on until the very end, so I don't want to give away too much about that. So the thing that really just makes this book though are the characters because I mean they're all, they're all great, there's not a single character in here that I hated, even the villain, when you find out who they are, I did feel sympathy for them, like I could kind of see where they were coming from, I could see why they were doing the things they were doing, I still thought they were evil, but I didn't feel like, okay, I didn't feel like they were pure evil or that they were just doing this for power or anything like that, and beyond that all the characters are just a hell of a lot of fun. Esther herself is kind of the straight man in the story, like she's not particularly silly, she doesn't have a particularly over-the-top personality or anything like that, but she does have some pretty sarcastic and snarky narration, she does occasionally say some funny lines, like she's pretty great, and she, you can tell she does or she is a genuinely good person because she's trying to stop a mob war from going on, she's trying to prevent more people from being killed, so it's not like she's someone that just felt like she was getting dragged into this, she does seem like a genuinely decent human being. Then there's her wizard friend named Max, and he's this centuries-old wizard who is supposed to protect New York from evil, and his lack of understanding about the modern world is pretty funny, and his weird vocabulary, his weird way of describing things is also pretty funny. I mean he's just a lot of fun, and then there's multiple mobster characters, the most prominent of which is this old hitman named Lucky who is Esther's friend, and he accompanies her throughout the majority of this book, so he's the most prominent mobster character, but the thing is that almost all of them are just such over-the-top, like shitty gangster movies, Godfather Goodfellas stereotypes that, I mean, they're just hilarious to watch.  The last character of note is Esther's boyfriend who is a cop named Detective Lopez, and he, he's not that great, actually, but I did kind of enjoy seeing his relationship with Esther, because the thing is, they do have some genuine chemistry, and they do seem to actually like each other, however, the thing is that life just continually gets in the way for them, and so as you're reading, you do really get the feeling that, okay, yeah, this isn't gonna work out for them, but at the same time, you feel kind of bad for them for that happening, because they both seem like, they both seem like decent people, but yeah, I'd be lying if I said Lopez was my favorite character, or that he was particularly funny, but you know, he was fine, he was there, he was, he was alright. I don't think there's much else to say about this book, though, I mean, like I said, the plot is mostly just them solving the mystery, and it is a genuinely good mystery, so if you're into that sort of thing, I can definitely recommend this, and if you're into just like sort of lighthearted tongue-in-cheek sort of thriller adventure type stories, then you'll probably really enjoy this, because like I said, it's genuinely funny, and it's not just the absurdity of some of the situations, like some of the characters, again, they're also absurd, but they also do have some fun quips and jokes that they tell to each other, so overall, yeah, I can give this a solid recommendation, it's a good way to start my year off. Please subscribe. I know that seems greedy considering how many I already have, but you know, I could always use more.


And we're live with Robert Mahari, a member of the Board of Advisors for the MIT Computational Law Report and our emissary in Davos, Switzerland now for the big annual World Economic Forum event and you've been representing Computational Law Report and MIT's Computational Law Program out there so I want to thank you and just check in and find out how are things going in Davos. Absolutely, Daza, it's been a pleasure to have the opportunity to represent the Computational Law Report here at the Imagination in Action event that took place in the TCS Dome at the World Economic Forum. It's been exciting to talk to lots of different people from all sorts of backgrounds about our take on computational law and it was really encouraging to hear that, you know, from business leaders to people in the governments of developing and developed countries to people who are in the art dealer business and the consulting business and the professional service business real estate. Everybody seems to agree, lawyers too by the way, that there's something really wrong and really old fashioned about the law and that change is needed. And I think that universally people appreciated the way that the Computational Law Report approached law from this interdisciplinary human centered, almost design thinking perspective. So it's been really exciting and I hope that we can build partnerships out here and bring things back to Boston and kind of continue building this vision. So this has been great, yeah. Sounds exciting. Seems really exciting. I know it's like in a sense like the biggest show on earth and in some ways in terms of the world leaders and the thought leaders and all the energy and the activities that happened. So as I understand it, you had a demo pod and you basically did a talk through, is that right, of what the Computational Law Report is and what computational law is and you've got some feedback from what was like people strolling by in the pavilion or can you just describe like what happened and how did it go? Sure. I had what amounted to a TV screen behind me with a couple of slides and people would stroll by. I was placed conveniently by the buffet so I could corner people and I could tell them well first and foremost what computational law even is and explain to them that, you know, law has always been code. It's been code since Babylonian King Hammurabi chiseled his code into stone 4,000 years ago. Then it was paper-based code and now we're moving to this computational world at MIT and that to try and do that takes a interdisciplinary approach and a design thinking approach and so I talked people through that and then I would talk them through how this might apply to what they do because I think one of the things that's exciting about the way the computational law works is that it's focused on application, it's focused on the real world and making positive change and so I would talk to people about there are dealers and I would talk to them about copyright and how we could think about copyright. There are people in the real estate business so I talked to them about property rights. A lot of people in the finance business who were very interested in the compliance and know your customer part. So all sorts of things from all sorts of different industries and it was fun and there were also lawyers in the room who were very excited about what we were trying to do and maybe a little bit scared but I think in a good way at least by the time we were done. Yeah, change can be scary except when you engineer it, I spoke hopefully and so I believe you went through some slides that we that we prepped back at MIT and one of them was the computational law development goals so that's something we don't even have in our site yet. We haven't shared it widely but can you give a little preview as to what some of those development goals were and how that part of the demo went? Absolutely. So second part of your question first which is that the best laid plans to men you know the rest right. So I would love I always try to kind of get to the country a lot of development goals and I think that by the time I got through the first five kinds of my presentation someone would be like well what about this and what do you mean innovate in the law that's like crazy talk. So I didn't get to talk about them as much as I wanted to but we come up with these first of all we come up with a mission. The mission is to leverage technology to be able to accelerate prosperity to create inclusive justice systems and to create predictable transparent legal systems. And so the way we thought about this mission or in thinking about this mission we came up with five computational law development goals and those are inspired by the UN's sustainable development goals but obviously kind of focused on the law. So the first one is a focus on humans human centered law and putting the human kind of in the middle of it and this means that you know everybody should be able to understand the law. This means that laws should work for people generally things like that and then some of them are more technical like thinking about law is something measurable thinking of law is data and then some of them are more about how the law operates across jurisdiction across time. So we have this idea of universal interoperability and then we also had an interdisciplinary angle to it. So thinking about these partnerships that the law needs in order to be an integrated solution and not this self discipline. So those five computational law development goals and I hope that we'll be able to share them more broadly soon really kind of help us frame how we might approach this mission. Indeed great. Sounds like you're sounds like you're having a good time and making some good progress. Can't wait to debrief with you when you get back to MIT and the United States of America but until then enjoy Davos.  I'll do my best. Thank you so much for this opportunity. It's been really great.


Welcome folks, we have the Dow Industries trading down 56 Nasdaqs up 86, S&Ps are up 12. Gold contract down $7 trading at $19.93 an ounce. We have Silver down 25 cents, $23.80 an ounce, LightSuite crewed up 44 cents, $71.99 a barrel, notes and bonds. A 10-year note, down 4 ticks trading $113.13, the 30-year down 12 at $126.25 and $KingDollar. KingDollar trading flat $103.194, the Euro is at $108, the Yen is at $138 and the British pound is at $124.01 at U.S. Dollar. Let's take a look at the S&P that actually E-mini because the E-mini out here today has two high volume swing lows. So we just went up and tried to test the high of the day. I suspect what we're going to see here is that now what you're going to do, and we had volume on this too, but the volume that we had when we just had that spike was only let's see 33,000 Shaya contracts versus 56 on the way up. What we have down the bottom, a big number, $72,000 from this morning and then it went about what's that $1,300, $43,000 rather. So the probability is that we're going to get back down to this other side coming into the closeout here. If we go to the spy in general, what you're going to see, which makes sense by the way, a huge contraction of volume because the setup is 530 with House Speaker McCarthy and President Biden, we'll see whether they get anything done. I've said a million times my take is that it's going to be get done the day before or whatever. And so what you have today though, that's a huge contraction now. We have 42 million shares traded, the spy's up at $23,000, we're talking about on Friday we did 103 million shares, the spike that it took out was 102 million shares, that's a nice setup there. Now when you look at the cash, now this gets interesting too because when you look at the cash, we really haven't broke out yet. So and with the difference is the spy pays a dividend. So you have to actually look at the cash. So the cash number on the thing you want to keep your eye on here is that the 40, well yeah, it's over, 41.95, so you're over by seven points right now. Stay right there folks, come right back.


So, for the end of this year, I've been doing a digital declutter. Just like in the summer, I tried to go through all my physical possessions and sort out only what I need in the right place, for the right purpose, everything else can go to simplify my life. And now I'm doing the same thing with my digital world. And I had planned to finish it by the end of the year. That would have been great just to completely clear the table, completely clean the workshop, and have a completely clear digital life to start the new year. But it's going to take a few more days because it's amazing just how much is accumulated over the years. It's easy to forget about it because you can just kind of turn off your phone and computer and you can just not see the piles of stuff.  Physical objects don't take up any significant space and you could easily, you know, just buy another tiny little hard drive and have a huge new collection, it wouldn't hardly add any new physical space at all. But it's in the mental space, the space that it takes up in our thoughts because, you know, for most people, myself included, living in this modern world doing technically related things, we really spend so much of our time on computers and phones dealing with digital objects. I never really thought of them that way before, they really are like objects, they are just like you would have boxes full of junk and, you know, piles of things in the corner of your room, you can have the same kind of thing with digital objects. All these files that are hanging around, all these different accounts to different online services and all these loose ends hanging everywhere. I can't really figure out exactly what it is because it isn't like with the physical object you clear space and it's obvious that having clear open space is good. But with the digital space, it's not really about space so much because these things don't take up space. Why do I need to delete all these things? Why can't I just forget about them and just, they will never bother me again, just leave them there ignored. But it seems to me like there's something, they still take a certain drain on us. Even these things that we don't think about that we forget, they can still be a drain, they can still be this little bit of mental clutter that every time we happen to look through our hard drive and see this, some bunch of files or every time we use a web browser and see these other accounts pop up, I mean, anytime we just happen to come across these things, old messages that we see every time we log in, these things, every time that we see one of these things, it's I think the same kind of effect as seeing that pile of clutter and just sort of adding extra weight to our thoughts and extra distraction to our day. So clearing that away is like making this open space. So how do we make this open digital space? It is a slow process for me going through years of first working through all my files and it takes too long to individually organize every little bit but at least start by putting everything into this major categories, everything that, okay, I know it's more or less here. If I'm using it, it goes in one of these useful folders that I can access and if it's purely for souvenir goes to a souvenir folder, just like putting old sentimental clutter items into a souvenir trunk and just sort of knowing where everything is and then keeping my active folders where I'm working as clear as possible with just a few folders of things that I can access usefully. So I did that and then the online stuff, this is what seems to be taking so long going through all these accounts that I have somehow accumulated over the years and deleting stuff that I don't need, just collecting the list of the things that I want to be part of. All the accounts that I have, I want to know, okay, I'm part of all these things. Everything else I don't need to worry about. It's simply cleared off my table. So it can be a slow process, but I think it's going to have the same kind of results that I have been getting from clearing my physical space, feeling this greater openness, freedom and ease to go through my day without hitting obstacle after obstacle of clutter. Just like the feeling of working in a completely clean and clear workshop instead of a pile of stuff, like working on a completely empty and clean desk, cooking in an empty and clean kitchen, and a well-organized kitchen. And so this is my project for this new year time. I want to clear everything down, everything that is unnecessary and unneeded. Clear it down to the basic bare table and be able to work from there. So I'd be curious to hear if any of you have done anything similar and what's your experience with this idea of clearing digital space.


Have you heard of a flame artist? Now I know what you're thinking. No, a flame artist has nothing to do with actual flames. Kind of. You can think of a flame artist as a jack of all trades in post-production. You need compositing. A flame artist can do it. You need color. A flame artist can do it. You need finishing. A flame artist can do it.


Hello everybody hooded Cobra Commander 788 here and this is a quick look at G.I. Joe's laser trooper from 1986 sci-fi. You can't get more science fiction in G.I. Joe than the G.I. Joe laser gun guy literally called sci-fi. sci-fi was a replacement for G.I. Joe's first laser rifle trooper flash from 1982. There were a couple other vintage versions of sci-fi my favorite of which was version 2 from 1991. It's an excellent update with a removable helmet and much better colors. sci-fi's accessories were very precisely suited to his specialty He included a large laser rifle with a black connector hose that connected it to his backpack The backpack even had a clip for storing the laser rifle. That's nice What people probably most remember about this figure is the color and yeah, of course It's bright neon green whether you like this figure or not probably depends on if you like science fiction and bright colors in G.I. Joe not my preference But I know a lot of fans dig it another thing people notice about this figure is his Robocop like helmet Yes, his head kind of looks like Robocop But sci-fi was released before the Robocop movie so he could not have taken direct influence from that I've already done a full review on this figure. It was an early collaboration. I did with Joe fan 82 It was a lot of fun sci-fi's file card talks a little bit about his personality But it's mostly about how he can stand very still. That was a brief look at G.I. Joe's laser trooper sci-fi I hope you enjoyed it. Please subscribe to the channel for vintage G.I. Joe toy reviews I have a huge back catalog of reviews So check those out support the channel on patreon so I can continue making these videos You can find me on social media on Facebook and Twitter and I have a website HCC 788.com I'll be back soon with a vintage G.I. Joe toy review and until then remember only G.I. Joe is G.I. Joe