Hello everyone, welcome to Options with Doug, streaming live daily on Bookmap Discord and the Bookmap YouTube channel at 1.30pm Eastern Time. Before I go any further, I need to go through the Disclosures, General Disclosure, all Bookmap limited materials, information and presentations are for educational purposes only and should not be considered specific investment advice nor recommendations. Risk Disclosure, trading futures, equities and options involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. And hold on just a second. It looks like my YouTube stream is a little blurry. I don't know if there's anything that I can do about that. Okay, that's better. Okay, so as a reminder, the focus of my presentation and the Options with Doug chatroom and Discord is options, order flow, the impact of options markets on stocks and futures and the influence of market maker hedging flow on price action. I have a two step process for trading. The first is planning and that's based on positional analysis and I look at how traders and market makers are positioned in the options market and how those positions change from day to day to help develop a thesis regarding expected volatility and trading range for the day as well as a directional bias. And the second step of my process is execution and I look at real time order flow and Bookmap and real time market maker hedging flow and Spot Gamma Hero. And I think this approach provides a significant edge. Other traders use technical analysis or fundamental analysis and again I think this combination of positional analysis as well as looking at real time order flow and Bookmap and real time market maker hedging flow and Spot Gamma Hero provides a significant edge. And questions and comments are welcome and I will be watching both the Bookmap, Discord chat as well as the chat on YouTube. Okay, let's get started. So what I want to talk about today and I've got quite a bit is first of all, news. I'll go over economic data, events and earnings for the next week, week or two. And then I want to do a review of Friday. Remember I talked about the Put Vana rally and how that helped contribute to the rally on Friday and also how you could have anticipated the rally in your planning process. And then we'll go over our positional analysis for today and then we'll talk about some setups and there were some great setups today. Okay, first news, economic data and nothing major coming out this week except maybe the PCE on Friday. But anyway, let's see what we have. So first of all, tomorrow, that is Tuesday the 24th, there is some PMI data coming out at 9.45. And next on Thursday, durable goods and GDP and that's at 8.30 a.m. Eastern time. And then finally on Friday there are a couple of items, PCE and apparently this is what the FOMC looks at and recall the following week on January 31st and February 1st is the next or the first FOMC meeting of the year and the announcement and press conferences on Wednesday, February 1st. So this is the PCE and then the Michigan Consumer Sentiment at 8.30 and 10 a.m. So that's the economic data coming up and again I mentioned the big event, the FOMC meeting next week on Tuesday and the announcement and press conference on Wednesday. And then there are a couple of earnings announcements this week for stocks that are in my watch list and Microsoft announces earnings on Tuesday tomorrow after the market close and then Tesla on Wednesday again after the market close. Okay, so that's the news coming up, events to watch out for. The items that I mentioned could be market movers, the economic data this week and certainly the FOMC meeting next week and that will also impact how traders are positioning themselves into that event. All right, let's do a review. I want to do a review of Friday. Give me just a moment. I've got a number of screenshots that I want to go through and I'm going to start. So again, this is a review of Friday. This is options expiration last Friday and things to point out here. First gamma notional for SPX and this left column here and spy on the right. And this number minus 2, 2187, I consider that a full tank of put fuel. So there's the potential on around big events or options expiration for changes in implied volatility and also a lot of these put options were going to expire. So what this means is that traders were long puts, very long puts, market makers are short puts and they are short futures to hedge their delta exposure. And as price increases, that's what happened on Friday, market and so price increases implied volatility drops and market makers can buy back their short hedges. So I'm setting the scene. This is Friday morning during our planning process and we see this and look at the thing that comes to my mind when I see this minus 2,187 is rally potential. And this is just reinforcing that idea of a negative gamma scenario. This is the VANA model for SPX and this is showing that traders, again, traders being long puts, market makers are short puts and a price decreases so they have to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure and as price increases they can buy back those short futures. And here's the spy chart. Spy VANA model. Again, just a steeper line indicating that in the case of Friday market makers again are short futures to hedge their delta exposure and as price increases they can buy back those short futures. And again, remember, we're in the planning process now still looking at the information that I look at every day and talk about every day. And the next is noting, again, this is options expiration Friday noting the amount of gamma that expires that day on the 20th, January 20th. And that is getting up to a somewhat significant number so those puts are going to be gone at the end of the day and actually this is SPX so that includes the AM settlement which happens at the RTH open as well as the PM settlement. So this is from Spot Gamma Equity Hub looking at the five-day history and this is for spy and note here is your number the amount of gamma expiring on that Friday 37.75%. So again, those puts are going to expire on Friday and they're... if price increases they're going to lose value very quickly and market makers delta exposure will decrease. And here's the gamma model this is for SPX and the green line is the current expiration and the black line is the next expiration and this is just reinforcing that idea of the gamma expiring at the end of the day. Look at the same gamma model for spy and again reinforcing that idea of that gamma expiring and one other chart I want to take a look at actually a couple of other charts so this is showing the put dominance slight put dominance for SPX then notice the blue line the put gamma is larger or more negative than the call gamma and even more so for spy more put dominance for spy and that just goes along with the steeper van a curve and the greater amount of negative or the more negative gamma notional and then finally one last thing to look at and all this information is from spot gamma and this is the delta notional by expiration for SPX spy QQQ and NDX and this is again by expiration so what we're noting here is the that's the January the 20th January monthly expiration and again notice the dominance of put so below the zero line that's negative gamma or delta in this case and that's put delta, negative delta so that all expires are expired on Friday and one last thing to take a look at so this is all in the planning process on Friday setting the stage so we see that large negative gamma notional and again the first thing that comes to my mind is rally potential if the market gets going that's a full tank of fuel and could lead to a rally as again puts expire implied volatility drops price increases market makers delta exposure decreases and they can buy back their short hedges and then one last thing and this is the an SPX chart from Friday this is Friday and think about again just doing your planning process in the morning and think to note this is the 3,900 level this may be a little bit difficult to see but this top line is the 3,900 put wall and that level can be expected to act as support so we know that that level is in play and here right after the open SPX moves down test that level then goes down to this combo L1 level and reverses higher and then as you can see rallies for the rest of the day so that is the SPX think or swim chart with the spot gamma levels here and this is VIX so this is kind of a proxy for implied volatility so this is showing that as SPX was increasing implied volatility is dropping so that is what we were looking for again with all that negative gamma notional implied volatility dropping market makers are buying back their short hedges and then finally here is book map and this is showing the reversal now these levels actually they are correct this put wall level is not quite correct it should be down about 3 points lower where I have this note SUP for support so again ES, SPX test that 3,900 level and rallies and once it gets going this yellow line is showing stop orders showing as price rises these buy stops, buy stop orders are contributing to price levels off and then as price is ES, SPX start moving higher again more stops fire off and I have both the sub chart and the on chart stop indicator and here we can see some of the large stop orders that green dot, small green dot 2,484 1435 894 so as price gets going up towards approaching the SPX 4,000 level a lot of stops start firing and also notice green dots there, aggressive buyers market buy orders and that is confirmed by the CVD line that is the dark blue line this dark blue line here so a lot of contributing factors to the rally on Friday but the the one that you could anticipate and plan for was the Vanna rally based on that large negative gamma especially for spy and then all of the gamma expiring on Friday okay any questions about that and there is a question in YouTube what is the significance of zero gamma and according to spot gamma not necessarily that much spot gamma looks at a different level the volatility trigger and that is their gamma flip level and this gamma flip level or volatility level is the volatility trigger level is their level at which gamma flips from negative below or market maker gamma switches from negative below to positive above so zero gamma would actually be a level of zero gamma but I think spot gamma at least and what I follow places more importance on the volatility trigger okay I hope that was helpful and now let's go through our positional analysis for today and again the thing to emphasize is using this process I would have anticipated the rally okay so let's go through our positional analysis for today and what I want to do is start with levels on the charts I'm going to go to first of all look at a couple of think of swim charts so this is SPX for today this is a 20 day one hour chart and this is showing the rally that started on Friday at the 3,900 level has now today shot straight past the 4,000 level and it appears to be prices heading up to the 40-50 level SPX 40-50 level which is the new call wall so these are showing the levels in play and a couple things to note and I'll talk about this more but the call wall has shifted higher to 40-50 and actually the put wall shifted lower to 3,800 now so here's the put wall down here and the call wall above and the put wall is to strike with the largest net negative gamma and that can be anticipated to act as support and the call wall you can anticipate that to act as resistance so that's the big picture the 20 day one hour chart again showing the second test of the 3,900 level and then the strong rally starting Friday and now moving up to the 40-50 level and let's just take a look at a closer end view and this is a two day one minute chart of SPX again showing the spot gamma levels and this is the rally continuing from Friday morning again the 4,000 level here provided very little resistance and prices now moving up to the 40-50 level alright let's take a look at book map now this is ES, this is the S&P 500 futures and this is pointing out the reversal higher at this around the zero gamma level and the support level and these levels are a little bit higher than they should be spot gamma is still using a 20-point difference between ES and SPX so what we're looking at here what I'm showing I have two columns of levels the first is spot gamma cloud nodes and this is showing SPX levels they're important as well as combo levels which are SPX and SPI combined and converted to an SPX level and then converted to an equivalent ES number by adding 20 points and right now I have that difference at about 17 points so that's one reason why I'm looking at the SPX charts and think or swim to see the exact levels so anyway the reversal higher this morning at the support level or close to it and then the rally up again the 4,000 level often and price is now above the ES 40, 50 level alright let's talk about shifts in levels now one other thing that I'm looking at is this is my own own column of cloud nodes and I'm marking the supportive resistance levels that are noted in the spot gamma AM founders note as well as big round numbers in ES and then also SPI levels the main key gamma levels in SPI and those levels are correct I calculate that ratio of SPI to ES just about every day okay shifts in levels there were quite a few shifts in levels mostly higher so first of all the SPX volatility trigger increased from 3915 to 3945 and again that is spot gamma proprietary gamma flip level and interestingly I mentioned the SPX put wall dropped from 3900 to 3800 and we'll look at the S&P 500 charts in just a moment and then the SPI put wall actually increased from 385 to 390 and then call walls increased across the board SPX, SPI, NDX and QQQ call walls all increased higher traders are looking for a higher end of the trading range and accepting higher prices and then the key gamma strikes for SPI, NDX and QQQ increased as well while the key gamma strike or the absolute gamma strike for SPX remains at 4,000 and the key gamma strike or the absolute gamma strike is the strike with the largest total gamma total absolute gamma let's take a look at the S&P 500 charts now and we'll see where those gamma levels are so here is SPX there's the put wall down at 3800 and then the key gamma strike or the absolute gamma strike that's obvious strike with the total highest absolute gamma also note the significance of the 3900 level and then here is the 4050 level, that's the call wall so that is SPX, those are the absolute gamma levels here's SPI there's the put wall and now the key gamma strike is at 395 and 400 is a significant level that is a large gamma 1, LG 1 and then the call wall is up at 410 so again the there are quite a few shifts higher in levels call walls across the board and key gamma strike or absolute gamma strike for SPI, NDX and QQQ alright let's take a look at some data now and just to point out, gamma notional so this is market makers position on the gamma curve has shifted to positive for SPX so on Friday, SPX in the morning, Friday morning was minus 558 and now it's 117 so it has shifted positive to a fairly neutral stance and then SPI recall was minus 2187 on Friday morning and now it's still negative so market makers gamma position and SPI is still negative not nearly as negative as it was on Friday and let's take a look at van emals and so this is just showing the neutral neutral position in SPX indicating that market makers their delta notional is not going to change a whole lot as price moves up and down and they're not going to have that in this position at least to the beginning of the day and they're assuming a delta neutral position they're not going to have much delta exposure to a hedge as price moves up or down now that could certainly be changing today with this large price increase but that was the situation before the open this morning and SPI, again still in a negative gamma the market makers position on the gamma curve is still negative gamma indicating that market makers will need to sell futures as price decreases and buy back those futures as price increases and one thing that I want to point out this is just one one quote from the AM founders note this morning indicating that implied volatility remains near the low end of its remains near the low end of its fair value so this is talking about VIX or implied volatility and that may reduce VANA as a key driver of upside movement particularly over 4,000 so there were some questions over the weekend about continued VANA rally there is a partial answer we'll take a look and see what's going on today but that is I think that's a pretty good assessment that VIX may not drop a lot lower so there may not be that much VANA fuel left in the tank so we'll see what VIX is doing so let's take a look at VIX and so there was a drop this morning and this is VIX for today so drop this morning down to around 1960 19.6, 19.55 and then is now moving higher so remember I'm looking at all of this to develop a thesis for the day I talked about the shifts higher in levels for the main indices the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ and this is a spreadsheet that I keep every day these are the stocks in my watchlist and I track the key gamma strike for the previous day and the current day and I update this every morning and I color code the key gamma strike level based on whether it increased or decreased from the previous day and note all the green here so this is indicating that all these numbers highlighted in green increase from the previous day so this is bullish I was looking for first of all given the decrease in gamma notional or more positive I was looking for a lower volatility than Friday but definitely bullish that was my directional bias based on the increase in all the levels again the S&P 500, NASDAQ and stocks and I posted my watchlist the spike gamma hero watchlist in discord ranked from strongest weakest signal indicating that today I was bullish and looking for long entries okay let's take a look at some setups so the first one that I want to start with let's go to book map and Tesla was at the top of this list this morning this hero watchlist it was a great long setup multiple pullback entries and prices heading for the multiple liquidity targets also first high liquidity target at 140 144 and 145 and let's take a look at hero and see what options traders were doing one day puts and calls so traders are buying calls and selling puts and Tesla and it looks like just recently they started selling calls and stopped stop selling puts so what I'm looking at is the rising orange line that's indicating that traders are buying calls and the rising blue line indicating that traders are selling puts and just noticing that it has leveled off a little bit let's just change the look back period now to 30 minutes and that will give us a little bit more clarity about what's going on now so it looks like traders are maybe taking profits on their calls so this is just changing this rolling window or look back period to a shorter time frame so we don't have all of that accumulated data from the entire day to look at so there's the first setup that I want to look at Tesla now let's take a look at the S&P 500 and I'm going to look at ES, SPX and SPY so ES this this is the S&P 500 features and it's combining the SPX and SPY hero signals into one signal I'm going to zoom into the morning there was a bullish confirmation this morning so note the positive delta trades and then as price moves up towards SPX 4000 and SPY 400 traders start taking negative delta positions so we can see what and this is pretty pretty typical behavior for the S&P 500 and sometimes this leads to reversal and sometimes not so it looks like traders started buying puts which makes a lot of sense given the low volatility traders buying puts so there's the S&P 500 the ES and now let's go back and we'll leave it on this and see what they're doing during the day so they continue to buy puts and again this is looking at the SPX and SPY signals so let's take a look at SPY now and it looks pretty much the same and I'm looking at questions on YouTube do I wait for the first 15 to 30 minutes to get in my trade I look for a couple things first is if I see a key gamma level and anticipate a reversal there so I see hero, let's say today I see hero rising price drops down to a key gamma level then I would look for an entry as close as possible to that and look to buy a call and then if I miss that entry then I would look for a pullback to enter a trade and RTS not sure how to time the trade in context of what hero and bookmapper indicating and yeah that can be a problem especially when you're looking at this in real time of course right now I'm looking at this in hindsight but if you're real time looking at real time that's the reason that I'm starting to favor just buying options more and more you don't have to be that precise with your entry if you see again my thesis for today was bullish and if you see price at a key gamma level liquidity gamma level targets above then just buy a call that's the approach that I'm starting to take if you're looking at hero in real time to confirm a trend higher then it can be a little bit difficult but if you see a divergence and I've talked about plenty of divergence entries and anticipate that reversal at a key gamma level that gives you time to prepare for that trade okay so there were some confirmation of the morning for the S&P 500 then not so much for the afternoon so let's go on so we looked at one great trade in Tesla and the next one is Netflix and notice now the the signal the hero signal showing that comparing the strength of the hero signal for the last five days and last 30 days is weak for SPX and spy and it remains strong for Netflix the next one that I want to look at as well as Tesla the one that we just looked at so if you're using hero as a signal it's often much easier to interpret the signal for single stocks than the S&P 500 so now let's take a look at Netflix super strong today traders were buying calls all day and that's driving price higher let's look at book map so there's Tesla continues to move higher let's take a look at Netflix very strong rally a little bit of a pause here at the 350 call wall and price continues to move higher from liquidity level to the liquidity level it looks like the next target above if Netflix keeps going is the 365 level let's just go back to hero and see what traders are doing and you can always what I like to do is change the rolling window period the look back period the afternoon to get more clarity so in this case with this big drop traders were selling calls looks like it has not recovered that much so let's take a look at the total signal and if I were looking for another long entry I certainly would not I would not be looking for a long now I'd want to see that hero line rising before taking another long entry so it looks like the best move may have been this morning alright the next one QQQ let me just take a quick look at something now compare so right now QQQ is up 2.4% and spy is up 1.4% so that's what I thought technology continues to be strong very strong, easy to read correlation much easier than the S&P 500 traders are buying calls in QQQ very clear driver of price higher shown by the rising orange line let's go take a look at book map nice strong yet uptrend in the morning consolidation around launch time and some liquidity targets above so plenty of pullback entries as traders buy calls market makers are selling the calls and they have to buy QQQ or in QQ futures to hedge their delta exposure so this is going to be the theme for the next few stocks is traders buying calls again we saw that in Netflix continues in QQQ and as a stock trader if you're looking for a long entry this is something that you want to look for it's a powerful driver of price action and the next one is AMD strong rally in the morning then consolidating after price hits the 75 call wall let's take a look at hero and there you go traders buying calls market makers are selling the calls and buying stock to hedge their delta exposure alright the next one Moderna looks like calls are definitely driving price action at least up until about noon let's take a look at book map now it looks like price has resumed its uptrend heading toward the 200 key gamma strike and note all the liquidity at that level also note the reversal at this liquidity here around around 195-50 195-94 40-50 something around that level so note the absorption at that level price resumes uptrend heading up towards the 200 key gamma strike let's go back and take a look at hero again see if we can gain any insight by changing the rolling window yeah that helps a little bit showing that right now it looks like options trades have leveled off price continues to rise that may limit the ability for Moderna to get up to the 200 level alright the next was Nvidia and again note the strong hero signal here trade is buying calls for most of the day and it looks like they have started selling puts as well alright let's go take a look at book map Nvidia strong move up to the 190 liquidity level a lot of consolidation at that level and then prices continue to higher so price reversed higher actually at the 180 call wall and never looked back so again traders buying calls driving price higher let's go take a look at hero there couple of other stocks that I wanted to take a look at next one was Disney there's some I guess overall pretty strong correlation I'm not going to look at book map that's on my other computer and I'm about out of time so at least in the morning I saw that traders were buying buying calls in Disney really as good a setup as Tesla and Nvidia and AMD QQQ there it is and the last one that I want to take a look at is IWM and I've just started following this index but traders were buying calls today in IWM so just like QQQ buying calls in IWM driving price higher let's go take a look at book map so strong rally up until about 2 o'clock looks like price has met resistance at the 188 level let's just go back and take a look at hero again changed that look back period so a little choppy there heroes making a lower high as price increases then price starts to drop okay so we've already looked at the good setups or the best setups Tesla, Netflix, QQQ AMD, Moderna, Nvidia and then analyzed the price action in the S&P 500 on Friday talked about the bullish position analysis today for the S&P 500 as well as stocks a lot of the stocks in my watch list and that is all that I have for today are there any questions any questions, comments okay I'm going to wrap it up I want to thank everyone for watching thanks for your questions and comments and I will see you tomorrow thanks again, bye


Item number SCP-173 Object Class Euclid Special Containment Procedures Item SCP-173 is to be kept in a locked container at all times. When personnel must enter SCP-173's container, no fewer than three may enter at any time, and the doors to be relocked behind them. At all times, two persons must maintain direct eye contact with SCP-173 until all personnel have vacated and relocked the container. Description Move to Site-19, 1993. Origin is, as of yet, unknown. It is constructed from concrete and rebar, with traces of Krylon brand spray paint. SCP-173 is animate and extremely hostile. The object cannot move while within a direct line of sight. Line of sight must not be broken at any time with SCP-173. Personnel assigned to enter container are instructed to alert one another before blinking. Object is reported to attack by snapping the neck at the base of the skull, or by strangulation. In the event of an attack, personnel are to observe Class IV hazardous object containment procedures. Cell reports sounds of scraping stone originating from within the container when no one is present inside. This is considered normal, and any change in this behavior should be reported to the acting H-M-C-L supervisor on duty. The reddish-brown substance on the floor is a combination of feces and blood. Origin of these materials is unknown. The enclosure must be cleaned on a bi-weekly basis.


Hey, welcome everyone. Happy holidays. Happy inauguration day. Looking forward to the transition and what's happening. Today we're going to discuss Clubhouse. I did a three hour marathon stage appearance on Clubhouse the other day and I was asked some really good questions. I'm not here to promote Clubhouse. I just want to share some of the experiences. Some people out the audience came up to the stage and asked some excellent questions. This platform is a really new platform that we're trying out and experimenting with so I definitely want to encourage you if you can get an invite to Clubhouse, try and do so. If you're having problems with it, reach out to us and let us know. This is our number on the screen that you can text. One of our associates, I am looking at those texts all the time so if you got any questions you need someone to sponsor you or help you get in, let us know. But the interesting thing today is someone asked the question about whether or not they should be pursuing state contracts, city contracts, or federal contracts. That seems to be a hot topic all the time for people who are just getting started in the government arena. The conversation today I want to discuss with you is my feelings on state contracts, local contracts, as well as federal contracts. I typically tend to have a preference in terms of going federal but giving the nature of events that's been happening in the last year and moving forward, it looks like there may be some opportunities and I may be changing my stance on that. But today let's just jump right into it. One of the recommendations that I gave when I was speaking to folks on Clubhouse was that if you were deciding to go on to the local contract arena, if you've made that decision and you said, hey, I'm thinking about going to a local contracting arena, here in Miami-Dade County we have these advisory boards and I recommended to the person that was asking the question that take a look at the local advisory board for your local city, municipality, and then when you look at that, find out when they are in the meetings and then try and attend a meeting. So here in Miami-Dade County, and I looked up, again, you might have to play around and do some searches, you may have to call the local municipal offices, but definitely take a look and see if you can get some inside information with the local advisory board for your particular arena in your area. Why? Because there's a lot of good things going on. It says here we have a small business development center in Miami-Dade County designed to help small businesses and this is where I started truthfully. When we first got started, this is what I was doing because I didn't know any different. So again, naturally, someone said, go to government contracts, we went here and we started at the local level. We had some folks in there that helped us out and helped us with our registrations, didn't cost us any money, but here you can see here there's recommendations that are made to the small business. This is called a small business enterprise advisory board for construction, but they also have it for goods and services and they also have it here for architect and engineering. And from this, they actually issue reports on their meetings because again, these are a public entity and as a government entity, they have to document everything. So they do issue reports that you can go back and look at. The recommendation that I oftentimes offer up to folks is to attend the meetings. So again, now things are virtual so you should be able to join a webcast of some sort that they have on there, but I recommend that folks attend these meetings. You're going to learn a lot in the meetings. You're going to meet people first and foremost, but then you're going to also learn a lot about how your local government procures goods and services and I think that's so critical for most people. We seem to believe that the attending the government or municipal building is only for when you have parking tickets or paying taxes, but there's a lot of other services that the municipal buildings and your local cities offer that can be beneficial to you, particularly those of us who now want to start our own small business. You have to get active, you got to participate, people have to see your face, know your name, and be able to identify you and say, hey, you are that electrical guy, right?  This is the time to carry your brand around with you. So again, when you are on camera, even in your background, I've had people put their logos in the background, kind of like when you go to one of those award shows, but again, let people know who you are so that the more exposure you get, the more opportunities that will create for you and also the more you'll learn about who are the good contractors who are the bad contractors. This is what I recommend doing, but I wanted to show you really quickly on this particular report. And this is going to be like a two-part video. This is the first part of that video. I don't want to make it beyond about 20 minutes because I know people get bored. So I'm going to make two parts to this. This is the first part where we're going over participating in your particular industry, or I'm sorry, your particular city's boards for your respective industry. And then the second part is going to be why I believe that state and local contracts, given if we continue on the path that we're continuing, should create and open up some opportunities for folks out there. So this is again, this is part one of a two-part video series that I'm making. So again, we're here at the Miami-Dade County page for Small Business Enterprise Advisory Board. I went ahead and clicked this March calendar. And this is the March 2020 last meeting that they had. And again, things are changing with COVID, but even if even if there are your local particular group stop having meetings as a result of the pandemic, again, you can still go back in and check archive information. Now looking at this report, Eric, what am I looking for in the report? Now again, they're different. They waiver in terms of the information that's required to put on it. But I think for the most part, it will give you some knowledge and insight into your local government, how it works. By the way, LaWanda Wright Robinson, who's here, she's been doing this since I first started. So God bless her. So she's been doing this a long time. Lori Johnson has been there a long time as well, helping small businesses. Great, great, great advocates. When I first got started on my first couple contracts, they were there. They were probably closer to the bottom of the total poll. Now they're at the top of the charts. So looking here, old business, new business, reasonable opportunity to be heard. You also by attending these events, get your chance to be heard for your voice. And then you can ask questions. But I want to show you something because this is this is the area that I talk about a lot. And one of the things, and it was just coincidentally that they happen to have here on this chart, it says here, assistance provided a small business enterprise program. And then it talks about certification, assistance, year of date totals, needs, assessment meetings, technical assistance, and then payment issues. And they actually created a category entitled payment issues, payment issue related dollars, 1.24 million. Now this is fascinating because at the time of this chart, contract issues and then contact with SB, highlighting contract opportunities. This, when you're looking at it and people after ask me, Eric, well, why do you say those things? Why do you make those presumptions about state local contracts? Because this time after time, whenever I'm speaking somewhere on a professional stage and speaking to folks and there's an audience and there's people that can hear me, not 90, not 80, not 70, 100% of the time someone in the audience, someone that's listening, someone that's watching has had a similar experience. So for me, I've concluded not only in my own experiences, not only in the experience of my friends, but the experiences of those persons in the audience. So right there, 1.2 million dollars and payment related issues is a big deal. And to be frank with you, I believe those are only the issues that were brought forth to the board. If you add in the issues that were not brought forward to the board, you're probably going to get double or triple that number. So again, this particular part one is not really the highlight focus in the payment issues, but it's more of how do you start learning and investigating and making the best possible decision for your business, right? And so that's what I'm here to help you do is I'm not telling you what to do. I'm giving you all the information so that you can go out and do your own due diligence, your own homework, your own research, and then you can determine the best possible path for your particular small business. And that's what we want out here. But if you go through this particular report, which is 156 pages, it's actually a pretty good report. I enjoy the report thoroughly. This also is a lot of the reasons why people ask me about minority contracting. And I'm black on or I'm Hispanic on because at the local levels, they still prioritize those particular things. But you have to learn vocabulary, vernacular, and you have to learn how to speak to your audience. If you are bilingual, and you're speaking to a primarily English audience, I think you would speak English. And if you were speaking to primarily Hispanic audience, I think you would speak Spanish. So the same thing here, we cannot talk federal contracting to the local government, and we can't talk local contracting to the federal arena. And a lot of times folks get their words jumbled, and their messages jumbled, and you would be surprised how many people at the federal level take offense for the words that people are using improperly or incorrectly. So we want to just help you by trying to relate. The more you can relate to the particular your audience members, the folk, the person of your focus over your attention at the time, the more likely there are to like no interest you and believe that you are credible. But this is where when people talk about minority contracting, and they talk about, I'm black, I'm male, I'm Hispanic, I'm woman, female. This is what you're talking about here, right? And this is at the local level. Federal government, you will not see these types of reports. But again, here, they talk about there's the amount of opportunities. There were 87 projects awarded for $61 million. There were seven products awarded for total of $33 million that were eligible for small business participation of the 33 of the 33 million three projects with small business SBE construction measures total three to three million or 10%. And then there were six open market non satisfied projects with 4.7 million talks about the total value of the contracts. And we're not going to get into the integrated reports, but it lists here all the contractors information, all the people who are working on these projects. And then it goes into other projects outside of this particular goal. So then it looks at jobs at the airport. And I mean, I've actually, it's funny, believe it or not, I've used these reports in my past to find subcontractors who I want to work with. So for example, Lunacon, I mean, they're huge, they're prime and a sub just depends on the project. But they're doing 20 plus million dollars a year. Patricia Bonilla was on my podcast. And so you could find her on there. But again, a lot of this information, which people don't understand is public information. You just have to do some digging around and find it. This is how I when I'm looking for a subcontractor in an area that I'm new to these are the places where I go. If this person, I mean, I don't have to ask them for the past performance. If I see them on this list, they're already working on government projects. So they're familiar with government projects. Right. You don't have to take their word for you don't believe what they say. It's here in black and white. Another thing that's interesting about this report, I'm pushing up about 13 minutes. I'm monitoring my time today is again, projects that are operating within Miami-Dade County by some of the major primes and then they're added into this board. So here we look at Jackson health systems. And here you go. This project with Skanska and Jackson health systems, the total value awarded, total value of costs of work, the total value of contract to SBE. Here's the percentage completion. It goes into the breakouts. And then again, it lists some of their major SBE construction persons and their contract values. So all of this information is good information. Whether or not you can make a determination as to whether you should pursue state, local, or federal, maybe not, but this is great information to have to find out also where you can fit your lane, right? So if you go in and you see one of your competitors on this particular list or one of these respective lists, you go, okay, this is where they're going after. So now you know in your brain, who is a potential prime contract that you can work with as well because your competitor is working for that person. So a lot of good research and it just, I always remind people to start with the research. Let the research guide your activities. When, when talking with, I gave an example on the stage on clubhouse, I said that because someone asked me, Hey, what kind of stuff does the government buy? And I asked eight different people on the stage, what services they provided to the government. So Mebs is one of our interns who's works here at GovCon Giant. He sells clay shooting targets. And what he did was he researched a small municipality that was, I was at the New Jersey, New York, a small town area that we're looking for something very specific where again, not a lot of people provided those services. So there are opportunities out here.  Look at these companies, IGWT construction, they're sub tier one, tier two, 1.9 million, $1 million contracts. You know, if you are bidding a job at an Air Force base and you're looking for some companies, these folks are used to working as subcontractors. Great. Keep look. Z roofing, $1 million roofing contract. Hey, I'd look at hiring Z roofing here, MMAC, ACM refrigeration, American Industrial Management Corporation. Okay. Caucasian white male. So maybe not, but like you say, construction, but they consider small business. So they're falling into threshold. 16 Hispanic firms, seven African American firms, three Caucasian firms. Miami breakers. My, my con scaffolding, Southern Blossom. So, and then the good thing about the report, like I said, it goes into all of the different, the major opportunities in construction, what they're doing this particular contract value was $133 million. Looks like they take about whatever the difference is, 17 million in fees. And then goals and a goals, CSB contractors. Here are all the contractors. These are people that I would consider using for any of my projects that I had coming down the pipeline. So I think that all of us, all of us have the opportunity to attend one of these events and or find this information online, or at least now you have a point of reference that you can call your local city municipality and say, Hey, do you have any type of advisory board of similar scope and nature? This is part one of a two part series where I'm a tiling state, local, federal contracts, which ones should I do? Which ones should I consider? And how I believe that if we continue along the path of what's happening now with the continuing passing of stimulus packages and funds, that it may become an opportunity where I think that a lot of small businesses, it may not be as bad as it once was in terms of going after these contracts and getting paid because they are being backed by the government's strong arm. So now we're going to look at on part two is the three different stimulus packages and how they are lending a hand to offset the funding shortage falls for the state and local government. So stay tuned for part two of our series. We're going to jump right in right now.


just make sure to record that properly in our minutes thanks Joe what's next okay so we are into the transportation planning category we've got three transportation planning grants the first one is in chickpea in chickpea center they want to do some work looking at their streetscapes in the center so they're requesting $200,000 to design streetscape improvements in downtown chickpea it would also include complete streets concepts to improve the flow and safety of all modes of travel including pedestrians bicycles vehicles and public transit so the original environmental impact report for the mgm project projected that about four and a half percent of the traffic from the casino would travel through chickpea on local streets with most of that going through chickpea center there are also many mgm employees that reside in chickpea the commute to the facility and surveys done by the city indicate that many of chickpea's residents are patrons of mgm as well so the review team agreed that these demonstrated an impact on the city of chickpea so now the city will use these funds to hire a consultant to evaluate downtown chickpea and propose conceptual designs and recommendations it will also include a robust public participation process the review team agreed you know that these types of projects that improve the flow and safety of multiple modes of travel will address negative impacts while also encouraging alternative modes of transportation to and from mgm which helps support the notion of transportation demand management which you was a requirement of mgm's permits so all of these transportation planning and construction applications were forwarded not only to our licensees but also to mass dot for their opinion on the efficacy of the applications so in this case both mgm and mass dot were fully supportive of this application and therefore we recommend that chickpea be awarded a grant in the amount of $200,000 for its streetscape improvement project and with that I will open this one up to questions questions on this is nika did you have any comment no I think as as Joe mentioned um you know it's it's it's a great project I think it will go a long way to improving the um the general feel of the chickpea downtown and there's enough traffic there through employees and patrons that can be attributable to the casino um and it merits this funding I agree appropriate use of mitigation monies I'll say okay thank you uh moving on to the next one is the everett mystic river walk um everett is requesting $200,000 to advance design of a section of the mystic river walk uh to complete a missing section of the walkway between mystic view park and room 16 let me just um quickly see if I can share um this is my favorite part of community mitigation uh fund application review when Joe brings us to the yeah uh let me just open up uh google maps real that's really helpful um and I will zoom in so you can see where on core boston harbour is and we have the gateway center here which is where the target and cost go and all of those are so on core is um walkways connected over through here and there's a series of paths and walkways through this area what we have is a little gap right up here from these walkways up to some existing connections underneath the the bridge that goes over the maldon river so it's essentially this sort of a line right through here is what they want to do it's a little bit of a challenging site because there's some uh there's some wetlands and there's um you know you can see there's a little brook here and some wetlands but you can see these little pathways here these are are underpasses underneath route 16 that allow people on bikes to get you know up and down from the bridge and use the bike lanes and so on so this would make this connection through here um which is right now if you want to go out there you have to go out on to route 16 and through sand tilly circle and it's you know kind of worth your life and what you'll see over here is we've got wellington t station is right here and just zooming out you have this whole area up here of many uh large apartment and condo complexes you have uh um name of it is escaping the station landing over here which has multiple multiple uh apartment uses and things and condos again and then you go further down and there's there's some very large developments in this area and obviously some huge uh residential neighborhoods again this is what i'm probably belaboring the point but you know we love um projects like this that will you know close in these gaps in these walkways and create this really great network where people can safely use these bike paths and walkways and make their way to the casino or otherwise so um we really we really like um a project like this again boncourt and mass dot were fully supportive of the project and um so therefore we recommend uh the two on questions for jillan the river walk commission kim yeah i agree i love the google maps and they'll build a little a little boardwalk over those wetlands like they do on the golf course it uses the bike trails on the cape and um it'll be it'll be excellent for those folks to be able to take their bikes or walk uh over there so i i think this is a really good use of the mitigation rooms any any other comments or questions for jill commissioners i'm gonna guide you i agree with these kinds of projects sorry no no you're not frozen sorry i thought you were you're good we can hear you continue okay yeah so um i like like everyone else i i like these kinds of projects it's all about improving the network of uh bike and um i have this image in my mind um about the the bike rack in an anchor boss on harbor by the employee entrance when near near the inauguration there were just dozens and dozens of bikes of people who had employees who had done out there using a bike it was of course a very nice weather time although that doesn't necessarily mean that it's not used in the winter so i think it's these kinds of projects that are a great alternative to the traffic all around it and i'm glad that they're we're helping the effort that's ongoing and and similarly mass dot supports this application as well oh yeah absolutely yeah it was recently in the boston globe on um their magazine on places to live and and in its category for housing prices effort ranked number one for the north um and they mentioned i don't know if you saw the article but they mentioned um how many employees of anchor boss and harbor want to live in everett and i suspect the more we make um biking accessible um it will only make it more attractive in from medford and the surrounding areas so uh that that that's uh was a very positive article for um the impact of um casino so on that community no further comments or questions on that one all right moving ahead moving moving right along uh the next one is uh lin is requesting some money to design some traffic and safety improvements at boston street and hamilton so they're requesting two hundred thousand dollars for this project the intent of the project is to decrease the number and severity of crashes at that location improve traffic operations and also improve access to the northern strand community trail um so this this uh you know right off the bat we are we are not recommending uh funding for this project um and i want to give some some good background on why why we got to that point with this um firstly you know the impact of casino related traffic on the city of lin um is minor uh according to the original environmental impact report document it was estimated that about 10 of the traffic to and from the casino would be from areas sort of north and east of the facility um about nine percent of that traffic was expected to use route one with about one percent using the local roads to the northeast such as route one a and route 107 uh with an average daily trip generation of about 24 thousand vehicles a day um at on core boston harbour um about 24 hundred of those would expect be expected to go to those points north and east of the site with the vast majority of these going up route one you know so about 2160 vehicles per day up route one now route one doesn't pass through lin proper um it sort of goes up along one side of it and we certainly would expect that some casino related traffic using group one could be coming from or passing through lin but you know trying to look at sort of a worst case estimate we believe that a maximum amount of vehicles that would pass through lin uh or come from lin uh to or from the casino might be as much as maybe 450 vehicles per day so that would be 225 going to the facility 225 coming back and it's also expected that this traffic would generally use the major routes in and out of a town such as um route 107 and uh and 1a and again i'm going to share my my google maps again um just so you can get an idea of what we're talking about so the intersectioning question is right up here where it's that you see west lin there there are these two streets that come together here this is hamilton this is boston street and um i'll zoom in just a little bit um now you can see the encore casino is down here and as the crow flies that's uh about eight or nine miles from the facility and you can see here you know traffic coming out of encore to that sort of northeast area would tend to use route 16 and it would either get on route one north or continue over to route 1a and you can see here 1a goes up along the coast 107 comes up this way um you know to be using this intersection to access encore just seems quite unlikely um and again just sort of uh just zooming in on this a little bit um you know this is the intersection here um and this of course the northern strand trail does run right here which ultimately comes down through uh everett and and eventually we'll be coming to the site but again we're talking about a about a nine mile bike ride from this location and we can't really put our fingers on what improvements to how improvements to this intersection would either encourage more traffic to use the northern strand that just you know the connections just didn't seem to be there for us um so yeah you know with respect to this particular application oh you know in previous grant rounds um the commission did accept that there would be some minor impacts to the city streets due to due to traffic and we did award the city a couple of grants to uh study certain improvements that could be done but at that time you know we viewed those as as kind of seed money to start the process on some very large projects for example we gave them money last year for the route 107 project and the route 107 project is a I think a 30 million dollar project that you know well we'll have some ancillary benefits to casino uh traffic the major benefit is truly to the to the city and so we felt again that providing some seed money to get those projects started was appropriate but that was really about all that we could um uh sort of justify now with respect to this particular application um we couldn't see how there would be an appreciable amount of traffic using these particular streets um it is a heavily traveled intersection there's about 20 000 vehicles per day that use that intersection um but we didn't we just didn't believe that the casino traffic would make up anything more than a really de minimis portion of the traffic on that road and we also we were intrigued by the connection to the northern strand but we also didn't see how improvements to the intersection would material materially affect the use of the northern strand um so with respect to on core they did support this project they usually do support projects for communities nearby but mass dot did have some reservations about this project particularly with the proposed project cost and also the fact that the project cannot be initiated uh in the MPO process so essentially for these reasons we are not recommending funding for this project and with that i'll open this one up for questions first looks like i'm seeing satisfied i i'll just add probably probably what everyone's thinking is that i i i feel that the review team really thoroughly considered uh this application and i appreciate you know you're really thinking about the potential for the the bike trail to come through um right it's always hard to turn down an application but i i felt very comfortable with your your thought process and your recommendation and respect both on cars and mass dots um input so you know and again we would love to fund all of these projects you know i there are a few projects that we've seen that didn't have some merit to them but um you know again we are sort of bound by that uh edict that we have to find that nexus to the casino and next year too joe i'm sure when you put out the guidelines and the applications you'll be doing your you know outreach and always communities that think they they may have a valid application have the opportunity to to speak with the group and and you'll probably do that same kind of training that you did this year so um you know i guess i would say perhaps there's another application in the future for lin but this one you know i feel that your your recommendation is is is very well supported okay um so the next one is um another project in everett on the northern strand uh some trail lighting improvements um so everett's requesting 135 000 for the installation of lighting on the northern strand community trail from its current terminus at wellington ave north up to the river breed district um so just a little bit of background on this last year we gave everett a grant to extend the northern strand from its current terminus down uh to the project site to the encore site um and that portion of the project will include lighting um so encore built an overflow parking lot up in the river green area for both employees and for overflow parking from the casino which is serviced by a shuttle bus but the thought there was that if some lighting could be provided on the northern strand trail up to that location it would make it more of a 24 hour transportation corridor rather than just being used uh during during the daylight hours um and of course we always agree that any anything that will improve the the bicycle pedestrian network has a good potential to take some vehicles off the road which will ultimately help traffic overall in the area and the traffic to the casino as well now this project was actually constructed last year um the project ran into some change orders and cost overruns for which the city had not budgeted um so the total cost of the project came to about 452 thousand dollars with 135 thousand and change orders so the city is requesting our funds just for those uh change orders that they ran into and this amounts to about 30 percent of the total construction cost uh which falls well within our guidelines of not funding more than one-third of the project costs so that so you know the review team felt that this project you know in conjunction with the northern strand extension down to the on-course site will improve access to the river green area and reduce use of single octopus vehicles um the project is completely consistent with the other bike and pedestrian projects that have been funded in the area um which will ultimately complete an extensive network of bike and pedestrian options for getting to and from the casino and again both on-core and mass dot were uh fully supportive of this project um therefore we're recommending uh fully funding this project at 135 thousand dollars so i hope when this one comes yeah i agree with the team this is an appropriate use for the uh mitigation monies i think everyone's nodding their heads uh great endorsement by um on-court boston however uh just to uh i think the statement was that would be um has the opportunity to make substantial and lasting improvements to our area this project is what it could lead to significant reach on improvement in the future so i'm bringing endorsement okay okay so the next one is uh sitting a spring field um this is for some uh roadway resurfacing and complete streets improvements again a transportation construction project um so springfield requesting 200 000 dollars for resurfacing and complete streets improvements on dwight street and hamden street in springfield in downtown springfield so dwight street is a major uh primarily stealth bound route from i 291 in downtown spring two downtown springfield um you know a substantial amount of traffic from i 90 westbound uses 291 and dwight street to access the casino you know if you if you continue on 291 you have to do a merge onto 91 and then cross three lanes of traffic to make the exit and i think people who are in the know uh will often take that dwight street i know i've used it numerous times myself and i think most of the commissioners have as well in going out to springfield um so we certainly agreed that the amount of traffic that uses dwight street constitutes an impact of the casino so the project will not only improve the pavement structure on the streets but it will also incorporate complete streets elements um you know improving access for all modes of transportation uh not only vehicles but pedestrians bicycles public transit um and one nice thing about this project is you know mgm did a whole bunch of these complete streets improvements to main street state street colombus have um you know dwight street being another major route this will bring that sort of up to that same standard that mgm was was required to do on those streets um which again will just improve overall transportation um the 200 000 request is uh exactly one third of the total project cost of six hundred thousand dollars which is in line with our guidelines and also both mgm and mass dot are fully supportive of this project and so we are recommending awarding uh the 200 000 dollars for this project any questions commissioners just as you said and i saw some heads nodding this is um you know the traffic uh counts don't quite tell the story because if you try to go by what google tells you and go to the casino coming from from route 90 into 91 um that is really difficult and so most people will come and do use dwight street um which perhaps again the figures under count um how important that connection is uh as as you go into the casino if there are no other comments on that um we'll move on to our our last one of the day um which is a this is a community planning grant um and this is the north hampton uh the north hampton live website uh marketing program so north hampton is requesting uh 75 000 to continue um the marketing program uh of the north hampton live website um just again a little bit of uh a deeper background on this um back in 2020 um you know we've awarded grants uh for this platform a couple of different times most recently last year um we did award a grant to north hampton with the understanding that north hampton needed to move this platform towards a self-sustaining model uh you know and while the review team didn't envision funding this project beyond 2020 many of the initiatives that had been planned to make it financially independent were unable to be met uh doing due to the ongoing pandemic you know you know there were restaurants and stores and other things that were all closing up shop and trying to ask merchants for for money under that um atmosphere would be uh extremely difficult if not impossible so we we agreed that um you know just the sort of the timing of this was was was really really difficult um so now the original and continuing purpose of this north hampton live website is to mitigate impacts on north hampton from the development of mgm spring field really by helping north hampton compete against you know the significant marketing resources of mgm you know they it gives them certainly not a voice as as loud as as uh what mgm has with their you know advertising campaigns and others but it does give them a a sort of a fighting chance to uh to you know keep their existing customers and hopefully grow their customer base somewhat um so now north hampton has actually made some strides towards becoming self-sustaining um they did agree to provide uh $25,000 of matching funds towards this grant um so um you know that that's a move in the right direction um and mgm is also supportive of this request um they they sort of contend that that they're really complimentary to a place like north hampton and not really in direct competition but I think we can see that you know uh any competition for sort of entertainment dollars is is competition so but they are definitely supportive of that now because of the difficulties over the last year in obtaining other sources of funding the review team recommends awarding this grant in the amount of $75,000 and again we do expect that north hampton needs to make those efforts to become self-sustaining you know if if um a platform like this needs continual subsidies from the gaming commission you know perhaps the platform isn't as successful as it as it should be so with that we are recommending the 75,000 but we do expect north the north hampton to continue making those efforts to create a financing model that doesn't rely on commission funds you know forever and with that I'll open this one up for any any questions or comments commissioners you know I'll um I'll mention that um in the past I was I would go along with these type of requests mostly as Joe said because had the caveat of it's going to be helping the one-time costs and then the city could take over you know for the longer term but this year is really one that has been has brought a lot of impact I guess to to the restaurant industry and if we can be of some assistance to the city of north hampton I think it's a good way to do it I would agree as well um under the circumstances and with the with the notion that they will at some point become self-sufficient with this I agree with the team's recommendation commissioner brian any thoughts no Joe made the same comments in the briefing which I thought were pretty compelling in terms of you know giving them this for this year with the idea that they would you know when things turn around hopefully over the next coming months that they can look for funding that makes them self-sustaining this is where I probably have to continue to think this through um I was um I'm I guess I wonder if I'm as as if the argument about self-sustaining is as compelling because I do feel as though north hampton which has had always a big tourist draw for its restaurants um you know wakes up after you know the casino is built and when you are trying to line up the marketing dollars against the marketing dollars it's a significant impact on their own budgetary process suddenly they want to make sure that they're not losing any of their their restaurant diners and their visitors to the casino or more appropriately be able to leverage from them you know the the benefit of the casino so I am I I like the idea of supporting the marketing programs of the neighboring towns um in nights I maybe I see them the nexus more clearly so um that will be something we can talk about perhaps in the guidelines going forward maybe I need further clarification and and and to understand um every commissioner's position on this um but I I I do I like this last year and I I like and I'm very pleased that the recommendation is to support it this year and with especially the backdrop of the impact of COVID-19 on the restaurant um industry hi excuse me manager this is joe I just my whole uh system just crashed on me so I had to had to call in oh so maybe you didn't hear that I am my comment so we can discuss them later to my my just practically trying now I think that just a comment for everybody supports your recommendation and everybody seems to really support it particularly because the the notion of Northampton becoming so self-sustaining in the future on their marketing and I guess I I just expressed a viewpoint that's slightly different but but I'm open to being convinced otherwise I just um for this I'm very pleased that this recommendation stands as is to support Northampton yes well and there he is again I'm back what a funny day huh we've all had our our tech issues Eileen and you've done very well today Gail occasionally it's been a little bit so slow down too must be must be May 6 huh 2021 so I haven't had that happen before though where I mean the I did it completely shut off I and it was gone it was gone completely wow you know I've frozen up before but never had it completely cut off like that yeah and then you called in and then it it came back interesting yeah well the mysteries so I think um I I think there are no further questions on this one but we are not taking a vote today because we know that there'll be other proposals in the various categories and we'll do our voting for category yep we will have I said we have eight more to get through uh at the next meeting uh hopefully um we have one more follow-up uh so close Kathy so close he froze in a way that's not his best you think I think we got the gist of what he was saying though but you know he's finishing up those last eight and we'll be ready to go and there he is this oh that's excellent okay so um I think then that concludes uh Chief Delaney's report for today right and um I and I want to just praise the entire review team and of course give a big shout out to to Mary and Fania for their continuing support of Joe Joe's good work so thank you uh commissioners you're all set I just in case you freeze again Joe thank you so much well thank you and I'll go give my wi-fi a rest okay I think everybody is should put their devices to sleep shortly after this meeting so um in terms of our agenda that brings us to item number 11 are there any commissioner updates no okay then we'll move on there's no other business then um the only thing I should know for other businesses today apparently is national nurse day and I think all of us can some day some moment today recognizes the nurses in our lives and also the just the global effort that nurses have made this last year so just an acknowledgement and a big thank you to the entire team to Executive Director Wells and to Vivian who is probably thinking this has been a good long reading thank you Vivian so with that commissioners do you have anything you'd like to add would you like to move motion to adjourn second excellent thank you commissioners I appreciate all your good work and in your support commissioner Cameron hi commissioner Brian hi commissioner Zinica and thank you Kathy I thank you okay and I vote yes Vivian have a good day everyone thank you


A physical presence is expensive in the house. I am digital. That makes it easy for me to be in multiple places, supporting business functions of the office and on the rise. So who am I talking to right now? So Cloud Minds is a company. So we have a long history of utilizing cloud AI conversation. So what we've done for today, for example, today we utilized cloud AI conversation with Pepper. But you can only have that conversation where there's a Pepper. So, yeah, so SoftBank Robotics. SoftBank Robotics. Yeah. Yeah. We work on Pepper and we also, but what we discovered is that let's build a product where you can have a conversation anywhere with your digital avatar. And she just shows up on the TV? She shows up.  So we're... Can you make her speak like the Google voice? It's only your AI. It's our AI platform on the back end. Your speech. Our natural language processing, our speech. But what it does is that our platform, we go through and score every conversation that takes place. So we know, based upon that score and this knowledge database, she has a confidence level of the answer. So we can go through and the key piece where we have that nobody else really has, we have a human in the loop that can intervene. You have a human in the loop? We do. So on the back end, we have a human in the loop. Somewhere. Somewhere in the cloud. Exactly. It could be anywhere in the world. It could be anywhere in the world. Yeah. So what we do is that even the best of AI's can only answer 80% of the questions. So that's 20%. How do you fill that gap? So we've done that with a human in the loop on the back end. And they can actually... And apparently even important because they're part of the learning process of the AI. When they go through and say it doesn't know a question, human in the loop can intervene. And then as part of that learning process of the AI and the cloud brain, it's always learning. And learning from those interactions with the customer. You have our 3D right here. We do. On this amazing hydrogen phone right here. Luke's amazing at this point. So I find out... Hey, what's your name? Who are you? What's your name? So it's a little bit noisy. Hello. My name is Claudia. I am a virtual avatar created by Cloud Minds Technology. Powered by Cloud AI. So how do you get to her to move the mouse and that to move? Yeah. So that's really the hard part of building an avatar is building in the muscle structure of how to formulate the words. So tying together the muscle structure of the face and facial expressions and emoting during that conversation is really the hard part of building the avatar. And by doing that, we can create and establish a... Not only a face of your brand, but establish an emotional tie to your brand.  It could live on a phone. It could live in a kiosk. So wherever your customer is on their buying journey, it can always talk to you to the brand of your customer. The face of your brand. So she can wear the logo. So we can make a complete custom avatar for a company. So we can say, hey, if you already have a spokesperson for your company, we're going to make your own spokesperson. She's just running on this Snapdragon phone right here. She was running on a phone today, but she can run on many different... So it's an Android app. It's a cloud. She can run on many different things. So the 3D is running from the phone. There's 3D graphics going on the Android GPU. Yeah. So on this device, yes, on the red device. She's not in 4K. She's not right now. So we always do a development work on her. Eventually, she'll become a hologram. I mean, the key is like she could be like a three-dimensional person that you could have a conversation with. So... So in Seagull... Yeah, the partnership is through the Edge device. So for us, until we have fully embedded robots and fully embedded within our robots, 5G chipsets eventually. So the Seagull device is the 5G device. For us, the key point is... This is 5G. This is 5G. The 5G logo. So... That makes it a... For us, it's very important to have a true natural conversation. For 5G, you've got to have low latency. And for our new robot that will be launching on the 26th of February, it's where you can get control of the robot's hands and gestures. And you are... Cloudmines? Cloudmines. Cloudmines does the... Cloud Robotics. So we're a Cloud Robotics company. And we're based in... Santa Clara is... We're based... I'm based... Our U.S. base is in Santa Clara. We have offices in China and Japan as well. And... Have you been doing this kind of stuff for a long time? We have. No, no. We've been doing... So we've been doing with the conversational AI. It's mostly around Pepper and some other robots. But what we really wanted to do was how can we bridge this gap? For example, retail. How do you bridge this gap between e-commerce and brick and mortar? So if you can actually bridge it with an avatar, now it becomes this very valuable integration point and a face to your brand. So for example, a shopping experience would be... If you go into a retail store, it should already know my shopping history. It should already know everything that I've been looking for on the web regarding your products. So I come into the store. There's Claudia sitting in a kiosk. She facially recognized me and already sets a personalized shopping experience for me. Say, I know you've been looking at these things online. Here's where they're located within the store. Or, hey, let me call somebody or notify somebody to bring those items to the dressing room for you. So it creates a personalized experience for you. I'd like to get into the store and the electronic store, for example, to have so many TVs all over the place. All over the place. All over the... No matter where I am in the store, she's always there. Well, you can talk to her on the phone. No matter where I am. It's called the array of mics. Pick up whatever I say, no matter where I am.  So now I'm like, oh, I'm within the store. Maybe I'm not at the kiosk. I could still have that conversation. And all those conversations are still in the back end. So you have that intelligence around those conversations that your customers are having with your brand. And they may actually ask an avatar something completely different than they would ask a human. So they may have like a more honest exchange with an avatar than they actually would with a human service person. But the trick of making this successful is you want to be everywhere. Everywhere. And to get to that, you need to provide, let's say, a free app that everybody uses. So what we do is, yeah, the app is free, but what we do is we focus on the customization of the avatar. So the avatar is a custom integration. Everything integrates in the cloud. So for us, it's all about this cloud brain and understanding and always knowing, always learning cloud brain. So this becomes part of that extension of that cloud brain where wherever your customer is on their buying journey, they're always going to ask a question of your avatar, of the face of your brain. So no matter what, they're like, hey, I'm at the beach. I got a question about X about your product. I can ask the avatar through your app. But for this to be the best experience, you need to be the world leader in terms of interactions, right? Google has a lot of interaction going on every day, right? Yeah, so we need to have those interactions because that's part of the learning process of the AI. You don't want to just find your avatar at work with Google Assistant? Do you have an option? It could. It could? Yeah. You could have her speak with a Google voice. Or a custom voice, yeah? Yeah. So yeah, we could integrate with, we could do custom integration with Alexa or we could do integration with Google. The key is, when you're talking to a customer, though the key is the integration on the back end, most customers, when we talk to enterprise customers, they already have a call center. They already have a Q&A already built. We just load that Q&A within the avatar. So now it becomes this knowledge base for the avatar that it can draw from its knowledge base to answer the questions from your customers.  We could at some point. Not too far. We could do a three-dimensional scan and then scan my voice. It has to be like some parameter of your voice, yeah. Is it part of the technology? Yeah. Yeah. So actually the avatar is built within the Unity platform, the gaming platform. So what we've done is like, we've integrated our cloud AI conversational platform with the Unity platform to build this seamless product with the quality of the digital avatar. So you just need a 3D model of my face. And my body or something? We just have to like record your voice. And my voice. Yeah. So then we could like, we could bind to the voice to get your voice. It's not easy. It's not easy. Can't you do it automatically? Not yet. It's not an easy process yet, but it's getting there. Knowledge curve is getting up there fast.


Sergeant Major and I just wanted to get together with you for a few seconds before you head out on the 4th of July weekend. We want you to have a great time, but we want you to be safe. Be smart in your travel. Since 2013, three hazards have stood out in our core. The first one is driving tired or sleeping. Make sure when you have a plan and as everyone should, you work the plan and stick to it. The biggest risk you're going to have out there is alcohol. Alcohol consumed by somebody else or you or somebody with your group. You're grown men and women. I trust you. We trust you. But you have to be careful with alcohol. Don't put yourself in a compromising position. Please be safe about this. The third hazard, motorcycles.  Normally the accident is called by the other person. Make sure you're watching out for the driver that's not watching out for you. We need you to come back. You've worked hard for what you've done to earn the title Marine. Please don't do anything to put yourself unnecessarily at risk. You're too important to us, your family, and your teammates in our Marine Corps. So please have a great 4th of July. Check what you've earned. We'll see you back here next week.


Hello everyone, how are you today? This is Marc. I'm doing just great. Thanks for asking. If you watched this lesson, you'll learn the first conditional. There won't be a bright future unless we work on it now. They will move to another city, if necessary. A student will complete an English course provided they are highly encouraged. Whatever happens to us won't change the outcome. In this lesson, as I said, we're going to look at the first conditional. So stay tuned. I've already talked about conditionals. If you want to watch those lessons, you may click here. Now, let's concentrate on the first conditional first. We used it when talking about a situation which may exist in the future, and thus is a probable situation. We have a formula, and that is the subject plus the present symbol. Then we need will plus infinitive. So the first part, we call it a condition. And then the second part, we call it a result. Just like my introductory example, if you watch this lesson, you'll learn the first conditional. Now, I could have said you'll learn the first conditional if you watch this lesson. It's the same thing. The only thing that changes is the importance that you want to give to the first part of the sentence. For example, in this case, you'll learn the first conditional is more important than if you watch this lesson. So I have listed four rules or four tips for you to follow and to understand better the first conditional. The first tip that I want to talk about is to use unless instead of if. Unless means if not. The example was there won't be a bright future unless we work on it now. So we have the result right here. There won't be a bright future. And then the condition unless we work on it now. I could have said there won't be a bright future if we don't work on it now. It's the same thing. Now let's take a look at the second tip. We could omit the verb to be by adding if plus adjective or a prepositional phrase. If you don't know what a prepositional phrase is, you can click here and watch a lesson on that. The example that I gave you at the beginning was they will move to another city if necessary. So we have if plus adjective necessary. The other example that I listed here, he won't go to the beach if hot. He will go to the beach if warm. Okay, the third tip is we can use provided provided that proving as long as only if when you want to state that one situation is necessary for another. Okay, let's take a look at the example. Maybe you'll get what I mean. A student will complete an English course and then I use provided, just provided, provided they are highly encouraged. So the first part of the sentence you can see that is the result. The condition is after provided. Provided they are highly encouraged. Let's take a look at the another example. Her parents won't worry as long as she calls them every evening. For example, her parents won't worry is the result of the best statement as long as she calls them is the conditional, is the condition of the sentence. Now the last tip that I have for you today about the first conditional is in the condition we can also use whoever, whatever, wherever, however, whichever and whenever. Let's take a look at my examples. Whatever happens to us, so this is the condition part of the statement. Won't change the outcome. Won't change the outcome is the result. Another example would be whenever I see her in the condition I'll tell her about her marks is the result of the sentence of the statement. Now let's recap. So in this lesson I talked about the first conditional. It's a situation that may happen in the future. So it's probable. So we have a formula for this. In the condition part of the sentence, so after if, unless, provided, etc. we need the subject obviously and the present simple. In the result though we need will plus infinitive. This could change according to the importance. So it may happen that you want the result first and then the condition. It's up to you. I gave you four tips on how to use the first conditional correctly. If you haven't understood, please re-watch the lesson. That's it for today. Thank you very much for watching. If you want to post your own example you may do so. If you want to post also comments or questions you may do so under this video. Please subscribe to my channel if you haven't and I see you next week for a new lesson. Take care. Bye bye.


What is going on guys, it's your boy DPJ here today with another Destiny video and in today's Destiny video we're going to check out what Zer brings to the table on the 8th of May 2015. And if you guys are new to Destiny and you don't know who Zer is, is a vendor who visits the tower for my Friday morning and leaves on a Sunday morning and with him he brings along exotic items you can trade for strange coins and moats of light.  But okay let's just see what he has this week, okay okay oh my days okay so he has the room wings which are gone as for the Titan, costing 13 strange coins, heavy ammo drops more often and contains more ammo in each drop causing damage with a melee reduces your grenade cooldown and increased reload speed with special weapons. We then have the ATS slash A arachnid helmet for the Hunter also costing 13 strange coins.  Then we have the obsidian mine helmet for the wall up now this is the one exotic I did need in the game until I got it yesterday in the nightfall and now Zer sells it. How crazy is that? Okay costing 13 strange coins this one will increase grenade throw distance, increase super energy gain from killing minions of the darkness and nova bomb kills reduce the cooldown of your next nova bomb, okay the weapon of the week is the thunderlord now I know a lot of people have been after this so I like you guys will be pumped as Zer has finally brought it, it is a great heavy machine gun it really is well worth them 17 strange coins, okay we have an exotic shard costing 7 strange coins and we have an exotic army engram costing 23 moats of light. Armours and weapons available to upgrade this week we have the masculine third man and the lucky raspberry for the hunter we have an insurmountable school fort and the crest of alpha loop for the titan we have the school of dire ahamkara and the apotheosis fail for the warlock weapons we have the bad juju the fawn the plant seed the ice breaker the gallahorn and the truth rocket launcher and that is it guys that is what Zer brought this time around under 8th of May 2015 is there anything here you guys are going to buy I would have brought the obsidian mind if I weren't awarded it yesterday in the nightfall but still not a bad week considering let me know if you buy anything down below in that comment section thanks for stopping by as always do drop a like I do appreciate the support and peace out until next time. Peace!