Okay, we are good to go. Good morning and welcome. Thank you for attending this session. My name is Massimo Ferrari and my partner in crime here is Eric Maurisi. We both work for Red Hat. We are part of the team responsible for the product strategy in the management view. Today we are going to talk about the financials behind the private cloud, and specifically a private cloud based on OpenStack. If I will be able to change the slides. There we go. Before starting drill down into the model, I'd like to provide a little bit of background on the project because we started this research as an internal activity. We were looking to a number of answers around OpenStack and we had two big questions. Okay, I need to build the private cloud. Is OpenStack the most cost effective technology that I can choose if we compare it with other known OpenStack technologies? And okay, I have my private cloud up and running is based on OpenStack. What are the first thing I should focus on? The knob I have to turn to make my private cloud even more efficient. So we started running through a number of TCO model already available on the market, but honestly, none of them was transparent enough, deep enough, able to provide the level of detail that we were looking for. So mainly because our lives were way too easy, we decided to create our own model for the TCO. So what you expect to see today is something slightly different from what you may use to. Because it's not the usual marketing tool that we made to prove some point convenient to us. Is we tried not to seek the numbers themselves. We tried to build a tool, a way to provide those numbers in a consistent way. And what came up is a tool that is intended to be consumed by IT decision makers and support them in financial conversation within the company and with the line of business. And in building this tool, what we did is asking a number of peer review from IT guys, financial guys, people we trusted in the industry, following the exact same process that an analysis firm like, I don't know, IDC and Gartner uses when they deliver their researches. So what we try to do is to be as objective and as unbiased as we could. And to do so, we relied on industry data. But because we were about to explore a number of areas not covered by traditional research, we had to do a number of assumptions. What that means, well, basically, that some of the number that you are going to see later on in the presentation looks weird to you, causes could be only two. Or we did the wrong assumptions, or we used industry data that we're already outdated when we use them. The good news is that the model is completely transparent. That means that it's very, very easy to fix it, very, very easy to improve it over time. And because, as I told before, is a tool, that means good numbers in, means good numbers out. So what we try to do is to build the most comprehensive TCO model for a private cloud. Able to act like a scorecard, so to help you doing comparison. And because, as I mentioned before, is transparent, that means that you can use your own number inside the model. Well, to recap, long story short, we built a tool able to provide numbers to be crunched by financial guys, taking account things like the impact on income statement, balance sheet, cash flow, whatever. And has been built by IT guys, us, people who knows that things like hardware and people has different cycles within the company. And because we believe that tools are the right way to find answers, we built this tool to support ongoing decision making. Now, I don't want to spend any more time into this introduction. The important thing here is that, as I mentioned before, this was an internal research, no plan at all to share outside. But in the process of building the tool, we found out a number of, well, remarkable things. So we decided to present the research at the summit in Tokyo. We collected a number of, you know, interesting feedback there. And so we spent the last six months double checking the numbers, comparing the research with something else that came out in the meantime and we are happy to see that, you know, we were pretty much close to the reality. So let's go straight to what we found out building the model because at this part of the presentation, the numbers are the important part. The important part is what we learned into the process of building the model itself. And the first thing is that, well, good news. OpenStack is the cheapest technology to build a private cloud. Now, not exactly surprisingly, but because that's the first time that someone in the market tries to build a similar tool, we are happy to have numbers that prove this statement. The interesting thing, the relevant thing here is that we are not talking about a single use case. We are not talking about a single situation because no matter how fast you grow, no matter how slow you grow, we weren't able to find a single situation where OpenStack was more expensive if compared with other known OpenStack technologies. Now, two big statements, I know that. So it's time to provide a little bit of insights of this project, just to support what we just said. So we started running through a number of different growth curves. What we were looking for was the consistency in the results independently from the growth curve. So we run through exponential, linear, logarithmic, while those curves, because each one of those curves represent a different adoption strategy inside the company and the success that this strategy has inside the company. Well, the difference is because different type of business, different companies have different timing into adopting a new technology and have different timing into deciding and applying a different strategy. That's why you will see around companies which decided to go all into a private cloud, so moving all their applications to a private cloud. And on the other side, you will see other companies bet on a single relevant pilot project to boost the confidence in the technology. But the point here is that what the model proves is that numbers are consistent independently from the growth curve. So the numbers you will see may be different or very different from what you see every single day in your infrastructure, but the point is that the model remains valid. And because the comparative results are always the same, what we did for the sake of this representation is to use what we found the most common growth curve, so the exponential curve. So everything you will see later on relies on exponential growth curve. But what we are comparing here, as I mentioned before, the first question we were trying to answer was, okay, is OpenStack more cost effective if we compare it with other technologies? So the comparison here is OpenStack versus other vendors' technology. I'm specifying that because later on, we will see another kind of comparison which is more like buying model for OpenStack, so more OpenStack versus OpenStack. But what are the items that this model takes in account to calculate the TCO? Well, to procure and to run a private cloud, you have three main items, software, people, and hardware. And you can split those three items in three different buckets. So you will find in the software buckets all the costs related to subscription or licenses, depending on the software you're using. In the people bucket, which is the most relevant in terms of size, you will find all the costs related to server and storage administrator, network and system engineers, their managers, the training, the onboarding cost, talent retention, everything is around the employees. Last bucket, probably the easier, the hardware bucket contains all the costs related to procure and refresh all the hardware you use in your private cloud. So we are talking about servers, storage, networking. And well, the nice thing here is that the model addresses each one of those cost items in a different way. So to address the software costs, the model compare a number of different technologies to provide an infrastructure as a service engine. And to address the people cost, the model introduce IT automation at different levels of the infrastructure. And to address the hardware cost, the model simulate different VM density on top of the hardware, on top of the servers. But what we are comparing here, we say that we are comparing OpenStack versus other technologies. Now, we are not quoting explicitly other vendors, we all know who are we talking about, but the point, the relevant point here is that all the other vendors providing their bundles, orchestration and IT automation capabilities that aren't present out of the box in OpenStack. We all know that OpenStack has a lot of potential for automation, a lot of potential for orchestration, but the point is that to do an Apple to Apple comparison that we need to do there, we compared OpenStack with a CMP on top of it. And well, because we are at that, so we easily access to those data, we compared RHCI, which is one of our bundles, which includes our OpenStack distribution plus cloud forms as the CMP on top of it, which provides all those capability to compare. Now, let me spend just few moments on the notion of CMP because cloud management platform is a terminology introduced by Gartner to describe a family of products intended to augment infrastructure engines like hypervisors, infrastructure as a service, cloud manager, platform as a service, cloud managers, and introducing a number of capabilities like cell service portal, chargeback, policy enforcement, whatever. And another thing you may expect a CMP to be able to do is to spread all those capabilities across a large number of infrastructure providers on one side and cloud providers on the other side, enabling what we call an hybrid cloud. So at the end of the day, a CMP is that piece of software you may expect to see in place into your infrastructure at the latest stages of maturity. And talking about stages of maturity reminds me that implementing a private cloud inside an enterprise, inside a company is a journey, a journey that may take years to reach the full maturity level. And that's not something that we are saying, it's not something that Red Hat is saying, it's something that all the major analysis firm says. And don't get me wrong, you can have your infrastructure as a service up and running it, let's say six months. You can do that. We are talking about a different level of maturity. We are talking about training your people to this new technology. We are talking about adapting your business processes to this new service model. We are talking about introducing a number of capabilities that are needed to interact with all the enterprise tools that you have within the company. And all those things while you are driving the adoption of a new infrastructure. So not exactly an easy thing to do. That's why we are showing the numbers on a six years time span. Well, that's one of the reasons, the other reason is that we are showing the costs and how the cost changes over time. In fact, we modeled this TCO up to 10 years, which is way longer than how your infrastructure may look like now. But we were trying to ensure that there are no weird gotchas over time. And if you remember, for this representation, we are using the exponential growth curve. So you will see the number of VMs doubling year over year. And last relevant things for this representation is that all the numbers we are showing are represented through a unitary metric, which is cost per VM. That's very important. And we are going to come back later on this because now it's time for the graphs and some numbers to support the graphs. And okay, now it's the moment for my buddy here to explain why those numbers are important. Thanks, Massimo. One thing you guys will see pretty clearly is that even year over year, the costs can be dramatically different for offering the same types of services. So here we have, we're talking about the technologies in an open stack with the automation and orchestration of a CMP and a non-open stack cloud. So start off maybe $500 in savings per VM. As you get to more mature, increases to 700 or more. One of the things that we found is some of the feedback we got after we gave this presentation in Tokyo and then released our research is we had a lot of interesting comments about the numbers in particular. So one of the things is we had talked to some companies who were on the smaller side and said these are ridiculously high. We talked to some larger companies who said those numbers are fantastic. How can we get those? Those are ridiculously low. And what it looks like is we did a good job getting kind of the industry average of this because it's really kind of right in the middle. So little bit, you can see the difference between the two. Open stack is not only cheaper to begin with, it continues to get cheaper over time and you're able to get some economies and savings there that they grow over the time of your implementation. So another way to look at this is to look at the total costs over the period of time. And because open stack is less expensive as you are growing your curve, as I said, it is less expensive compared to this other stuff. The difference between the two grows even more. So by the time you are into several years in, those numbers can really, really add up. To make this a little bit more clear, we're gonna switch into another graph to look at just the gap between these two. All right, so year one, there's some difference. By the time you start to get to 1,000 VMs or so, we're talking about an awful lot of difference. So the majority of this in the comparison between the two is in the software cost. Some of this is in VM density, but that's really pretty small and we'll talk about that later. One thing to keep in mind is these numbers are list prices. Not surprisingly, other software vendors were not particularly keen on giving us their discount schedules. So in order to do like to like these are list prices. But think about the discounts that you get with your vendors and be able to, you can adjust these quickly. If we look at the cumulative savings, so understanding that building a cloud is something that you is going to not only take time, but you're gonna use over time, what is the comparative savings over that period of time, right? So basically you're getting to a point where I don't really care what your discount levels are.  So what we just saw is the TCO model for a private cloud and the remarkable amount of money that you can save choosing OpenStack as the software solution. But if you remember the second question we had at the beginning, now, okay, we have the cheapest possible private cloud based on OpenStack. There is anything else that I can do to make this private cloud even more cost effective. Well, luckily the model says yes, but like in many other situations, the point is okay, yes, but how? And the first thing that the model demonstrates is that IT automation by and far has the largest impact on private cloud costs. And that's from day zero. So the first recommendation here is to focus on IT automation first. So Massimo said when we started off that we tried as much as possible to rely on industry data, numbers, et cetera, that anybody in this audience could get to with no problem. One of the things that we looked at were staffing ratios for sysadmins. So one of the things that we found in some of the other TCOs that we looked at that we didn't think was enough as they didn't include the cost of the people running the VMs and the apps that are on top of the cloud. When we talk about things like automation, that's where a lot of this comes in. So we got some good staffing ratios from this group called Computer Economics. And what they looked at is the number of OS instances, so VMs plus bare metal servers per sysadmin. And they found that the industry average was somewhere around 52, 53 instances per person. Now this is an open stack crowd. My guess at any number of you have an extraordinary larger than that, but that's kind of industry average. And when we're talking about this exponential growth, we're talking about doubling the amount of VMs every single year. So you have a couple options. I'm guessing most of your sysadmins are probably not working only half days, so they're gonna need help with all this other work. So one option would be you can double your cloud team every single year. My guess is there probably aren't too many people too in a position to do that for the entire life of their cloud every single year. Another place that you can bring it in is around automation. So what the folks at the Computer Economics found was that one of the key indicators for the people that had the highest levels of the ratio of the number of instances to the admin, so kind of that top third, one of the key indicators was how much automation they had within their shops. And they found that those, even just the top third, not the top tier, but just the top third, were about double to about 100 instances. And this is becoming even more important. So within the US there's an organization called the Bureau of Labor Statistics, so US government agency, they look at a lot of things. One thing that they look at is the expected job growth across any number of categories. So they expect over the next few years, we're looking at somewhere between 11,000 and 12,000 brand new system in jobs within the US. I was like, all right, that's pretty good. But if we look at the projections for the number of VMs from IDC, we're looking at between seven and eight million. So quick math, that's about 700 VMs for every admin. Now that's gonna be spread, those number of VMs are gonna be spread across the entire team, but depending on how quickly you cycle out your hardware, that could be anywhere from 400 to 600 VMs per person very quickly in the next couple of years. So if you're not there, then start thinking about automation. All right, so speaking of automation, one of the things that we looked at, Massimo said at the beginning, we had two main questions. One is how does OpenStack compare to non-OpenStack distributions in terms of cost? And the other one is what are different ways to think about and look about how you acquire and run OpenStack? Because there's certainly any number of options to do it. So we looked at three different models. One, we looked at grabbing the upstream code and supporting it yourself. We looked at getting a commercial distribution and we looked at a commercial distribution with the CMP. So that bottom curve is the one that Massimo was showing off before. So the numbers, again, they all get better over time. But the thing to think about a little bit in terms of the cost is we figured that the upstream was gonna be significantly more cost competitive. And we were surprised that it is not. And when we looked into it, it kind of made sense, right? Because it is the combination of all the people to run your cloud, but you also need additional people to support the cloud. And as the cloud goes, both of those are required. So for a commercial distribution, you are supporting your operations of your cloud. You don't have to support the code with the CMP, with all the automation pieces. You have that benefit of just supporting your cloud, but you're also starting to basically give more hours to your sys and minns to get things done, right? You're starting to divorce that exponential growth of the number of VMs from the hiring and the number of people that you need to do. So that's nice. This is a talk about TCO and finance. What does it mean particularly for looking at the comparison between two of these? So we have the hour commercial distribution of OpenStack compared to our commercial distribution of OpenStack with CloudForms and the automation. So it's automation, it's extra software, software costs more. However, when you look at the density levels that we were looking at breaks out to about 53 bucks of VM and the savings you have in terms of getting things done as you grow, that $1,200 or more means you are not having to double your team every single year just to keep up with the growth. So tremendous savings there. One thing, another thing here is so we happen to be showing from year five, the numbers don't look too different depending on where you pull from in terms of year one, two, three, et cetera. And a lot of the literature talks about some of these technologies and the value of coming in on the more mature curve. However, we found that it's really easy to get some of these really right from the beginning. So any sysimines in the room, you've probably been waiting for everybody else to catch up in the fact that if you have automation, your life is easier. And that's exactly the reason why we recently invest in the automation tool Ansible. Why Ansible and not other tools? Well, plenty of reason, probably the simplest one is that Ansible is easy. It is easy to learn because the configuration files are basically human readable, it's easy to implement because it's agent less so it's very easy to introduce into an existing infrastructure. And well, recently we extended the support for automation to networking. And that means that you have more infrastructure to automate. But going back to the findings of this project, you may remember that I mentioned that the unitary cost that we were using to show the data was extremely important. Now, one of the things that we learned from the project is that you should track all the cost into your private cloud using the cost per VM metric. Why? Because it's a great, great way to show how good you are into introducing efficiency into your infrastructure, how good you are into providing a great service at scale. And if you are acting like a service provider, even internally, the numbers that you have are closer to what your customers, internal or external, expects. So a couple of things that we found in value in looking at the per VM costs. So one in particular, they are certainly susceptible to the timing we talked about in terms of the purchase cycles and hiring, et cetera. You're going to have people come and go, people get promoted, people leave, sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes it's a bad thing. But they're going to come in at different rates. With hardware, you've got to have initial hardware, you've got to hire for growth, then you hit the cycle for refreshing your hardware every few years. In software, what differences come in in terms of, is it a license plus maintenance, or is it a subscription? All these come in and can affect things at different times. So because of this, one thing to keep in mind, and we can't recommend this strongly enough, that if you are looking at your costs, make sure you look at them over time. Because of the way that these timing cycles happen, if you offer the exact same service next year that you do this year, your costs may not be the same. The other piece has to do is, in terms of using the VM costs, is in comparison to the total costs. So Massimo and I have spent an awful lot of time looking at the data, and thinking about it, and talking to people about it. And we look at these annual costs, and all we can see is somebody is spending a lot of money. We have no idea if that's good or bad. When we switch over to looking at the per VM costs, there is no way for me to tell from that total cost that the difference in cost between year one and year three, there's a 50% savings, a 50% reduction in cost of the VM as you go over time.  So if you break them out separately, you can start to get to things like all these. You can see the things that we talk about when we talk about things like these magical economies of scale. So there's one right on the screen. Now, what we have just so are two very different metrics. So we have the total cost of your cloud, which is a very good representation of how many people you have onboarded on your service, how many people you convinced to use your service. On the other side, we have a unitary metric, which is the cost per VM, and is a great, great metric to show how good you are into providing efficiency in your infrastructure. So how compelling is your infrastructure to your user? But now, the really interesting thing here is the relationship between those two metrics. So one thing to keep in mind, as you do this work to reduce the VM cost, you're going to increase the usage. So probably not a big surprise. When things are less expensive, more people want to use them, they find new uses. What we did find, however, is that when you reduce the costs, your total costs are going to rise. So when we talk about the curve and the total costs going up, if you're just looking at a cost savings mechanism, keep this in mind. So we can actually say it more strongly than this. We looked at a bunch of data from IDC over long-term trends, and it looks like for every dollar or 1% that you reduce the cost of a VM, the total usage grows by about two and a quarter percent, which is a correspondingly mean that your usage costs increase by a little over dollar for every dollar that you reduce at the VM costs. Okay, so far, we saw how to address the software cost, we saw how to address the people cost, but what about the hardware? Well, surprisingly, what the model shows is that increasing the VM densities on servers, on hardware has a surprisingly low impact on cost. Now, we are not saying that you should not track the cost of your hardware, especially at scale. What we are saying here is that if you want to focus on high-impact cost items, you just should look elsewhere. So frankly, that was a little bit of a surprise to us. We figured, hey, if you can double your density, you buy half as many servers, easy way to save some money. But when we looked at it, the difference was not particularly strong. So these four nearly indistinguishable lines are different density levels across those same servers. So industry average is somewhere between about 10 and 15, VMs per server. We wanted to see what happens if we could really crank up the density as well, so we also looked at 10 and 20. Given OpenStack has some better density properties than a bunch of other technologies, let's say you've got 15, if you were to do all the work to double the density to 30, you're talking about a savings of about 350 bucks per VM.  And that $350 is before any software and effort, et cetera, to be able to get to that maybe unrealistic doubling of density. Okay, now we are approaching the end of the presentation, so time to do a little wrap up. So the first thing we learned into this project and in this presentation is that, well, you did well choosing OpenStack to build your private cloud is the cheapest option on the market, very good. But if you want to make your private cloud even cheaper, even more cost effective from a financial standpoint, you should enforce a number of recommendations. And the first recommendation is focus on IT automation first from day zero, because IT automation has the largest impact on cost of a private cloud. Surprisingly, on the other side, increasing VM density on hardware doesn't, but once again, everything matters at scale. The second recommendation is track your cloud cost using a unitary metric, the cost per VM, because it's a great, great way to show how good you are into providing new features, innovations, efficiency in the service you are offering. But on the other side, and that's the third recommendation, expect your total cloud cost to grow while you are seeing your cost per VM lowering. Why? Because the total cloud cost is a representation of how good you are into onboarding people in your new infrastructure. And that means high total cloud cost, lot of people using your cloud. That frankly speaking is a very good problem to have. All right, so what kind of things can we change in the model? Here are a bunch of the assumptions we made. Here are the types of industry data we used. Frankly, one thing that we would really like to see and I think the industry can get a lot of value about having more understanding about the financial impact of architecture choices upon cost. There are a number of people who do this already, right? So public clouds, managed service providers, all these folks, cost is one of their optimization parameters. It's not just throughput or latency or IOPS or any of the other ones that we have. And we would love to see more expertise grow in the industry. We think it will help all of us. We think it'll help us make better decisions when we're taking architecture choices. We think it'll help us make better decisions when we are thinking about new technologies and new projects and decisions even with, even with the development of any of the OpenStack projects. So we've done this work and we're talking about what if we were gonna open source the work that we have done. We got some very generous offers when we put this out in Tokyo, however most of the offers, even they were very generous offers, were really around data. So we're pretty comfortable that the model itself works across a wide set of data and particular customer data may or may not have any transferability to any of you guys in a different use case. Could be different use cases. Maybe you decide you want to do your unit costs instead of VMs to be this containers or whatever else, right? So we're looking for ideas. If you wanna help extend this to be able to build it into something that we can use across different use cases, different classes of software, or you just have questions and wanna figure out this is something interesting, please, we'd love to hear from you. And thanks. Okay, I think we have consumed enough of your time for today.  So thank you again for attending. Enjoy the rest of the summit.


Lead 2 sulfate solubility in water at 25 degrees Celsius is 4.25 times 10 to the negative 3 grams per 100 milliliters. What is the KSP of lead 2 sulfate? Okay, so in order to do a problem like this you're going to have to know what lead is, sulfate is, and how to combine these things. So let's go ahead and write lead 2 sulfate, so like that. So you also know that this is a slightly soluble compound, so you can write a reaction equation. So we know the KSP of this thing, E2 plus. So the solubility is given in grams per 100 milliliters, so that's the solubility of that. And we have a 1 to 1 to 1 ratio of these things, then it has to be the solubility of this thing and of this thing too. So, but we use these units, we take these things to molarity units in the KSP equation. So this up here is not in molarity units, so we're going to have to change those to molarity units, okay? So how do we do that? We're having 1,000 mills is 1 liter. Okay, if we do that, the units of molarity are what? Moles per liter, so do we have moles per liter here? No, we have grams per liter, right? So in order to get moles, we're going to have to use the molar mass, right? So if we had a lead sulfate, it should be 303.3 grams per mole. Okay, so let me do that, cancel, cancel, 4.25, 1.40 times 10, the negative 4. Okay, so that's the solubility in molar quantities, so molar to molar to molar, right? So we've got a 1 to 1 to 1 ratio there and we're looking for the KSP, the value of it. Well KSP equals the concentration of lead 2 times the concentration of sulfate. So this is 1.40 times 10 to the negative 4th molar, then this must be 2 and this must be 2. So in order to do this, 1.40 times 10 to the negative 4th, and I'm not going to put any units in to not confuse myself, 1.96 times 10, 8. Questions on that?


I'm inclined to say that Donald Trump is becoming even more unhinged than he usually is, but you know, that really isn't shocking to anyone. I think it'd be more surprising if he actually acted like a functioning adult for at least a day. But lately he really has been more stupid than usual for lack of a better word.  We need some, you know, new words to describe what's happening. The current vocabulary just doesn't do it justice. So as many of you know, he has been raging against mail-in voting, not because this actually will lead to fraud as he claims, but because if more people vote, if mail-in voting increases voter turnout, that means he probably will lose because Democrats always win when people show up to vote and Republicans lose. So he's banking on people staying home and feeling demoralized and not voting or not being able to overcome the obstacles to vote in order for him to get reelected. And here's what he tweeted out. There is no way, zero, that mail-in ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged, and even illegally printed out and fraudulently signed, the governor of California is sending ballots to millions of people. Anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there, will get one. That will be followed up with professionals telling all of these people, many of whom have never even thought of voting before, how and for whom to vote. This will be a rigged election. No way. Now, he's trying to prime you to think that mail-in voting will lead to fraud specifically because it will enable undocumented residents to vote, but that's not going to happen. You will not get a ballot mail to you unless you are a registered voter. If you are not a citizen, you cannot become a registered voter, so he's fear-mongering, but one thing that you may not have noticed about that tweet is that Twitter actually put a little disclaimer with a link saying, get the facts about mail-in ballots, which leads to a headline, which reads, Trump makes unsubstantiated claim that mail-in ballots will lead to voter fraud. So they fact-checked him, and they also explained in a tweet, we added a label to two real Donald Trump tweets about California's vote by mail plan as part of our efforts to enforce our civic integrity policy. We believe those tweets could confuse voters about what they need to do to receive a ballot and participate in the election process. So yeah, simply put, they fact-checked him. And in response to said fact-checking, Donald Trump was apoplectic. He was enraged. He tweeted out, Twitter is now interfering in the 2020 presidential election. They are saying my statement on mail-in ballots, which will lead to massive corruption and fraud, which he presented no evidence for, is incorrect.  Yes, you heard that correctly. The president of the United States accused a private company of violating his First Amendment rights. You're not dreaming. This is real life. This is the dystopian future that we never thought we'd all see, but we're living it now. But he wasn't done there. As Variety reported, Trump is signing an executive order that would let U.S. citizens submit complaints if they feel they have been unfairly treated by social networks. So he's going to make it easier for us to speak to the managers of these social networks and voice our grievances. And you know, I for one am all for it because I have a grievance with YouTube. Please stop deprioritizing independent media in favor of cable news like Fox News and CNN and MSNBC. But he's not done yet. There's even more. So as NBC News reporters to Hillkipur reports, President Trump says he would shut down Twitter if his lawyers found a way to do it. But there are hurdles. I'd have to go through a legal process, he says, per White House poll report. And let's take it back to the beginning. All of this. This entire kerfuffle is because he's mad that they fact checked him. That's it. They fact checked him and he wants to shut down Twitter. Donald Trump is the ultimate Karen.  Now look, there is a conversation to be had about whether or not social media websites should engage in fact checking because that doesn't necessarily mean that they will be unbiased. I mean, for example, you have Facebook hiring a fact checker of the Daily Caller, which I personally don't trust. But that's a different conversation for a different day. The fact is they fact checked him. And in this instance, you know, they are correct and he didn't like it. But guess what?  He has been absolutely on a rampage against mail-in voting. And all he has is fear mongering. He can't present evidence because this is not a widespread issue. And he sent out this bizarre email to people, which reads, we need to make one thing clear. There is no way that universal mail-in ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mailboxes will be robbed, ballots will be illegally printed out and forged, and the election will be rigged. But that's just what the Democrats want, isn't it? They know they can't possibly be President Trump, so their only path forward is through voter fraud so that they can try to steal the election. Yeah, so again, I'm inclined to say that he's losing it, but that would mean nothing. It wouldn't adequately describe, like, anything different than what we've been seeing. But let's go to his concerns here. Mailboxes will be robbed, ballots will be illegally printed out and forged. Listen, I've said this once, I'll say it again. I live in Oregon. We have had vote by mail here for decades. And this has not happened. If you go to the Heritage Foundation's website, which you should never do, but if you did check out their cataloging of voter fraud and instances of voter fraud individually at the state level, for Oregon, they have, what, 13 instances of voter fraud that has happened over the course of 20 years. Would you call that a widespread problem? Because I wouldn't. And it's not that easy. Like you can't just forge these types of ballots because what we do is we'll get it mailed to us, right? And it comes with an envelope.   Like if you chose to theoretically tamper with the machines that count the ballots that are mailed in, you'd be more effective that way. And when it comes to people robbing mailboxes, I mean, that is a federal offense. If you rob a mailbox, if you go into somebody's mailbox and take their mail, that is a federal offense. So if that were going to be something that happens, don't you think that it would have already been happening in states like Oregon that have mail-in voting? And here's the thing, if somebody hypothetically chose to steal my envelope in my mailbox and take my ballot, I could just request a new one. And sure, they can fill it out and forge my signature and all that.  People don't even think that their vote matters in this country, right? People have checked out of the system, 100 million Americans don't even vote. So they don't feel like their one vote matters. So why would people, if they truly wanted to rig an election or effect change politically, illegally do something like that, which would be the least effective way of rigging an election ever? It just doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. Now, I would be happy to stand corrected if he provided us with evidence that maybe this is more widespread than it is. But guess what? It's not. It's not an issue. And this is about him being afraid of democracy. Because again, we always have to call it like we see it. Republicans don't want the turnout to be increased. And if you reduce the obstacles to voting, if you offer everyone automatic voter registration and mail-in ballots, and you make voting a national holiday, guess what's going to happen? More people will turn out and Republicans will lose because they have a fixed block of people that is always going to literally turn out for them. And each election will hinge on whether or not Democrats are successful at getting out the vote. So they know that if they can just suppress the vote by demoralizing people or making voting a little bit more difficult, they can win. That's what this is about. Don't let him tell you anything other than that. This is about his own self-interest. He doesn't actually care about fraud. He doesn't. If he truly was concerned with voter fraud, then any election where it comes within 2%, for example, if it's a close race, that can trigger an automatic audit. He can tell Congress, send me that bill and I'll sign it into law. He can do that. There are ways that you can take precautions to audit the vote, right? Make voting more secure, pass election security bills that have been introduced in Congress, right? Tulsi Gabbard has one. That's great.  That's the thing.


Hey, everybody, this is Brett, and this, 2024 Jeep Wrangler Sahara 4-door is stock number 24J176. I am here at Summit Automotive in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. You're new and used Jeep and Jeep Wrangler headquarters. I am super excited to show you this Jeep Wrangler today. Not only is it in my favorite color, Hydro Blue on the Wrangler, but this one has a new option for 2024. If you watched any of my other videos, you know that the Sahara originally in 2024 for the mid-model refresh only came with the 2-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine that put out 270 horsepower and 295 foot-pounds of torque. Well, now with this Wrangler, they have now added the 3.6-liter Pentastar V6 engine to the Sahara lineup. It puts out 285 horsepower and 260 foot-pounds of torque. Lose a little bit of torque there, but you do gain a little bit of highway miles per gallon on this Wrangler. And I thought it was really weird that you could only get the 2-liter with the Sahara package when they came out with the mid-model refresh. And now you can get the 3.6-liter, which you can see right here. And if anybody knows the reason why they started putting the 3.6 back in these Saharas, let me know. My guess is that the Sahara sales were probably dipping a little bit, so they wanted to add this engine. A lot of people like the 3.6 Pentastar. And myself included, I got it in my van. I've had it in a Wrangler before. Really nice, reliable engine. This one also has the LED headlamps, running lights and fog lights, which are now standard on the Sahara trim level. You get these silver headlight bezels along with the seven-slotted grille inserts. And looks really good on this particular Wrangler. You also get these silver trim around the fog light bezels as well. Color match fenders, which are standard on the Sahara package. The color match hardtop is not standard. That is an option. And this one has it. So you can still get these sandals in this shroud here, but they're really hard to see. I don't know why they don't really indent them anymore. They just kind of make them smooth, but they are still there. You get the Jeep climbing up the side of the windshield. All these windshields now are Corning Gorilla Glass. You get the antenna in the windshield, which allows you to get a second trail-rated badge on the fender there. You get the Sahara block lettering and the Jeep lettering on there as well. The T50 on the doors gives you the information that you need the Torx Bit 50 to get those doors off. We did a demo on how to take your Wrangler doors off your JL. That's in the upper right-hand part of the screen. And in the description below, there's also a full description of this vehicle with all the options and a link to the original window sticker in the description below. So check that out. You do get the painted and polished aluminum wheels on the Sahara package. Get the black and silver Jeep logo in the center cap there. Has Bridgestone Duler HT tires. These are 255 70R 18s. Kind of a highway tread pattern to them. Four-wheel disc brakes on all the Wranglers. You also get the LED tail lamps. Standard. This one has the towing package with the receiver hitch four pin and seven pin wire. And you get the backup parking sensors. Back storage area. This one has the case for the front hardtop pieces. You get a nice storage area underneath there. You also have holders for your door hinge, roof and windshield bolts. You get the alpine subwoofer back here. And you can take this hardtop off. There's four bolts on each side. Two quick disconnects. We did a demo on how to take your hardtop off your JL as well. That's in the upper right-hand part of the screen and link in the description below. Little Easter egg. You get these seven slots on the door back here. You also get the JL badge for a two-door, four-door wheel base and overall length as well as water 40. Where it was designed and where it was built. Or developed I should say. That door shuts nice and solidly. You get the black fuel door cover on there. And that color match hardtop. I think it looks really good. Let me know what you think in the description below or in the comments below if you like the black hardtop or if you like the color match on these Saharas. I'm surprised this one doesn't have step bars. I thought these step bars were a standard option on the Sahara but apparently this one does not have them. This one does have blind spot monitoring and heated mirrors. The enter and go system. Just have to have your key fob in your pocket. Put your hand in there. It'll automatically unlock those doors. Back seats are in obviously nice condition. It has the kind of bronze or gold stitching. I don't want to get that wrong. I get yelled at every time I call it a wrong color. But Jeep calls this color black. I think it's charcoal factory formats back here. You get 115 volt, 150 watt plug-in. You also get two USBs, two USB C's back here and your window controls. These seats go down nice and flat. The other thing I like about these seats is that these headrests stay down. So if nobody's riding back here, you get better visibility. The other thing that is new for 2024 is or are the side curtain airbags that they've added. They've made these standard across all the trim levels and a really nice job by Jeep. The other thing that's different, these speakers are in a little bit different spots and your map lights back here are kind of more positioned over where the passengers would be as opposed to in a cluster in the center there. So that is new for 2024 as well. You get the child safety locks on the back doors. That's not new. The other thing that is new is this badge, the Wrangler and the Gladiator back to back. This one does have auto headlamps. You get the cloth dash on this one with the gold trim. Power mirrors and power locks, nothing different there. Driver seat height adjuster. Now the power seats are only on the leather interior. So you've got to upgrade to the leather to get the power seats, you get the sears stitching and backrest and you get that bronze or gold stitching, whatever you want to call it. And that stitching is on the steering wheel as well. I really like it on the steering wheel. I think this is the best looking steering wheel that they make. Hop inside, I'll show you the instrument cluster and the radio and stuff.  This one has the seven inch LCD display, digital speedometer, compass display as well. This one has the heated leather wrap steering wheel. This one has adaptive cruise controls and regular cruise controls, Bluetooth and information center controls there as well and audio controls in the back of the steering wheel. This one has the Uconnect 5, 12.3 inch touchscreen radio. This radio is the standard radio across all the trim levels on the Wranglers now. The only difference is if it has nav or not. So this one does have the nav system. And I think with that, you get the Alpine premium sound system as well. The thing that's changed on the dash, these vents are now below the radio as opposed to on the sides of the radio and the center console piece up here on the dash is different as well. It used to be one piece. Now they've divided it into two kind of coin holders or whatever, and then this center piece there. Everything from here down is the same. Audio volume, tune controls, all that good stuff.   You get the keyless entry with the remote start and the flipper key on there as well. Like these key fobs, there's also a spot to hold those. We're gonna check out the original window sticker in just a second. We're also gonna turn on all the lights on this vehicle and turn off the lights in the picture studio so you can see just how bright they are. I'm gonna go through the options here. This one has AMFM, Sirius XM radio capabilities. Also, your backup camera is here and everything, but I wanted to show you all the different apps that come on here. I'm not gonna go through everything. I'm just gonna quickly scroll through them. It has Android Auto, Apple CarPlay wirelessly so you can project your cell phone to the screen and then it has off-road pages. You get your backup camera, which I will show you those because they make those crystal clear. This one also has the front camera, which is pretty cool. It's a trail cam. So if you turn those, if you turn the steering wheel, those lines are dynamic. And what that does is what tells you kind of where the tires are gonna be. So if you're off-roading in this thing, you can make sure you're not gonna hit any rocks or if you wanna hit a rock strategically, you'll be able to do that with good confidence. The other thing is the off-road pages. So you got your steering angle, transfer case, latitude, longitude, altitude, accessory gauges, pitch and roll, and you can go back to that front camera for those off-road pages. So a lot of really cool stuff that you can do with this radio. Then you get your system. A lot of this stuff is just links to other parts of the radio. But anyways, that's everything on the interior other than the assist and SLS buttons, auto dimming mirror and home link buttons for your garage door security systems and lightning systems. You get all the quick disconnects to take that hard top off. And you can tell if it's got the Corning Gorilla Glass because it's got the Gorilla there. But if it's 2024, it's gonna have it unless you're in a sport package. So I'm gonna turn on all the lights and we're gonna take a walk around this thing with all the lights off and check out the original window sticker. I think I'm gonna do the original window sticker first. So let me pause it. So here's the original window sticker. Also note that this is gonna be linked in the description below. So check it out there if you don't wanna go through this and fast forward if you want. 2024 model year, Wrangler four-door Sahara. Hydra blue is the color, PBJ is the paint code. Black interior, I think it's charcoal. 3.6 liter Pentastar V6 24-valve VVT engine with start-stop, 8-speed automatic transmission. So the Pentastar is a $2,000 option. You can see right there. And that's on Jeep's website as well. Everything on your left here is your standard equipment, including the command track, the 345 gears, remote start system, all that stuff is standard equipment. Interior features that you connect 12.3, you connect five 12.3 radio, Apple CarPlay, Google Android Auto, Series XM, all that standard. Exterior features, all that is standard. Optional equipment starts with the Hydra blue ProCo which is $5.95. Trailer, tow, and auxiliary switch group is $11.95. It gives you the auxiliary switches that we just looked at right there. And the receiver hitch, seven pin and four pin wiring. The technology group is $22.95. That gives you the Alpine premium sound HD radio, GPS navigation, connected travel and traffic surfaces. You connect five with a 12.3 inch touchscreen integrated voice command integrated off-road camera. It also gives you the subwoofer and back. Safety group is $12.95 blind spot monitoring and automatic high beam headlamp control. ParkSense rear park assist system. And 3.6 liter Pentastar is $2,000. Also gives you an engine oil cooler. So that is nice as well, especially with the receiver hitch on here. Body color three piece hardtop is $18.95. And your wheels, which are the 18 by 7.5 inch aluminum is $1,095. Total MSRP on this one is 61 for 60 to get your summit price with all the rebates and incentives on this particular Jeep in the upper right-hand part screen. And linked in the description below as a link to this vehicle on our website. Click that to see availability and all the rebates and incentives. Three year 36 bumper to bumper, five year 60 powertrain. And you do get a little bit better fuel economy for the highway on with the three six to 23 highway, 18 city, 20 average. I think it's the average is the same between the two liter and the three six. And then greenhouse gas is a four and smog ratings a seven. So good on the smog rating, kind of in the middle on the greenhouse gas rating. Not really rated for any five star safety ratings, except for which is three. So let's go check out these lights. Like I said, I'm gonna turn all the lights off in the picture studio. We'll do a final walk around and we'll be all set to go. Give me one minute. All right, so you can see just how nice and bright all those lights are. Jeep has really done a nice thing making the LED lights standard on the Sahara Rubicon Rubicon X and an option on the Sport S really nice and bright. Definitely an upgrade over the halogen lights and they look really good. They're very bright, nice white light as well. And coming around to the back here, you get the LED tail lamps, LED license plate light and those look good as well. Let me know what you think in the comments below of this particular Wrangler. I'm also very curious as to what you think of the 3.6 liter beam in the Sahara package. I know it definitely for me personally has put the Sahara back on the map as far as a trim level I would consider. I like the three six. I've had it in a couple vehicles myself. And just let me know what you think in the comments below. Thank you so much for checking out the video and to see more pictures of this Jeep or one of our other 550 new and used cars, trucks, SUVs, minivans, Wranglers, Wagoneers, Grand Wagoneers, Compasses, you name it, we got it, Renegades. Go to that website right there, summitauto.com. Full pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle all at summitauto.com. And if you wanna check out more HD videos, you can go to youtube.com slash summitauto. Click the bell notifications, get updates on the videos I do each and every day as well as having access to one of the largest catalogs of vehicle and Wrangler specifically walkarounds on YouTube, over 500 Wrangler videos and over 9,000 videos total on the YouTube channel. It's also the best way to stay current on our ever-changing and vast Jeep and Jeep Wrangler inventory. In fact, in a second you will see a link to subscribe to the YouTube channel in the upper left. A link to all the Wrangler videos I've ever done in the upper right. A link to this vehicle on our website in the lower left and a link to one of our latest YouTube videos in the lower right. Click those, check us out. We're super excited to be offering a brand new 2024 Jeep Wrangler four-door Sahara with the 3.6 liter Pentastar V6 engine and Hydro Blue Procoat. Thank you so much for checking out the video. Remember to like, subscribe, and share on the YouTube channel. I really appreciate it. Thanks again.


Rwy'n cael ei wneud yw'r h offline i leiwch ar gyhoeddfa erbyn seroedol gan gweithio, ac yn byw'ch i'r gweithio i'r moghwyr, mae'n raddw i'r gweithio a gweithio'n llun i'r gweithio'n gweithio. Rwy'n cael eu gweld bod hynny'n gallu'n cael ei wneud. Dwi ddim yn ymgylchedd ac wrth hyn bynnag Ben showers. Daeth yw gwneud i'r gyfweld ffyrdd o'r UK. Rwy'n cael eu bod yn y rhan o'r golyde a'r maeddi arfery hangdo. mae'r eu pethau arall o fewn amddangos. Mae rôl i'n ei d Perm yn y Ffordd y Dyniad, felly mae'r gwał pwysig, mae'n gweithio i'r holl ym Jordan, yng Nghymru, ac mae'n fanywch ym Mhysywyd Gwasanaethu, mae'n fanywch i cutoeddach i'r bwysig a'n defnyddio chi fod yn fwy cymdeithas hynny, sy'n berthynatod o'i cymdeithas yn gweithio. Mae'r gwaith o fforddau, mae'r cyrfryd yn gyd, mae'r cyrfryd yn gweithio. Mae ymdoES yw ni'n ysgawdd iawn. Yn dweud y pethau bywyd yn cerdderoedd, mae'n sicrhau bod I have the best questions on the train home after a conference. Felly, mae'r cwestiwn yn chweithio, ac mae'n g兴er y bap unveiled o gweithiau yn y bap, mae'r cyllid yn defnyddio am yr email. Mae'n gweithaf y gallwch chi'n gwneud ymddangos o Gysg, ond mae'n gwneud yn gwneud y Gysg, nad yna dwi'n fydd fadeb. I thought I'd very briefly just kind of give you the high level kind of stuff. So JISC is obviously a UK organisation. We're there really to support higher and further education, so universities and colleges within the UK to support them in the use of digital technologies for learning, teaching and research. So our vision, our mission is to make the UK the most digitally advanced education sector in the world. That's what we're there to do. JISC used to be a kind of quasi-governmental body.  We're now a charity. So while we're still almost entirely government funded, we have charitable status. So that gives us a bit more flexibility that allows us to do more things. JISC has, in transforming into a charity, JISC also looked at its internal structure as well. So JISC now has four kind of key divisions. And they are technology and infrastructure. So that would include Janet, the joint academic network, so the network that all universities and colleges use in the UK. Content and discovery. So that includes things like JISC collections that negotiate licences on behalf of the sector. Then there's futures, which is my division, the bit that I sit in. So that's looking at horizon scanning, understanding the kind of challenges, the opportunities that are sitting out there on the horizon and working with institutions to understand their requirements and their needs. And then finally, we have customer experience, which has a kind of dual role. That's both marketing and comms within JISC, and also the kinds of advice and guidance, those kinds of training services that JISC offer to the community as well. So things like JISC leave them and stuff like that. So that's JISC. JISC is one organisation with those four kind of key divisions within it. So I plan to talk for about 40 minutes, I reckon, and that depends on how much I kind of go off topic. But I think around about 40 minutes, I'm very conscious of the fact that I stand between you and lunch, and that's not a great place to be situated. So I'll talk for about 40 minutes, and then we can take questions and things like that at the end. I'm not going to start by telling you about the project that I'm here to talk about, about CASRAE. I'm going to start by talking about the context, the reasons why we're engaging in this project, why we're collaborating with this organisation called CASRAE. So I'm going to give you a bit of context, a bit of the landscape about research in the UK, about scholarly communications landscape within the UK, and what the drivers are for some of the work that we're doing around research information management. Then I'm going to give you a bit of background about the organisation CASRAE, who we're working with, we're collaborating with on this particular pilot, on this particular project. I'll also tell you what CASRAE stands for, which will be a crucial part of understanding what CASRAE and the project is hoping to do. I'll then talk to you a bit about the project, a bit about the pilot that the UK is working with CASRAE on. Finally, I want to very briefly touch on some of the implications of this project for other things, other things that GISCA are doing, and other projects that are happening in the UK, but also other things that are happening internationally, some things that you'll probably be aware of, like SHARE, for example, in the US. So I'm not going to dwell on those too much, but I just want to finish by just surfacing those connections, surfacing those implications. Okay, so let me start by talking about research within the UK. So this year, 2014, is the first year that institutions that researchers are submitting their research outputs to a new impact framework called the REF, Research Excellence Framework. I nearly forgot what that meant for a second, and that would have been horrendous. Research Excellence Framework. So this is a new way that the UK government is evaluating, I guess, research outputs, so understanding the impact of those research outputs. And this has been huge. This has effectively transformed the way that institutions are judged within the UK. It's a star rating, I think it's up to five stars or something like that. So if you're an institution, you're putting everything into this. So this year was the first year that they submitted to REFs, and that's a big game changer. The next time will be 2020. UK government also announced yesterday, so hot off the press people, that post 2016, let me just read this out so I don't misquote it, so post 2016, so for the next REF exercise in 2020, articles and conference proceedings that have been peer-reviewed must be deposited in an institutional or subject repository on acceptance for publication. So that's a mandate by the UK government. So post 2016, anything published has to live, once it's been accepted for publication, has to be deposited in an institutional repository effectively. So this year, so running up to 2014, most institutional, their mission, their vision, for managing their research information and reporting is essentially we just have to do this. They just threw everything into this. By 2020, institutions will have to have in place a well-oiled machine. They can't do this on an ad hoc basis anymore. It has to be by 2016 to 2020, this has to become a well-oiled machine, the way that they report this stuff, the way they demonstrate that they're complying to these mandates. And these mandates aren't going to stay still. They're going to be constantly evolving, I suspect, and new ones will be coming in. And the other big thing for the UK research community as well is open access. That's probably the biggest compliance issue for many institutions demonstrating that they're complying to these mandates by the UK government. And at the moment, that's a very difficult thing to do to demonstrate, to be able to get reports out of your systems to demonstrate that information. They're all hand cranked, does it work? And then there's the kind of broader changes as well. So the changes around things like being able to track funding and understand those different sources of funding. So the UK government is no longer necessarily the de facto point at which research, or the place from which researchers get their funding. Increasingly it's coming from industry, from commercial and other non-governmental sources. So being able to track those and understand where those sources are coming from, what the compliance and what the kinds of reporting requirements are from those other funders. Increasingly as well research, as we all know, is becoming increasingly international, interdisciplinary. The project teams are becoming more complex. They're cross-institutional, national, international and so forth. So again, tracking those collaborations, tracking those things is becoming much more complex. And then finally, certainly for UK institutions and our suspects, it's the same around the world, research is one of those big kind of flag-waving things. This is often what the brand of the institution rests upon. And post-2016, coming up to the 2020 REF exercise, that's going to become even more the case. The effort that institutions will want to be putting into this will be enormous. So this is an opportunity for institutions to raise their profile. So you kind of get a sense of those kind of, the changes both within the broader landscape but also within the governmental UK policy landscape as well. At the moment, this is a really basic image, but this is just to give you a kind of understanding of the systems that sit within the university, so those kind of finance, some of the things which are relevant to research reporting, finance, the repository, crisis, so current research information systems, which again at the moment tend to be very uncoordinated ad hoc systems, they also tend to quite often be augmented with spreadsheets and things like that. And then in the kind of research council reporting side of things, those systems there, ROS, research fish and jazz, nothing if not lovers of acronyms, are the kinds of systems that researchers and institutions have to report to. So jazz is the joint e-submissions portal. So if you're a researcher in the UK and you want to have government funding, you want to apply for grants, something like that, you use that system to submit your application. Research fish and jazz are research output systems, so that's telling them what the output of that piece of research was, who the collaborators were, et cetera, et cetera. So that's just a very, very simplistic kind of picture of that relationship between those two institutions, those two sets of systems. Despite, I mean this is incredibly simplified, so I've taken that right down to its very basics, but despite those kind of, what was there, six different systems and ultimately their ecosystems within each of those systems. Lots of other things are plugged in, they're hand cranking stuff from other systems, they've got spreadsheets, et cetera, et cetera. Despite all of this data, despite wallowing in this kind of morass of data, it's almost impossible to get any meaningful analytics or data out of those systems. And that, again, post 2016, when institutions are giving up for the rare from 2020, that's going to become critical. At the moment, it's very hard to get really meaningful, really rich analytics data out of these systems. And ultimately, that's the kind of data that strategic and day-to-day management decisions will be made upon. So if that's the policy, so I've talked about the policy side of things and given you a kind of picture of the system side of things. So the system side of things, as I said, is generally fairly uncoordinated in ad hoc. The systems are pretty immature, as is the particular profession that we're talking about, the people who do this kind of stuff, research information managers. It's a relatively young profession, there's no kind of official qualification, and while they're doing an incredible job against all the odds, they're still doing it against the odds. The odds aren't stacked in their favour, let's put it that way. And as I've said, the systems landscape is complex. You've got local systems, you've got governmental systems, and then you've also got shared systems and other kinds of collaborative systems that institutions are trying to work on to take away some of this burden. So things like Eucris, which is the UK research information system as a shared service. They make an above-campus system for research information management. Similarly, if the institutional context is complex, so is the funder system landscape as well. Multiple reporting systems. There are also other bodies within the UK like HESA, which is the Higher Education Statistics Agency, which also requires institutions to submit data to them as well. And as I said, at the moment, getting information, meaningful data out of these, using these analytical tools is pretty much impossible. It's very hard. So this really is where CASRAE comes in. So CASRAE is a Canadian organisation. It stands for, and I'm going to read this off the slide because I always forget, consortia advancing standards in research, administration and information. So this is really a community-led collaborative membership organisation. It's Canadian. I think the UK is the first international partner. I think they're also looking at other northern European countries and the US as well as potential partners. The UK is their first international partner. What CASRAE does is it maintains and develops and maintains a dictionary, a common data dictionary. So what that means is it really means it advocates on particular standards, on best practice around those standards, on particular vocabularies, particular vocabularies and best practice surrounding those vocabularies for institutions and funders. David Baker, who's the Executive Director, has this wonderful quote. He always says that the research community internationally generally captures largely the same types of data. So it cross almost every single country we capture the same kinds of data. But there are three obstacles that divide us. Meaning, structure and format. Ultimately that's what CASRAE is there to do. Try to define those particular things, the meaning of those words, the vocabularies that we use, the structure of the kinds of reports that we're submitting and using and the format what they look like. The kinds of things that CASRAE tries to define, the terminology that it tries to define are things like... It all relates to the management of research. So things like academic CVs, research grants, the data management plans, controlled vocabularies, authoritative lists, simple things like institutional, authoritative institutional lists and identifiers. So it aims to be a single source, a single point, an unambiguous source for data profiles. By being an unambiguous, a single point of contact for those sorts of things, it also means it can work with multiple... It's agnostic in terms of vendors, it works alongside other standards agencies and other kinds of projects in this space into operability projects. So things like CERIF, there's other projects in the UK that I'll talk about in a minute. It's agnostic in terms of the technology that institutions use as well. Orcid as well. Orcid is a really good example of that if anybody's come from the Orcid presentation this morning. But Orcid is one of those partners that's working with CASRAE so that Orcid would potentially become the ID, the researcher ID that is used within the dictionary. So what JISC and CASRAE were interested in doing was understanding whether the CASRAE approach, whether that idea of this dictionary would be a viable approach for the UK research information management community. With this work, could we pilot this as an approach within the UK? So... And CASRAE was very attractive, given the context that we're talking about, this research landscape that we're talking about and the fluidity of it and the complexity of it, both in terms of the policy landscape and CASRAE is very attractive. So what we're working with CASRAE on is piloting three working groups within the UK to explore three priority areas. So we had a meeting in December of last year, 2013. And that meeting worked with stakeholders and experts across the UK to try to define the kind of priority areas that we should look at. Areas we should work with CASRAE to try to define the kinds of terms, the kinds of vocabularies that we want to use within those areas. And they were the top three areas that we decided we'd focus on were data management plans, authoritative lists, organisational lists for institutions and research reporting. So things like open access reporting, the kind of requirements that surround that. So data management plans were a big one. They were probably the biggest one for obvious reasons. In particular because of the increasing requirements from research funding organisations around having a data management plan in place. How do you demonstrate that you have that in place? How do you report that effectively and seamlessly? So what we're doing is that particular working group is building on the work of the GISCS, the Digital Curation Centre. And they've developed a tool called DMP Online, which is Data Management Plans Online. So it's building on that work to try to use that as a basis for a particular approach to data management plans within the UK for UK institutions. We're also working with the funding councils as well to understand whether or not the DMP Online is fully sufficient. Is there other stuff we should be bringing into that? What are the funding requirements, and how might that change that data management plan? So that's the first part. So that's the first thing we're working with the CASRA Group on. The second are the organisational lists. So what are the best list, organisational list that exist out there already? Are there ones that we can borrow? Such as the Ringgold and so forth. So it's evaluating those, understanding the benefits of those particular ones. And it's also about trying to understand how we make this sustainable. So it's not just something which we make a decision about what will be our authoritative lists, et cetera, et cetera, but how do we make this sustainable? How do we make sure this is updated and this is kept alive? Because that's the other issue as well. And so there are opportunities with CASRA. The CASRA is that one single point whereby things like APIs or machine to machine technology, you can make sure that you're able to keep those sorts of things up to date. And then finally, but maybe most importantly of all, is the research reporting. So the real driver behind this I guess or why this has become such a challenge is because of open access. So the requirements on institutions to report or rather to demonstrate their compliance to these particular mandates. So again this is really to some extent trying to understand what the requirements are from the funding councils, nailing them down on those and then developing a kind of a set of terminology of reporting for that that is applicable to them and that researchers have for example a single profile that then populates all those different systems with whatever information those different systems require. So if you think back to the research, sorry, the funders, Government funders box those three different reporting systems, they're just automatically updated with the kinds of information that those funders need in terms of OA compliance. It's probably also worth just mentioning as well that as a result of that summit where the decisions were made about the three priority working groups there were other things that came up that people thought were very important. So things like ethics, I think ethics reviews research equipment profiles as well but we've stuck with the three highest priority things but they will review those other ones and you know I suspect as well as the landscape changes other priorities will emerge but for the moment it's those three things data management plans, organisational lists and research reporting. So if standards and interoperability isn't enough to get your juices flowing then governance surely is is the next big thing. So the other thing about piloting CASRA in the UK is not just about understanding how we can benefit from having this kind of this dictionary, this kind of single source of unambiguous kind of data profiles and so forth but it's also about understanding how we keep this up to date, how we engage the community in this project as well and how we make that young profession of research information managers a part of this as well. And so the pilot project is also about understanding the governance understanding about how we build up this group of experts and of stakeholders around this particular project. So the CASRA UK working group or national network I think is what it's called starts with a national review circle which is a lovely term I think and that is so in conjunction with the working groups which are kind of the hands on stuff the national review circle is a broader range of people, experts and stakeholders within that group and they review the work of those working groups so they see what those outputs are, they comment on them and they review them. And so it's the working groups who are developing the different outputs the different drafts of the idea and those are then fed up to these circles this broader group of stakeholders and experts and the circle ensures that the standards are fit for purpose ultimately that they are applicable and that they are kind of the sense check layer I guess in that but the circle is really a way to build up that community to a large extent and that's ultimately what this is about it's probably you know we're talking a lot about those kinds of technologies the systems, machine to machine communication, those kinds of things but actually ultimately it probably comes down to the people making sure they have the right kinds of skills and they have the kinds of infrastructure in place that enable them to do the things, the reporting working with the researchers that they need to be doing. So I have another picture for you here so in some ways this is again this is very very simplified this is maybe a kind of end point, this is maybe a kind of picture of where we'd like to get to so you can see there there's the researcher he has the opportunity to submit his information once via a web form which automatically populates the various government databases and systems at the institutional side of things information can come from the repository from the current resource information from the current research information system and from elsewhere and then sitting in between these systems and these end points the place where the data is captured and the research funders tick the boxes and pat everybody on the back sit these different pieces of the puzzle the different schemas that will be used the different semantic layers and the APIs the machine to machine stuff as well so I've talked a bit about CERIF and so RIOX and VIFA OA again other projects that we're working on in the UK VIFA OA is vocabularies for open access so very simply actually that maps really nicely as well to some NISO work that NISO are doing around open access identifiers or indicators I think it's called so essentially it's very similar to the NISO work in terms of developing some shared vocabularies of the way we talk about open access outputs so have you defined them but VIFA OA goes a bit further it also talks about how you describe things like embargo periods and license conditions and things like that RIOX is about repositories again so RIOX is a kind of profile for repository items and again this all feeds into the kind of the way that CASRI is able to be this one point for all of those vocabularies so once those vocabularies have been agreed they can sit in CASRI and essentially be the kind of I was going to say the smooth operating system I'm not sure what that even means but they help ensure that those flows of data go across systems and between systems seamlessly that's the idea at least okay so we started off with a very messy picture my picture actually didn't demonstrate quite how messy it was but you have to imagine that it was a very messy picture this looks messier than my original picture granted but that's because most of this will exist underneath the hood you won't even know that this is there it's not important for researchers or even research information managers to a large extent but what's really important and probably why we're doing all of this kind of stuff is because increasingly well as I said at the beginning there is at the moment no way or no very effective way and certainly not a kind of above campus level where institutions are able to analyse the kinds of data that they're supplying to to research funders to the government etc about compliance so there's no way for institutions to really effectively track where those hotspots are in terms of research where money's coming from where are the real interesting areas where are the collaborations where are those small germs of things those small seeds of things which are looking like they could be the next big thing where the institution might want to think about resources stuff like that and increasingly that's going to become more and more important it's going to become more and more important as well as open access becomes a bigger part of this kind of space as well and the compliance side of things is going to become much more complex so JISC so something like CASRAID can enable those kinds of things to happen much more easily and also happen in different places so JISC monitor is a project which is looking at developing a shared service effectively for UK universities to enable them to kind of get that bigger picture so it has and they're developing a prototype of this service I'm not sure how to describe it I was going to say dashboard I'm not sure if that's quite right but by 2015 they'll have a prototype in place it's literally just started this project and they've developed working with publishers funders universities even developers as well and they've developed four use cases and those use cases are around monitoring publication activity collaboration and in this sense collaboration between systems almost that interoperability between publishers systems institutional systems and so forth compliance so data around compliance and also APCs so article processing charges so the charges that publishers charge for open access publication so institutions are able to track those and the idea is that the the service will be a kind of database a knowledge base for institutional publication activity connecting publishers to the institutional systems analysing publication data to determine whether or not something's compliant with the funder mandate and data on things like how much they've spent on open access charges so at the moment it's very difficult for institutions even to track how much they're spending on institutional sorry APCs on publisher charges for open access so that's the aim of GISC monitor as I say it's very early stages it's just starting right now I mean it'll be an open source prototype open source code prototype and it maps very nicely as well it's trying to do very similar thing to something like share in the US and they had a presentation just before this one so again what I wanted to do in this presentation in a sense was almost talk about the thing so from the UK perspective we're almost starting with the things which will enable those kind of critical pieces of the puzzle that enable things like this to happen so that interoperability standards and those sorts of developments aren't necessarily the most sexiest of things to be talking about but what they enable these kinds of things that can be built on top of them both by the institution themselves but also for the sector as a whole are very exciting so that's something which in the UK we're very very excited about and we're currently again share isn't a very similar kind of position in terms of their timeline they're at the beginning and we're at the beginning so we're collaborating, we're talking with share very very closely okay so I think that's pretty much it so that's pretty much all I wanted to say today really as I say this is still very early days in the UK for a lot of this stuff a lot of the things that I've talked about today in terms of CASRI are still we made the decision about the three priority working groups in December it's now April, April the first honestly no joke so we're right at the beginning of this but ultimately we see something like CASRI and some of those other smaller projects that we've been talking about that will feed into CASRI into the dictionary things like vocabularies for open access things like SERIF as enabling these kinds of services these kinds of systems whatever as national services but also that enable institutions to do stuff at a local level as well so they can understand where their money is going how much they're spending on open access what they're getting from funding into their bodies what types of funders are they getting how is that mix of governmental and industry funding what does that look like and how is that changing over time and what does that mean for their strategy so I've listed a few things up there which you might want to follow up in particular if you go to CASRI.org there's another I should have put it up here I didn't realise until this morning there's one called dictionary.casri.org which is the actual dictionary search interface which is quite nice and you can actually go there and have a look at some of those kinds of profiles that they have in place some of the series stuff and stuff like that and there's a sense of what they do a little bit better than just on their website there's a website for the CASRI UK project on the JISC website and there's some other stuff there as well JISC monitor has no online presence at the moment all I could find about it was a slide share deck from a presentation a few weeks ago so that's probably you're at the cold face here at the cutting edge almost no one else has seen whether back JISC monitor at the moment so some inside news for you there as well I should also say as well that I've I've also been very very lucky that I've got colleagues at JISC who are working very very closely on the CASRI project Rachel Bruce and Varena Bygert who's kind of I almost feel like I'm channeling them I'm their mouthpiece so I should say thank you very much to them and if I'm unable to ask any questions that you might have or if you want any more information about the project then do feel free to contact me but I will probably just pass you on to them because they're much more informed than I am thank you all very much thank you