Hi global supply chainers. Welcome to the second Hangout event. Today we are going to discuss about the blended program. I'm Eva Ponce. I'm the Executive Director of the MicroMaster Program in Supply Chain Management and we have today with us Dr. Bruce Arsena. Bruce is the Executive Director of the Supply Chain Management Master's Degree Program here at MIT and also the Director of the Blended Program in Supply Chain Management. So thank you so much Bruce for being here today. He's going to provide you an overview of the blended program and we will try our best at answering all of your questions. So let's see how it works. I know that you have a lot of questions so we will try our best. So the first part of the Hangout is going to be Bruce's presentation, the overview of the program. Then we will have around 20 minutes to answer your questions and after that we have prepared breakout session. So you can join this breakout room. This is a space that you can discuss with your peers. You can see them and be seen by your peers. Talk about relevant topics in SC0X. So I hope you enjoy the event. Thanks again and thank you Bruce for being with us today. Thanks very much Eva. As you know, we're all very excited about getting ready for this blended program. It's a new and unique adventure for us as well as it will be for the students who are interested in participating in it. Just like the MicroMasters program itself was a new and innovative way to reach out to many people in the world that normally wouldn't get a chance to benefit by our courses. The blended program is in that same spirit. We're setting up the blended program to be able to admit what we would think of as non-traditional candidates to come to MIT. MIT has a very successful residential program, a 10 month master's degree program already. This year we have a very proudly of 40 students, 20 men, 20 women from 14 different countries. They're going through the program right now. But what I say non-traditional candidates, let me start off by saying what is a traditional candidate and then I can make the contrast. The recruiters who come to our program to recruit our candidates are looking for early career supply chain professionals probably between 25 and 35 years old. They have normally at least two years of experience but more preferred as five or more years of work experience in supply chain. These students are ones that have a very quantitative background. Students who are an industrial engineer can do a lot of math. That's what the recruiters are looking for and we're very proud. We're very successful at getting their job searches. Normally we have 100 percent of the students get job offers before graduation. Occasionally like this last year we had a couple of students that it took them a few months longer to get landed in jobs. That's a traditional candidate, a 25 to 35 year old young career professional in supply chain with a great GMAT score, very high grades as an undergraduate and a very quantitative background. However, there's lots of great people out there that don't fit that mold. What MIT is trying to do with the blended program is provide a pathway for some of the folks who don't fit that sweet spot of our traditional candidate. Some of the things that are different about the blended program obviously by taking the five online courses and doing well and doing well in the capstone exam, you're given a different way to prove yourself and establish your credentials for us to look at instead of looking at a GMAT score or looking at your undergraduate grades which you might have had 15 years ago and and who knows what we all did as undergraduates, right? This gives a person an opportunity who's working in supply chain who has great experience to be able to prove themselves and we can look at that. And so when we're looking at what kind of a candidate or we're looking at for the for the blended program, you still need to have a couple of years of work experience, at least a couple of years of work experience, but we're not we're not looking for people right in that sweet spot 25 or 35 years old. There's sort of no age limit at all on this. And when I look at at your college transcript, I'm no longer like for the for the residential program. The first thing I do is I go through the transcript and I circle all the math classes that the student took and how did they do that they get an A in each math class, right? We're not going to do that for the for the blended people. I'm just looking to see that that you went to college. You got some degree. And and we're not looking at a GMAT or a GRE score. That's not required for admission. So we're looking for a person who's got some great great ideas, did well in the in the Micro Master certificate. And part of what you'll have to do when you arrive is a research project. Let me just talk about the research project for a second. The students who are part of our residential program begin that research project almost immediately after they arrive and they work on it for about nine months. It's it's done in conjunction with a company. The students who are coming for the blended program will do a research project, but they're only going to be on campus for five months. So they'll probably have to do some work ahead of time. For example, part of the application process will include giving us a two page description of what what kind of a project would they like to do. Have they thought about what problem it's going to solve? We like projects that include quantitative analysis. So that means what kind of a methodology do you think you'd follow if it needs data? Where are you going to get this data? All of the projects that we currently do are done in conjunction with a sponsoring company. You might want to think about what company could I approach to help me to help sponsor this project. So those are some of the things that we're going to be looking for in the application process for the blended program because we want them to want the students to get started on that on that research project. You know start thinking about that even before they get to campus because they're not going to have a lot of time once they get here to make this thing happen here. How intense do you think it's going to be this semester for the blended program students? So the blended students, well all of our students are very very busy when they're here. We encourage them to take time to enjoy life but we also give them a lot and the and the blended students will be very busy when they're here. There's a set of classes that they'll have to take and they'll have to finish working on this research project. What I thought I'd do is we're in the process of preparing some some answers to to questions and an overview. I thought I would just run down through that through what we so I don't forget to cover some of the areas. Give me a second to look at this here. The the blended people are going to get the same degree as the people who are in our residential program. At the moment that degree is the master of engineering in logistics. So they'll be working on that and the application system will open probably right at the very beginning of April of 2017 and the applications will be due on June 15th 2017. We're going to try to get back to everybody no later than August 1st of 2017 with our decisions and then the people that we have offered admission to will have one month until September 1st to reply back to us to say yes you're going to come or no you're not going to come. It's a possibility that we'll have a wait list and work through that as well but but that's the timing of what of what we're doing here and there will be 40 students admitted we have 40 residential students there'll be 40 students admitted to the blended program as well. Yes I want to add one thing that is that in order to apply to the blended program you need to complete the five SCX courses plus the proctor final exam. So the SC4X is going to start in January 2017 and is going to end mid of April 2017 and the proctor final exam is planned to be on May 2017. So then after completing the final proctor exam you can apply to this blended program. And so because of that timing you will need to have started creating your application materials before you take the capstone exam because after you get your results of the capstone exam you'll only have until June 15th to submit your application. So if you need letters of recommendation and so forth you will need to have started working on those well in advance and also the two-page description of your thesis idea you'll need to get working on that ahead of time as well. There's questions about work experience we're looking for a minimum of two years full-time work experience. If the work experience is in supply chain that's great we also look at work experience and other things you know with operations and so forth so it's not absolutely necessary that you were in supply chain but you do have to have some work experience. I have people who write to me and say I'm a junior in college should I apply for the micro master for the blended program and my response is you need two years of work experience before we can even look at your application so finish your undergraduate degree and then go go get a job for a while right? Yeah and the main reason is because the degree we provide here is very industry oriented. This is the main reason we need to require this experience work experience to be admitted. So let me just I'll read down what the what the application is going to require so you have to do an online application complete that you have to get the micro master's credential. You have to work for at least two years full-time we want to see your undergraduate transcript you'll need three letters of recommendation the two from your boss or a previous boss or one from a professor if at all possible. You'll have to make a video statement and the video statement will be about telling us why do you want to study supply chain management. You'll also have a two-page description of a research project. If you're a student whose first language is not English you'll probably be required to take the TOEFL or the IELTS exam. There can be waivers on that if your education was done in English there's some instructions that you can get a waiver for that. And what is the application what is the admissions committee looking for well the thing we're looking for is how well did you do on your micro master's credential we're not going to simply admit the people who had all the top scores that's one of the criteria but it's not the only criteria we're looking at what kind of work experience you had we're going to read your letters of recommendations we'll look at your transcript your undergraduate transcript to see if you got a degree and we'll look at your video statement having you explain why do you want to get a degree in supply chain management this will also help us understand how well you speak English and present and so forth right. We're going to read your research project this is very important because we want to make sure that you're going to hit the ground running and you put a lot of thought into what your research project is going to be. We've already talked about the deadline let's see make sure I hit all the bases here so people ask what are my chances of being admitted into the blended program what's interesting is that well MIT is going to be reviewing everyone for admission to the blended program there we also have some centers MIT has has cloned our our center here at MIT in Spain and Malaysia we're in the process of opening up new scale centers in Luxembourg and Ningbo China at least two of those centers Spain and Malaysia will also be offering a blended program of study and so when you apply to the blended program you'll see choices in there that you can ask to be considered for the blended program in these other centers as well beyond that my understanding is that there's universities outside of MIT that are going to be offering blended program so so my suggestion would be that don't apply only to MIT's program apply to some of these other programs as well because we can only take in 40 people at our program but there's there's other slots available out there yeah indeed so far cartoon university in Australia Queensland University Denmark Denmark technology university and Rochester Institute already have an agreement with us in order to offer their own blended program yeah people have asked can I apply to both the residential and the and the blended program you can the that's two different applications the timelines are very different for these two I would suggest studying it and only applying to one but technically you can apply to and the decisions are made separately if you if you do come to the residential program but you've taken some of the online classes people want to know can I get credit for that well if you're in the residential program you can't get any credit any college credit for what you did online but you may go to that professor and say I've already taken the online version of your class can I opt out of it and take a different class instead and in fact yes that that will be a possibility but it's up to the individual professor to make that decision along the way right people have asked the question after I take the capstone exam how long is it good for and the answer is we consider it to be valid for three years and you can if you don't get into the blended program the first year you can certainly apply again and actually two more times after that okay I just received one question that is very related with this topic they said which is the difference between the micro master the blended program and the scale network so for the micro master I'm going to answer the micro master is a credential it's not a master's degree so it's a credential it's a certificate that allows you to apply for the blended program the blended program is a master's degree program so they are also asking about the difference between the blended program and the master's degree program we offer in the scale network so MIT's offers a 10 month residential master's degree program which is very similar to what is offered in Spain and in Malaysia and is about to be offered in Luxembourg and China Ningbo China that's a 10 month program it's very intense that's what exists today the blended program is you're on campus from January through June or two June it's five months on campus MIT will be offering that our centers in Spain and Malaysia are seeking to set that up right now the expectation is that they will be able to offer that that still has to be determined that's still being in the approval process at those centers but but that's it's the same degree it's five months instead of plus the micro masters instead of the 10 month program let me just one of the things that very important to talk about with the blended program is about the job search of course we're very proud of the ability for our residential program to play to have our students get very excellent jobs and like I said oftentimes 100% of the students but not always get a job before they graduate but what what everyone needs to understand is that in North America the heavy recruiting season for companies to come to to MIT and and do presentations and interview students that all happens in September October and it starts to tail off in November and so most of that recruiting will already have happened before the blended students arrive on campus in January right and so if if one of your reasons to try to come to MIT for the blended program is is to get that really outstanding job first of all you're better off if you came to the residential program because that's really what that's all set up for if you come as part of the blended program you have to understand that you'll have to to do a lot more work yourself on your own reaching out to companies because not the flow of companies will have have died down to to a much smaller flow by that time we'll still do a number of things that to assist you will include your resume and so forth in our resume book companies that do come to campus in the spring time if someone shows up to do a presentation you're absolutely invited to participate in those but we just want to make sure people understand that in North America the recruiting happens before a blended student would arrive and so there's much more responsibility on their own shoulders to to make sure that that they're going to find a job for themselves okay yes um another question that that students have asked um if you're an international student and you come to MIT as part of our residential program because you're enrolled for at least one full year you're eligible to um to take advantage of what's called OPT uh and STEM OPT is um is on-the-job practical training um you can stay for some period of time i think it's a year after you have graduated even without a company sponsoring you for an h1b visa you can work for a company and then if you're in science uh technology uh math uh engineering uh you're actually you're allowed to stay for two more years and that and our residential students uh do can take advantage of that unfortunately because the blended students are not going to be enrolled for a full year those two things are not available to them okay now just one side comment here is that our experience in the SCM program has been that many companies are reluctant to hire students based on the just OPT and STEM because they realize that uh within two or three years that person would have to leave the country and they may become very dependent on that person or they may be worried about some some unfortunate relationship with that person because of that so it's much more common that a company if they're sponsoring you for a visa they'll hire an international student they don't normally hire international students just based on OPT and STEM yeah the main question here is for the to qualify for the OPT you need to spend one full year at MIT um with the blended program is just one semester right two full semesters yeah two full semesters for for to qualify for the OPT right yeah and our blended program they will not qualify for that so yeah okay so um that's sort of an overview of um that I guess one more question on financial aid we realize that um a lot of students need financial aid our program is is very expensive there is limited amount of financial aid even for our residential students there's a very limited amount of financial aid um the the cost of the program is still being finalized it will probably be between 40 and 45 thousand dollars for tuition um so um obviously if if you're a U.S. citizen there are places you can go through the government to get financial aid um international students uh you would need to start thinking about that well in advance uh because our program has very limited financial aid for anybody yeah perfect you already answered one of the questions about the scholarships so yeah okay one more question is there a bachelor degree required to apply for the for the blended program the bachelor degree is highly recommended um at the moment uh for our residential program we absolutely require a bachelor's degree um it's possible there will be some situations in the future where a person without a bachelor's degree may be uh admitted but that's uh that's an uncertainty uh our advice right now is stick with the bachelor's degree uh we absolutely want to see that you've gotten we're not going to scrutinize your bachelor's degree the way we would i'm not going to go through and circle all the math classes but um uh but we do want to see evidence of that kind of training a formal training for applicants excellent so they are also asking about ac4x when it's going to be offered ac4x is going to be offered in january 2017 and it's going to end in april 2017 so after the c4x you can you can go to the proctor final exam in may 2017 before applying for the blended program more questions let's see my age is over 35 am i still eligible absolutely absolutely you would be uh i would say that non-traditional candidates uh we welcome you absolutely yes one more question about the capstone exam locations we are still working on the details of the capstone final exam um my answer is no worry about that we will offer location we know we have a students from all over the world from more than 180 countries so we will be sure that the locations will be as close as close to you as as we can so we are going to offer it in many different countries and we are still working on the details if it is going to be virtual or physical what else let's see more questions blended program education requirement i have a master degree in supply chain so can i apply with this master degree you can sure yeah you can apply um there's no problem with that universities don't like to give out identical degrees to what another university has already given you but this the blended program is sufficiently different than anything else anybody else yeah there's no problem like that one more question blended program is it available in nimbo china it's going to be available in china it may someday but it's not going to be available immediately in nimbo and the same is true in our center in lexenberg it probably won't be available this first year but may be available in future years definitely yes i'm i'm yeah we we are going to to update all of this information in our website so there are also other universities that are going to offer blended programs and this information will be on the supply chain master and website so you can go there um access to this information so they say meaning if people start now they will not complete until after the first capstone can you let them know they will have to apply to the next round this is a very good question once they they complete the micronuster and they and the capstone some how long they have in order to apply to the blending program so the blended program is going to have a cycle um each year where the application system opens in this particular case uh april first of 2017 is when we project that and it'll close july 15th 2017 um our expectation is that we'll repeat that every year so if you finish your capstone exam um after the time uh when when you needed to apply you can apply to the next window and the window opens up again the next year at the same time and and the capstone is good for three years and so you could apply several more times there okay in terms of the application the line is going to be a every single year more more or less same depth line yes as far as we know now we're obviously this is the first time we're doing this and so uh we'll learn what works what doesn't work and there may be some changes to some things along the way but our expectation is that each year in the spring time uh the application system will open and um yeah now in the future um we may offer the blended program in the fall as well as the spring and there will be two rounds of application um as i said we're we're gonna figure out how to do it the first time and get all the bugs worked out of it before we open it up to another round that happens in the fall semester perfect so let's see if we have more questions here okay this is a question for me about the format of the final exam so for the final capstone exam the best way to prepare for this exam is go through the great assignment the meter and the final exams that you are taking now in sc1 sc0 and scx courses so i would say it's going to be this kind of question the questions that you are taking now in great assignments um and final exam per course so this is the best way to prepare for that what else do we have here well maybe one other thing i might mention is um uh questions students have asked questions about housing um as in any big college town it's all geared up for people who are going to show up in september and then graduate in june we are working with the housing office very closely right now to uh to understand um how much housing is available where is it and and what process would we have our blended students go through in order to secure housing they're going to be a little bit off-cycle from the normal um normal flow of students um so uh we're working on that and we'll be we'll be posting a lot of this information in the near future um but uh again this will be a situation where once you know that uh that you're being seriously considered and admitted to our program you'll have to start thinking about housing um sooner than the normal student would because it will be more difficult to get housing um and we're working on trying to figure out a process to make that happen and more easily for you perfect more questions about the capstone exam it's going to be an open book it's going to be a time exam as the final exam you are taking now for ac1 or ac4x um it's going we do not have the details so far so let's see if it is going to be physical or not physical but take into consideration it's going to be a time exam so this is going to limit the time you are going to have to to to be open book in general yes we all of our exams are open book exams oh this is a good question you don't seem to have any plans in the near future for africa market any plans to open a center in africa why not yes i won yes we have here professor sheffy so please yes can you answer to this question i i know you are very interested in africa yes in african markets good question we have been interested in opening a center in africa for many many years um there are problems with funding such a center interestingly we're in the process right now of working with the gates foundation and with nigerian authorities but possibly and i have to mention possibly opening a center in nigeria so it may or may not happen but i appreciate the question we very much hope to add a scale center in in africa it was our hope all along and actually interestingly we now have a project to evaluate such a center funded by the gates foundation let me just make another comment about uh candidates from africa um but we talk about non-traditional candidates i i think of africa because we occasionally get applicants uh from africa applying to our residential program it seems to be because of the education system over there it's very difficult for students in that in that part of the world to get very high g-matts scores and so forth um so uh we're very anxious to get some non-traditional candidates applying from africa that come through the micro masters pathway it seems that it's very challenging for students to come through our normal pathway from africa and so i'd love to be able to get some great african students in here definitely they are suggesting south africa i guess so yes i mean i'm suggesting south africa i understand something let me just say yeah south africa is not in the middle of africa but if they have more more of a suggestion if they can come up with more than just a suggestion it's it's fine yeah in the past there were no takers we would not we usually wait for an approach from a country a foundation or a set of companies to open a center so we have no way no approaches from from south africa they are also suggesting india and other countries okay there is one question regarding the the blended program and the scholarship so i just want to mention that the algohair foundation they are going to offer scholarships for those students that are for the arabic world and they are going to get the admission in the blended program so this is a foundation that is going to offer these scholarships and we are definitely talking with with more organizations in order to to see if other foundations can also provide these scholarships so for those that are arabic citizens have a look to algohair foundation more questions let's see oh again with the capstone exam they want me to release the the solutions of the final exam so okay let me go to this question again i'm learning an assessment for learning you are going to have all of the solution explanations because we want really really want you to learn assessment is pure assessment it's just to check if you have the knowledge in order to give you the certificate so we are not going to provide solutions for assessments since this is not intended for learning it's just to check your knowledge so the answer unfortunately is no we are not going to provide the solutions for final exams or the proctor final exam i hope you understand this more things let's see open the program in google hangout can the professors advise on how to come up with a good research idea for the research project initially as part of the application process a student will have to a candidate will have to create a two-page description of what project they would like to work on and we're going to give some guidelines around you know what's the project what company might be willing to sponsor you what data do you think you might need so we need you to start thinking about this i we expect that after we have admitted some students we will start to engage with some of those students around what their thesis project is but in the application process itself when there are still hundreds of students that are in the process of filling that out it's it's very unlikely that we're going to have enough staff to engage with with applicants at that point yeah but we would have general instructions on the website right right general not not specific right yeah but it's going to be a mission criteria so we are going to take this into consideration in order to admit the student after admission then we are right and so but by the way after a student is admitted i mentioned that they only have five months on campus to get the project done so after students are admitted we will be getting back to them asking them to do a little bit of pre-work on their project before they come to campus to spell out in more detail exactly what project they want to do the methodology they expect and so forth so they'll be doing a little bit of work so that when they arrive in january they're not starting from scratch they'll have a great idea as exactly what they want to do where they're going to get the data and and they can start working on it the fourth week of january the residential students go away they go on a trip to Panama the blended students will stay at MIT and work on their thesis and also get more coaching on on career development skills in that week as well great one question about what what will be the percentage of international students within the blended program we we have no but assume this is we have a student so far for 190 countries the pipeline student that we have in the micro master program is from 116 countries so i think we we we we can we don't have any target that is going to be a very international program important things there are no targets and no quotas yeah this is a very good one yeah definitely right more questions is there a formal way to get a company to sponsor you this is a very good question re-ask yeah is there a formal way that the company can sponsor a student in our blending program so let me describe first of all set the stage and what happens in the residential program the residential program MIT has a center for transportation and logistics that has about 50 companies who are corporate members of that center we approach those companies every year to ask if they will sponsor master's thesis projects and we in fact do get from that population of companies we do get companies to sponsor every master's thesis project for the residential program for the blended program the responsibility shifts over to the blended student to to think about what kind of project they would want to do what kind of a company might have that particular issue or problem to be solved and and to approach companies a lot of this will be done before they come to campus once they arrive on campus and they're now working on under our advisors and so forth we can help them but a lot of the responsibility for figuring out your thesis project or your master's your your research project will be done by the student even before they arrive let me suggest there's another element to the question when somebody says sponsored they mean financially sponsor a student and that's if a company wants to financially sponsor a student students should mention it in his or her application in many cases this will also be a company that the students will work with and we do his or her thesis with but at MIT there are many many cases when a company sponsors a student financially and pays tuition and pays the living expenses this is a common way of doing business at MIT and you should just mention it in your application and we will give all the instruction for the company how to do it great one good question bruce a can traditional candidates get admission in the blended program sure sure there's nothing to prevent that we're looking at anybody they people have to have two years of work experience but beyond that but they want to add that they need to have the micro master credential to get admission so let's say if you if they mean with traditional candidate they want with they do not have the micro master credential the answer is no so that's the question so for the blended program is mandatory to have the micro master credential in order to apply in addition to that we are open to candidates for every different ages or cultures or experience or whatever but it's mandatory to have the micro master credential for the blended program and by the way it's you can if you have the micro master credential you can also apply to the residential program right there's nothing nothing preventing you from from doing it yeah but if you do not have the micro master credential then you cannot apply to the blended program because the blended program is an accelerated way to earn a master degree at MIT or other university because of the micro master because you already passed five a massive open online courses plus the proctor final exam okay this is a question that you already already answered but they are asking again how much is the blended master going to cost we're targeting tuition will probably be between 40 and 45 thousand dollars yeah in addition to that you need to take into consideration the the cost to live the living experience and by the way we will have an estimate once MIT will release the final tuition for that semester which is right now unknown we just estimated MIT will also release an estimate of the living expenses so you can do some financial planning yes Boston is such a cheap place to live there Boston is an expensive place to live it's a very expensive place to live yeah but a good place nice I agree let's see this is the same question we already answered the blended and residential degrees are the same degree yes we already answered this question and yes it's the same degree somebody asked before about the scale network yes the the scale I don't think I don't remember who answered it but I don't think we answered it fully students who are in the blended program are part of the scale network because it's the same degree as the residential degree so they are part of the scale network and by the way in many cases a employer will be interested in them working for a multinational some other part of the world we are usually when we put together the the resume book it includes people from throughout the scale center right so they will be part of this scale center resume book and other activities of the scale center another example in January when the blended students come to to MIT during January in three and a half week in January the student from all the scale center are at MIT and we specifically started it in January and not when the MIT official spring semester start which is February in order to blend them with the rest of the scale student get them to know each other and be part of that community they will also be considered part of the alumni of the scale network so yes they are part of the scale network yes yeah January will be a very busy time we have a very full schedule of courses and tours and lectures team projects and all 100 and this year we have about 110 students will be there when the when the blended people show up it will be at 150 students and so forth so yeah so January 2018 even more students from Luxembourg in China that's right yeah we can be 200 so one question about the are we going to receive a customized certificate rather than the one from edX so let me clarify this point so you are going to receive a certificate for SCX course and this is a certificate it's an MITX certificate that you can get through edX through the platform for the micro master is going to be an MITX micro master credential through edX so it's an online certificate that you can access through the platform through edX it will say that you get the micro master in supply chain management it's not going to be it's going to be MITX micro master in supply chain management credential in credential it's not going to be just vanilla micro master say supply chain management the question they are asking about is any customized way to receive it the way to receive it through the the platform it is customized and it says supply chain management it's not general edX but I think maybe the probably question is are they going to receive in the mail this beautiful horizontal they print them no it's not printed copies it's an online deliver through the platform and everything is delivered through the platform through edX this is very important for the blended program there is an option that they can choose to send a kind of transcript directly to the university but only for those universities that are edX partners but this is a different thing right I should say that once they finish the blended program they'll get an actual MIT degree yes but this is a yes a physical MIT degree what a physical a physical program that's why it's called blended great more things what about if the degrees are from one of the partner universities okay this is a good question so you are going to have the MITx micro master credential in supply chain management and then if you get admission at MIT and you pass the the degree you are going to have the MIT degree if you go to Denmark you are going to have the master's degree for Denmark University of Technology so this depends on the university you get admission for the master's degree more things what are your thoughts on the University of Queensland cartoon Denmark I think they are good universities yes they are good universities they are interesting using the micro master as a path of credit for their blended program more universities is going to be interested and go for their own blend is that Queensland and Australia sorry is that the one in Australia Queensland and karting are both in Australia my daughter went there for a semester she loved it yeah it's a great experience oh and also I understand Rochester Rochester city of technology rIT very good rIT is an excellent school they are also going to offer a blended program based on the micro mastering and we are actively looking for others yes yes others are going to to yes to you soon do you have any indication yet what the criteria will be for the proposals the research proposals two or three people have asked but I said it was too early in the chat what criteria the research proposal will be assessed we're going to issue some instructions on what we're looking for in this two-page description it's only a two-page description but we'll be looking for things like that they're going to suggest what problem or issue that they would like to address what kinds of companies or what kinds of supply chains have that issue how they're going to address how they might want to solve it what think about what data would you need to be able to solve this where might you get such data so it's it's really an opportunity for a student to to think about some interesting issue and then dive into it a little bit deeper give us a description of how you want to dive into it once the student is admitted we're going to go back to the students say okay it's it's now let's say it's now September and you're going to show up in January I want you to start thinking a little more deeply about this project so that when you get here in January you've got a much better understanding of exactly what the question is what company might work with you and what data do you need and so forth one more question how would they write this credential on my resume micron mitx micro masters credential in supply chain management this is the best way to present this um let's see I have another question here yes you already write it perfect yes one question is can I use the micro master credential to apply for an undergrad degree in at MIT and say this is going to be part of your cb you can for apply for a job for another graduate program undergrad program is mandatory for the blended program it just just just say that MIT does not have an undergraduate program in supply chain management so just but but as we're already starting to receive for example the application season is open right now we're receiving applicants for our residential program and I'm sure other schools are receiving applicants for all sorts of programs and I'm seeing people listing in their in their resume that they took sc1x or sc2x and so forth and telling us what score they that's very positively received it it helps a lot we like to see that and I'm sure other schools are going to like to see that as well perfect they are asking for the cost of the blended program in other universities I would say you need to go to the specific website um this is some information that each university is going to so it's working with Malaysia may be more difficult we'll see yeah we will announce those universities that are going to to offer a blended program and then and we are going to provide the link with the specific details and information about this lecture so you need to go to there indeed the admission criteria is going to be different for one university and another university so the the the length of the program could be different so it's a decision the only interesting thing is that um the the centers that are members of the scale network um when you apply to the blended program at MIT the same application there'll be a way to apply to those centers as well on the same application whereas other universities will have their own admissions process to participate in one question about the difference between the x series certification and the micro master the x series certification includes three courses sc1x sc2x and sc3x and it's a certificate certificate that said okay you have a knowledge in supply chain fundamentals supply chain design a supply chain dynamics supply chain strategy the micro master is more than that include five scx courses plus the proctor final exam um we are going to provide you this credential and you can apply for a blended program with this credential so this is the main difference between the x series and the micro master credential okay any other question arthur amat the people are asking if the internship suffices as work requirement uh few people have asked about the working requirement to apply for the blended can you offer any more insight sure we repeat the question does it does we talk about having at least at least two years and preferably five years of full-time work experience lots of students as they go through college in the summertime they have a a two or three month internship we're really looking for full-time work experience it's great the internship is is excellent to have on your resume and that helps a lot but we're looking for that full-time job after graduation usually at a company so the internship helps but it's not a substitute for full-time employment one more question when when is going to be an mba mit metro master be offered not in the near future by the way the mba mit requires four semesters not two so at best you'll be three semesters in resume that trap doesn't doesn't say much right okay so i think we we almost cover all the questions we have thank you joseph for joining us we're going to have you too we're going to be open you can talk about okay so thanks both to to be here today um now we we are going to have the breakout rooms open you can join them we just uh include them by by different regions and areas in the world so you can join to the north america breakout session the europe india middle east or any other one that you have here so this is an opportunity to talk with and discuss with your peers to introduce yourself and to have a nice discussion in supply chain management with your colleagues your classmates so please feel free to join the breakout rooms and thank you for your participation and see you next in two weeks so thank you okay let me stop recording let's hold tight for one second


Hello, I want to show you Kristen Brooks iPad Lab here at Woodstock Elementary School in Georgia it's a really colorful cool place and Let's take a step inside Hello So, oh we have we got one viewer now when it's during the school day It's hard to hard to get a lot of these but I bet people will watch the replay So you have a whole huge room in here that is your iPad lab this is What the advantage of an iPad lab is that you can have students sit anywhere they want, right? The cafe kind of area so it's laid back and we do projects and an iPad pad an iPad pad That was actually one of the names considered for the rooms to the iPad lab It was considered the iPad pad from Sandy Adams your friend. Yeah, Sandy Is that it kind of looks like maybe a kindergarten room too with the with the bright colors I wanted it to be very colorful because I actually color coded where they sit on the carpet with the boxes up there for the Storage and then the iPads are actually colored to go with it That is a great idea So what happens in this room in this room the students come in and I had the Promethean board with using air server Connected to my iPad and I usually go over what we're going to do for the day while they sit on the carpet Sometimes I have a video from PBS or Brain Pop that you know is a little launching pad for what we're going to do that day and then Show them a quick demonstration And we usually make some sort of project that they can collaborate on and work together to come out with a product So how long are do you get to see the students and how often I see them about once a week? And it is usually for 45 minutes for each class, and I see 1150 students That's that's a lot of students like this is like a like a Starbucks for kids It kind of is like a little cafe for children with their iPads and here. This is our yeah show it show me right here It is here's the cart. So we're all the magic happens and Everything's color-coded everything's color-coded it makes it easy to for me because I do teach so many students And I really try to use every minute that they're in here I know when I have them all back like if I just look in the bins I see six red ones back I know I have all of them back before they leave students have iPads in their classrooms, too Or is this are these the only iPads around? They have different ones that they can check out big carts like this from the media center that they can check Out and then most of our teachers have at least one so there's usually one in each classroom for sure And then we have different sets that they can check out so this the reason that the iPad lab became What it is is that our students the title on school so they didn't all have devices at home So I wanted them to be prepared when they got to middle school to know how to use one Terrific, okay, so You're using these for storage here You know different with sometimes different manipulatives that I might use with the kids with certain apps I store them in the bins and again, it's kind of color-coded over in that area. I've got the same colored bins So yeah, so the kids sit down they get their assignment And then they kind of are dispersed to go where they would like to around the room So they might want to sit in the beanbags with their friend. They might want to sit at the small table We have our Osmo area in the back over there So sometimes students are working with their partner using Osmo if you've never tried it check out Osmo Here This is one of their favorite stations. I started with one station last year and Osmo and now I have Six complete stations. So we'll just go through one so this is Osmo tan gram and I love Osmo because it is using the iPad, but it's also Encouraging the children to work together Sometimes they're competing against each other. Sometimes they're collaborating together So Osmo is one of my favorite things and now it's become the students favorite activity. They love playing with Osmo so basically you've got some different levels and We'll do this one. So it shows you the picture that you're making which for anyone that is My same age. This probably looks familiar except for when we did it. It was on just like this colored matte So those of you not familiar with Osmo There's there's this little mirror reflector you get here is so that the iPad can actually see what's in front of it So you manipulate things in front of your iPad But the iPad can tell through its camera mirror what what's placed where it's really innovative. Yes They I think my students sometimes think Osmo is a real person because they talk to him. Hey Osmo. Do you see it?  Yay And then the way that they've set up 10 grams once you get them correct You can get into different levels and so this one is in the castle and it's a little bit different because it shows you the Negative space so it's you know kind of exciting. They love it I had 10 grams in my fifth grade classroom before Before iPads and so it couldn't tell if you're right or wrong You just had to keep keep trying and and do it visually and there are other apps for Osmo too with the letters and Drawing it's pretty neat. Yeah little pieces fall down and they're trying to hit the bull's eye and They're trying to figure out, you know slides and planes and what they can use So it's very exciting and the words I love words where they are usually competing against each other to create a word And you can make the words whatever you want them to be so this year I actually got this idea from Tony because Tony made one with his name I made some with all of our staff names So like the specials teachers and the office staff because a lot of the specials teachers They just say hey computer teacher. Hey iPad lab teacher. And so I felt like they should know our names a little bit more respectful So we made one that had the Faces of the teachers and then their names and the kids loved trying to compete to spell the teachers names So so a few questions that one was asking do you do any green screen work in here? I am starting green screen this year I'm actually working on it now. I've got my Legos all set up over there and little stacks So it's coming So you said Osmo is a favorite app Somebody asked what's their favorite creation app? My kids love chatter picks for kids They love where they take a picture or find a picture online They draw the line and then they speak into the iPad and then that comes back out and their favorite thing to do is to Especially with historical figures like they'll say I'm George Washington and then it's their voice coming out But it's the mouth of George that chatter picks kids is an excellent app And it has no in-app purchases and it saves to the camera roll. It doesn't have any advertisements I don't exactly know how they make money, but I'm glad it's around Yeah, it's a favorite and pick collage. My students love pick collage Yeah, there's there's several that they really enjoy creating with Anything else we should see in here No, I think that's pretty much it just you know It's a fun place to be and the kids are very good with they know how the room is set up And so one of the rules is when they're finished all of the iPads go back in the boxes up here All of them asleep and they have to set the room back the way it was because it does get very Disorganized while they're in here for 45 minutes, but they're really good during our cleanup time to set it back And if they do it all correctly quickly they get to do a go noodle. So they get excited about that nice Well, this has to be a room that they love to come and visit You know you introduce me to the art teacher next door And I know kids love coming to art and because it's so hands-on and they get to make something and that sounds like What your room is like too? Yes, we are definitely trying to focus more instead of playing games on the iPad Because I don't think they really need a teacher for that. It's more of creating items on the iPads And a room without desks is pretty refreshing Yes, and it's funny because they do tend though We have just a few tables and they do tend to sit there Even though they have the entire carpet that they can lay down on it's kind of funny to see who picks what And questions asked, how do you keep the iPads updated? Actually, that is something that I have a wonderful person in the county who comes and helps me update all of them And we do one mass update. So like right now the new iOS 9 I don't have iOS 9 yet. So I will get it in probably a month or so What about putting on apps?  Yeah, she prefers like kind of when I first started I made a list of ones that I wanted for sure and then we put all those on in a big batch And then as the year goes on if there is something that I find I usually put it on my personal iPad first to test it To make sure I really love it and then I will go and add it to one iPad And it will duplicate itself as it moves along Oh and there's somebody does this for 450 of their own devices. Oh, yeah I bet she wishes she has someone from the county to help out that way We call her iCarol very lovingly iCarol comes and helps and takes care of all the big stuff that I need help with So yeah, it's great anybody wants to come visit Woodstock elementary the iPad lab the door is always open It's a very friendly school flip around since Kristen hasn't been able to see your heart But they've been giving you a lot of thanks for the hearts And I met you at JETC the Georgia ed tech conference which is which still really starts today with workshops and goes on the rest of the week So I will see you a few more times this week I hope hopefully I was glad you invited me to your school to check out your lab and Look at all those hearts. That's so nice of them. They really like the space and they like the organization That's I love classroom routines where it can keep things nice and neat and students just know what to do When and everything flows smoothly. I love that. Yeah, we really we do we focus very much on having a routine And we kind of keep the same routine every time if they pull out a chair and move it or move a beanbag or a stool They always put that back. So it's really nice. It's nice that I'm not the one constantly cleaning up after them because like I said 1150 kids is a lot of students But they are very good and very respectful and I have to give a shout out because a lot of this furniture was donated So the kids at the beginning were very aware that if the furniture was messed up, we would not have it any longer So they're very good about keeping it nice That's terrific All right. Well, thanks for joining us. Thanks for your questions And there's lots of encouragement and that people like what they're seeing if you would like to follow me on Twitter I do post different items that my students make and different things if you want some ideas So it's just at Kristen Brooks 77. Yeah, and if you click on her Twitter profile You can go to the page that she's made for the iPad lab. I stalked your app lab a little bit So I see this stuff there There's some videos and projects and and lots of great stuff there So and I put her a Twitter name in the title of this broadcast to so people can click on that. I try All right. Well, thanks for joining us and I'll see you later


Let me start with an observation before I go into my slides. I think as a community, we talk a lot, but we don't communicate well. I learned this from my wife, actually. But the good news is, after 22 years, I'm starting to get it right, apparently. It's a really, really difficult thing to do. I was having a discussion in the coffee break. It's very easy to start to collaborate with someone. Today, for instance, it's a one-way message. It's very easy for me to plan my presentation and to deliver it to you. But security is about A to Z. And if you don't get right away from A to Z, then you've only partially solved the problem. And through years of trying to collaborate and engage with other parties throughout Europe, we have really discovered in Inessa how much effort you have to put into the process. So I think the reason I'm saying all this is because this is what Inessa is all about. It is about collaboration. And every project that Inessa does is our project in the sense of us. And you play a major role. Most of the work, if not all of the work that Inessa publishes is, in fact, your work. And so Inessa has gone quite a long way down this path of collaboration. We still find it extremely difficult. For instance, our next challenge is going to be some level of international collaboration outside Europe, as this is now allowed in our new mandate. It is extremely difficult to be able to plan it in such a way that you really deliver the results. So what I'm going to talk about in my presentation today is all about collaboration. And if I were to summarize Inessa, it is we are there to create an effective network and information security community throughout Europe. I'm going to make one more last comment about Inessa, and then I'm going to skip the opening slides. So sometimes I appreciate if you're not working in the European communities, it's sometimes difficult to separate the different instances and to understand what they do. And Inessa is extremely complementary to the commission. The commission is an executive body. It produces new European legislation. Of course, Inessa feeds into this process by working together with operational communities and giving information, which helps make good policy. But over the last few years, and under the new director, we really tried to focus more on policy implementation, because this is where the real challenge is. We have some great legislation, but if it's not implemented correctly, we don't get the benefits from it. And implementing policy needs to preserve the economic interests of those who are working with security. We do not want to penalize European firms by doing this badly. So that's what this talk is all about. Let's move on. Let's talk a little bit about the EU cybersecurity strategy. What it is. Ooh, that's not very good. I better tell you then. You should know about this, honestly. The EU cybersecurity strategy is probably the most important piece of policy that has come out in the last five years on a European basis. And it will change things. It comes with an associated proposal for a directive, which will become law. So you need to know about it. And if you don't like it, you need to try and change it. It's important. What does it say?  The ones in red are where Anissa has been explicitly asked to contribute. And our contribution is to help implement this stuff. So I'm obviously going to concentrate on the stuff we do, but please read this. It's extremely important. It's a great piece of legislation because it brings together three strands of activity that were essentially a part in the past, which are the open market activities, the stuff we all do as private or public sector. The law and enforcement activities, which Olivier has just talked about. And the third aspect is the military and defence and international relations activities. So it's nice to have a coherent document looking at all this. Now I'm going to skip over this. I'm going to give you the slides afterwards. That will help you understand in more detail what we do. And I would really like to spend the rest of the presentation explaining what Anissa does and how it does it. And my plea to you is, if you are interested, then please talk to us. You can either talk to me personally or you can send a message to the agency. Because, again, our goal is to involve you in our work. So in terms of critical information infrastructure, let me start with this. Every year we produce an Anissa threat landscape. We don't do this work ourselves. Again, it's very illustrative of the way we work. We go right the way through the globe trying to find out who's done what on risk and threat analysis. And we put it all together in a form which is appropriate for our stakeholders. So it encompasses a lot of experience and a lot of results. And hopefully it gives our stakeholders those results in the way which is most useful for themselves. And this is what it looks like. This is one of the graphical tools that we use in developing this. It tells you what the top threats are and how they're evolving. And then it splits it out by service and in all kinds of nice ways that you can make the most of it. So please go and have a look at our website. Everything is free as a public institution, of course. And you might be surprised. You will find a lot of practical stuff there. Now, a word of warning with this. I think whenever we talk about data, and especially in this business, we always make the assumption that data is predictive. This is not actually always the case. So be very careful when interpreting data. And also be very careful about the variables around the data that you're analyzing. For instance, one of my staff said to me the other day, why don't we use the overall number of incidents in Europe as an indicator of how well we're doing? But that doesn't mean anything on its own. If you double the number of systems you're using, logically, you would expect to see a doubling of the number of incidents, even if you were a status quo. So analysis of the data is very important. And if you look at the way that security has developed over the last few years, it tends to be black swan events such as Stuxnet, low probability high impact, which have dominated and changed the industry. So data is good, but let's not use it blindly. Cyber exercises is probably our flagship project. We work together with the Member States, and all the Member States play in this. It's like a European equivalent of Cyberstorm, and we do a very practical exercise every two years, involving operational communities and seeing how they will react to a cybersecurity incident. The next one is next year. We've already had two. They've been very successful in the sense that we've done very badly. And that's a good thing, because when you do badly, you learn a lot. So the first exercise tested three things. In an incident, who would you phone? What do you know about their decision-making mandate, and how would you exchange data? Now think about it. If someone attacked you in Ireland tomorrow, and it was from, say, Portugal, would you know who to phone? Three years ago, no, you wouldn't. Even more importantly, you do not want to phone someone in the middle of a cybersecurity event, spend half an hour talking to them, and realize they can't help you with your problem. That would be a disaster, right? And then finally, when you exchange information, you have to do it over the right channels using the right tools. So we did badly, but the good news is that in the intervening time, we have done a lot. And now we have, for the first time, a pan-European set of standard operating procedures for dealing with a cybersecurity event. And let's not forget, if there was a cybersecurity event tomorrow in Europe, there is no central coordination. It is multilateral. This is sovereign state decision-making and subsidiarity. So 28 member states will have to talk to each other multilaterally to sort it out. That shows you the importance of having good procedures. We do work in securing new technology. I should more correctly say new business models. The one on the left, for instance, is cloud computing. Cloud computing is more a change in business model than it is in technology. And the way to look at this, incidentally, is to look at all the aspects, not just the technological ones. Most of the problems are in things like SLAs, legal restrictions, knowing who's doing what with your data. The technological aspects are difficult, but not the most difficult thing in cloud computing. So we do a lot of this kind of work. The one on the right is smart grid security, which is becoming much more important. Industrial control systems in general are becoming much more important. And here again, your work, not ours, we work together with the community to produce very practical guidelines for how you deal with the most current risks. We give input into member cybersecurity strategies. This is a great evolution. So all the people on this slide have produced what is called a national cybersecurity strategy. So they explain how they deal with big events at a national level, including political events. How do you escalate things? Which communities do you bring in? What is the order and the timescale of doing things? It's great to see so many countries on this. And we can now use all these as examples if you like to encourage a certain homogeneity of approach across Europe. And that's important because security is, of course, cross-border, as we all know. You don't do security within national boundaries. That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. So the more we can rely on a commonality of approach, the better we will be at dealing with these large-scale incidents that affect many member states. What Anissa did here was we produced a deliverable in 2012 that basically summarized what we learned from you, the different member states, and your experiences in doing this. And that's what it describes. Now, again, I'm not going to read it out to you. You can all read yourselves. But I will concentrate on one thing here, the development life cycle. And again, I would like to make a point. My personal history, I was 18 years as a chief information security officer in the financial sector. And what I can tell you is one of the things we do very wrong is documentation. We produce lots of it, and we don't keep it up to date. So it's useless. In fact, it's worse than useless. It's harmful. If you have a 300-page document which is not up to date, the tendency is to believe it and do the wrong thing. We need to go to smaller, more compact forms of documentation that are kept up to date, and more importantly, are read and acted upon. And this is as true for a national cybersecurity strategy as it is for a piece of documentation in a company. So the development life cycle is absolutely fundamental here. Keep the thing alive. Make sure that it is brought up to date to evolving conditions so that it reflects reality. And you'll find lots of other stuff like this in the document. Now, when I say this, you're all probably thinking, yeah, we've heard all this before, of course. And I know you've heard it all before, but my question is, are you doing it? Can you really say your documentation is short and sharp and everyone has read it and updated it? My experience over 18 years, I couldn't.  So these are the challenges that are waiting for us. It's a change in mindset. I've talked a lot about collaboration. Let me talk about it explicitly. We do a lot in terms of assisting operational communities. So this is a sort of map of some of the communities we deal with. I would like to single out the CERT communities, Computer Emergency Response Team. They are pretty much the only frontline response mechanism worldwide. We are very tightly integrated into their network. We have a high degree of trust with this community. And we do a lot to support them. And we do a lot to ensure that these communities help support other communities. So with the EC3, for instance, we have been working to make sure that CERT communities work well together with EC3. And this is going very well. And that, you know, they learn to adapt to new conditions to deliver their services. We're doing a similar thing with the European External Action Service. We also work together on an occasional basis with Interpol, FinancialISAC, C-POL, NATO from time to time. We exchange information, which is the limit of what our mandate can achieve. But all the while, we try to focus on clear objectives and deliverables. I'm saying another thing very briefly. Everybody is talking about sharing information. And everybody is saying, we need to share more information. No, absolutely not. We need to share less information. But it needs to be structured information. It needs to be the right information. And it needs to be used to solve the problem at hand. We live in a world of data pollution. Too much information doesn't do anyone any good. If I go to the Internet and say, when should I plant my geranium? And I get every month from January to December, I'm not any wiser. And sometimes it can be a little bit like that, to be quite honest. What about national governmental certs? These are special certs. These are certs with a political mandate that could, in theory, you know, kill the network or do very... things with a high impact at the national level to make sure things go right. So these guys are key in any pan-European response mechanism to a cybersecurity incident. We've done a lot of work supporting this community. When we start in 2005, there were only a handful. Now almost every country has one. I would like to concentrate on this idea of baseline capabilities. Now they all exist. The challenge is to make sure that across the different member states, these certs are delivering services in a similar way. Because, again, if you do have a problem and you phone up a cert in another country and they're doing completely different things in a completely different way to you, well, how are you going to get your act together? How are you going to solve the problem? So the concept of baseline capabilities is extremely important for future development, for moving to a high level of maturity. We've released this a couple of years ago. We keep it up to date. We work a lot with the community to keep it active. Very quick example of the kind of stuff we do. So we actually help to train certs. We provide training material which is produced by ourselves with the certs. Again, very strong collaboration. An example is on the slide. And we sometimes go out there ourselves and help certs to learn from what other certs have taught ourselves. This is again learning by doing. It's similar to the Pan-European exercise and I think it's a great way to build capabilities throughout the member states. This I've already talked about. This is working together with the law and enforcement community. So I'm very happy to be a member of the program board of EC3. We have a lot of communication together. Our experts talk to each other. I won't go into the details. I'll lead you to look at the slide because I would like to move on to the last point which is extremely important. And if you read nothing else in the directive, read this. So this is something that is big worldwide. Security and data breach notification. They're two different things. Security breach notification is when you have an incident that affects your security. Easy enough. Data breach notification actually came from a California state bill over 15 years ago which was legislation even though the U.S. approach is voluntary. And this is about if you have an incident, the fact that you have to inform all the people, your client's suppliers, whoever, whose data has been affected by this incident. They're different. They have different goals and objectives but we should try and come up with rationalized processes for dealing with both of them. Now what have we done here? We've supported the member states in implementing a thing called Article 13A which is obligatory for the telecoms community since 2011. All 27 member states, probably 28 by now, are compliant with this. They've transposed it to international law and I'm going to show you some data in a minute. The great thing is that all member states converged on a common solution which had some very hard decisions in their thresholds, impact, timings. So this shows you the power of a strong collaborative approach and now we have a common method for reporting these incidents across Europe. Second example, a little less optimistic, I'm afraid, is Article 4 which is a data breach notification. Here the number of communities involved is enormous. It's a much more difficult job. The good news is we are making a lot of progress. I'm going to finish with two slides just to show you what comes out of this because what you should say to me, Steve, it's great to collect data, but what the hell do you do with it? What do we do with data collection business? What do we get back again? Well, this is the very first baby report which came out in 2011 and it already tells us some quite interesting things. Look at the incidents here. Most affected mobile coms, perhaps not surprising. It's a younger technology. It has to mature to the level of fixed line, but look what it was caused by. Not cyber attacks, sir. It was caused by more mundane things like hardware software failures, 20% natural disasters, 20% involved power cuts. So this is where we are suffering at the moment and this is where we need to concentrate in order to get one step better. Now, I'm not saying ignore cybersecurity incidents. Quite the opposite. But this is the side of cybersecurity that you may see less and yet it's fundamentally important for the operation of our network. So this data has already been quite useful. Now let's look at 2012. It's actually saying the same thing. Already we are seeing a trend starting to emerge. Most incidents are caused by system failures, hardware and software, third party failures. Malicious actions are a bit bigger. That's interesting. 8%. Natural disasters down to 6%. But hardware and software failures are something that we really need to look out for. So I said that data wasn't predictive. This data I think is predictive. It tells us something which is very important and which we can work on. The good news is this gets filtered back to what the strategy is trying to achieve and this is trying to achieve with its different projects and so we achieve high levels of security throughout the EU. So I would like to leave you with that. Hopefully I stuck to my 15 minutes and I would also like to thank you because again, we do everything we do through your knowledge. It's this link with the operational communities, your experience which makes in this a valuable and if we didn't have it we wouldn't have much to sell. My team is only 40 people strong and I'm very proud of them. You can't do a lot with 40 people but with 27 member states you have a highly scalable and agile approach and this I think is what Anissa can offer to you in the future. Thank you very much.


Okay, awesome guys. Thank you so much. Can I start with a good awesome. Hi guys. Thank you so much for coming here My name is Edith and I'm the founder and CEO of solar IO and I'm really really excited to be here for two reason number one Really really passionate about what we're going to talk today and number two I think it was two years since I talked to a real audience so let's talk So as I said solo is the company that I founded and we are focusing on solving the application that working problem so the connectivity and as one we basically living this STL community are stuck is basically STL and envoy and therefore we have working very very hard upstream We have two to see member from the six that exist in STO and we are working very hard to kind of like push the project for it We have basically a platform called glue mesh and this platform is basically a Built from four pieces the first one It's basically the mesh go a core and that's basically what it's basically an STO upstream within the hands from us like external and rate limiting is where is a set rotation and a lot of other stuff and Big big focus on multi-clusters The second one is we basically took the STO ingress and get right and basically make it a full-blown API Getaway so what we did we extended with a lot of and we filter like WAF like Like the data loss provision like soap the only STO soap that exists in the market and so on and The lesson at least we have developer portal again the only developer portal that exists first year in the market today and it's supporting, you know open API and as well as gRPC so that's what we have and The last and not least what we have is extension and extensions is basically the ability to customers the service mesh to your need And we're doing it with wasm. So it's built into our platform It's working seamlessly and you will be able to write your own custom filters to and boy Okay, so that's great. So as I said service mesh and boy proxy, that's where we're focusing and Service much is solving a lot of problems you all know because that's why you are here One of them is networking the other one is observability and the lesson not least is security and policy That's the stuff that they are focusing on this is great But then what happened is that there is a request coming into your clusters and there is some getaway that catching that request And it's going to some service and sometimes it's maybe a front-end service, right? Maybe some UI of your application and then in the UI micro services You have a lot of code. What is this code doing? You need to basically aggregate all the data from all those micro services that is connected to So maybe what you wanted to ask yourself is give me all the engineering solo that's working on glue mesh and earning less than 200k that means that we need to go to the engineering server to the product service to the final service to the To the ha and basically make the match to return that That that off So this is where graph kill is coming into the place, right? And as you know, hopefully, you know graph pl idea is basically to abstract that loss logic and basically Suggested that as as an obstruction Basically, you will make one request to the GraphQL service and the GraphQL service that is basically configured by Configuration and declarative configuration will go and do all those run-through for you Okay, that's great. So what is graph QL graph QL is basically the ability to do 8 to ask all your services use all your services as a query language, right? Get all the data that you want with Query language and it's very very very quick, right? You can see really quick animation, but basically as you can see you're adding filled boom. It's giving you the So it's pretty pretty true Now It doesn't mean that it need to do it only for one service, right? He can do it from a lot of surface It doesn't really care how much service you need to query from and that's what you can see you have three services here You're asking a query again in the response. He's going and doing all the run-through for you. You don't know honestly it's abstract for me so that's what graph QL is and Then biggest point about graph QL and I think it's really really important is how easy it's making to consume it And I think this is something that you will hear from a lot of our front-end team and UI team They want graph QL because then it's one query that they're putting in their application and basically the data is coming to them So it's a declarative query. It's quick and it's bringing you very easy to consume which one one request So now the question is what's the problem? Why am I telling you about it? This is a service mesh So we'll tell you why because actually build this graph QL service It's actually taking a lot of time you need to take some libraries, right? And this library usually a lot of the time that at least the leading one is no JS because it's a UI kind of like front-end team and Then you need to give them the schema and then you need to build in the resolver Which basically will resolve to that graph and then you need to deploy it and build it, right? This is another thing that you need to take care on your infrastructure And of course, you know, you can't have something in your infrastructure without security and observability that too risky specifically because it's kind of like acting right now as your Gateway so it's really really dangerous So when you're looking at this we try to figure out if there is any way for us to make that thing Simple that we're working with a lot of customer in production and we constantly heard about that conflict about There is this graph QL. There is a service match already ever get where how is that going to work? And that's exactly why we decided to make it better So envoy has this amazing ability to basically be extendable and this is why we a big fan of that And what you can do is basically you have the notion of Filter chain and the request is coming to the filter chain and going to a filters that you can put your own Custom filter inside and that's what's solo doing a lot, right? So if you see about what our differentiator, we know and we're in and out. So we have rough support We have data loss provision a filter. We have a double a slum that the coin creating the relationship in them They the trust immediately we have request and response transformation one of the most Honestly, but probably being used filter that we have we brought soap to envoy right and therefore to STO as well And now we basically brought graph QL to us to avoid. So what does it mean? so Basically we build a graph QL server that coming before the router and honestly if it will eat this it's not going to the router and basically know how to get a query and Basically go and do all this round trip for you He know how to do this and by doing this if you think what we just did we now be able to leverage in everything that and we're giving Us out of the blue so for instance the security the tracing the observability we getting it The caching everything that envoy can give me I can basically leverage right now in graph QL And the only thing that we need to give him is a schema right to know You know how to process the request and a resolver and the resolver we build in a lot of our resolver But honestly we also creating an integration with wasm that way that you can build it in any language that you want There is over and dynamically loaded to end right and that's really important. So again Basically what we just did right now is that every service slash get away in your infrastructure Know how to talk and become a graph QL server without you Need to do much so the question what do you need to do and as I said what you need to do is to give the schema and the Resolver, but we actually thought that we don't even have to let you do this So we find a way to auto generate the schema and the resolver for you for those services So how do we do this either? We're using open API or we're using, you know, uh, so swagger Are we using a you know, uh, whistel or anything that we can in order to kind of like understand What the schema should be and they're basically converted as the resolver So again, you basically can make everything in your infrastructure with a click of a button now Basically serve graph QL don't need to do anything. Just click a button and said I want that service as a graph QL Okay, but we didn't stop there because we also think that if everything in your infrastructure is graph QL And again, the reason to use graph QL just to remind you easy to use right? You're the velocity of the people that consuming it will go up dramatically So what it was very important to us is also to stitch it because if everything right now is a little graph QL That represent those graph we also need to stitch it and that's what we'll do in the getaway So we actually built into that envoy Stitching and federation is coming next. So basically again click off a button You're just telling us the relationship between them and boom everything declarative You can actually have graph QL everything in your services and stitch the on the getaway Okay, so now we have also another piece on that pattern right this is this is a product right This is what we are selling and now we're selling only also that piece which is again flip over button everything can be querable But in glue it's actually even more interesting in our platform because in our platform There is the ability to actually create what call a workspace. So what does it mean a workspace? The workspace is basically a ability to take namespace cross-class there in same class there Wherever you want and basically create a workspace and delegate it to your team And when you delegate to the team, you also tell me what they allowed or not allowed to do Okay So basically this is a very very interesting way to actually expose and delegate that in your organization The beautiful of it is now you can also export export Services in your workspace to the other so for instance I'm the billing service and I wanted to be consumable but all my company I will be able to expose it and what will happen in the other services They will see a catalog and those catalog is basically will allow them to import that service So now they will basically be able to said I want to take those So, you know, this is the services that exposed to me and click on a button I can consume them to my walks and If you're consuming it, let's do it the right way and what we basically did was that let's embed a developer portal in that Process so when you actually try to import a service in the catalog You will be able to get everything the developer portal giving you which is basically the docs Try it get the keys Whatever you want on boarding your people very easily and until now you could have done it with open a bi and glpc But now we also you can expose anyone you can decide that either to expose this as a rest like it is or so Or you can expose it as a graph QL And then you will see that you will be able to see that you will be able to Let your team easily consume it with the flag So that's what I have but I wanted to kind of like summarize what I just talked about because I think it's extremely important What we saw me is a huge huge technology problem. It's not easy. So trust me. Anybody. It's not easy writing C plus Ascing graph QL inside and boy, it's even harder though Which I think it's very very important is the fact that we're solving a conflict inside your team We had customer coming to us constantly and said My team one graph QL. How's that working with service mesh? So here is how it works in service mesh It's part of your services. He's taking advantage of the service match You don't need anything in your thing and in a quick on a button.  So that's all I have and I think I'm out of time anyway, so thank you so much and hopefully you enjoy


Moving to wide receiver we're gonna emphasize something different. Running back we want to type games. At wide receiver we want high scoring games because at wide receiver 67% of all players in perfect lineups came from games with a total of 45 or higher. That is compared to 55% of all games across the NFL. That's a that's a big number. What's more startling to me is that only one out of 57 perfect wide receivers came from a game with a total under 40. Game environment is key everywhere. Mentioned it why at quarterback and stacking but wide receivers need a lot of volume to pay off and a lot of times game environments are worse and totals are lower because there'll be less play volume throughout the entire day and we want to make sure we are definitely downgrading guys in games with low totals as a result of this. So again not saying you cross those games off but if someone down there with a low total is in your core ask yourself if that game will hit the over. If it's not going to hit the over then you're going to want to reconsider and look elsewhere. The other super interesting thing at wide receiver was the difference between the expensive wide receivers and the cheap ones. Basically the cheaper guys were big play high variance wide receivers and the expensive ones were more dependent on volume. What we can see this is by looking at how they got their points. There were 22 wide receivers with a salary below $6,000. Those 22 guys averaged 18.3 yards per reception in the games where they made the perfect lineup. The more expensive wide receivers averaged 16.6 yards per reception. It's a major split but it also makes a lot of sense because players with high A dots who get a lot of downfield targets are going to be more volatile. They get lower percentage targets which means there is a good chance they have a poor game and when you have a poor game that lowers your salary. But they still have the ability to hit the highs which is key for something like a perfect lineup. It's also backed up when you look at some of the names on this list. The cheaper wide receivers who made perfect lineups were to John Jackson in week one is loan week where he was healthy. Marquise Brown is there. John Brown is there. DJ Chark, Marvin Jones, John Ross. None of those guys are elite wide receivers but they get downfield looks and can convert on long catches and that gives them a path to a big game. But I think what's emphasizing though is that even the cheaper wide receivers needed the ability to have a big game and the scoring thing is key here as it was at quarterback. The first time we did this study in looking at perfect lineups was back in 2017 and we set a criteria for wide receivers to make the perfect lineup. They basically needed to get either 85 receiving yards or score two touchdowns and last year one wide receiver was an exception. It was Danny Amondola. I remember this because Danny Amondola is a bait in my existence. He was the one guy who was an exception. This year there was only one exception as well that was in week 17. DD Westbrook made the perfect line without getting either 85 receiving yards or two touchdowns but it happened in week 17 where scoring is lower. So I think this is still a good set of criteria and a good way to decide whether a wide receiver has the upside to make it in your lineup. Can they get to 85 receiving yards or can they score twice? If you can't answer yes to one of those two questions you probably should not use that wide receiver in a tournament. I would probably not want to use them in a cash game either because upside does matter there as well but it's mostly important when you're looking for upside 85 yards or two touchdowns. That's what you need out of your wide receiver to justify using them. So wide receiver in perfect lineups we wanted higher scoring games. We wanted to desperately avoid bad games and I think that's more key at wide receiver than any other single position on the board. For the cheaper receivers you want big play guys. I tend to prefer them at home where they may be more likely to hit on those deep plays but that was not necessarily as true in the data this year as it was last year and you do want to make sure all receivers regardless of salary have a path to a ceiling game 85 receiving yards or two touchdowns they can't get that's your best looking elsewhere