The signal oil program The whistler that whistle is your signal for the signal oil program The whistler am the whistler and I know many things for I walk by night I know many strange tales hidden in the hearts of men and women who have stepped into the shadows Yes, I know the nameless terrors of which they dare not speak Yes friends, it's time for the signal oil program the whistler Rated tops in popularity for a longer period of time than any other West Coast program in radio history And signal gasoline is tops to tops in quality It takes extra quality, you know to give you extra mileage and signal is the famous go farther gasoline So look for the signal circle sign in yellow and black that identifies independently operated signal stations from Canada to Mexico And now the whistler strange story The hangtree affair It was boredom that got Lee Ryan into it in the first place His train out of Chicago for the West Coast was moving slow with further delays expected because of the snowstorms ahead Yes, he was bored and impatient His last business venture in Chicago hadn't paid off too well And he looked forward to his arrival in California and the prospects of a deal worthy of his talents Lee decided that the club car might help pass the time It did the car was crowded and he found himself sitting with a talkative man who seemed to know many things about many people Including a number of their fellow passengers He was a reporter a man whom Lee had known casually over a period of years a Reporter who apparently loved to report and he talked to Lee Confidentially as if to his city editor. Oh, you picked a great chuchu Lee. Yes, sir I'm glad I'm getting off. You can carry on for me. How do you mean? Well, you can follow my boy Jeff Larkin. There's no story there as far as my newspaper concerned The city editor is washing it up Larkin that sounds familiar. I bet he looks that way too. Hey, ah, right over there with that girl. Oh She's not bad. Huh? Oh, she just like all the rest hanging around. I'm thinking he's gonna get that money money Oh, you didn't recognize a man an ex-con But I knew him when he was a big big man and hose lay any bodies time had happened He was the brains. Yeah, that's what they say. He'd planned the robberies on his partner noisy Nevins pull them off all a great team great noisy Nevins are the nitroglycerin Oh noisy could blow a safe door off clean as a housewife and open a can of peas. Oh sure and I'm with you They used to work together, but the last big job. They pulled a hundred thousand dollar bank job Larkin got careless He also got five years. He'll got the hundred thousand. Oh, it disappeared and so did Nevins That's why I've been tagging Larkin around ever since he walked out of that pen six months ago Your paper figured he'd meet Nevins split the dough. Haha. That's right only my paper was wrong Larkin knows from nothing where that dough is and noisy. Oh, he's quiet now as they get and Permanent to oh, yeah, I got that way about a month ago I think it was an auto accident out in Fisco. I was too bad Nevins was probably the only guy in the world who knew where that money was you figure he stashed it away somewhere Right absolutely right a hundred thousand dollars and it stays stashed Well that poor girl wasting her time with Larkin somebody should tell her there's a hundred grand unmarked bills Negotiable as a mud puddle in a pogo stick. Uh-huh. Say, you know, what's a funny thing? Well, I was a kid I could never manage one of those things. Oh, no. Oh, that's pretty good. Oh, you're kidding me Well, I'll be seeing you pal. Happiest scoops. Don't worry about me. I'm getting off the next stop My yeah, my best to Larkin if you should run it too. Yeah, I remember and I just might run into it Interesting isn't it Lee a man with a hundred thousand dollars only he doesn't know where it is It was hidden away by a partner who's dead now All very interesting Yes, and you think about it a lot after you leave your reporter friend in the club car Wonder if he's right if that girl really is going to be disappointed It's hours later that you feel the train grind to a stop glance out of your compartment to see that you've pulled onto a Siding in a small town station a porter. What's wrong? Why are we stopping? It won't be for long. So it's just a snow Oh, yes, and there's time to get off for a while if you want to some of the passengers are we'll be here bottom now I'll thank you. I don't think I'll bother Instead of leaving the train you walk back to the observation platform Stand there looking off toward the few lights of the small slumbering town of Springdale You find yourself wondering about Jeff Larkin again and the girl And then as the train is ready to move on you see her approaching alone from the direction of town It's a chance to speak to her. Isn't it Lee? On impulse you decide to take it You start for the boarding platform at the end of the car and reach it as she comes up the steps I'm sorry. I didn't mean to it's all right. Oh, no, you've dropped your purse here. Please never mind. I insist You bend down quickly begin to retrieve the articles that are spilled from her purse One you can't help noticing. It's a picture postcard addressed to mr. Jeff Larkin general delivery Chicago give it to me. Why certainly certainly. Hey, sorry, but I'm in a hurry. Thank you very much afraid your boyfriend might miss you Boyfriend, I know what you're talking about. I'm sorry. I just thought you were kind of chummy with a fellow in the club car You're mistaken Someone happened to sit with me because the car was crawling. Oh, sure sure. That's happening me too forget it. There's nothing to forget Good night night She wasn't very cooperative was she Lee and you wonder why? Wonder also about the card addressed to Larkin why she got so excited about it The next morning following the stop at Denver and find out Yes conductor, I'm sorry to bother you mr. Ryan, but we've been questioning all the passengers Questioning them about what? Oh, I'm sorry. This is lieutenant Knowles Denver police lieutenant to explain quickly Mr. Ryan a man a few compartments down from you has been murdered. I'm this train No happened at a place called springdale when we pulled into a siding mr. Ryan. Oh, I remember we stopped for about an hour Yeah, that's the place during that hour the victim of man named Jeff larkin larkin, you know him Well, no, no, I've heard of him. That's all I guess a lot of people have anyway larkin got off the plane for some reason never got back on His body was found a short time later in an alley at the edge of town. He'd been shocked for devil We've been trying to find someone who got off with him or talked to him just before no luck so far But now the young lady in 29 miss Clinton says she spoke to larkin earlier in the club car But that's the last she saw of it. Oh, she uh She didn't get off at springdale. No, no, she says she stayed in her compartment the whole time I see and you Ryan. Well, I walked back to the observation car. I was there at all 20 minutes or so, but you didn't observe anything. No, no, I'm sorry lieutenant. I didn't observe a thing With the prologue of the hangtree affair the signal oil company is bringing you another strange story by the whistler Recently I was looking at one of the newly announced 1949 cars as the salesman pointed out the air conditioner and the front seat that drops back to make a bed I Couldn't help thinking it's the trend of really modern products to do more than is primarily expected of them Just as signal premium compounded motor oil does so much more than just lubricate Of course signal premium has 100% pure paraffin base the finest money can buy But in addition signal premium oil Contains scientific compounds that go to work inside your motor doing jobs that regular oil alone can never do One compound for instance washes out accumulated carbon gum and varnish another compound guards expensive bearings from explosion and still other compounds keep the oil from thinning and prevent excessive foaming No wonder signal premium is the oil that guarantees a sweeter running motor So next time you change oil have your signal dealer put in the modern type signal oil that does so much more than just lubricate signal premium compounded motor oil and Now back to the whistler Well, you don't have to wonder anymore about the girl you saw with Jeff Larkin It all fits doesn't it the reporter's story about that hundred thousand dollars hidden away Larkin's death in a deserted alley back in Springdale The girls claim that she didn't see Larkin leave the train and that she herself didn't get off You know different don't you leave and the knowledge gives you absolute confidence when you reach Los Angeles Check into the same hotel that she does and then half an hour later call her room. Hello. Hello, Julie Oh friend of yours a good friend we uh met on the train Well, you met Jeff Larkin Julie you got real chummy like I once said well, he is still there Julie Well stay there, huh? I'm coming down to your room so we can talk now wait a minute. Are you wait a minute, Julie? That's all it'll take me. Well, the name is Lee Ryan and Julie Yes, I like my martini is very dry. Well, don't expect too much. Mr. Ryan. I Haven't any ice. No, I don't give me that so far. It's all you've had just um use that cold shoulder of yours. I'll be right down I um, I don't do this for everybody. Mr. Ryan. I don't lie for everybody Really, you're mistaken about that. Oh, is that so? Yeah, the drink looks good. I Think yours looks better. Let's switch. Howie cagey It's me. Oh It's good now The business at hand Julie Sounds terribly boring. Oh, I'm not nearly as bored as I was when I started this trip things are beginning to look up It's why I didn't tell that police detective that you got off that train They couldn't resist a certain possibility Namely that you know something Look, I uh, I don't care about Larkin What were you after? What's that? What's that address unknown Julie that spot where? Haven't stashed that hundred grand. Hey, I got it. What have you got mr.  Ryan Hey, what did you do? What did you put in this? My drink Getting dizzy Julie I Had you figured perfectly smart boy? You shouldn't have switched drinks with me Mr. Ryan, mr. Ryan, are you all right? Should I get the doctor? No, no, no doctor. I'm okay Where is she the young lady who called about you? She's gone checked out gone. Where she was going to catch a train I believe I'm I'm not sure she was just leaving her room when she saw you out here in the hall Give me a plane schedule. I want to go to Silver City Silver City. I don't believe the planes land. All right They'll get me close enough. I'll go if I have to crawl the rest of the way. Yes, sir anything you say As far as the stage goes mr. Silver City Here's your drink mr. Nice like I was saying Silver City is real quiet during the day But it'll open up round sundown. That's when the boys start drifting in from hangtree. Oh say You was asking me about the stage. There she is just pulled up in front of the hotel You wouldn't be waiting for that little lady with the suitcase just got over for Jane. I Sure would pop. Yeah classy.   You see Julie leave the hotel Watch her as she enters a cafe halfway down the block quickly you leave the bar and hurry into the hotel Say clerk. I've been expecting someone a young lady. She was supposed to arrive on the bus Why yes, she checked in a little while ago roommate. Oh good, but she ain't in now. Oh, oh, well, I'll see you later Say, let me have your pass key. Well, I've left my key in my room. I'll bring it right back Okay, just a second Moments later you slip into Julie's room quickly you go through her suitcase and pocket the gun Then as you turn your eye catch a sight of something on the dresser It's the postcard the same one Julie dropped on the train the card addressed to the late Jeff Larkin It boasts a picture of historic hangtree cemetery of Silver City on the back You can barely make out the handwriting there Jeff Be sure to look me up You're out this way Hope to see you soon Johnny Bridges Johnny Bridges You gotta know more about him Bridges yeah, well, how do you like that your Friend was in here asking about him my friend. The ladies got off the bus a little while ago Ask me if Johnny Bridges had been in lately You know something Johnny Bridges died over 50 years ago What yeah Silver Johnny they called him big man another big man. Yes, sir own the mine town too Yes, sir, you have been out to the cemetery the cemetery Johnny's got the fancy and fanciest rest in place of them all Hurt it cost over ten thousand dollars big granite Crip got a life-sized statue of Johnny on top and What's matter young fella?  Oh easy Just go right down the end of C Street here and turn left by the signal oil station go up the road You'll see a tree top of the hill that's old hang tree right beyond it on the side of the hill real handy likes the cemetery Oh, thank you. Thanks a lot You're out of breath when you finally reach the old cemetery As you start down the hill you notice a handful of people moving about the tombstones Tourists leave yes, they're all about you peering at the time worn inscriptions on the tombstones taking snapshots Then you notice someone else Yes There she is standing before a massive vault staring at the statue on top of it quite a jant wasn't he Julie? Don't look so surprised, baby. Oh What are you doing here? I'm writing a book on the old West. What are you doing here? You You won't believe this. I'll try I'm writing a book too about Johnny Burgess. That's right Remarkable character Burgess. I understand that broken down pile of rocks there that crypt cost 10 grand I must make a note of it doesn't look much like anything now does it over on with the weeds and all? That lock on the door doesn't look very good to me. Does it to you? I'm not an expert on lock You know from here. It looks like it could be forced with a marshmallow. I wonder what's inside that is besides Johnny Burgess, I mean I Wouldn't have the faintest idea Look, baby Our tourist friends are going to be parked here all afternoon if I'm not mistaken. So why don't we go back to town talk about the Romantic old West and all no about this this postcard and Johnny Burgess crypt Where'd you get that postcard? I happened to wander into your room was quite accidental really. I was looking for the elevator May I have it please? Well, sure sure Now let's go back to town find some place nice and private Your room at the hotel do you know Lee?  Oh, thanks, honey It was really very simple Never sent the card to Larkin to let him know where the dough was stashed hangtree cemetery The hundred grand hidden in that vault the final resting place of silver Johnny Burgess. Give me a cigarette with it Help you, sir. Thank you You've been to Frisco mm-hmm. That's a great town. We could have a wonderful time there Julie could we have a size We'll be rolling until Lee yeah, just where do we stand? I mean about we're partners, honey We're partners. I see You'll have to give me a little time to think it over. Oh sure You know there's one little thing I've been wondering about you Julie How'd you break into this affair? You're not Larkin's girlfriend. You picked him up on the train, didn't you? That's unkind So you and noisy Nevins used to hold that so we did I Made him in San Francisco while Larkin was in prison You must have discovered that your boyfriend sent word to Larkin when he got out about where the dough was I mean Something like that, but Nevins didn't tell you where it was. He was not very cooperative at times Lee Yeah, I bet you even suggested Nevins double-cross Larkin so that the two of you can have all the dough do you think yeah, I do Well Nevins wouldn't hear of it. He was one of those honest people code of the underworld and all that Funny I thought he'd do anything I asked him except double-cross an old pal No, he seemed to think we could get along with half the money Said he didn't deserve anymore opening safe came so easy to him. Yeah to him and his nitro So when Evans was killed in that accident you saw that half go out the window You didn't know where it was hidden, but Larkin did he'd get it all so do we have to go into that part of it No, no, I guess not we'll forget about it We'll forget about everything except then in another half hour. It'll be dark And then we have a date with Johnny Bridges and a hundred thousand dollars Now we can be in Frisco my morning What do you say? Oh I don't know I can talk you into it. I know Can you? Well, I talk and leave I May buy a half hour later as you step out into the street You suddenly discover that Silver City has come alive The main street is swarming with men from the mine as you walk past the saloons the cafes and stores You can hear the shouts the laughter jukeboxes and player pianos You walk to the edge of town Stop and stare at the hill beyond hangtree silhouetted against the sky For a long while you stand there trying to make up your mind about Julie After all these he killed once At last you turn and hurry back along the crowded street in one of the saloons you get the information that you want What's that again, mr. The bus what time? Oh, yeah, there's one do there and let me see about another half hour Thanks, you can catch it over there. Yeah, I know not say is there a phone in here. Yeah, right back there end of the bar Thanks You push your way through the crowd of the rear of the saloon to the telephone booth and place your call Hello, it's all set, baby. Still want to go to Frisco? All right, but get the stuff and leave tonight now you wait for me stay right way Or I'll pick you up in about 10 minutes Look sheriff you can check on this later But an ex-con named Larkin was murdered in Springdale five days ago Wait a minute You'll find the murder gun at the Elmira hotel in roommate. It's under a seat cushion a chair by the window You'll also find the dame there who pulled the trigger hold on here. Bye. Bye, baby I'm gonna miss you and Frisco The whistler will return in just a moment with a strange ending to tonight's story Meantime since there are only five shopping days till Christmas. I have a brilliant last-minute idea I hope there are no little boys listening because what I want to suggest is that there is no finer present than a switch For that forgotten name on your gift list The forgotten name I'm referring to is your car and the switch. I'm suggesting is a switch to signal You know that signal gasoline must have something For signal to have grown so in popularity from a mere handful of stations in Southern, California To almost 2,000 signal dealers serving six Western states from Canada to Mexico Of course, I don't have to tell you that signal is famous as the go farther gasoline But even more important to you is the extra driving pleasure you enjoy Thanks to the extra efficiency today's signal coaxes from your motor So if you want your gas pedal to keep that Christmas morning thrill year-round Remember Marvin Miller suggestion give your car a switch for Christmas a switch to signal gasoline and Now back to the whistler After 12 hours and several long-distance calls Sheriff McQuinn of Silver City was prepared to do some questioning He talked to Lieutenant Knowles in Denver and to the San Francisco police Now at last he felt that the puzzle was beginning to fit together All that remained was to walk through the quiet early morning gloom to the cell occupied by his angry and patient prisoner How time you're talking to me. What's it all about? You can't hold me here like this. I'll just take it easy lady. I Can and I'm doing it, but I haven't sit down. I've been making some phone calls Picked up lots of things about you. What of it?  So So that's very interesting Added to the gun you were carrying around and it could spell a murder in spring day. You'll have to prove that Lieutenant Knowles thinks he can caliber of the gun, you know Ballistics and Then the motive all that money. I don't know anything about it. Sure. Sure. You don't know a thing Why don't you ask Lee Ryan? We don't have to lady We're satisfied with what happened to him last night was Nevins work Just like a hand from the grave a Double crossing hand. What do you mean? Out at the cemetery When your friend Ryan tried breaking into silver Johnny's last resting place Yeah Yeah, noisy Nevins was an expert with TNT He wasn't planning to share that dough with anybody He set a booby trap to kill his old pal Larkin But Ryan got it instead Let that whistle be your signal for the signal oil program the whistler each Sunday night at this same time Brought to you by the signal oil company marketers of signal gasoline and motor oil and fine quality automotive accessories Signal has asked me to remind you to get the most driving pleasure drive at sensible speeds be courteous and obey traffic regulations It may save a life Possibly your own Reaching in tonight's story were Frank Lovejoy and Doris singleton The whistler was produced and directed by George W. Allen with story by Joel Malone and Adrian John Doe Music by Wilbur hatch and was transmitted to our troops overseas by the armed forces radio service Remember at this same time next Sunday another strange tale By the whistler This is Marvin Miller speaking This is CBS the Columbia broadcasting system


So, hello everyone, we should continue. I apologize, my voice is working like 80% today. So, I apologize in advance. Anyways, so my name is Aleksandr Matyshentsev, and I'm really happy to see you all here and excited to welcome you to ArgoCon. So, I feel like the fact that so many people chose to join ArgoConference over other co-located events here at Amsterdam, it's amazing and it speaks a lot about Argo popularity. So, Argo made awesome progress over the last few years and it became an extremely important tool that helped us engineers to build and deploy applications on top of Kubernetes. So, it doesn't really matter what your goal is, whether you want to just deploy a simple web service or you want to orchestrate a complex canary deployment or maybe you want to build an ETL pipeline. Argo has a component that can help you. And I think it's fair to say that Argo became a key ingredient in a cloud-native ecosystem and that's what I'm going to talk about today. So, I gave you my name only, but let me do a proper introduction. So, as I said, my name is Aleksandr Matyshentsev. This is my typical joke. Don't try to repeat my last name. So, I prefer to go just by Aleks. And I'm a long-time maintainer of Argo. I've been working on this project for almost seven years. I cannot believe it. And in fact, I'm a part of the team that created the project and team is pretty much here. You can see it on the screen. So, you already might honk and there is Jessie and me and we've been working together, kind of helping enterprises to adopt GitOps and maximize benefits of using Kubernetes for many years. And that led to the creation of a project. And eventually, it led to creation of our company, Acuity. And currently, we pretty much keep doing the same thing. So, we are helping enterprises, providing them services to adopt GitOps and implement it using Argo. Plus, we are scaling this process by providing a SaaS solution, SaaS product called Acuity Platform that currently includes managed Argo CD. And a ton of innovation on top. I won't go too deep into there. It provides a lot of additional features on top. And I can share with you that it was really kind of scary and hard decision for us to leave stable, full-time jobs and commit to start a startup. And it happened only thanks to Argo. And what motivated us and gave us courage to go for it is the progress and achievements that Argo made in the last few years. So, Hong already gave you a lot of numbers. I will highlight only a few metrics that I care the most about. So, Argo obviously graduated in 2022, which puts it into an awesome company of projects like Kubernetes itself, Envoy, Prometheus, and so on. That's great. Next, it has awesome velocity that indicates project is not just big and it keep growing. But what inspired me personally the most is the number of contributors. So, as a maintainer, I could kind of, I had a chance to observe how this number is growing. So, a few years ago, we had a team of two. And today we have multiple special interest groups. We have marketing team, security team. We have weekly contributors meeting and the hundreds of people are helping us to move project forward. And I personally and whole company, Acuity Thinks, it's extremely important for the project health. And we want to express our gratitude. And Acuity Peer Program for Argo is one of the ways how we say thank you to our contributors. So, idea here is very simple. We pick outstanding contributors and we reward them. So, one of the rewards is we're making sure each and everyone knows about their contributions so they can get credit for the work. So, we tweet about it, we blog about it. And of course, we provide awesome Argos, like PAK, which everyone loves. And we provide GitHub sponsorship. And so far, we have only seven people who received the award, which I think is an embarrassingly small number. And we have way more people who should get it. That's why it's a call to action to everyone here. If you have a person in mind who you think should receive the award, please navigate to acuity.io. Just search for Peer Program page and submit your nomination. And we'll be happy to review it and reward the contributor. So, we should keep moving. We announced Peer Program during last ArgoCon. And it feels like a great tradition to announce something new every ArgoCon. And today, I'm happy to announce a new resource available. If you are curious about acuity, if you want to learn about Argo from ArgoCreators, acuity.acuity.io is the place. So, as you can guess from the name, this is the resource that hosts a set of courses. So, today we are starting with the first course, Introduction to GitOps and Argo CD. It's available for free. Feel free to sign up and you will be able to start using it right after the QubeCon. And two more courses are under construction and will be added soon, which is Advanced GitOps and Introduction to Acuity platform. And I'm pretty sure it will be useful to everyone. If you're curious about Argo, if you want to learn about it, please go ahead and use it. And I have just one more last thing that I want to announce, which I think is the best possible thing to announce a new open source project. So, I hope you enjoyed the name. It's called Cargo. And Cargo is about automation of change promotion across multiple environments. So, this page doesn't have too many details intentionally. So, the reason being is, Cargo is not yet ready for its prime time, but we've been using it internally to build and deploy Acuity platform. So, we like the result and we feel confident enough to invite early adopters. So, if you care about promotion of changes between multiple environments and you want to try to apply GitOps principles to that process, please talk to us. You can find us at QubeCon booth or just send us a message in the CNCF Slack channel and we'll be happy to introduce you to a project. That's it for me. It's been great honor to speak today. And please go ahead and enjoy ArgoCon at QubeCon. Thank you. Thank you.


What's good? This is Don't flop USA. We're back in Chicago if you want to see the next battle day make some noise Let's go 14 days out in the USA fast all the way from London here to Chicago man This is battle number two of the entire fucking 14-day trip on my right-hand side appearance number two all the way from Cali We got mega death make some noise Fresh coast gunbars that edu pixelated night cruise elephant graveyard bad bar six I'm a dude on the left-hand side first appearance and don't flop from all the way up in Minnesota We got infrared the general make some noise Because no one play around two words when I'm done with my victims man All right, yo, it's round on what infrared I said before I get started It's one thing I gotta say I Feel sorry for his kids.  I hope you get zany and bro some bars today Well, I'm gonna leave you in my a because I broke that heat like Tim to take your heart away Got him through the great white hope in a square with Cassius Clank Well, let's get this show started. I loaded that clip early like a mad name all business ain't no time to play You're gonna be another Cali rapper the dynamite West all Peter Mac Dre I said I said earth when you told me how to vet from Cali.  I'll be killing them every time.   We're cool.   It's pitiful So like busting a nut on the thought I came to get ready you I Said peace I do things I'm different to change you lame you eat I can see that with bifocal lenses on some new frames.  I'll break your mouth.  Whoo. I start shopping with that Rick flair I'm snapping your mom's with the Ruger.   Thank you gonna leave me on the curb dad.    I'm sweet try me get your life ended I got a all-black chopper.  So am I ready? Oh that jams don't even make the road station Look when I see dollars, I go chase them a hustler But for me you couldn't get a old man good. Listen, you you got a license for your choppers That's why you carry all my weapons illegal even though I hide them ain't in berries.  You would think I went to Jared But not knowing what I had in the chamber was gonna make this mega death Worst in the holocaust acts round when I get the swing in the chopper. It's not a tomahawk I got a hundred round drum on the cake rushing. You can have it all I'm gonna catch a body shooting arch back like a neanderthal nigga.    Holy they better pray for Fall when I'm up like you back time and hit them with the razor's edge. No Scott I said I'll catch you out.  If you worried to die for your squad There's no play by no rules last big got his back eight and cold to 14. I put a cold move Nigger I said nigga I said you went overseas to be an American sniper I was born in the war zone since I was shitting and pissing and diapers.  Look Keep it real ain't gotta pretend. I'm here to win ain't trying to take and why would I worry about death?   I'm looking like your big bro.  I think finally he tried me. He died on the kitchen late night and air like I said why you was prepping right in them infrared lines.   We ain't equal because I don't know you my nigga. We can't mingle a couple These a ring of bells make jingles you don't get the point much.  I start a space like airway from the Jacksons.   I stayed up all night crushing 30s a little cane I put a big missile to your middle frame bang the weapon blue the tech stretch them like Stefan strew That's how the Westin do what what's the West to you with God's status. It's all Maddox Unlimited ammo homeboy.   That's why you from Minnesota I'm something colder.  That's a big-ass gun Toys and there's two ours in your name.  I put metal to your windpipe your deltoids.


Hey, welcome everyone to CUBE Conversations. This is John Furrier, Founder of SiliconANGLE. We are here live in Palo Alto. We're here with Tyler Bell, Vice President of Prog with Factual. For CUBE Conversations around big data and business, Tyler, welcome to the CUBE Conversations. Thank you, John. So big data, obviously, we've been covering for a long time, and data's the hottest thing right now. People say data's the next oil, data lakes, data oceans, as I say, but data's actually central to the value proposition of this next generation of social, mobile, cloud, and certainly cloud has propelled data as a first-class citizen in the developer framework and to business models. So I want to just get your take on what you think about the big data space in terms of, for the folks out there who are looking at using data to recast their business models, look at application development, and figuring out how to use data to enable their business for this next generation. Yes. Yeah, one reason you see and hear of all these metaphors around data is because people are trying to grab various sort of ideas in their head and better understand how to articulate this new value, which is something we haven't really seen before. And really what it is, is that you see the separation of data from the program, and really that's where things come into its own. It's really only relatively recently that the idea of data as an asset has come to fruition. And with that mental separation, we now have the tools that just work with the data independent of the business process. And so as data has grown in quantity, yes. But I think it's also the mental shift, is that people, executives, technicians are understanding that data as an asset means that I can build a motor, I can broaden my wall against the competition, and actually do things in the sector that haven't been seen before. I'd like to get your take on how data has changed, how the mindset around data has changed in terms of how people acquire data, what to acquire, what to look for, databases and a lot of those technologies and around how the tooling's changed into this new generation. But first, tell the folks out there about Factual. What are you guys doing, what's your business, what's your business model and what is the vision of Factual? Yeah, well Factual's a data platform obviously, that's why I'm here. We focus specifically on location data. So, and that can take many different forms. And I think each form is particularly important. The first one is location data in the terms of commercial places. So all the bricks and mortar stores around the globe. So our foundational product layer is about 70 million places in 50 countries. And we use that, that's valuable because it's of course valuable in any kind of mapping or social discovery app or check-ins, any kind of review app, requires that seed data around which they can wrap their own content, much like a pearl is formed around a small grain. And then of course on top of that, we have the idea of working with location data. So where users go over time, where people return to, what's important to them, what can we learn about people based upon and behavioral patterns based upon where they go. And so that's taking say your location data from your app, overlaying on top of our places with some machine learning and then we return information about your user base. And that new enriched data can be used by you to personalize how your app behaves and also make sure that you're producing more relevant content. I had a chance to speak with Gil, your CEO and he talked about, you guys have been around for multiple years doing a lot of hardcore development and knowing the company, you guys are a lot of data geeks and you guys are, you guys are digging into the data. Who are some of your customers today using Factual and why are they using Factual? Well, we're very keen to announce two new partners or I guess you could say refreshed partners that are coming to Factual to take a bigger bite out of our data. It used to be that when you launched, say a mapping product or a local product or any kind of application, you start out in one country and you learn about that then you grow out country by country. Increasingly organizations are saying, look, when I launched this mobile app, I want to go global from ground one.  So companies come to Factual for our global places data, the international data, as well as the suite of tools we have around it. And the two that we're announcing now are Bing and Yelp are coming on board and they're taking a big bite out of our international data which is lovely to see, they're good partners. So you guys essentially acquire data from the internet public data and you also have source data. Is that just like locations, their addresses? What are some of the data types and sources that you guys acquire? So this specifically relates to our places data. So that's that foundational product that I spoke of earlier. And Factual excels in areas, not where there's too little data but actually there's far too much. And really that's the internet pretty much, the entire to the internet. So far too much data, it's heterogeneous, it's mixed up, it's erroneous, fragmentary and it's dated as well. This stuff moves very, very quickly. In fact, we just released a blog post talking about our tens of millions of updates and deletions and refreshes and new places that we've added just in the last quarter. So everything's moving and what Factual wants to do and what we've done is build a crucible. And basically you take all this poor data, this bad data, you take some very high quality trusted data that we get from partners, hotel chains will give us data, partners who work with hotel chains and restaurant chains give us data. We put it in this big melting pot. We ignite the switch and all the impurities are burnt off and we're left with this cool glowing nugget of pure canonical data. You know, I love open source. Open source has been a great boom for us in the industry you're seeing that reflected now with cloud and other things, especially in software side. So data in a way has to be open. So the one observation we always hear is I have some data but if I just can put it into a pool if you will and make it better can I get other data? So everyone has data, right? That's clear. But then folks wanna know what to do with the data. So like how to make sense of the data. So can you just explain that concept of, I call it silo data, what are you gonna call it? You know, if I'm a hotel chain, I got all kinds of customer data, I got product information about my hotel, but I'm just a hotel, I'm not a restaurant. So this is the challenge, right? Is that internet companies have faced how do you one make all that data work together? Yes, yeah. And there's a lot of like, there's a lot of new ones. Also a lot of like hard stuff under the covers like cleaning the data, explain that whole concept out, this notion of openness and having data sets from different sources come together. Yeah, so with that one question you've hit upon about five vital aspects of data. So I'll break them up and address them as I can. The first with the idea of openness, we sort of the tech sector or individuals don't have a very good mental model of how to share data yet. That's something that doesn't exist because the general thought process, the belief system, from your company's lawyers, town two, the executives and product managers, is that data is a zero. And cultural privacy.  That's hugely critical and I don't wanna just touch upon it. But so here we will deal with just data about businesses, about places. So that's not terribly private, sort of where this office is located. You want people to know where this office is located. Retail establishments want to make sure their data is clean and well-broadcasted across the internet because it's good for them and it's good for the consumer. Everybody wins. But there's no model for non-zero sum data. So if I have data about places, I will very often be reluctant to exchange it or share it out unless there's a clear value that's articulated. And so people still think of data as a zero sum game whereas if I give you data, then I've somehow lost value. When in truth, factual's view is that data is more powerful and in most cases, not all, more powerful when it's shared. So if you think of the, there's think of, I guess the two examples I use for open data which are most valuable. One is technological and the other's natural. The technological one is GPS. So with GPS, that's the most successful open data play ever because by having those birds in the sky, we've now opened up the world's geographic data and all sorts of businesses flourish on top of that open data set. The other one of course is on the natural side is a seed, right? So if I have a seed and I have an apple orchard, apples create seeds or I can cut a bit off and splice it and give it to you. You can grow your own orchard. Now we're both better off because we both have orchards, we have cross-pollination. It's not that I'm chopping down my tree and then giving you an apple. And so I use those metaphors because they sort of articulate opposite extremes of where we are now which is fundamentally people are thinking, well, I'm told with the big data movement that all data has value. I don't know what that value is yet and so I'm gonna just lock it down. And factual's proposition is that when you share data it's more powerful. So for example, I have a business about a place. I give it to you. Let's say I give you one million bits of data. Records about places. You correct bits on every one. If you share those edits, corrections back with us, we both share ownership of that data. So you've helped us, we've helped you and we shake hands and walk away happy. So in any ecosystem you mentioned this is an enablement model because that sends you what you're saying is this is an enablement opportunity for folks non-zero some game as you mentioned. This is a phases of innovation. There's build, grow, value or monetize. Build, grow, monetize. Well kind of in that build mode now people are looking at holistically at data. Can you share your thoughts on where people are at right now based on your experience with the company talking to big platforms that have data and as people who don't have the big platforms there might be a small business sharing their address kind of like a yellow pages model on the web that want to take advantage of what the big guys have in platforms. So how do they build and how do they grow using data? Yeah you know I think there was a with sort of the advent of big data and let's say sort of three years ago was just a finger in the air sort of chalk mark about what I'm talking. The whole idea was that there are now new tools that I can use to better understand my content. How do I get those tools in? How do I find the expertise to work with the tools? And I think those kinds of questions on the operational side have now become a little bit more refined. So I may not need that. I can now use a service. Microsoft is pushing the ML as a service now of course. So it's no longer necessary of a question of I have to have all these assets. It's become much more subtle. And that subtlety is really reflected in well I may not need to work with big data myself but I can identify someone who can process it for me and make it usable. So that's something factual it does certainly. Or I can hire a service that allows me sort of on tap computational resources that I require. And so what you're seeing is a maturing of the industry where it's no longer a question of sort of a panic knee jerk. I need to have all this. And it's much more of understanding but what are the data assets? What are the raw material? What are the computational resources? And then the head count that I need to deliver. But in the overall spectrum of things it's sort of we're still in January on the calendar year of big data. So you think it's clearly build mode right now. People in build out mode not so much growth focus. So maybe some of the big boys maybe but. Yeah you know it's certainly not growth phase because that implies that you've actually sort of locked it in and you know exactly what you're doing. I think it's still so early that we're still learning the potential. Whenever just like whenever any new technology is brought on board the first question people ask is can it do what I can do already? And then once that you can tick that box people begin to say oh look at all these new ways that I can do things. We're actually now have the technical vocabulary to expand my product in ways that we're just not possible before. And so I think we're right on that cusp where people are ticking the box and saying okay what can I do now that's new. Tyler you're a vice president of product team and knowing how product teams work you have to balance kind of two roles. You gotta look inward to the company to know the assets and the mojo that you have from a technology and staff standpoint and then out to the customer facing market on the go-to-market side and balancing that roadmap what to deliver they basically call the MVP minimum viable product. So gotta ask you how do you balance the roadmap from what you can deliver today and what the market's ready for and specifically you know getting in there and getting your success beach head if you will for factual. And then what do you sequence downstream. So some people call it headroom or whatnot. So you know you guys have a unique very valuable product. What is your focus there? I mean how do you look at that and what are you doing specifically today in market. Yeah you know I'm glad you asked me this question that sounds so trite but I'm glad you asked because it's one of the most difficult things that we work with because what we found is we're not a company that starts out with the marketing message and then sort of looks down. We start out with the data and we say look we have all these fantastic resources. We have an expertise in location and data computation and there are some very clear pain points in market needs. So we come up from the data side rather than down with a message. And I think that's very powerful because our data is the best that's out there certainly. So the product is sound. But what's more important is that or I guess what's most revealing is that the difficulty that factual has is taking all these data wonks as you noted taking our products and basically understanding that they need to be reinterpreted for people in entirely different sectors. So how do we take this valuable packet of data about a place or about a person or someone's movements over time and how do we articulate that value not as raw JSON but actually as a marketing message to say these are the wonderful use cases you can do. So I mean I guess as an exemplar it was only until probably about a year, a year and a half ago that we had any kind of maps on our site. So we deal with location data but it's all articulated as just chunks of code basically. And now we're beginning to say look this really requires and we can do some really cool visualizations with the material that we have. So to your question the big balance that I have there is working with my team on the outbound side to ensure that we can articulate a coherent message but also always articulate the strength of the data. We never want to compromise what we have. We wanna say look we have confidence metrics and percentile metrics that we give you when you consume our data rather than what other folks say that which is yes this person's a golfer no this person's a golfer. We can say yeah we're pretty sure this person's a golfer and we're being open and transparent with you or at least as far as the data allows us to be. It's always a challenge. The beauty of data is in the eye of the beholder and it's really challenging for a company of your excellence to kind of have that approach because you can have make data for every diverse use case on the planet and be intensely in markets. So the broader market opportunity really is the scale point for you as a company. When do you see that straight and narrow on the broader market opportunity? So that's the next question I wanna ask you to kind of end the segment is if you look at the data strategy holistically and say okay we see that data will be a big market and we know that that's growing. We see evidence of that. But now we have a consumerization trend that's really driving the data equation and it's not just about the product. Product places and places and whatnot. It's about the audience themselves and the consumers who actually want value. And so now you have a consumer angle and you have some people who have been consumer facing. I wanna know all about the consumer, psychographic, demographic, all kinds of data there. I have all this data on the products that are out there. How do you integrate those two concepts? Yeah. You've touched upon a very important point and I'd break that up into two answers. The first is by starting with the observation is that Twitter's really the first mechanism where the consumer's been allowed to talk back to the product or talk back to the brand. And that's just a sea change of how consumers engage with products and brands and places, stores, et cetera. And I think that it's because we no longer have a simple one-way communication, it's become two-way, it's become a conversation. What you're seeing is twofold. One is on the technical side, data is being used to better understand the consumers through the products that they engage with in the same way that we want to better understand the places by the people that engage with them. And so you're seeing now the raw materials for a very virtuous circle that's moving us away from this shotgun approach where it's sort of one-to-many messaging and that's what advertising is, performs very poorly in your face, rarely relevant to the marketing message which is much more one-to-one. We're actually engaging with each other now. And brands and advertisers are learning about that, but we now have the data that begins, allows us to enable that. And you know, obviously data is, we are data geeks and I'm a data geek and I self-confess, but essentially what you're referring to is these new protocols are being developed. I mean essentially conversation is a handshake. If I have a conversation with you and you don't respond, you're not handshaking with me, you're not connecting, that's measurable, that's unique. Data opportunity. So I got to ask you about the personalization and the targeting and you're seeing a lot of folks go for the ad serving market as ad tech is the first kind of obvious low-hanging fruit, but what's beyond ad tech in terms of data? When you talk about the consumers connecting with brands, when you have real time, and which essentially location data is about real times, where people do, where they are, how does that change the game in terms of the data opportunity for you guys and for your customers? Locations has two sides to it. One's the real-time thing, where's the user now and that's a hugely strong signal, but there's also the contextual side, where have they been, where do they go to over time, because that's a great signal about what's important to this individual. To my earlier point about people picking up a new technology and saying can I do with it what I already do, they're now picking up information about the user and saying can I monetize that and so can I take this new data that factual provides and put this into an extant advertising model and I see a bump and that's a good thing, but where the future really is is the idea of personalization and so the reason that your phone behaves much like mine and others in this room is that the phone, the device, the applications know so little about who you are as an individual and there's all kinds of reasons for that, the siloed nature of mobile apps, the whole idea of Google and Apple and they're not just about introducing the consumer almost in their entirety, so there's all sorts of reason why the device knows so little about who I am as a person and because it doesn't have the data about me, it can't anticipate my needs, it can't articulate and surface things to me that are interesting and I think most importantly it can't filter all the crap that happens around us on a day to day level and really surface only the things that are interesting and so what we're seeing now, I think and what I'm keen to ensure that factual plays a part thereof is that data about individuals must be handled in a hugely private and anonymous way ideally but nonetheless contain information that allows applications and devices to better engage with us as consumers and anticipate our needs and that's really the future. So my final question is kind of just to sum up the segment about factual and the data opportunity is if someone comes to you and they're a total stranger or a friend who's not in the business and says, now tell me about this experience, all this data's out there about me and my phone where I go, real time, I'm in the crowd, I'm on Twitter, I'm on Facebook, I'm on my databases, I'm at work, this consumerization trend that's blending business in IT and the consumer apps, what is the most important thing that you would tell that person about what's really happening here? What is the value message that you would share with that person? Yeah, I would say that we are now in the middle of a massive shift where consumers actually begin to understand and control their own data. Now, that may be directly as a so-called personal data locker, there's various reasons I don't think it's necessarily gonna come to fruition in that form but also indirectly in that I can understand which brands to engage with and what kind of data I can share off my device about me. And the reason that that's so critical is that consumers are increasingly understanding that the data they contain and release about themselves has tangible value. You can go out and you can buy a database that has just a phone identifier and then gender and that sells for a big chunk of money and the data's absolutely rubbish but it gives you an indication that in aggregate information it gives you first a clear message that developers just don't know who the user is. They don't even know their gender and you can't ask because people are like, why are you asking me? So what you're seeing now is an artifact of that sort of users understanding the data that they emit and control and its value is that product managers are changing their mindset and they're saying, look, if we want to know a user's gender or if we want to know a user's location, we have to give them something that actually merits our maintenance of that valuable data point. And so for example, if you're a song app and you basically release music to your consumers either on demand or by broadcast, what you can do is you can say, well, I want to get location in because it helps me really understand who that consumer is but I'll tell the consumer, look, you don't have to do this, it's totally under your control but if you do, because we know all the cool bands that you like and your preferences, we'll tell you when they're in town and we'll give you special deals. So it's a question of incentives but I think more importantly, it's gonna be a question of new experiences. What data, when I release data as a consumer, what unparalleled novel experiences can I have that make my life easier? So there has to be a transactional exchange of some sort. So for the opportunity on the other side of the coin for the business is what then? To exchange value in sight? Indeed, yes. So the business, the publisher, produces a better experience, it's much more engaging and I think that value right there is absolutely fantastic. Like if I have an app which is much more anticipatory if even the most basic one of routing, for example, if this app can save me 10 minutes on my way into work then that's a very good value that's exchanged but that's a pretty facile example. We're at Tyler Bell, Vice President prior to the factual making tools and automation and technology, making data make sense. Thanks for joining us here on the CUBE Conversations. Thanks for watching.


This tree was burning significantly when this pulse, all these structures burned down. The CZU Lightning Complex fire started on August the 16th.  These are some of the oldest living things. Chris Sporer oversees the park and its staff. This is the place where people would bring their family to have that redwood experience where they're camping under the redwoods, they're learning about redwood ecology, they're experiencing the creeks. The park is splendidly equipped to serve the requirements of the visiting public and in the summer season is constantly thronged with pleasure seekers. To put this park in perspective, Big Basin Redwood State Park is home to one of the few remaining old growth redwood forests in the country. It was established as a state park in 1902, making this the oldest state park in California. But the history here goes back much farther. Some of these giant redwoods go back 1500 years. This was not the first wildfire these trees have been through. They've survived before and Chris is hopeful most will survive again. These trees to become 1500 years old have had to survive multiple fires. This is the trail right here. Even while the fire was still active, Chris led a tour of Big Basin so Governor Gavin Newsom could see the damage firsthand. The visit included an emotional press conference at the site of the Burn Down Park headquarters. My heart really does break, not only for my staff who have given everything to get through this, but for the people that I know how much this means to them. We've all felt the pits of despair. We're still feeling that, but on the other hand, there's so much support and you can't help but look at what the future is going to be, you know. Big Basin will remain closed for the next year. While several agencies, including Cal OES, work with state parks and the locals to rebuild and reopen. From our partners at Cal Fire, through all the support agencies including OES, people are reaching out. It can be daunting to see the forest through the burned trees, but take a closer look at Big Basin and you'll see the earliest signs of recovery. I was out yesterday and I saw some of the sprouting already happening on some of the trees. You see that and you're like, yeah, the forest is going to rebound. It's not going to look the same, but it's going to come back. For more with Chris Forer or Big Basin Redwood State Park, go to the podcast page on our website at OESNews.com.


would be interesting but it's not the scope of this particular work Yes I think he has a very related question which is to get the new sets in action can one use phages to make bacteria express some peptide that are already known as pathogens to immune cells? So I would just say that we're exploring some of those things now I don't have any of those I now understand what the person's going at that has been of interest to us to do something more than just killing in light of this synergy and we don't have any results to share yet but yes that is certainly of interest to us. Yes then there is a question from the YouTube chat so Giulio is asking would it be possible to apply ideas from control theory optimal control stochastic control to this system such as in the immune phage synergy model? Yes and we have a paper out this year in the bulletin of mathematical biology which does that I didn't include that because I had I was going to run out of time and I included a different study that came out in M systems but if that individual is interested you can look at Juanlin Lee at all we've collaborated with Uri Warty who's a control theorist here at Georgia Tech to do precisely that and I'll just make a comment that the challenge always in optimal control is that we have a sense of timing but we all can worry about misbefuscation of the model and so in that paper what we did is try to take the lessons from our optimal control results and use them to guide something that could be done in practice which is the delivery at the outset of what we think is the right dose in combination and we're also looking to try to convert that more into a feedback control case by taking data not just at the outset and projecting forward in time but also taking new measurements and responding appropriately so we're actively working on that as part of an NIH grant that funds the study and you can see our first work in that direction again in Lee at all with myself and Uri Warty and Joy Nung in the bulletin mathematical biology 2020 great if there is not any other question I think you can go to the next oh okay there is one question in the zoom chat by Sreerama is competition and or cooperation play any role in controllability I assume that person is referring to maybe competition or cooperation between bacteria maybe if so I certainly would think that this goes back to my point about using phage to treat multi component infections right multi species infections and then absolutely we need to be thinking about those kinds of interactions here with in a species if we have systems particularly cases like CF or that have a longer time to develop biofilms then if I think of that as a cooperation mechanism within bacteria of the same species then also yes we have to think about ways to address issues of emergent properties of populations that may then lead to recalcitrance or making it different more difficult to treat with phage if phage can't penetrate those biofilms or somehow overcome those collective defenses I only have a few minutes left so maybe I'll go to this fourth part is that okay so let me now go in one direction and again I I didn't add the optimal control work but wanted to get back to this example from Paul Turner and just elaborate a little bit more on it which is again to recall that there are pseudomonas originosa that use these antibiotic efflux pumps so in other words if an antibiotic is present they can be pumped out increasing survival but yet this phage on k-1 uses these efflux pumps in some sense as a surface receptor to inject genetic material into the host of course there could be a mutation which means that some pseudomonas may have lost this efflux pump or at least do not have the surface receptor so that now they can no longer pump out antibiotics but of course phage can't get in so in these two examples and there may be a continuum of expression here there may be at least on the archetype side antibiotic sensitive types which are also phage resistant and antibiotic resistant types which are phage sensitive and this is precisely the rationale behind the dual use of antibiotics and phage together and this is what it was reported in really a pioneering study by Benjamin Chan at all with Paul Turner as the senior author leading the study and describing it here there's a caveat though that concerned us that there may be issues about targeting the wrong strain so for example if there is a phage sensitive inoculum at the beginning then using phage may work whereas if the initial community is largely phage resistant right by antibiotic here in this particular case I haven't had the antibiotics then even all the things I said before about immunophage synergy may no longer work because if it's the bulk of which are resistant bacteria they may rise to such high densities that we don't get the benefits of them being driven down so this is just to point out that once we have sensitive and resistant cells then targeting really matters and we think this also matters with respect to the this antibiotic phage joint treatment so what we did is take our original model and instead of just having phage and immune cells and a sensitive and resistant type we also are going to have including antibiotic and I'll label these two bacteria with A and P meaning A is sensitive to antibiotics and P is sensitive to phage right so now we have a specific kind of mutation which just doesn't make it resistant but now becomes sensitive to the use of antibiotic and we wanted to explore what might happen in these kinds of models one of the things that we realized initially is that a combination therapy might restore efficacy to mistargeted phage therapy so if the inoculum was initially phage sensitive and one adds phage and that's going to work but if it's an antibiotic sensitive inoculum and you use phage then of course you're just going to get the emergence of these BA types however the combination therapy here in both cases there's a background antibiotic applied can lead to elimination in both so our first point here is that we think that in this class of systems clearly this phage antibiotic combination is going to be better irrespective of what the initial breakdown of that population is right whether it tends to be more on the sensitive to bacteria phage side or to antibiotics the other thing that I think is important is it the inclusion of immune responses we think again is an implicit and hidden part of what makes this effective so we went and explored the outcomes of combination therapy with immunity and you can see in both cases we get an elimination but in the absence of an immune response we end up getting again this persistence of phage and bacteria with some background lower levels of these antibiotic sensitive bacteria they're being reduced by the use of antibiotics but the phage and antibiotics even though they're working synergistically can't clear things because phage that intrinsic relation between phage and bacteria means that we end up getting generically coexistence rather than elimination so we tried to put this all together envisioning that we have variation of the inoculum type here all antibiotic sensitive all phage sensitive the level of antibiotic and here is the m ic concentration the minimum inhibitory concentration and what i'm showing you here are bacterial densities only with antibiotics which you end up getting is except in this very corner case essentially the elimination of the antibiotic sensitive type but the persistence of bacteria that are sensitive to phage when you add immune responses so if there's an active immune response there's some regime in which there's clearance but there's still a large regime in which there's not when antibiotics and phage are added together but not having the immune system you can see that in all these cases we don't expect elimination despite the synergy although densities are driven lower there still are persistent levels and when you use a lot of antibiotics then instead of having the antibiotic sensitive bacteria you get largely that phage sensitive bacteria when you don't use much antibiotics below the m ic you get antibiotic sensitive bacteria so in other words you're selecting for the type but not eliminating but notably when all of these players come together we expect a large regime including in the sub inhibitory concentration levels where there's robust elimination of the bacteria and only when you basically don't use much antibiotics at all you end up selecting for these antibiotic sensitive types right so the point here is that the combination of antibiotics and phage is good and it's particularly robust when there is an active immune system so the conclusions here i hope i've explained this tripartite model of phage immune bacteria dynamics it really is an ecosystem aware approach and thinking about phage as part of an ecosystem made also redirect our attention to how to think about the development of therapeutics that in vivo now shows that the curative success is not just dependent on the phage but also on the immune response that a fade-neutrophile alliance in terms of is maybe necessary for therapy and that was revealed with these immunomodulated mice studies and also synergy can help resolve the resistance problems because the immune response can eliminate both susceptible resistant pathogen and we're working now on generalized symmetry to include commensals i didn't talk about that today as well as antibiotics and also keeping in mind that once we are aware of these kinds of feedbacks it may be that trying to get candidate phage we should be thinking about ways in which phage can make it easier for the immune response to work rather than thinking of the efficacy of killing on its own and with that again just want to thank collaborators here pointing out i've talked about this m systems paper here at the end but also there is that other bolden math bio paper which focus on control theory and additional thanks to our experimental collaborators at pastore as well as to the Turner group at Yale for their collaboration on this theory analysis of their fascinating antibiotic and phage evolutionary tradeoff mechanism and with that i'll be happy to take a few last questions great thanks a lot Joshua for this very nice lecture so we have time for questions i don't see any question in the chat either on zoom or youtube if you have any please either write it or raise your hand yes there is a question by Martina please um hi Joshua is always nice to hear you to hear lectures i it's a bit of a bit of a leap i think because there is all this idea that let's say the right quantity of phages might promote bacterial diversity and in this sense we might can so in a in a probably far away future do you think we could use phages to as probiotics phages as probiotics yeah okay and instead of bacteria is probiotic but using say phage in some sense i think i guess it depends on how we're going to think about the term probiotics right meaning do you want them to be residents because maybe if we add phage that are hanging out eliminating the wrong bacteria that could be good but maybe you mean something else like you'd actually like them to become residents which in fact uh like a for the gut microbiome in the sense that you need a diverse community and what so so there's an interesting paper a few years ago and it's a shame that i i'm dropping the name of the first author but the last author is mark young who was published in pns uh on a healthy gut viral which looked at the relationship between in some sense the diversity of phage and outcomes with respect to health finding that they were related and i think there are many questions left to be answered about mechanism is that essentially a reflection of healthy gut microbiome where we see phage of those microbes or is it actually the inclusion of phage that is leading directly to health benefits i don't think we know the answer to that but i think the fact that you're raising it in some talks i've made a schematic i wish i had it here of a yogurt with extra phage because you know that when people will go to the store and pay lots more money for activa and other back let's say called a bacteria infused probiotic yogurt right but right now the market for if you told people i'm put extra viruses in your yogurt i don't think i'd have a good market share maybe that will change with time i don't have that slide here today where i've created my fake campaign but you're raising an important point and maybe with time that's in fact what we'll be doing but i think we still have a ways to go okay thank you great any other question hi i have a question yes please sorry i'm gonna start the video hi thank you very much for the nice lecture my question was about always diversity i think in part you replied before like of course you were talking about like an acute face of the illness so not a big specific diversity of the of the microorganism to be killed by phages or by the immune system but what about like the intraspecific diversity that might be caused by the like the evolution of the microorganism of its own uh different and differential like um uh sorry defense against phages like and that the model then yeah so in some of my earliest work in this space and thank you for the question one of the first problems i worked on also with simon levin is co-evolutionary dynamics arising from precisely the mechanism that you describe in which phage in some sense catalyzed diversity which then leads to catalysts of more phage and so on and we've worked in other cases showing that you can have co-evolutionary dynamics and diversification stimulated by these interactions in the context of therapy that's i mean that's fascinating from a fundamental sense but they may not be the right outcome you want from a therapeutic sense as you can see here already even if there was a pre-existing phage resistant mutant right in the event that there was this immune response that got eliminated so in some sense selection operated because of your addition of phage and led to a proliferation but it could be controlled however in a broader sense there's also something that we've been working on and i'll see if i can while speaking find it for you but there's a new paper on bio archive by justin myers group talking about co-evolutionary phage training and i will it's something that we've been thinking about from a theoretical perspective i don't know if i can write to everyone in the chat uh at once maybe i'll send it to jacobo he can write to everyone in the chat uh with it but basically the idea is that it may be possible to look forward in time finding what kinds of phage might arise because of the emergence of new mutants but then go back and apply those at the beginning to stop the emergence in a therapeutic sense so i think we always have to keep in mind i mean these co-evolutionary systems are so cool and fascinating we want to understand them but in a therapeutic sense they may not be our friend per se so we have to think about maybe ways to leverage and that's one that we've been very interested in exploring great um yes this is a question that is there is a question in the chat that is related to a question that was already asked and agar is wondering whether we can engineer phages so that it will facilitate a better recognition of the bacteria by the new system so the answer to that is we've been working on that for quite some time and in principle uh probably yes in practice which we're working on maybe harder and maybe others are also working in this space but that's clearly one that as you can see implied by my the work here where there may be reasons to think about phage not just as agents of mortality but also as synergistic elements potentially even adjuvants and in that case it does reshape the way that we might want to engineer phage as was pointed out in order to have better ecosystem effects not just killing or lytic activity in the absence of that ecosystem these are all and i would just say since we're almost at time last time just to thank you for everyone in the audience for these questions obviously if people want to follow up i'd be delighted uh and also to point out that this field i've tried to introduce topics in which the story isn't totally written yet that story needs to be written by all of us so i hope that maybe some of you might be interested in what's happening here and work in your own universities um to try to advance these this sort of ecosystem and the eco-evolutionary approaches to understanding viruses and their microbial host so thank you thank you very much Joshua for these very great lectures and it was really great thank you very much for the involvement in this and well thanks again to everyone for attending the school we will meet each other again tomorrow at the usual time i guess uh yes no a little bit later than usually 2 3rd italian time with the first lecture by andreina so thank you again josh and thank you everybody for being here thanks thank you Joshua thanks all thanks again take care thank you sir


Hi, I'm Terence Sanford and I'm the captain of the Noble Park Fibregate. Communities change over time and here in Noble Park over 60% of our residents were born overseas. We felt it was our duty to become more in touch with the different cultures and nationalities to best serve their needs. The night began with a meet and greet, which included the Chief Officer, Ewan Ferguson. We stood in a circle and each member gave a little bit of an insight onto where they've come from and why they are part of the brigade. We all sat down and had a nice barbecue and salad before heading off to a local reserve to begin our training session. At Noble Park we have 47 members, 20 operational and 27 currently undergoing minimum skills training. These members are showing great enthusiasm and not only are we teaching them fire skills but they're also teaching us the difference in cultures and how that we can better interact with them and serve their needs. The Chief gave an insight of his experience using a Rayco but also how to use it correctly when working within a team. After actively listening to the Chief, with enthusiasm the recruits picked up a Rayco and demonstrated correct techniques. It was time to rotate the crews and give the other members an opportunity to also have a go. The Chief spoke about teamwork and the importance, not only on the fire ground but also in day-to-day life. The brigade is keen and enthusiastic about attending local festivals and community events. This is a very important aspect of what we do at Noble Park. This gives us an opportunity to interact and engage with the community and let them know what we do and who we are. Our brigade is very proud in its endeavour for a positive relationship between CFA and our local community residents and stakeholders. We are developing strong partnerships with multicultural groups and service providers. The brigade has newly developed the position of multicultural coordinator. This is to aid with multicultural community engagement, also to facilitate the integration of individual members who may come from backgrounds with a volunteer brigade concept that does not exist or is structured differently to Australia. Our new members can speak over 20 different languages. They can act as interpreters not only in emergency situations but also at community engagement events. Thanks for watching our presentation. I hope you got a bit of an insight into what we are doing here at Noble Park.