start so welcome to travel sponsorship to sponsoring both and I can just let Scoutens do the next okay so for the late-comers it would also for you be nice if you could sit here so we can talk together and not hide behind the others it's I was originally the one proposing this buff then Tiago, Gatemo, Jacomo and David joined me and the list is ordered by the alphabetic order of the first names if you wonder and we tried to prepare this buff two days ago I think it was and we had already had a discussion of two hours so that will be a bit constrained so if then you decided oh I'm gonna but a bit to manage David is going to take some notes on Gobi you can all if you want connect to the Gobi.debian.org server there's under buffs it has a document travel sponsorship and I'm going to do a short introduction but then I think it should be open discussion we define some topics we would like to discuss and yeah so the goals for this section we thought that we have to narrow this a bit down because it's that much that's a broad topic and our goals are to have better defined criteria for the next Debcon so we can try out this process and for next Debcon and possibly better or order or different questions matching these criteria and the third goal is it's nice to talk here we had these talks twice I think in the past and something's changed too also but something's going out okay so at the end of this session we would also like to form a team that carries on with this we have some non girls this session should not be about the actual money handling not about what was discussed on the mailing list already there it's not set what was discussed there but I think that's somewhat a different topic so we would like to keep this out of this session and also accommodation and food sponsoring if possible should be kept out so how it works today for those that don't know or have never been involved with it it's this year's process in it works similar in previous year but not exactly the same the applicants they have to fill in a form in Penta they give us their total travel costs the next question is labeled amount I'm unable to find myself none yet that's the wording we have now in Penta now it's just about what we have now to see and there's enough time for discussion afterwards and there's a free one free text rational that's labeled what are you doing for Debian why do you request sponsorship so we have these three things then the team rates all the applicants on two dimensions one is the contributor level the other is called requested amount for the writers and it's on a scale from minus minus that these are two minus that were combined by latte to plus plus so it and it's there's a zero level in the middle so it's five on five levels and we then combine these two ratings into one and with a weight for the contributor level with of 0.6 and for the requested amount ranking on of 0.4 then they were sorted according this score and granted sponsoring just for going down the list until we reach 80 the batch at 80,000 K dollars 80,000 dollars of amounts they were unable to find of this question yeah some statistics as I said 80,000 dollars was the budget this year last year it was 33,000 euros we had this year 42 applicants we don't know for last year and we granted 18 requests of those 18 for one it was too late so he cancelled and in 2011 53 requests were granted we don't know if there were more applicants than these 53 at all or if everyone got it and the team thought that we would have liked to grant nine additional requests if there would have been more money and the rest of the applicants were below zero on our score so we thought it we don't would not like to grant these requests even if we had more money this year you also only granted sponsorship if you could found the full amount right there was no partial sponsorship yeah there was some discussion among the team if we should do partial sponsorship of the requested amount and the majority of the team decided to not do that on the basis that if it reads amount I'm unable to find 80% of it is worthless because then they don't come so the first discussion topic is and I think that will probably be the the one that takes most of the time also is that what should be the criteria the basis for granting these travel sponsorship request now we have these two dimensions its need and its contribution level yes yeah I have a question from my RC it was the money for the one cancellation subsequently allocated to anyone else and now and it was not because at some time the whole Dampcon team decided to not do this because it's too late I think the confirmation of a sponsorship was sent like three weeks before the Dampcon so yeah because money was available too late Tiago so then just to give you an overview what we plan the next topic would be about the information we then need what should we ask a few ideas then one about should these requests and what was granted to be made public and how to proceed just a short summary of the criteria I think that yeah as I said they're widely worrying of opinions and I think the worrying opinions are mostly grouped around this question should it be and if yes how based on the actual need of the person requesting it or not it ranges from oh if you should only request it if I can't buy food anymore if I don't get it too if my employer does not pay it then you should just request it and if possible also get it the money and another question we could ask do we need agreed upon criteria at all or there are also opinions that say and if their opinion about this are distributed or varying inside the team then we get in the end somewhat the consensus of whatever criteria might be applied yeah maybe just a quick comment or not okay do you think we should stay on the slide no just a quick comment on that last point since it was originally a concern for me too but then I realized what we had essentially was eight or ten independent ratings of each person and as long as with each writer rated all people the same way then it's in some sense okay I have a I mean to actually answer the question about should these requests be public and it's generally not considered a good idea to publish for example the kind of thing that you would have to put on application like your income and so forth and in a lot of cultures there's stigma associated to you know needing financial help and in particular giving detailed information necessary and so at the very least I don't think that we could sensibly publish the amount of sponsorship that people have received maybe it will be worth just identifying who was thought sufficiently valuable contributor that they received some kind of sponsorship but the financial end of it is thanks but could you please stay on topic now and I think we will try to have the other topics later so the other topic of the criteria I think it will be I think it's more fair for everybody if there is a clearly defined criteria because also there is people that feel like maybe I'm cheating the project if I'm asking for sponsorship I feel guilty because I don't do enough etc. so I think it's it will be fair more fair if it's a clearly defined criteria yeah I kind of agreeing with that I don't think it's I don't I agree that we've got people making a judgment but there is a problem at the moment if people apply unevenly I mean myself I've never applied for a devil travel sponsorship because I think there are other people in WN who need money far more for that however if we decide that actually it's fine for everyone to apply then I don't really object fundamentally I just start applying to I think it's a bit silly at the moment if some people apply and get it just because they think it's okay to apply and other people are not I don't think I'm at all unique in that in not applying at the moment because we kind of assume it's the people who really need it in a more fundamental way speaking as the guy who's trying to take minutes I also would like it if we follow the topic so can we talk about criteria now is that your plan that's my plan but I think the last not that it's an important these are everything is important that people but I think one part of talking about criteria is also talking about if we really need criteria and I think that was your topic okay sorry if I understood it correctly just before we move on from that and forget about it entirely the where the no criteria thing comes from it was possibly an idea of mine last year which is that the it's not that you have no criteria you have a sort of smorgasbord of criteria that you suggest to the team and they can apply them as they feel fit to produce an ordered list and that if you then get people rising to the top of those ordered lists they will get funded for all the reasons that all the people in the team think are important and I think the problem with having a fixed criteria is that quite often you have people in the team applying criteria they don't really agree with and then sort of subtly gaming the way they give their points try and make the criteria they really agree with pop out of the system at the end and that's much worse yeah I think we were mixing up to kind of ideas about criteria here one is who we think should be applying at all and who we kind of advertise should be applying and one is how we actually make the judgment I'm not but in my point of a moment ago I wasn't trying to say how we should actually make the judgment in the end precisely but I think we should at the absolute minimum even if we didn't have a formulated metric for comparing people we should at the minimum have advertised who we are expecting to apply are we expecting everyone coming to be that to validly apply and get money if we happen to have it lying around or are this meant to be a bursary scheme for particularly people who particularly needed I think Christian wanted to say yeah yeah I'm not exactly sure I might be off topic because I had hard times following both Moray and Phil so sorry for that please slow down when you speak before my suggestion talking about criteria my first idea was sharing the way we writers actually rated up to now but I don't know if that's a good idea now in the session yeah we can do that that could be done yeah briefly preferably but that could give ideas to others my personal idea is we shouldn't have all the same criteria to kind of balance them together in some way should they it's hard for me to say they should be public or not because I'm having even hard time sometimes to be sure about my own criteria once you have done this you understand what I'm talking about I guess so that was a proposal I don't know maybe it's too long time for this session so my own criteria I was trying to avoid to make a kind of put quotes where needed a preference to the always the same people in some way I witnessed that we tend to do that with travel some sponsors sponsorship over time it's like three successive that can't find doing that and I tried to imagine the contribution of people and more of a picture of what they could bring to Debian so it was kind of the same idea joyous brought last last day come fighting for Debian newbies or things like that and I'm happy that this year we I think we have been able to do that in some way to bring new people in Debian and not sponsor quotes always the same people right I'm sure that those people some need that some are very very valuable contributors I ended up plus plus all the time those people I know are wide and respected and important or whatever Debian contributors so these were mostly my criteria and my criteria for rating travel was more trying to guess the price and whether it's reasonable or not for the person to request of that price of course somewhere more expensive than others and trying to forget that it's not really precise but this is the way I did actually I can continue I was going to you can too hello yeah I think there's more than one criteria there's more than one group of people who deserve sponsorship there different reasons and different level of the amount people cannot pay so I think this should be taken into consideration and also what Christian said this new initiative is also a good thing we should keep having like we had it last year and the year before and not this year which I'm very sad about yeah but there was the idea Christian proposed that every the dose that rated this year should explain a bit how they did it so we're drifting away with the topic I know it's going a bit back in time but well Jonathan Wilcher said that well just joining into this he would be very unhappy to have specific numbers specific amounts published he wouldn't mind a Jonathan was sponsored partially sponsored but not the specific numbers I he says I suspect the number of applications would drop to and therefore valuable contributors might not get a chance to be there I mean well we went already over it but to that topic I think it's completely clear that the granted sponsorship should be public that's when we are stabbing a need to document how we spend our money so we cannot say oh yeah we we hid it there under the carpet but even to a transparency I try to ensure that we have time for this topic but I really like to keep it on topic now things yeah so probably just one other opinion about how you did the writing no no I think for contribution level I just did a quick Google or Debbie and orc search and for the requested amount it was a bit fussy I don't know if I consistently myself applied the same criteria because I was constantly asking myself oh I didn't know really how to wait this but you definitely got a higher ranking by me if you paid a substantial amount yourself and and if I thought that the price or your travel cost seemed unreasonable I did a quick search on flight search engines to verify if it's or somewhat okay have we had everybody who did it this year now so I guess I was biased towards people doing sort of core infrastructure stuff in addition to packaging or so I I mean I do packaging but I wouldn't have ranked myself that highly for travel sponsorship I was biased toward people who are really sort of doing extra stuff and above and beyond whether that's reasonable or not that's what I did and for travel I found the two I was equally confused as go dance and but I really just looked at the requested amount compared to the geographic location so I didn't penalize people for being from far away but again I had some similar idea about I guess there was an underlying thought that well if we can pay for five people all else being equal if we can pay for five people rather than one we should probably pay for five the risk of I think it's within the agenda point so don't be me up there's not the we're talking here about criteria for comparing individuals which is obviously what you need to think about in the first instance but the point that's being raised here is also valid of how if you've got this comparison imagine you assign some perfectly accurate score to each individual there is still a question about how you actually decide who to give the money to in the end in most in I think every year all that's happened recently has been effectively has been people counted down from the highest ranking person to the lowest ranking which obviously avoids having to think about something more complicated but it's not necessarily the best way to spend WN money to do that if you imagine I mean you can easily imagine things like person one costs the same as person two to eleven together or as in the next person in the list and person M costs the same as the next ten would be and maybe it would be more useful to Debbie in overall to bring those ten people instead of one person from very far away obviously that gets into a lot of different issues you need to start thinking about a fairness over years and so on but I still think I do think it's wrong just to say well let's just carry on blindly and only count down the less than ignore this issue and there is also the bias that we enforce over the years is that if we only if we rank by contributed level then we risk that we only reduce the set over time and one good advantage of that con was the new best found last year for example is just bring new people to the thing but get benefit from that comes just because you are not yet a core member and I mean on one hand it's good to have core members here because it's also good work done etc but it's we have also to put some ways into having new contributors in I think right so if I can sort of propose a slightly more formal way of looking at this it seems that we have essentially kind of roughly three criteria for granting sponsorship the first is that the person is a worthwhile person to have a debcom for some reason or other and that's a thing that a lot of people have been talking about for example with newbies or core people or whatever and that's a thing that we need to talk about in more detail the second criterion is really nobody seems to be saying that everybody should be applying sponsorship there's obviously some criteria in a financial need yeah right I I would like to propose that there that the criterion should be that essentially the person would not be able to attend debcom otherwise because the point of the exercise is to enable people to come to debcom not to subsidize people in general and the third criterion is something a bit more willy but it's that the travel cost the actual claim is reasonable that the travel cost they're claiming are roughly sensible and and they're kind of fairly straightforward criteria I would like just to comment on one of your points I would not agree so much on this the people that can come otherwise should not apply I mean some people are able to get a lend money and get and make well commitment to get the money they don't have access to which is which can be hard for people to do who would come but a part of the sponsorship is making life less miserable for them so yeah I mean I think we I was just adding to the to the Gobi document that we we should add a quantitative field asking what would be your action if it was denied to you so I will go anyway too I would definitely not go yeah so just to let you understand what can happen I I will talk about my specific case so I asked for travel sponsorship I've been denied and as you can see I'm still here I what happened is that I asked my mother okay and it's going to affect me for the rest of the year it's not because I'm here then you should have it was the right thing not to sponsor me I believe like I care about DBN and it affects my life but I still want to come I don't know I think yours you and Gunnar are still not disagreeing but with the idea that there should be some kind of need criteria and though okay it's indeed I did want to suggest that they should be a particular specific criteria the question is as a kind of leave as I'm just wanting the a discussion that we had a past that called about this the need the need and the that wrote this top to this is that these are the same phrases that yeah was some proposal how to just agree with this approach it's sure I bet I guess is I mean I suppose can we ask is there anyone here who really thinks we should ignore needs and it should for example I mean to have a hypothetical example should it be should we be expecting that next time Mark Schollerworth comes to DevCon he would be perfectly validly applying for travel sponsorship if he's doing something at the time it's a big if not yeah so I think I the only reason I would propose and and have occasionally in private discussions propose not having a need criteria is that it seems very difficult to have a need criteria that we agree on and and to have one which is applied consistently and I think that a need criteria that is kind of fuzzy and badly applied is maybe worse than not having one I agree that the situation as it is now in my opinion is worse than just saying everyone that has to pay it out of their own pocket should apply just wanted because that's I think that was also year in your introduction that you said today some apply and some don't and I think that's not a fair situation so as I said before and we agreed on the same thing is it's quite important to have this criteria for the people to decide they should apply or not to make more fair the whole process and the other thing I was going to propose since there seems to be this recording theme of people who and are really big contributors and really well-known people and this is people who are newbies maybe a good way to solve this is to have two separate budgets so we had this money for newbies and we played with a different criteria that for the people who are big contributors I think we all agree on that I'm not so sure if I can have an opposite II I'm not so sure but because it's quite easy to get involved into the avian without being present so I it could also be an option to say people should be involved first because it's possible to do that without coming to any conference and if they show some interest then they basically are getting sponsored something about criteria that it's a typical problem in movie rating and that kind of things so we just need a lot of people ranking and the criteria then becomes unnecessary I mean if we are all of the confidence just ranking three or four people is the criteria becomes fair well I think everyone should write all the people to have consistent ranking well there's two things about that first movies you rank about some criteria still I mean is the actress beautiful or something and it's criterias that we know in advance the other thing I just wanted to just throw into the discussion I'm not yet convinced myself that it's a good idea but one obvious or objective measure that we could ask is what is your annual income and what is the part you're asking I mean that might be considered that it's just a measure that is somehow consistent across the countries of the effort I mean is it a month's worth of your income is it half a month is it a day or the three months and I mean that's that's a measure of the effort you have to make to come and I don't know I'm not sure it's yet good a good idea but I'm just throwing it into the discussion I think I think a bit to what Luciano said I think this this would not we cannot give everybody ranking rights but having a big enough committee as we have had ensures that the criteria is at least more a more distributed so I think having 10 people rank it should be enough in my opinion even if they have some diversity some divergence in their opinions and well I don't think that that the deer is so crazy I think that should come into account and not only for travel sponsorship but also for lodging and food I think it does make a difference and even more when when we are tight on money as we were this year I think it's a fair thing to ask right so I'm very strongly opposed to this notion that the that we'll just have you know 10 people and they'll each bring their own ideas to the table and somehow the result will be fair that it that is not a way to get fair outcomes we if you let people make decisions in an unstructured way and you don't give them formal guidance what you get is people's unexamined prejudices and even when you've got good people who are trying their best those kind of prejudices you know the structure doesn't provide you with the assistance to overcome your prejudices this is why we should have a system that requires the people making the decision to go through a set of criteria and think about them and make a decision in a structured way that's not to say that everybody has to agree it means that everybody has to think about the same questions and think about things in the same way okay I'm sorry I think we're running out of time for this topic if we want to discuss others and I think we can continue this in the bathroom or wherever if there's interest just to finish this I would like you to ask a few questions raise your hands those that think we should or only minimal criteria should be need and just everyone should be able to apply but just just on this neat thing who thinks that mostly everyone should apply and it should not be based on needs that much so we want to count and again it just made me think the thing is that if we have everyone apply then we have a larger set so it makes it harder for the rating team but it also makes it evenly distributed across the people that will come in the end but in that case we need more I think if people apply and there's some expecting that they at least could be granted if there's money so put up your hand if you think the travel sponsorship should be granted regardless of financial need in you have very valid points but you're also talking over the buff moderator which I find personally distressing okay yeah but can you raise your hand again so David cannot count okay it was a bad idea I think it's just I think my idea was that this buff should not be only about those talking a lot but also to gather a bit more quantitative opinions how people actually think I think there's more than one kind of need so the question okay my idea was to just have are you more leaning towards we should just grant those that actually very much needed and couldn't come otherwise or should we grant also those that have to pay it out of their own pocket it probably affects them somehow but they would come otherwise too I think so that's your opinion other might have other opinions so that's what that's what I want to find out I think maybe tricky to to to phrase this into a yes no question like just now because it seems that there is many shades in this there's many vectors to consider so probably this is kind of voting is a bit diverting from the real goal of trying is not that if one person more leans on the one side we just do it that way it's just to gather some view of the general what people think are you going to ask about these four criteria there or just about I was thinking just about the two but because I think these two questions are okay we can also say please because there's way than more there's not only give it to all or only give it to those in need because there's a different needs okay I have another idea it was just a spontaneous city of these four levels of needs where do you think we should draw the line I personally think it would make maybe sense to have different budgets to have one budget for newbies one budget for this criteria need and that for that criteria need that would split the money further but I think I don't know I'm not involved in travel sponsorship in any way but just something I was thinking about why I'm listening to what you're saying is at the university there you know they have scholarships and and there are two types of scholarships one of them is a married based scholarship where it doesn't matter you know if you if you're poor or not it just don't based on what you've done so in terms of Debbie and it will be your contribution and and the other one would be a needs based so if you're poor then you're more likely to get it so and and the third thing I heard here is is about the newbies so what I'm thinking is maybe there should be different slots you know so we have so much money we can sponsor X people and then out of those X people two of them are gonna be newbies three of them are gonna be needs based and three of them are gonna be that might be another idea one I mean I in general agree with this but one inconvenience we would have is that well we're heading towards a system where the number of cues approaches the number of applicants and and then people would a well the let's say the fight or the discussion would be to which queue are you sign are you to be assigned so yeah there are some criteria like newbies that's clearly easy to get but say if I want to get sponsorship should I wait in the line for the disadvantaged countries or for the people contributing to the end or to both what yeah and I would like to go to the public or not public topic because we just have five minutes left to on that I just say I think although I realize there are some privacy concerns about exactly what you make public I think it is a fair thing that if you are applying for money from Debbie and it should you should have to accept as part of that that at least at the very least your name is going to be made public because that also just avoid it takes away one level of problem by meaning that however whatever a stupid criteria we end up coming up with even if they're really bad at least then other people in the project can look at it and just make some opinion about whether they want to interfere or not if it's just a black box and they have no idea it's not really a good way to spend Debbie and money on my view I think other it's very important that it's clear to everyone if they apply what's gonna be public right what I think we can't do it for this year's but what I would like to suggest is that the application in turn the part of the application which relate to why should I be sponsored in terms of what am I going to do for Debbie and what is my justification for having Debbie's money that part that's not the financial side should be made public and the I think it would be fine to ask people for their income but that should be kept private and the result should be these are the applications that we accepted and you just you just get told this person was sponsored or not in the other way around could be useful for the applicant if the people says the output public the output of the comments the comment box I send an email like it two weeks ago asking for those boxes I mean I just anonymous ways to know what what sorry yeah I think it's on one hand it's probably tricky to completely anonymous this and it's also at least with the current system quite some work if you want to do this for everyone I think opening the I mean yes there should be something set back to the person as to why they were accepted or rejected but I think it would open to lots of disagreements if in your comments as somebody said something you don't 100% agree on then there will be flames so that can be problematic probably a good idea is that the team as a whole makes some statement for each person instead of trying to anonymize so I mean I'm not saying I'm not saying getting a consensus like yeah I do these five people and this is more or less actually there's not much to summarize at least currently because it's mostly a rating on this scale and very few comments yeah well James has a sense on on IRC that yeah a publishing names only he says is far enough publishing deviant sponsor this amount to those attendees X amount to Y attendees numeric is fine because the deviant needs to be transparent my name ask for this amount isn't other combinations become a gray area so yeah I mean finding which combination to publish is somewhat disagree I think it would be fine to say and this person requested that amount why not I think it's a source of flames also because then people have access to the result without having access to the discussion and I mean we have a discussion in smokey rooms for a reason because it's it involves a lot amount of private things and the result is also still be made from the private discussions we had so it it's actually quite typical that the results are known but the discussion is not in in many other contexts that I participate in so in scholarship deliberations in research grant deliberations the results are almost always public and so I of course can respect whatever consensus people within Debbie and want but personally I agree with guidance that I would also be willing to have the amount of sponsorship published if it was me and and then and I think that that information of amount although I agree it can be problematic I think it is somehow an important aspect of transparency too so maybe the privacy concerns are too much and we can't do it but I think it would be a good thing if we could yeah I'm not I wouldn't I wouldn't fight strongly on this point but I do I personally I do agree and I think if people if people the main people wouldn't people wouldn't in my personal view the main major reason people wouldn't want to publish is just they kind of feel embarrassed about having had this money but if that's the case then I just they should be applying in the first instance so okay I'm time so I'm sorry I propose the following those I would like to form a team to know of people who are willing to define the process for next year and also executed so I like very much this executing I like Phil's idea that it's not just the same people who make the decisions though what we meant to finish don't we but yeah I like Phil Hans's idea that it's not just the same core of people who actually do the voting so when you say do the execution I yeah I don't necessarily think that has to be the team that does the voting but I think they have also to follow up to actually implement the process they invented so that we don't just end up with a proposed process and then in next April something completely else is going to implement it yeah and if you're interested we could after the discussion meet in front and decide if we want another meeting to have ad debcon or by IRC or whatever how to proceed so but I thank you for the discussion can I finish on the very nice words I'd like to say that it would be really great if next year we had money for everyone that's it I agree thank you


My name is Marcel Spappens and I'm the manager R&D at Infra-Bridge. Today, I want to talk to you about our product panels, but before we do that, I want to show you our Superoffice products, all our Superoffice products. They're made with a lot of love and we are very proud of them, and that's why I want to show them. They're all available in the Superoffice App Store, by the way. Most customers know us from Synchronizer, that synchronizes the Superoffice calendars to your Microsoft or Google calendar. And of course, Databridge. That's the best and user-friendly step for importing and exporting to and from Superoffice. But there are more, as you can see, and in a few seconds, I'll introduce panels to you. Oh, and by the way, you can try all of them out for 30 days free of charge. Let's look at panels. Panels allows users to easily access and organize activities in Superoffice in separate archives, separate tabs. It allows the creation of custom archives, which can be pre-filtered to show only the relevant information. Additionally, it offers some special archives, like a birthday archive to view upcoming birthdays of important contacts, or a sales history archive to view the full history of a sale. And there's also a Google Maps archive to view customers' locations on a map. The pre-filtered archives can be filtered on activity to do and document type. Searching within the archives is, of course, available. The sales history archive is an important archive, sorry, if you want insights into lead time of all sale. Document versioning and PDF creation is realized with one mouse click only. Let's look at panels for Superoffice live. In this product demo, you will see panels for Superoffice in action. It will help you bringing structure in your Superoffice activities by creating separate archives for activities, to-dos, documents, and emails. These new archives can be pre-filtered and are searchable. In this scenario, a customer is working with many different activities, certain activities and documents are essential and should stand out. With a panel solution, three new archives are made available directly under the company card. In the visits archive, only the activities from the type visit in and visit out are displayed. All the new archives created with the panels solution share the same functionality as the regular archives from Superoffice. You can use the right mouse click function for extra options or double-click the activity to open. Searching in the new archives can be achieved by clicking the filter button, specify the search type, and enter the search criteria. In the email archive, only email activities are listed, making it easy to find a particular email. In the document archive, all different document types are listed. Depending on the settings, the user has access to the configure button to change the preset filter which activity or document type should be listed, or change the current filter. Within a document archive, you get two essential features. Copy an existing document to a new version or create a PDF from an existing document. All this can be achieved by one mouse click. Creating new archives is not limited to the company card. These new archives can also be created on the project card. For example, list all instructions activities for a project in a separate archive. The functionality is also available for the sales card in Superoffice. But you also get access to a special archive, showing you the complete history of all changes made to a sale. This way, you can track any changes made to a sale during the sale process. You don't want to make the mistake of calling your customer and not knowing they are celebrating their birthday. With a panel solution, you can enable an upcoming birthday archive to show the birthdays of your most important contacts. Showing the customer's location on Google Maps directly in Superoffice is also possible by enabling the Google Maps archive within the panel solution. Alright, that's going to do it for this video. If you enjoyed the video, leave a like. If you don't want to miss other videos from us, don't forget to click the subscribe button. In the description below, you will find additional information, including how to start your free trial. Thanks for watching. Until next time. Well, the panel's takeaways. Organize activities and documents, for example, have an archive showing only contract documents. There's versioning and PDF creation made easy inside panels. And it saves time in getting into the right information more quickly. Thank you for watching. I hope it was interesting.


Scoping studies have become increasingly popular in health research due to their ability to quickly identify and summarize existing literature on a given topic. However, there is still room for improvement when it comes to the methodology used to conduct these studies. This paper proposes several modifications to the original AXI and O'Malley framework, including clarification of the purpose and research question, balanced selection of studies, use of an iterative team approach, and incorporation of consultation with stakeholders. Additionally, the paper suggests additional considerations for scoping study methodology, such as the need for a numerical summary and qualitative thematic analysis, reporting results, and consideration of the implications of study findings to policy, practice, or research. This article was authored by O'Brien Kelley Kaye, Cahoon Heather, and Lev Actaniel.


I'm happy to have you here. It is an honor for me to be speaking at the San Francisco Public Library. Insomnia has been an issue in my life for many years, and it was a big problem. And I think, okay, anyway, and I retired, I retired a little earlier than I was actually planning to retire because I couldn't get enough sleep, and it was just too hard. I mean, I think that really impacted my ability to do my job, and I decided that, you know, if I wasn't working, I wouldn't have to worry about what time in the morning I got up, so that was the main reason that I retired earlier. And if I had known about medicinal marijuana, if I'd been able to use it or had started using it earlier, I think that I could have continued working for longer. So after that technology meltdown I swore I would never do this again. But if I'm a sucker for anything, it is authentic, non-commercial stories that help shed the light and guide the way for others. So it's hard to stay holed up in my office when patients themselves find this medicine so compelling of a positive experience. So I'm back, fingers crossed for technology to talk about cannabis and aging. So in 2017, a groundbreaking report came out commissioned by the National Academy of Sciences called the Health Effects of Cannabis and Cannabinoids. This is the first report ever to review the current scientific literature on the positive health effects of cannabis. It was commissioned by the National Academy of Sciences and included an expert panel too from the Bay Area, Dr. Donald Abrams, Chief of Oncology at San Francisco General, and Dr. Stephen Sidney of Kaiser Permanente. The expert panel concluded that there is indeed scientific evidence of the medical effectiveness of cannabis for a number of medical conditions. So no physician who is grounded in the medical literature can deny the value and benefit of cannabis for a variety of conditions. So for those of you in the audience who are met at the mere mention of marijuana by your healthcare professional with disdain, skepticism or ignorance, remember this report, the National Academy's Health Effects of Cannabis and Cannabinoids, and asked them, have you by chance had a chance to read this report? It's available free online. Another conclusion of the report is that there is very limited research on the usage and health benefits in the over 50 set, causing what's called a research gap. This is because cannabis research is limited by the policy that preceded it. A policy that strictly limited research to design only to show the harmful consequences and risks entailed in cannabis use, particularly in those thought to be abusing it, which were us, the baby boomers, adolescents, teenagers and young adults then, not the middle aged and beyonders that we are now who wonder if we should be using it. So physicians only informed by the scientific literature will not be guided by a wealth of positive experiences among those 50 years or older who have been using it medicinally for years. For over 18 years, I have had the pleasure of working with these patients as a clinical cannabinoid specialist, a fancy term for an evolved medical marijuana doc. And I've had over 13,000 patient visits from patients mostly not exclusively over the age of 50, including many octogenarians and a few centenarians. I had to practice that word. Folks over the age of 100. And I'm happy to be here tonight to share with you the experiences of the over 50 set and the scientific literature that has informed my knowledge of cannabis and aging. The questions most of my patients ask over 50 are, can cannabis help me with insomnia, anxiety or pain? And then is it true the cannabis legends as a cure, cancer, Alzheimer or slow aging? So I'm going to be answering those questions tonight bookended by the basics of medicinal cannabis and what I hope will be 10 takeaways from tonight. But before I go through the contents of the talk, I want to answer two questions that probably people here are too polite to ask. Who am I? And what am I peddling? I am a California trained medical physician trained in conventional medicine who left California after completing their residency in 1990 and returned in 2000. That was four years after passage of Proposition 215, California's groundbreaking legislation allowing for the legal medicinal use of cannabis to those with medical marijuana recommendations. And I began meeting patients like this. And I began to have horrible dreams with it. It was just awful. And I didn't even realize that that's what it was until I spoke with someone and they had taken the same sleeping aid and told me that that was a common side effect. So I went to the neurologist I was seeing and asked him and he said, well, yeah, but I have something else that might really help you. So I tried a common, it was again a common sleep aid, which was a sleeping pill. Was it a prescription pill? Yes, both of those were prescription, that one and the one I'm speaking about now. And that one, I had a hard time when I'd get up in the morning and tell a woman, don't be. And I didn't like the idea of perhaps becoming very dependent on it. So because of Proposition 215, patients like this had the option of a non-pharmaceutical, non-synthetic drug. It has helped me immensely and that I feel that it's a very safe alternative to a lot of very strong medications and pharmaceuticals. And I am just so, I feel so lucky that I'm able to use it. So in 2000, I began meeting patients who were refusing their refills on prescriptions I had doled out for years, Ambien, Halcyon, Valium, Flexaril, Prozac. And these patients were turning in their pharmaceuticals, opting for cannabis instead. And what they had essentially done was a comparison of pharmaceuticals versus cannabis. For the effectiveness, was it alleviating their symptoms? For its side effects and its risks, was it safe to use and did it make them feel better or worse? For its affordability, could they pay for the drug? And finally, for its accessibility, were they able to acquire it? And over and over again, patients were finding that cannabis suited their needs better than pharmaceutical. Because this comparison so often favored cannabis for a number of common medical conditions, today I am still a conventional medicine doc who no longer prescribes pharmaceuticals. Instead, I try to help patients harness the medicinal properties of cannabis to meet their medical needs. And just as patients are grateful for the opportunity to use cannabis, I would just like to make a shout out to those who passed Proposition 215, many of whom are pictured there, because they brought the evidence of the transformative power of cannabis right to my doorstep by allowing patients to experience it. Thank you. And what am I peddling? Cannabis is a multi-gazillion dollar industry. Most people who occupy the public space talking about cannabis have a product or a service to sell. I am here in a public service mode peddling much with the library pedals. Knowledge and stories to help you give pot a chance. So let's start with the knowledge part. Just as you shouldn't go out and drive a car if you don't know how to operate the pedal, the brake, and the steering wheel, you shouldn't take your pod out for a spin until you know the basic mechanics of the drug. And that is, where does your drug come from? What are its main medicinal components? And how do you get it into your body? There are two sources for medicinal cannabis, hemp and marijuana. Hemp is not grown for its medicine. It's grown for its strong fibers, which are used to create rope, fabric, and paper. But today it is also used for medicinal products. And the reason why, it's cheaper. Keep is good, but there might be some hidden costs that you should be aware of. Most CBD products not sold in dispensaries are not lab tested. They are bio accumulators of heavy metals, often passed on in the product. And they are absent, the full compliments of properties present in marijuana that many believe are contributing to their medicinal effect. Lab testing matters. A study done in 2017, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found 70% of products had mislabeled CBD contents and concentrations on their labels, and 20% had THC that was not listed on the label. So you don't have a reliable source of either medicine because you don't have the actual concentrations reliably reported. For those reasons, I specifically work with cannabis medicine derived from marijuana. And when I talk today about cannabis medicine, I'm going to only be referring to marijuana derived medicine because the broader term cannabis is now being adopted by the medical community as a more medicinally oriented rhetoric. So before I jump into the components of cannabis, I just want to step back for a second and give an historical context. And that is medicinal cannabis is not new. American physicians have been prescribing cannabis since the 1850s and it's been a part of the fabric of medicine in multiple cultures in Asia for millennia. In fact, before cannabis was banned here, it was in 40%, 40, 40, almost half, of all pharmaceutical products recommended by physicians. And it was indicated for use in over 100 conditions. Back then, not much was known about what gay cannabis is medicinal properties. The only thing that was known is it worked for a lot of things. Today, we know a lot more about what makes cannabis medicinal. This is a close-up of the cannabis marijuana flower and this is a further close-up of the flower also referred to as a bud, a modified 100-fold so that you can see these little oil-filled organelles called tricomes. These tricomes contain 500 different constituents and the medicinal focus currently is on two of them, THC, tetrahydrocannabinol and CBD that I'm going to be talking about tonight. But they also are components, there are components called terpenes that are drawing increasing interest and I think there will be increasing evidence of how they contribute to the medicinal effect. Tetrahydrocannabinol is the component of cannabis that it was responsible for in high doses getting people high. It is psychoactive. The receptors for it are all located in the brain and its effects on humans are analgesia. It's a painkiller, soporithic helps put you to sleep. It's an anti-anxiety, anti-depressant, appetite enhancement, anti-nauseant and anti-convulsant. That's THC. CBD receptors are all over the body. Virtually every organ has abundant CBD receptors although few are found in the brain and almost every cell binds with it and its effects on humans are non-psychoactive because it doesn't have very much activity at the level of the central nervous system. But it has all the same properties as cannabis but it also has additional ones. It is anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial. It relaxes blood vessels and is also known to help with bone formation and increasing the rate of fracture healing. So a question that I often get is THC and CBD. Which one is right for me? So now that I've covered two components of driving this machine, the source, THC and CBD I want to look at three patients, one with insomnia, one with anxiety and one with pain and see what worked for them and what mode of administration did they find most helpful. So here's a real patient whose name and picture has been changed who came in to see me with insomnia, pain and anxiety. And she was 89 years old and she had previously used many of the medications that I had previously doled out antidepressants, benzodiazepines and sleeping medication and was currently on a anti-anxiety. And she lived alone, she didn't have any cannabis experience previously and she's like many patients, she came in with a short laundry list of her hopes for cannabis and I said, which is most important to you because it's hard to do a shotgun approach to multiple symptoms you want to focus on one symptom first and she said sleep. So I am not unfamiliar with seeing sleep problems in the over 50 set. It's very common amongst the elderly, 42% of people over 65 have problems falling or staying asleep and for many particularly women, the sleep problems begin much earlier around the perimenopausal phase in the four days. So the current estimate of difficulty sleeping amongst the over 65 age is 42%. My suspicion is that you would see about that same rate if you backed it up to the 50 year olds. So she came in on the recommendation of her daughter-in-law. Many patients who are coming to see me are being sent in by their children and she opens up her purse and she says this is what my daughter-in-law gave me to take for sleep and she had a bag of CBD candies. Candies are what are called edibles, they're eaten, that's how the medicine is administered and it's one of four ways to get it into your body. The other three are inhalation through your lungs, sublingual under your tongue and then topical through your skin. So most patients that I see are not keen on inhalation and before I turn to the other modes of administration I just want to sort of set the record straight about inhalation and that is inhaling cannabis flowers is perfectly safe. That was one of the other findings of this report. Smoking marijuana does not cause lung cancer. It is safe to smoke the bud. But here's the problem with smoking the bud. So this is a Dunesbury comic who I guess was famous for doing cannabis related strips and these are two characters who are dropping off a stash to a friend and they remark by now the old girl should be feeling some relief. Oh yeah, does she know how to spark up? Does she have the technical know-how? Golly, I forgot to ask. And then the patient holding what looks to me like a joint says, so which end do I snort? Ah, she didn't say. In fact, inhaling today is more complicated than ever and the reason for that is that the medicine is so powerful that the amount that you need to use is so small. So that is a typical starting dose and since it's hard to get a sense of how small that is I usually demonstrate with my baby finger but you can't see it from there so I will say it is probably about the quarter of a size of a pea. So learning to inhale itsy-bitsy, teeny-weensy amounts of cannabis is, believe it or not, a multi-skill process. And so I typically do not recommend inhalation as a starting point. To provide patients with a technical know-how to use cannabis effectively through inhalation I actually offer an inhalation 101 class free to my patients. I never thought I would be doing that in my career but it actually is a highly informative experience that has transformed the life of many of my patients. But it's not a beginning starting point. What I typically recommend to my patients is sublinguals underneath the tongue. They're readily absorbed within minutes, typically lasts for four hours and are one of the most controllable forms of administration. Edibles, ingestibles are my least favorite form of administration and the reason why is because the onset is highly variable 20 minutes to six hours depending on what else is in your stomach and your rate of gastric emptying which is just determined by your genetics and by your age. You actually waste about 80% of whatever you ingest ends up in the toilet bowl and before you even hit your system it's metabolized by your liver into a more sedating, more psychoactive, longer acting product. So it's a very difficult beginning step to start with. And topicals don't work for sleep. Topicals are just for pinpoint areas. So sublinguals is typically what I recommend to my newbies but she came in with a bag of CBD candies. Intent on using them with the full support of her family so I am not one to knock a person off their starting block so I say, okay, if that's what you want to start with we will start with edible CBD. So getting people to use CBD is like getting people to watch cat videos. Everybody's willing to do it. It's non-psychoactive. It's gotten very good press. There's a recent drug that's been approved by the FDA that is a cannabis CBD medication that has gone through all the FDA trials for control of seizures. It's easily accessible, you can get it into dispensaries and it's a good starting point. So I go over the beginning dose of CBD so you should always, the mantra for newbies, start low and go slow. Beginner starting dose depends on the root of administration. I've listed them here. For those of you who are interested in having these numbers they're on my website free of charge on an online guide so you don't have to fear that you won't have access to them again. So in my practice I actually give patients a treatment plan that has the name of the product, how you take it, what you should start with, what time of day you should take it and then how you should slowly increase your dosage. And I also tell people that you have to record your usage in order to really understand what's working for you. You can buy cannabis diaries or you can make them yourself. You simply want the date when you took it, the dosage, the time, the intention and the effect. So I explained to her that once she has reached a dose of approximately, for her she was doing an edible, approximately 50 milligrams and she wasn't getting an effect that she's probably not going to want to pay the amount of money it would take to continue going up to high dose CBD. The effects of CBD are dose dependent. The more you take of it, the more of the effect you get. However, at 100 milligrams of CBD, which is sometimes what is needed for sleep, you're paying $20 a night before taxes. So it's unlikely that that will be sustainable for her. So even though there's no upper limit and there's no adverse consequences for most patients, it becomes prohibitively expensive. So I explained to her once you reach that threshold, it might be time to consider THC. And when I mentioned the word, it's as if I have yelled fire in the office. Baby bloomers, fear and loathe THC. And the most off spoke words in my office are, I don't want to get high. So do you need to get high in order to get the benefits of THC? Absolutely not. It's all about the dose. And so I explained, start low and go slow. And if she is not finding the CBD to be effective after 50 milligrams, I say, you know, give a milligram of THC a try. So off she goes, candies and hands, and I see her back a month later and I say rather sheepishly, how are you sleeping? And she says, like a baby. And I said, really? How much CBD are you using? She says CBD, THC. How much THC are you using? 2.5 milligrams. I said, really? What product are you using? And she whips this product out of her purse. A five milligram micro tab of THC. And I said, this is five milligrams of THC. And then she whips a pill cutter out of her purse. And she says, I snip them in two. So the point of this is twofold. One, finding relief through cannabis is not like taking a pill. It is a process. There are many pathways to success, but the process is essentially the same. Start low, go slow. And where you start might not be where you end up. For many, CBD is a gateway drug to THC. For sleep, most patients need THC. But few patients are willing to start with it. For some, but it's really the minority, CBD alone works. Usually when it's caused by anxiety. And a methodical approach will determine what THC or CBD is best for you. LT came in to see me with new onset anxiety and insomnia, which she had never had before. She was a typical Berkeley patient. She had used acupuncture, Chinese, Tibetan herbs, essential oils, and homeopathy in the past. She had had several panic attacks within the last week and was even reluctant to leave the house to come and see me. And had I seen this patient 10 years previously, I would have immediately prescribed something like lorazepam or valium. Had I seen this patient five years previously, I'm not sure I would have had anything to offer her. Because there were no reliable CBD products sold at dispensaries. But by 2012, there was lab-tested, marijuana-derived, sublingual CBD products on the market. This patient was, like many patients, extremely functionally impaired by her anxiety. 15 to 20% of the elderly who suffer from anxiety are functionally impaired. 40% of those with a chronic medical condition, age 65 or older, also suffer from anxiety, but it is not as functionally impairing for them as their primary illness. So accustomed to homeopathy, she was very open to sublingual CBD drops. So for anxiety, I have to say, it is a game changer. Patients are not afraid and have no loathing, no stigma associated with CBD. It's not psychoactive. And it alone is often effective for cannabis-naive patients that haven't used cannabis since their college days, patients. So I gave her a treatment plan that, once again, started low with CBD, gradually ramped her up to 15 milligrams, spread out three to four times a day. And she came in two weeks later with a dramatic response. For many patients, especially from those suffering from primary anxiety, not secondary to other stuff, it is effective in and of itself. So for patients who take occasional benzodiazepines, lorazepam, adavine, they can stop using them. And for other patients who are on chronic benzodiazepines, they can go back to their prescribing physician and gradually wean themselves off. There's another kind of effect that I'd like to describe, because the incidence of chronic panic attacks and anxiety is smaller 20% than the incidence of the kind of anxiety that accompanies medical conditions, like chronic pain, depression, or cancer. And that is that patients who use CBD oftentimes don't realize the benefit they're getting from it for anxiety until they stop using it. And then they revert back to their pretreated experience. So it does have a more subtle contribution to chronic anxiety that once patients become cognizant of, are very appreciative for. So how to figure out if CBD alone will help you? It's simple. Follow the process. Start low and go up slow. Use sublinguals.  Sublingual, again, is the easiest starting point. The low dose you should hold in place for three days, about 2 milligrams sublingually, and then go up slowly, increasing about 1 to 2 milligrams a day and recording your usage. And now on to pain. So pain comes in many varieties. There's back pain, neck pain, large joints, hips, knees. A lot of folks suffering from headaches. Abdominal pain from a lot of inflammatory bowel diseases I'm seeing, neuropathic pain from diabetes or unknown causes. Pain related to Parkinson's or multiple sclerosis, which is spastic pain, post-operative pain, and post-stroke pain. So 65%, 53% of 65-year-old or older have some kind of a bothersome pain. And the likelihood that you'll have pain only increases with time. The older we get, the more likely we're going to hit this. So I am seeing a patient, a kind of patient that I am delighted to be seeing. And that is the pre-op patient before the surgery. And I've seen pre-op hip, knees, back, and abdominal surgery patients. And they're determined to get off their post-op opioids as quickly as possible. And the traditional painkillers, non-steroidal anti-inflammatories and opioids are coming under increasing scrutiny by patients themselves. And she knows all too well the effects of opioids. She is used among other modalities, norco, flexural, and ibuprofen. And what she fears the most is constipation, which is well worth fearing. It is not only painful, but can lead to emergency medical needs. But opioids are responsible, as you all know, for much worse. The CDC just released its latest figures. 72,000 deaths in the U.S. last year from opioids alone. In states in which medical marijuana has been approved, the rate of prescriptions for Medicare patients for conventional painkillers has gone significantly down. So, does cannabis alleviate pain? Mild pain, some patients, can get relief with CBD alone. Moderate pain, CBD and THC are necessary, they're synergistic together. Severe pain, like post-op pain. CBD and THC can supplement other painkillers and reduce the desire for opioids. But usually, cannabis alone is not sufficient to control severe pain. So the route of administration I recommend to pre-op patients is sublingual, because it's the easiest to control and the easiest to begin for a newbie. And knowing that she's going to have severe pain after her replacement, I know that she's going to need THC. And so these are the starting doses of THC, in her case one milligram, sublingually. The dosing with THC is considerably different than CBD. So THC is a Goldilocks effect. And that means you take too little, you don't get any relief. You take just the right amount and your mind no longer is riveted by the pain. You can focus your mind on something else. You take too much, and unlike CBD where you continue to have the same benefits, you get a paradoxical effect. Number one, your pain can actually increase if you overshoot the THC mark. Number two, you easily can experience anxiety. And the other two are dependent on a much higher dose, which is that you feel stoned, out of control, paranoid, and then from there it gets worse. So what is important is before you have your surgery, you need to figure out about where is your sweet spot. And one of the good things about hip pain is you have pain before you have the surgery and you have pain after you have the surgery. So you have something to work with. So to find your sweet spot, the mantra is the same. Start low, go slow. If you're cannabis naive, you want to start your THC with a little bit of CBD. It will lessen the cognitive shifting you get. And you don't have to have your CBD in the same medicine. You can get your CBD from a different source. You don't have to worry about what ratio is right for me. You can have a THC medicine. You can have a CBD medicine. You should record your usage. I really like it when patients give me a couple of weeks before their pre-op because usually everyone can find their sweet spot in two weeks. And one of the great things about cannabis, it's safe to mix at these doses with any medicine. There is no question that a head-to-head comparison between nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories and opioids reveals that cannabis is safer and better tolerated than all conventional analgesic drugs. You should stop it 24 hours before anesthesia. You can take it with your narcotics. And you should expect few, if any, unpleasant side effects. So before I move on to the three cannabis legends, I would like to sum up because after I gave this talk at the Park Branch last week, a person who was in the audience said to me, so what product do you recommend for a headache? And I realize that I've tossed out so much information that it's really hard to distill it so patients really know what a good starting point for them is. So I'd like to try to offer you a distillate. So if you're wondering in the audience what you should start with, I'm going to try to encapsulate it. There is no size fits all answer, but for both CBD and THC, start low, go slow, be methodical. Sublingual administration is by far the easiest and most economical compared to edibles. If you are cannabis naive, which means you have not used cannabis since college, CBD is probably the right starting point for you. If you are experienced and are comfortable with THC for insomnia, your first step should be THC. Even if you're experienced for anxiety, you should just give CBD a run and see whether or not it alone helps you with your anxiety. And for mild pain, there have been some patients, even experienced patients who get alleviation with CBD alone. But if you're an experienced user and are having moderate to severe pain, you want a product that has both CBD and THC. So three cannabis legends that people ask me about, cancer, Alzheimer's, and aging. So cannabis is an amazingly potent anti-carcinogen, which I didn't know until I went to someone's talk who was making all these claims. And I said, do you have any references? Do you have any references? Do you have any references? And in fact, there's been about 1,600 articles looking at its anti-carcinogenic properties in cell cultures and mice. The first report came out in 1975 that found that THC inhibits growth of lung cancer cells. But there was no further research because the federal government wouldn't support that kind of research. Since the 90s, there has been a significant increase in the studies examining marijuana's anti-carcinogenic properties. But all that research has been limited to cell cultures and animal models. However, it is by everyone's estimation extraordinarily promising. It suggests that cannabis may reduce tumor growth, inhibit metastatic lesions because the cells don't have the motility, and selectively kill cancer cells, alleviating the sheer volume of cancer burden. But there has been no scientific study demonstrating marijuana cures cancer. So should you use cannabis for cancer? Not as your primary treatment if other proven options are available. But you should use it in conjunction with those others because of its anti-carcinogenic effect. It has been shown to be synergistic with other chemotherapeutic agents. And because it can be very powerful for symptomatic relief, especially nausea and appetite loss, as well as for mood enhancement. Anxiety, nausea with chemotherapy are concomitant. They're frequently seen in conjunction with cannabis. And for one of my patients, Kimo was his gateway drug to cannabis, which he found enormously powerful in transforming his anxiety pre-Kimo into a peaceful, grounded, and he called it his sanctuary space. So what about cannabis and Alzheimer's? Cannabis does not cure Alzheimer's, but there is cell evidence that it may retard its progression or delay its onset by preventing plaque being laid down in the central nervous system. THC itself does cause what's referred to as reversible memory loss. You remember less when you're on THC, sort of the Cheech and Chong effect than when the THC wears off, but it's completely reversible. What has been found and is being explored more and more is a lot of times patients with dementia have extraordinary agitation and anxiety. And they're often placed on very strong medications in order to deal with the behavioral consequences of that that feeling and cannabis can alleviate the agitation and anxiety in many patients. So does cannabis slow aging? There's no proof, but there's some very intriguing evidence. A group of elderly subjects were given ultra-low-dose THC for weeks and compared with untreated juvenile, juvenile subjects in a time trial maze for a delectable edible. And the group treated, the elderly treated, outran the juveniles who were not treated each and every time significantly. That's good news for the mice amongst us, which the subjects were. And for us baby boomers, one more hopeful signs of the opportunities that may or may not lie ahead in cannabinoid medicine. Before turning it over for your questions, I want to go over what I hope will be your takeaways. And that is know the basics of your cannabis, know where it comes from, what THC and CBD, what they do medicinally and what starting doses are and what your opportunities are for getting it into your body and the differences amongst them. I recommend starting with sublingual products. I think they're the easiest to use. And I am a physician who looks at the scientific literature. So I highly recommend that until there is proof of their safety, not to use vape pens, which are distillates. And that is because there is no long-term data on their safety and lungs are highly mutagenic and you don't want to expose them to anything that doesn't have a proven track record for not causing cancer, which cannabis has the flower itself, it has passed the test of time. Start low and go up slow. Do not rely on dispensaries for information.  I cannot tell you how many times I have seen cannabis patients walk out of dispensaries with $200, $400 worth of products, all of which are wrong for them. There are two weak links in the system. One, the medical community that fails to provide comprehensive treatment plans, including product and dosing, so patients can get the medicinal benefits of cannabis without any safety risk. The second is the cannabis industry that tries to fill the gap like a used car salesperson. Someone comes into a used car shop and says, which car is best for depression? And they'll be sold the only convertible on the lot. Dispensaries are not where you should get your advice. It is where you should get your medicine. This is how the dispensaries hope to engage the Over 55 crowd. This was a posting from yesterday, engaging the Over 55 crowd in your marijuana retail dispensary. And this person doesn't look like she's going after insomnia relief, pain relief, or anxiety relief. This patient looks like she's been given the opportunity to smoke an unspecified amount because she's smoking a joint. And the key word here is if you're not engaging the Over 55 crowd, then you're missing out on profit. Here is the secret that few dispensaries are willing to discuss. For the medicinal benefits of cannabis, you need very little product. And dispensaries turn a profit by selling you very high product. And that means that they are really specialists in getting high. The more THC they sell you, the more product they sell you. This joint usually has anywhere from a half a gram to one full gram. That amount of medicine, a half a gram, is 50 medicinal doses in the technique of actually getting a 2 milligram dose. So the dispensaries are geared towards profit. Profit means high dose product, which usually is not necessary for medicinal relief. Be methodical. Record the date, time, and intention of the medicine that you take. So not only do patients get a lot of products they don't need, they oftentimes don't record their experiences with the products that they get. Without the personal data on the effect, there is no way for experience to guide the process forward. So if you're going to use it, record when, how much, and what the effect is of the dose that you're taking. You don't need to and shouldn't alter any of your long standing other medications when you're beginning cannabis. You only want one ball in the air at a time. And if possible, I know this is sort of counterintuitive, use it before you need it. Get accustomed to cannabis because it is an invaluable tool in your toolkit as you get older. And remember you don't need to get high to get the medicinal benefits of cannabis. It's all about the dose and for most patients, less is more. And finally, continue to educate yourself. I have a tightly curated list of resources on my website including an online guide for new patients that's free of charge that goes over all of the basic information as well as starting doses and a few do-it-yourself websites on dosing both for inhalation and for inhalation sublingual and for edibles. And finally, I was telling one of my patients that I was going to be speaking on the topic of cannabis and aging to which she said, I can't imagine aging without cannabis.