TfNN, headline, News Update. Good afternoon everybody. I'm Tommy O'Brien, coming to you live from TfNN Headquarters in St. Petersburg, Florida, 12 noon Eastern time on Thursday, middle of the trading day. We got markets in higher territory, but we've pulled back a bit from the highs we have this morning. SNP is right now at 16 points, trading at $29.49, we've got the Dow up 172, trading at $26,675, NASDAQ up 51 points, trading at $8,039, S&Ps making new all-time highs today, notes and bonds, higher price, lower yield, the 10-year up 10 ticks, $128.06, 30-year up 15 ticks, $155.30 and the dollar index, negative $347 ticks, $96.235, we're going to start things off, we're going to start it off with the 10-year. As we got no rate cut yesterday, Chairman Powell with a press conference at 2.30 pm Eastern time digging into it, we're at 1.98 right now, folks, check that out. So even since this morning, we got a little bit of a bounce getting back up to about 2.015 as about 7am and right then, I mean, we make it to a low of 1.975, pretty remarkable on that 10-year. Jumping over the charts, we'll start it off with the S&P, climbing to a high this morning of $29.64, we're now a solid, those 16-17 points off of that level, made it down to about $29.46, currently trading $29.48, NASDAQ 100, pulling back from the highs as well, we're up there at $78.20, we trade down to $77.38, you're talking about a solid 80 points to the downside from that high, Dow 30, much the same, $26,785, we make it up to, we pull back about 100 points, trading $26,677, crude oil trading higher, we got some political tension going over in Iran with Iran shooting down a US drone, Iran and the US debating over what area that was of the sky in terms of whether it was an international space, whether it was over Iran space, nonetheless, oil almost up at $57, natural gas on the flip side, we got inventory numbers this morning, $116 billion cubic feet, inventory rise, the expectation had been for about $106, you saw natural gas go from $2.30, we're now under $2.20, trading at $2.19.68, and gold, holding steady, up there at $13.89.20, quite a run for gold, look at that run from yesterday, we were sitting at $13.50, $40 to the upside, stay tuned folks, we're going to have a replay right now for Basil Chapman, then we got live programming Steve Rhodes live at one o'clock, Dave White live at two o'clock, and Tom O'Brien wraps it up live from three till five, stay tuned folks, have a great Thursday.


All right. Welcome everybody to the April 7th. I hope the ledger technical student committee call. As you are probably all aware, we have two things that you must abide by on this call. The first is the anti trust policy notice that is currently displayed on the screen. And the second is our code of conduct, which is linked in the agenda. So with that, let's go ahead and get started with the agenda. All right. So as far as our announcements go, we have the hyper ledger dev weekly developer newsletter that goes out each Friday to hundreds of hyper ledger developers. If you have something that you would like to have included in that newsletter, please leave a comment at the wiki page that is linked in the agenda. And the second announcement that we have is the hyper ledger global forum. Is currently got the CFPs open until April 29th. So you have a couple more weeks to get your CFPs in. As heart had mentioned last week, there's a call for program committee volunteers that is currently open. And I will let heart maybe talk about that because it's kind of hand raised. Thanks a lot Tracy. For most of you on this call, if you're interested in being on the program committee for the global forum, please reach out. We are looking for strong volunteers and, you know, the TSC fits that bill. So we'd love to hear from you. I will be reaching out to many of you that I think might be interested. Individually, but if you're interested, please, please feel free to go ahead and reach out and thank you for your time. Thanks heart. And then the last announcement that I put on here is just a reminder to review the poll request that is out there on adding a page on the TSC responsibilities that are now has so graciously written for us. So please take, take an opportunity to do that. Bobby. Yes, hi everybody. I just wanted to put this out there. The learning materials working group is formed a task force to do this. Best practices and standard documentation information. So if anybody has any articles or information that you think would be of interest during our fact finding two weeks which starts started on Monday. Please post it in our discord page. Thank you. Thanks Bobby. Yes, thank you. Hi everyone. I just wanted to say one more piece on the PR on TSC responsibilities. I mean, we, there are some, I mean, I think there are parts that are not controversial, but there are other ideas of addition. I mean, of course, you know, I expect this to be formally voted on by the TSC as a whole, eventually before this gets merged, but it would be best if people, you know, at a peak at it and, you know, see if there's anything that you think is missing or more importantly that you disagree with, because I mean, technically this is kind of what we're supposed to live by once and so it better represent what you think is reasonable for you as a TSC member, you know, to to to be signed on. I would, you know, as I said, I mean, eventually you I suppose you will have a say when you get to vote, but, you know, earlier input would be better so I encourage people to come and look. Yeah, definitely. Thanks. All right. Any other comments as far as announcements that people would like to make. No additional announcements. So for quarterly reports, we still have the Hyperledger Explorer quarterly report that we're waiting on I know there are discussions going on about the project offline to determine how best to move forward. So, you know, hopefully once we get some answers there will actually hear back from the Explorer team with what they're what they're planning. And then as far as upcoming reports, we have the cactus and the fabric reports that are due next week.  So far as discussion items, I do not I'm not aware of any discussion items for today's TSC business. Please let me know if that is not correct. If anybody has anything TSC business that we should discuss before we get to the task force discussion. Let's bring that up now. I just have a quick question. Who is the Indian Blockchain Institute. We're trying to take. Thank you. Yeah, is this Kamlesh or. Yeah, so this is a future tech brand. Okay, we were just trying to take a role. Thank you. So any show. So they are not aware. No, there's no issue we were just trying to do the roll call for the TSC and we weren't we weren't sure who that was whether or not you were representing a TSC member. That's all. Okay, yeah. Yeah, you're more than welcome to stay for the meeting. Okay, just rename yourself Kamlesh. Yeah, exactly. I was going to say maybe it doesn't sound like. Actually, I logged in with that. Yeah, I just had some client meeting with that ID. No problem. All right. So any other TSC business that we should discuss. Just a quick one for me. I will have to leave at the house time. Okay, thanks Peter. All right, if there's nothing else, then Daniel, I guess I'm handing it off to you to walk through the task force discussion. Well, and I can share the screen or right. The screen. Here we go. Cool. So, today we're starting the projects gaps task force. This is a task force when we thought of the four main tasks force we're going to be rotating through this is one idea that I might think it's time for hyper ledger to consider apparently other TSC members to do with this commitment is one of the ideas to be listed for task force. And that is to figure out you know what projects are we missing in hyper ledger. So let's the performance parts, you know, make this official task force or task to be completed in a list of deliverables. So, the three things to complete our figure out first identify project areas hyper ledger would want to act projects that we don't already have. And two tasks I think are related to that and basically fall off of that decision once we figure out the scope we want for that one of them is to identify which labs project could fill in those leads those needs, and figure out which ones might need to get more support to as TSC members and to encourage other people to join. And the second one is possibly to identify other sources where projects maybe solicited from. Maybe we need to say hey we need a project in this area that doesn't have existing code and encourage people to start a new project of labs. Or maybe there's a project outside of hyper ledger that isn't attached to another group that might be willing to come in. I know that specifically how hyper ledger basic came in it was a project at consensus. And Brian came to us and asked us to come join at work. So that has been a path that's been been worked before. So the deliverables to affect these these three tasks. I think the first thing we need to do is we need to have a discussion about the overarching philosophy for the kinds of projects hyper ledger foundation wants to host this. Because there's been discussion like you know how to what extent we do to be read, you know, there's been statements by the TSC in the past we don't want specific applications we don't want to host like a commercial websites project that happens we blockchain as an open source thing that's out of bounds. But there's other things which have grown in bounds, such as the identity libraries that have come in that we're not necessarily part of the initial hyper ledger scope.  And also that might help us identify areas that are we think might be kind of full already, the notion of level one DLTs. We got already six of them, five of them now in hyper ledger for them are active projects. We don't necessarily need more but we might need projects that support interoperability. I think it's a hot area to run. So from that, we've got a list of specific project themes or areas from that philosophy. And we've also in that list, I think we'd want to include which current projects we have to fit into those themes to show what we have and that would better identify what the gaps are to show what we have that we don't have so we can fill in fill in the gaps, as the name the project that force, and then a list of labs projects that might be good fits to fill in these, these gaps, and list of affiliate unfilled needs that we would need to solicit projects for whatever means. I'm thinking of putting a time box on this of three months. So there's going to be three meetings in the, in the TSC and probably two or three off of Thursday meetings. So, to that end, the first thing I would propose is we would need to discuss when we want to meet on our off non TSC meeting because I don't think we can get all this work done just on three calls during the TSC. My initial proposal would be two weeks from now on a Tuesday at the same time of this call. Are there any other proposals of anybody would think a better time might exist going once. Does this conflict with anyone's project calls I guess is a good question. This is time. Nope. So don't when you share screen you can't see everyone's emojis that well that is one complaint about this. I think this is as big as possible. Cool. So the next, and I'll set up a zoom meeting for this on the call.  No, I just wanted to say that time works for doesn't conflict. Okay. I'm not a hand. I think there was a thumb and then there was a thumb. Okay. So the next part we're going into this task where I think we get to more of the open discussion and just I don't, I can't drive home and I'm going to need a lot of help in this one, but people brainstorming ideas for what the Hyperledger project philosophy. We might want to express with this and trying to fill and then after that project areas he's kind of interoperate and overlap. I'd like to start initially with philosophy ideas and then move the areas we can move back important we need to, as we get some of those ideas. So, I'm calling for people on the floor. What are some good project philosophy area, you know what what are some bullet points is what Hyperledger project should fill not everyone at once. Or maybe what it shouldn't go what shouldn't we do. Jim. I feel like integration with public chains should be a major philosophy. I don't know that if that fits into this category of philosophies. That's either running because at least with our customers we see a lot of repeating patterns that using permission chains as site chains, but integrate with public chains to inject value back and forth. It's got to be pretty popular pattern. Happy to hear those from other other people. Peter. I would say that we could add the idea in there that if the project wants to come in. It's not necessarily a perfect match for our what kind of projects we want rule. But the project already has a substantial and big relatively big community around it, and also maintainers and also contributors. We should reconsider it, even if it's not exactly a match because at the other day for that project based on the community and the number of contributors and maintainers. We could say that the people have voted that this is something that should be worked on. And so, in those cases, I think we could relax. Project project acceptance criteria in terms of the relevance of it. And so is this a good statement of that large projects like the joining to left that are not a perfect match issue quote unquote for the philosophy. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure about the kinds of projects. But what is hyper ledgers for looking goal or no. I'm sorry, I'm not answering your question. I wanted to suggest that we may also want to set some limits. And, you know, I'll historically, for instance, we decided to stay away from all the cryptocurrency stuff. And we still want to enforce or not. And, you know, I raise it as a question I think is important to basically set limits if we have some, you know, explicitly state what we wouldn't want to do as well as what we are interested in doing. I mean there's plenty of stuff on the web three for instance, is that something we want to get in, or is that something we feel like no, we're not part of this. So, I wasn't very active the first few years of hyper ledger.  But when you say that hyper ledger initially stayed from cryptocurrency what did that feel like what was the direction of that. Maybe heart can fill that in or no. I wanted to let hot to speak. I mean, but you know from my perspective, it was at the time, especially it was felt like, okay, there is all this stuff about cryptocurrency happening already. And what we're interested in is really the, the blockchain for the enterprise use case, which was not so much cryptocurrency oriented. So, there was a clear intent not to focus on cryptocurrency, and we didn't want to be overwhelmed by everything that was already happening in the cryptocurrency space. So it was a, there was, I think an intent to kind of differentiate ourselves from all the crypto stuff. I guess, this is a pretty fine line though. So what, you know, I don't think there's, there's a strong line between running something and hosting software. But, you know, there's a fine line between, you know, what is a cryptocurrency and what can be used for a cryptocurrency and all of these things. So, you know, like is a central bank digital currency, a cryptocurrency, right, because we have a lot of, we have a lot of people building on our platforms for those. You know, so I think there's a fine line here. So do we distinguish between the software used to run the live network and the live network itself would be a Yeah, I think we always have their data side to jump back in. And like, if we want to actually, this is not just a hyperledger thing this is even like a Linux foundation why think if we wanted to actually run software we would probably have to get like everybody at the top of the LF to approve us. Right. Tracy's had her hand up for a bit. Yeah. So yeah, I'm curious as to whether or not our tagline is still blockchain for business. And if it is, then I think that's a place that we really need to say that the focus that we have is enterprise. So, I think that it's very possible that if you take us away from kind of the roots or the foundations of that blockchain for business tagline that you end up with a situation where hyperledger becomes a completely different organization that it is today. I'm not sure if that's what hyperledger foundation actually wants and the governing board wants per se right like I think those are important discussions and maybe discussions that it really do need to be had at the governing board if you're changing the machine or the vision of hyperledger foundation. And my point of this wasn't trying to down that line and trying to figure out how the philosophy works within the current charter vision, the blockchain for business tagline what that what that means. And that, because I think if we're going to change the Europe, I agree with you if we're going to change the whole basis of hyperledger that is a higher level issue and more of an existential question. To put some limits on this, I don't think we should discuss the existential, but how the current philosophy of blockchain for business, where we should go into that and what projects we should look for. I think our know how to hand it or did you have any more Tracy. No, I think that we may get to project areas I think maybe that'll clarify some of this as well. I think you were next. Yeah, I wanted to follow up on what hot said I totally agree with him this is obviously we never prevented you know anybody from building cryptocurrency system on top of the software that we are building. And indeed, there's a lot of project now in the space of CBDC, and, and that's totally fine. I think indeed the distinction was really the difference between building software. You just faded out or was that my end. I lost him as well. Yeah, sorry, I know we lost you there. I think you say the difference is between building software and building a network which I think is an important one to be completely losing. We completely lost him. No, we didn't. Anyway, but I think this point was made. Jim. Yeah, honestly, I don't think we have a real worry of being mixed up with cryptocurrency communities, because those communities will not trust a business oriented foundation like high pleasure for their technology. We've seen Hadera for example trying to do this right and I think their success is debatable. So I think our angle and to me it's always clear that we are interested in permissioned networks, but I think it's a unstoppable trend that permissioned networks cannot continue to run as silos, they are going to integrate with public networks where the, the value right the trillions of dollars of value exist, because that's how you engage with the general public for for value to flow into and out of your side chains. So I think, at least for me, it's, it's us embracing technology and then advancement in the public side and help our customers to to utilize them, rather than the other way around that we will build stuff for the for the public side. I think it would not be successful as a corporate endorsed entity to do that kind of thing. Okay. So I've heard a lot of discussion about cryptocurrencies and value networks and public networks are financially use cases the only use cases for this. I guess Nathan's probably jumping in to answer my question or do you have a different answer. I have a different comment but I also think that that's a really interesting question because part of what I, what got me to get into hyper ledger and was got me excited about it is the availability of experts who knew things I didn't know, or who had insights into the parts of the ecosystem that I wouldn't have thought of or wouldn't have seen. So one of the questions I have as we start thinking about, you know, what pieces might be missing are, where are there areas of expertise that we want to invite in or how can we get participation from more viewpoints that help us, you know, advance the platforms that are already here. You know, in particular we've recruited pretty hard from folks who were working on secure execution environments who are working on different areas of hardware based cryptography, we've recruited pretty hard for folks who would participate in various special interest groups that were use case specific, though those that haven't always translated into features for the core platforms that people have been building. I think those sorts of participants help make the project overall stronger. So, I don't know how we go about maybe brainstorming different facets of what what we're looking for. Yeah, just wanted to jump in obviously no one would be surprised when I agree with what Jim was saying about integration with public change in a priority. I think we should be really specific though about whose needs we're trying to meet here. I think, you know, Tracy raised a good point that you know our tagline has been watching for business kind of for a while but what what does business mean what what what is an enterprise who are targeted users because I feel like, you know that, you know, one type of enterprise will have very different needs and another type of enterprise. So, you know, just a full philosophical question and don't have a good answer at this point but just want to make sure when we're thinking about what we're trying to attract or what, what is our you know gap analysis, you know, let's be sure we know it's meeting, you know the audience or the user that we want. Awesome yeah so thank you to Jim and grace for the comments. And I just wanted to hear what you all thought exactly was meant by integration with the public chain. You know integration is one of those things like Web three that, you know, means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. I'm curious if you, if you if both Jim and grace could elaborate a little bit more on what they meant by that. Yeah, sure. I can give some of my opinions. So, to me, when a, we have a lot of customers that are building sort of permission chain based defy scenarios, you know, it can be writing smart contracts for a financial instrument, right. Using or using fractioned fractionalized ownership to represent some real estate, for example, that's all done in the side chain. Once that's become successful they want to engage the general public to open this up to more to a much wider audience. And the best way to do that is allowing people to deposit their public tokens, you know, theorems or, you know, any of the tokens that runs on your as an example salon or other side chain, other layer one public chains, and then exchange the tokens inside their permission side chain, and they can so they can participate in the investment investment opportunities they built in the side chain.  They will withdraw and then they exchange back to the cryptocurrency and now they they they have more money going out than coming in. So that's that's a pretty popular pattern we have been seeing with enterprise customers, sort of growing up and then realizing they they they they have this great technique, or architecture to use so they can engage a huge amount of public that holds cryptocurrency. So that's kind of the main pattern that I had in my mind. Hope that helps her. It does thanks for the good explanation. Just to jump in, I just wanted to echo. Sorry. I just wanted to echo Jim described well exactly what I was thinking I think the bridge technology and side chains is a major piece of it. Yeah, so I just wanted to raise another point so whenever we would like to think and work for the rods, standardizing the, the, you know, the protocols, the structure and the things that we are doing, you know, we drink a lot of respect to crypto. I mean, the cryptography protocol, for example, hypervisor Ursa, there are a diversity in blockchain projects like your fabric south of Europe and etc. And it seems like you know we have pretty strong background and pretty strong community. I'm just wondering why, well, I'm not wondering I'm just trying to propose whenever we would like to consider thinking towards starting to standardize part of the protocols that we are developing so you know, whenever it makes sense to do anything with this. So back to the question I proposed before we went down the loss of experts in the various parts of the ecosystem one question. Before we move on to areas that I don't think I got to get answered for. I asked the only use case because that's, I know there's been work on on fabric for supply chain stuff. And there's like some energy projects that we have in labs. I wanted to know what people's thoughts were is fine that's the only use case that blockchain for business should be addressing are there any other use cases that might be, you know, useful maybe that's a nice bridge into the project areas. Karen. Karen Tamit down, Nathan. Well, I say that the digital identity folks do a lot more things than just fintech. So, certainly there's a lot of different areas of interest there. We could probably just make a list of the SIGs that are active and have a fairly good set of participants outside of just fintech. I was going to second your comment about supply chain I think that is first class use case. Where's the list of things hide. It's not very. Yes, the real question is where the active six. Are the nine listed on the high pledge website representative. Yeah, they're in the front of the wiki page. Anything that's. I guess there have been mergers to some of those exciting recent times. There's eight now because supply chain and trade finance got merged. I'm at market cap climate action capital market governance risk and compliance health care media entertainment public sector supply chain telecom. Okay. The six is the probably one of the things we should focus on and making sure that we have projects that might interest them. So maybe we should add that to solicits the six as well. Any closing remarks on the philosophy before we pivot over to project areas. I think another basic one is focus on frameworks rather than applications. I think you're going to take comments. Go ahead. Question are probably a comment right so last year we've worked on rewriting the charter for hyper ledger and we introduced the term called multi party systems. And should be. And I don't think so we have been very actively seeking for projects in these areas. And we probably need to look for what this means. So to me, I don't know when I think of multi party systems it comes as what would enable for somebody to build a system that could allow them to interact with their partners or their business partners right. But it could go into the way of like implementing some data standards or having specific solving, I mean having built as a problem, a framework, which would solve a specific scenario or with specific which could solve a specific domain area of problem statement. And stuff that synthesize for our meeting on the 19th. Great. So let's, with what we brainstorm so far with the philosophy without formalizing and synthesizing it. Maybe we could start just listing up project areas that we might want. Doesn't have to be within the philosophy or it could be well within the philosophy but let's just start listing them and see see what the direction gets from that. And then once there is one private to hyperledger what would you want it to be that we're not what we don't have right now. Everyone's got to have that idea in their head what would it be. I have just randomly thinking so at least one of the problem that we end up building in most of our solutions is a way to trace what's happening on a blockchain network across the entire network. What are some of the things you need to trace. And how we define the trace is pretty much subject to let me see if I can define it generically. The final characteristics of what you had to build in the trace. We can define it later. Yeah, take some time to think so. Okay. Tracy. I think we have a lot of tooling around our different sorts of layer one or one guilty. I think, you know, talking through tracing to me what that brings up is, you know, expanding the ability to monitor and we're already doing some automation with devil, but just continuing to build that out for all of our projects not just for a single one. Right so having those kind of cross project tools for for monitoring I guess is where I'm at. So monitoring automation deployment, I know that will does that. But we can list what we're currently covering to try and get a feel for what, what our plate should look like you know what are the, what are the, what's the food pyramid for blockchain. Jim. I think we can really do with a standard collection of token implementations. It's such a useful construct, both functional and non functional. I know the fabric team have. I think at least one, maybe more labs. But just feel like we can, we can have more prominent implementations like in the ethereum world opens up in this and no bringer go to for high quality implementation for these things. Something like this would really help many customers who end up writing something themselves, if it's, it's a, if it's on fabric, or one of the other DLTs that are not ethereum based. Yeah, and I think about ethereum is you're only really got, well I guess you can have some of the other aspects of it, but you only got the best for fungible and non fungible any of the other interesting token taxonomy bits. Oh, because that one does have some, but not all. Cool heart. I'm going to dream really big here. I'd love to see a common consensus interface. And, you know, implementation of modular consensus algorithms. Big idea so the fences I like it.  Okay, Nathan. In the digital identity side we've always thought about self organizing namespaces, and can we make it so that possessing some verifiable information qualifies you to share state or process state in a in a shared namespace so instead of thinking about the system as side chains think think about it more as more more like global storage so there's some interesting ideas to explore there I think the other big audacious goals. It's not going to be accomplished in three months is going to be like for your projects we can start a project that we talked about kind of is, can we use blockchain to make decentralized development more self organizing. Nathan is this reinvent GitHub is blockchain item. I guess I think it's taken a couple of tracks that didn't lead very, very to much, but there's a bunch of paths that, you know, we're discussed on the after hours conference tracks so to speak that we haven't tried yet. And I think I haven't been almost after hours conference tracks but it makes me wonder if things like data availability, or like some of the big issues that would be presented there because you got more than terabytes of data. You've got you know, approaching an exabyte of data on some of that. How would we share that. Still needed. Yeah, I think, I think that we missed missing one potential use case from the list. Centralize digital identity. The list that you have here. So we're missing. What projects might help in decentralized digital identity that aren't well even if they are here. What's the scope what's the, what's the food pyramid look like for a decentralized digital identity. Well, there's a lot of pieces of what trust over IP is defined as the decentralized digital identity stack that are already here. We don't do as much on the edge agent or the individual's identity wallet and hyper ledger, as we might want. We also don't do as much work on peer to peer cryptography cryptography based API's that the Aries protocol work kind of has pushed a lot of interesting constructs around how you can do, you know, peer to peer digital information sharing and how you can do dynamically composable API's through that sort of infrastructure, and there's probably more we could both investigate and share about what's been going on in that area. Okay. Tracy. Enterprise wallets for both. For any type of asset, he then verifiable credentials or tokens. Yeah, I guess just. Can I go. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, just add to that the idea of enterprise wallets and PC based wallet that I think it's kind of these days is a must for custody type of scenarios. And PC. Yeah, multi party compute. Now it's a little weird on my headphones is like non player characters. Now multi party compute. Yep. Nathan. There's probably a whole class of enterprise tools integration issues that we should have on our docket for projects where whether it's integrating into conventional authentication systems integrating into, you know, business object systems or, you know, all those sorts of things that we could probably make a big list of from everyone's internal architectural roadmap debates. Yeah. What's the track load transform. Ctl. ELT and ETL there's there's both approaches to it. Extreme way to do the transformer for after some people get excited about doing it before some after. So, looks like we got a good list here. So I think that the next step for this, this task force. We could go on for 12 more minutes brainstorming but I think we've reached a critical mass of some of these ideas. So on the, on the 19th, I think we need to try and synthesize some of the things out of this. I guess you can add one more point to enterprise tools integration. Most of the times it may so happen that so when we talk about authentication. We eventually need to deal with the blockchain. Blockchain layer itself right and let's say somebody is working on multiple protocols. They may need to deal with different types of key management that each blockchain has to go through. And since hyper ledger. Most of the frameworks built does provide a permissioning feature. If it would be nice to have a common, common integration point for that as well. Any other last minute ads. Just a question when you say active projects blow you mean graduated projects. Okay. You use the word active earlier and the way it the way you said it I wasn't quite sure whether you meant, you know, people were contributing to it actively or if you may graduate so just, just wanted to verify. So, I mean all of them actually, because the activity of a project might give insight as to maybe they're close but just a little bit off. Maybe we need to restart that project or we need to restart with a slightly different charter. So that might be worth looking into. I think there's also cases where some of these items probably are covered by the project but we haven't publicized what's going on there very well. Yeah, because I think that's very insightful because it might not be that we don't have a gap is that we don't know that we have something to fill that gap. So I encourage everyone to read over this, those who want to participate in formulating the philosophy and the areas and help identify the gaps. Feel free to contribute to this page, edit the comments. And from this will in two weeks time we'll come back and we'll try and synthesize the themes so when we come back against the TSC. We can discuss the themes make sure it lines up and then start identifying where these projects line up and what the gaps really are, and what we would want to fill those gaps, I think is where we want to come back in four weeks time and two weeks time back from synthesize that. So I encourage everyone I will send the when I get the invite out later today I've got a Thursday is my big meeting day so it's going to be a while before I can set up the the invite to send it out when I send it out, you know, so please please attend the meeting if you want to help synthesize and then categorize these these brainstorming items. That will be it for the day. Make good use of the extra time thanks for keeping the agenda light. Thanks guys. Thanks everyone.


The Arrowhead stood for Oklahoma, the team for Texas. Together they stood for the 36th Infantry Division. Before World War I was over they stood for a lot more, for courage and fighting spirit. The 36th was formed in 1917, the National Guard units out of Oklahoma and Texas, but its ancestry goes a lot further back to the Texas War of Independence and every war since then. As a division it distinguished itself in World War I. When peace came it was disbanded and the men returned to their homes and jobs. Not long after the war it was reorganized. This time it was made up entirely of men of Texas. It was still the 36th Infantry Division and they still kept the same patch, but now it was known as the Texas Division. As a National Guard division the 36th remained inactive until the trouble started in Europe. In 1940 when the German armies invaded France and the Lowlands the 36th was mobilized again. When the Japs struck at Pearl Harbor the 36th was in training. A year later they were still in training. During this time the strength of the division had been periodically paired to furnish trained cadres for new divisions being formed throughout the country. The replacements we got came from all parts of the country. In the spring of 1943 the division sailed for overseas.  Instead we wound up in Africa for more training. When we weren't training ourselves they put us to work training other troops. By this time a lot of the new guys in our outfit were beginning to believe the T on our patch stood for training. It was fall before we left Africa and this time there wasn't any doubt about it. We were headed for the continent. We knew we were going to make an assault landing but no one seemed to know where. We didn't know where we were going but the morale was high. It should have been. We figured we were the best trained outfit in the army. A few days before we landed they told us we were going to Italy for the first crack at the mainland. About the same time we heard that Italy had surrendered. It looked like we weren't going to see any action after all. Not much anyway. On the 9th of September 1943 we landed at Salerno. We didn't have the usual naval bombardment to soften the enemy. The operation was supposed to be a surprise. We were the ones that were surprised. The first assault waves got ashore right while it was still dark. Then the Germans began to let us have it. We were all set to blast us off the beach. Between their artillery in the hills and their planes overhead they almost succeeded. The engineers struggled to clear the beaches of mines and obstacles. We began to push inland. The Germans were waiting for us with machine guns and mortars. We finally got some artillery ashore and that helped a lot. We started moving forward again. Then the Germans attacked with their tanks. We had to fight them with infantry weapons until we got our tank destroyers ashore.  We began pushing inland.  We took them one by one. Hill 140. Hill 386. The fight for hill 424 was a tough one. We took it and lost it. The Germans attacked with their tanks again. They were trying to split our forces and they almost succeeded. The Navy moved in closer and began using their big guns. We got the air support we needed so badly. Finally we even got reinforcements. They flew in some airborne infantry. German attack was broken up. The fighting went on. In less than a week the paratroopers in a bloody fight had retaken hill 424 in Altevella. We had control of the area around Salerno. The Germans began to pull back and the division went into reserve. It was winter before we went into the line again. This time near Mignano to relieve the third was raining and cold when we moved up. The German winter line stretched in front of us, blocking advance to the north. Our job was to break through. To do this we had to drive them from their fortified defensive positions in the hills. There were three of them. With the help of the largest concentration of artillery since El Alamein, we took the first one, Mount Camino Majori. We had to fight to take it. We had to fight harder to hold it. Mount Samucro, hill 1205 was our second objective. It was higher and better fortified. We had a tough time taking it. Mount Lungo was the last German position blocking our way to the north. An Italian brigade had tried to take it and had been cut to pieces. We were more careful. We moved up the back slopes of Mount Lungo under the cover of darkness and attack at dawn. We surprised them and took the hill without a fight. After the fall of Mount Lungo the Germans gave up and began to withdraw. In San Pietro the little town dominating the main highway to the north was ours or what was left of it. But the battle wasn't over. Germans were fighting bitterly to cover their withdrawal. Christmas 1944 found a 36 with some of its battalions reduced to less than company strength, still pushing after the enemy. Slow but steady advance to the north came to a halt at the entrance of the Lyri Valley. Germans had prepared a new line of defense along the Rapido River and they were waiting for us. They didn't have long to wait. We attacked twice and twice we were driven back. Quite a few of our men got across the Rapido but not many came back. After the fight at the Rapido what was left of the division was sent to San Ilya in the north. Here the 36 crossed the river and the freezing cold of mid-February took up defensive positions in the hills around Casino. We didn't have the troops to assault the key German strongholds on Mount Casino and Mount Cairo.  The Air Force tried to get the Germans off Mount Casino. The historic old Benedictine Abbey was destroyed. When it was all over, Germans were still there. Near the end of February with only a fraction of its fighting strength left, the 36 was relieved and sent back to Naples to rest up. Two months later, after refitting and taking on replacements, the division sailed for Anzio to take part in the May offensive. The 36 was in reserve when the big push started to break out from the beachhead. They were committed when the advance of the Fifth Army had come to a halt before veletry. The last German stronghold blocking the way to Rome. The 36 was brought up and ordered to take it. We did. One of the most brilliant and conceived and executed maneuvers of the entire Italian campaign. The attack became a mass infiltration by the division. Under the cover of darkness, we moved through the enemy lines and occupied a high ridge overlooking the town. The engineers put a road in.  The Germans didn't discover us until the following morning. Then it was too late. They attacked. But we held. And the following day our troops entered the veletry. The road to Rome was open. The Germans were pulling back and we were right on their heels. The Romans had already started celebrating their liberation when we entered the city. But we didn't stop. We kept right after the retreating Germans, fighting their rear guards. By the end of June, we had reached Piambino. It was the end of the line for us. The 36 was relieved again. We returned to Salerno to prepare for another assignment. In mid-August, after a month and a half of training and refitting, the 36 sailed for France as part of the 7th Army. Our assignment sounded good. We were going to the Riviera. The only trouble was the Germans were still there. They only hoped they were so busy with the invasion in Normandy. There wouldn't be many of them in the south. We went ashore just below San Rafael. And this time, there was heavy naval and air bombardment. Ending was a surprise. The whole division, with all its supplies and equipment, went ashore on a narrow, rocky strip of beach. We took the key points along the shore and headed inland. This wasn't anything like Salerno. We were moving fast. Some days, we covered as much as 100 miles. That was a good reason for speed. We were racing to cut off the German 19th Army, which had left the Marseille area and was trying to get back to Germany. They were following the Rome Valley. They caught them north of Montilamar. While our reconnaissance elements blocked the main escape routes, artillery went to work on long columns of enemy vehicles that jam the roads, bumper to bumper. Now it was our turn to do the chopping up. They finally broke through, but it took them eight days. They left a lot of their troops and equipment behind. We chased what was left of them as far as Luxel-le-Barre. And then the division stopped for regrouping. When it started out again, the 36 was spearheading the 6th Corps attack across the Marseille. In preparation for the crossing, we attacked Remilmont and Aloys. The fighting was still going on when we made a crossing at Saint Lebois, the point in between. The Marseille bridgehead was established. The 36 pushed into the Vosges mountains after the retreating Germans. And the Vosges advance suddenly slowed down to a crawl. The terrain was bad and it was getting cold. The Germans were putting up a stiff fight. Clearing the Vosges hills was slow and treacherous work. One battalion, the first of the 141st, was cut off and isolated for almost a week without food or water. But they fought off repeated German attacks until they were rescued by the 442nd Nisei Regiment attached to the division. By the end of November, advance elements of the 36 had reached the Saint-Marie Pass. The highest and narrowest pass of the Vosges mountains was heavily fortified and the Germans considered it impregnable. The 36 was ordered to take it. We attacked with a combined assault and flanking movement. We'd used so effectively in Italy. It worked. They told us it was the first time in the modern history that pass had ever been taken. Winners set in, we took the city of Salistat and went on the defensive, guarding a front line over 50 miles long. Early December saw a bit of fighting all along the line. The Germans counterattacked. We almost lost Salistat. We kept it by turning every house we occupied into a fortified position. By Christmas time, the German attack had led up. The 36, after setting a record of 135 continuous days in combat, was relieved and sent to the rear for a rest. It was a short one. On New Year's Eve, 1945, the Germans launched a full scale attack which threatened to cut off and encircle the entire six corps. The 36 was immediately recalled and committed. The call was so intense, the regiment's online duty had to be rotated almost daily. By the end of January, the enemy initiative had died out and we were preparing for a full scale attack. Early in March, the 36 broke through the enemy's defense line along the motor river. By the middle of March, lead elements of the division had crossed into Germany, southeast of Wissenberg and were preparing to attack the Siegfried line. While the lead elements tried to breach the line in the Flatlands, the others took to the heavily wooded hills and attacked the heights, which were important features in the enemy's defense plan. It was a slow, costly fight, struggling up the steep wooded slopes, always under the German guns, locating them and then reducing them one by one. Four days later, after a fierce night attack, elements of the division found themselves behind the impregnable Siegfried line. Berksaberne, Dornbach and Bullenborn fell and enemy resistance in the area crumpled. The breach in the Siegfried opened a floodgate. Now forces poured into Germany and moved on the Rhine. Within a few days, the entire division was drawn up along the Rhine, awaiting orders. For the 36, it looked like the fight was over. They received their first rear area assignment, occupation duty in the Saar Basin. Late in April, the division crossed the Danube and re-entered the 7th Army line at Landsberg, mopping up behind the fast-moving 12th Armored. There was more mopping up in Bavaria. Early in May 1945, we were in Austria. We were busy cleaning up when the war ended. The 36 moved rapidly those last days of the war, but its time was profitably spent. Included in its bag of prisoners were such prominent party and military leaders as von Ronstead and Hermann Göring. Somehow it seemed only fitting that the 36 should be the one to bring in these leaders that played an important part in their downfall. In 20 months of combat, it won a reputation as an outfit that could be depended upon to accomplish the impossible. The hardship its troops had endured and the heroism they had displayed had also won for it 10 presidential unit citations and 15 congressional medals of honor. The cost had been high, some 27,000 casualties. But the 36th Infantry Division had earned the right to take its place among the great fighting outfits of all time.


Tell us if you'd be happy to be back in the Soccer Roo's. Yeah, it's a great achievement for myself and I'm very, very happy and proud to be selected in these two friendly games and I hope to go on a pitch and prove myself worthy. Delighted for Tommy, we're delighted for any player from our club that gets selected for the national team. We've got some youngsters with the young Soccer Roo's which is fantastic and getting Tommy involved now. It's great news for the club and we're really pleased for the boy. It's a great win for our club and it sets us up with an opportunity of going to the semi-final and we've maintained that all along and that's what we want to achieve out of these two games. We have a lot of belief in the group. We know what we're up against when we go there. It will be a hostile crowd against an excellent opponent but we have our noses in front and we'll do everything we can to keep us there and try and get through it. We're going to need everyone to be on their game. They're going to throw everything at us and on and off the pitch as well so that's something that we're going to be prepared for and we're definitely looking forward to the challenge. We have a good record away so we will go there with a lot of confidence, of course under the standing who we're up against and where we are but our record has been very good in the Champions League away from home thus far and another strong performance in China we feel can get us through. They might change a few things having two key players out of the match and receiving red cards in the previous game so it's definitely going to be a little bit different but like I mentioned we're definitely looking forward to the challenge. It's exciting. He's a young talented player that we've been monitoring. It would be good to get him here into our environment. He's had a bit of a tough time of a late Latio but we feel here in the A-League he certainly has a potential to do really well. We can help improve the player and also we see him be an asset for our club.


Welcome to Hawaii Together on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm your host, Kili Akina, president of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. This week marks one year since Governor Josh Green announced his first emergency order intended to speed up the construction of Kahale for the homeless or houseless. It also marked six months since the governor signed his first emergency order, waving many land use, zoning and environmental laws to foster more home building. Since then, he's updated that order three times and says that he intends to continue the state of housing emergency for up to a year. So my question today is, how have these regulatory waivers worked out? And that's the topic for our program today. My guest is Andrew Luff. He goes by Drew for short. He's a research associate at the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii and a policy fellow at Housing Hawaii's Future. Perhaps most impressive is that Drew is still in high school. He came to my attention when I was reading the Star Advertiser and saw his op-ed, which the newspaper had published. Drew is a junior at Radford High School where he's developed his research and writing skills at the school's newspaper, The Rampage. Welcome, Drew. Thanks for joining us on the program today. Well, we're so glad that you're here. And I just wanna ask you a few questions about an area in which you have become a bit of an expert so far and you're helping us to do research in that area. What got you interested in housing policy here in the state of Hawaii? Yeah, so my dad is in the military. So we moved here in June, 2022. And it's one of the first things we noticed when we came here was how expensive everything was, especially housing in Hawaii. And that really made me wonder why it was so expensive. And then seeing all the homeless people made me wonder what could be done to solve the problem. Now, from your research, how would you characterize Hawaii's housing policy? Yeah, so right now, Hawaii's housing policy, I would say is kind of discorrent. You have some agencies trying to build housing and then you have others that are making that very difficult. It's been clear though for a while that a large part of the problem is the complicated regulatory system, but no one has really addressed that yet in its entirety. The most we've seen is kind of limited exceptions for certain types of projects. And I think that in their current form, Governor Green's emergency orders are a continuation of that. Well, let's talk a little bit about some of the things Governor Green is doing. You've been doing a lot of research on his emergency orders, which have waived various laws to speed up the construction of shelters for the homeless and housing in general. Could you summarize a little bit of these laws that these emergency decrees are trying to address? Yeah, so there are a lot of laws in these proclamations. And I think that speaks to how large of a problem there is original proclamation on housing, waived eight entire chapters and then 32 individual sections of the wire by statutes. I'm not gonna talk about all of those, but I can tell you about a few real quick. So chapter six C was one of the more controversial and that was that relates to historic preservation and preservation of EV Capuna. And then chapter 46 relates to county organization, including zoning, which is very important. And then there are three chapters, chapter 76, chapter 89, chapter 89 C, which all are related to the civil service. Chapter 92, that's another controversial one. And that's the sunshine law. So like all the practices of how the government has to be transparent. Sections 3.1 and 4A of chapter 205, those relate to the state land use commission, which is like a statewide zoning board basically. So that was controversial too. And then sections 1601 or 1612, those deal with school impact fees, which are another hurdle and another controversial one was chapter 343, which deals with environmental impact statements. Andrew, there's certainly a wide array of laws that are addressed by the governor's emergency decrees. And he's had to revise his order a couple of times for various reasons, mainly in response to legal challenges. Can you let us know which laws are still suspended and which got removed from the orders? Yes, so the ones that are still suspended are the laws dealing with county organization and zoning, the civil service laws and school impact fees, those are all still suspended, but the ones that have been restored and are not in the proclamation anymore are the ones relating to historic preservation, the sunshine law, the land use commission and environmental impact statements. Well, let's talk about some of those, about these laws which were removed from the order. Why do you think the governor backtracked on these? Yeah, so I think this was largely to avoid a court challenge because these were all laws that were specifically listed in the earth justice lawsuit that has since been withdrawn. So it was a measure of public activism that made the difference in these cases. Okay, so about the laws that are still suspended, for example, the state's civil service law, what was the reason for suspending that? Yeah, so the reason to suspend that was some of the counties wanted to hire third party reviewers for building permits because it takes a very long time to get a building permit in Hawaii. So when the Hawaii Housing Backbook came out this June, it took, the median time was 153 days in Honolulu County, 174 days in Maui, 182 days in Kauai, and if you're on the big island in Hawaii County, it took 458 days to get a building permit. And the reason they're not normally allowed to use third party reviewers is the state Supreme Court has interpreted chapter 76 to mean that any job that has been done by a civil servant cannot be privatized. So, and the reason they're unable to fill these positions is the hiring process is much longer than in the private sector can take up to six months to hire civil servants and this discourages a lot of applicants from applying. Well, this certainly creates a challenge to accomplish the goals that the governor has set out to do. What about the state's mandated school impact fees? You've looked at that, haven't you? And how did these fees work? Why were they suspended? Yeah, so the way school impact fees work is that they are charged to no builders that build homes in a school impact district. Purpose of them is to raise money to build schools and like growing areas. These fees, they vary by district. They're all several thousand dollars per unit though. And this will add up, especially if you have a larger building. And they're kind of not ideal because they in effect punish people that build housing. And all the intent was they would be paid by the developers in reality. They get passed on to the renters or buyers of the housing. Andrew, do you have any further comments on the other laws that remain suspended? Yeah, so I guess the last one I wanted to talk about was chapter 46, which deals with the counties and it's especially important because it deals with zoning. So in Hawaii, about 4% of our total land is zoned for housing. And of that, only 7.5% is zoned for multi-family housing. So what this means is that of the total land, 0.3% is zoned for multi-family housing which is more affordable. And this creates high land costs for that teensy bit of land where you can build multi-family housing and rezoning land is very difficult. Right now you have to go all the way to the county council to get it rezoned. And it's a discretionary approval which means that they use their personal judgment. So it's kind of unpredictable too then and it makes it harder. So what would be a better solution would be five, right? So what that means is instead of using their personal judgment, you would have set criteria where if the project meets the criteria such as like infrastructure needs or whatnot, it can be, it must be approved to be rezoned. And what this would do is it would make costs slower by increasing the predictability for home builders and would make it easier for them to respond to the market demands. Well, Andrew, you have certainly summed up a very complex issue and have said some things that a lot of folks, even our public officials are not fully cognizant. You've talked about what kind of caps the supply of land here in Hawaii having a zoning of only 4% in our state available for housing and the process even that small amount developed. Now, when you look at everything that you have studied in terms of the governor's emergency orders, how would you characterize the results of the emergency housing orders so far? Have they been successful or are they on the track towards success? So despite all the controversy and lawsuits around these, the impact hasn't been that large. It's in fact, the proclamations have only been used once and that was to waive school impact fees for an office to housing conversion at 1060 Bishop Street. So I think that kind of speaks for itself so far. There hasn't been a lot of interest, I guess, in this. And I think probably the reasons why is that people might be a little hesitant to use this because, for example, in the earth justice lawsuit, that was to be successful. They wanted all of the exemptions to be undone if they were successful. So that creates some uncertainty there. And then there's already many avenues or specifically affordable housing to go through the pipeline. So it doesn't change that much. It's really just replacing one set of discretionary approvals with another. And they only have one year to take advantage of this and that's really not that much time for how much housing we need. Certainly that impact has not been very widespread. Now, what about the individual home builder who may want to get an exemption approved under the emergency order and build? How would that home builder go about doing that? Yeah, so this might explain why the take up has been a little slow. So first of all, it is affordable housing proclamation. So the second, third and fourth ones after his original one. Now your project must be defined as a portable housing. So if it's not for zero to 140% of the area median income, it doesn't qualify anymore. So you need to qualify. And then the bill beyond barriers working group needs to determine that you have the necessary skill resources and resources to complete the project. And you must be able to commence work within 36 months. And then if you meet those, you have to submit a pretty comprehensive application to the working group. And you still have to get public input. And then there's also some new challenges like you must pay prevailing wages, you use any of the exemptions. It sounds as though there's still a lot of complexity to the process. You mentioned the build beyond barriers group. Do you have any thoughts about how well that has worked out? Yeah, so it sounds like many people even in the group were hoping it would be more efficient. Like I think I read it took them 30 minutes to approve a single exemption. And that was the same one I discussed earlier, the office conversion. So still seems like they're taking a long amount of time to do these things. So it's really just a temporary workaround, but we would like to see is probably more by right approvals. Now overall, would you say the governor's emergency order serves as a blueprint for lawmakers who want to make permanent reforms? Given of course that the emergency reforms are short-term, there's only so long that the emergency can remain in effect. But what about long-term solutions? Can legislators take a look at what the governor is suggesting in his emergency orders and work toward permanent changes in our regulatory climate? Yeah, I think the laws that get suspended by the proclamation, if you look at those, I think legislators will find reasons why most of them should be reformed. But of course, a lot of the solutions in the proclamation are temporary and would probably not be the best way to move forward with a permanent solution. In terms of the balance of powers, and you've studied the Constitution where we have three branches of government, the executive, the legislative and the judiciary, and they keep each other in check. So in terms of the balance of powers, do you think emergency orders are the best way to proceed in terms of dealing with the kind of situation we have with regard to housing? No, I think we've seen the limitations of this approach definitely. We've seen that it's vulnerable to lawsuits and it's not ideal now. I think what we would like to see is the legislature really take this up in the next session and try to figure out some more permanent reforms. Well, Andrew, it's just been remarkable listening to your depth of knowledge on this subject. And I'm all the more impressed by the fact that you're still completing your high school education and have much further education and a career path ahead of you and so forth. And there are many activities you could be engaged in at this time. I don't know how many high school students are engaged in public policy in the way you are. And I just wanted to ask you, what draws you to working with groups like our organization, the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii and also Housing Hawaii's future? Yeah, so I've always been a little interested in these sorts of things. Like when I was little I would draw like maps of cities on like a paper table cloth or play a game or I'd pretend to be like a president of some sort. But I think it's a very good opportunity to try to leave Hawaii better than I found it and try to make it a place where the next generation can have a chance to realize their potential. Well, it's great work that you're doing and I appreciate the things you're volunteering at. For example, a friend of ours is Sterling Higa, the director of Hawaii of Housing Hawaii's future. You worked with him to co-author a brief for Housing Hawaii's future relating to parking minimums. The requirements for the amount of parking that would be necessary to get a permit for a building project. Could you explain a little bit of what that's all about? Yeah, so like you said, parking minimum is the minimum number of off-street parking spaces that a development must provide or to be within the code. And often what happens is parking minimums require home builders and communities to build more parking than they need. And this comes, of course, at the expense of housing. So parking is very expensive, especially in Hawaii. So in urban Honolulu, a single spot in like a podium parking garage is around $42,000 to build. And you have to maintain it after that too. And even a surface parking spot on Oahu is around $22,000 to build. So including the cost of land too in there. So it's not cheap and it's using resources that could have been used for housing. So what you will also see parking minimums do is discourage smaller units and developments because proportionately more parking must be provided for these smaller units compared to their size. And that doesn't really pencil out very often for developers so you don't see these kinds of things get built without exemptions. So parking minimums also will harm lower income people, the environment and walkability. So if Hawaii policy makers want to make housing cheaper and get improvement in these areas, they should look at removing parking minimums. This whole issue of housing policy, I take it, is not just a dispassionate debate topic for you, but it's something that probably you've thought of will affect your own future and the future of your peers in school at this time here in the state of Hawaii. Have you talked to others? What do individuals in your generation think about their prospects to be able to start a career in Hawaii and be able to afford a home in Hawaii and so forth? Yeah, so unfortunately some of my friends have decided that they're not gonna start their career in Hawaii and the high cost of housing is a big influence on that decision. Some of my other friends, they do wanna stay but they know that housing in the high cost of living will be a struggle for them. And I think we're losing some very smart and talented people this way. Is there a lack of hope?  What are their thoughts about the prospects of an improved Hawaii in terms of housing costs and career opportunities? Yeah, so my one friend said he had given up hope but the rest of them are cautiously optimistic, I guess they believe that it can be done that Hawaii can make housing more affordable but they know it will not be easy, will not be easy and it will take everyone working together. Andrew, if you were one day, some day governor or in a position to influence the legislature, what would you do for Hawaii in terms of its housing needs? Yeah, so I would try to make the process easier for all developments, mainly by using borough rules so that it would create more consistency and predictability in the system. And I think there's lots of places where we can remove redundancy such as with the state land use commission or inexpensively make the system faster by like changing the civil service laws to make it better to hire people. So I think it'll just take a lot of small changes but it'll take some permanent changes as well. We've tried lots of temporary measures to solve this problem but I think it's time for some more permanent measures as well. Well, very well put. It's been a delight talking with you, Andrew and appreciate your service to the community and look forward to seeing all the great things that will happen in terms of your further education and career. And thank you for working with the Grassroot Institute. Thank you for having me. Well, everyone, I hope you're as impressed as I am with our guests today. Andrew Lough is a student at Radford High School deeply concerned about the community here in Hawaii and doing something about that right now. I'm looking forward to seeing what will happen in his future, not just in his life but in terms of what we talked about today, the cost of living and quality of life here in Hawaii a state from which many are fleeing right now to find places across the mainland with lower cost of living and more opportunities. We're fighting to correct that trend so that people, if they choose, can stay in Hawaii. And I want to thank you very much for tuning in today and we'll talk with you again next time we're here on Think Tech of Hawaii's Hawaii Together. Until then, I'm Kaley Iakina with the Grassroot Institute, wishing you a law.


Hi, I'm Dr. Lewis Myers and welcome to Health Care Today. May is graduation season, along with flowers blooming, and across the country a cohort of fourth year medical students will be walking across the stage, receiving their diplomas and becoming new physicians. Most of them will go on to residency training and their specialties. Today we're going to talk to two fourth year medical students, senior medical students at the University of Vermont's Larner Medical School about their experience in medical school and their plans for the future. I'd like to introduce Anna Shambi, who is originally from Princeton, New Jersey. She went to Middlebury College. She did some post-baccalaureate work at University of Vermont and is now a fourth year student at University of Vermont Medical Center. She will be going next year to George Washington University in Washington, D.C. to specialize in obstetrics and gynecology. Mr. Ben Weaver grew up in Bedford, Massachusetts. He went to the University of Vermont for undergraduate and he will be going to Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts to specialize in radiology. Welcome to you both. I know this is a busy time of year as you try and transition and get ready for next year. We're going to talk a little bit about your experiences. It began before you got into medical school.  I'll start with you, Anna. So I knew somewhat early on that I wanted to go into medicine. I had read books by Atul Gawande in high school and ultimately went to Middlebury College where I studied international and global studies because I was interested in how cultures work and societies function and how people exist in the world, but was also really interested in the science of how humans work as well and realized that medicine was really the perfect blend of it. Atul Gawande talks a lot about how medicine is really the art and science of medicine and I think OBGYN, specifically, you see a lot of the sociocultural, sociopolitical workings in how people seek care and how people receive care as well. So that's what drew me initially. And then how about University of Vermont? What about, of course, you went to school in Middlebury. Was there something about Larner Medical School that called to you? A number of reasons. I think studying in a place as beautiful as Vermont was a big draw. Seeing the mountains from the anatomy lab was something that you really don't get to see elsewhere. And then really the active learning curriculum where we as students are not just sitting in lectures but really working together in the first, particularly the first two years of classroom learning. We're going to talk about that in just a minute. It's a very interesting program at UVM. Ben, how about you? What led you into medicine and why you at University of Vermont? Yeah, I think there were a couple of things that were, that I was thinking about when I wanted to decide on a career. I had grown up in kind of a science household. My dad was a chemist growing up and I knew that I loved the sciences. So I think when I was graduating from undergrad, I was kind of considering what direction I wanted to head in. Did I want to, I think I wanted to pursue graduate school but I wasn't sure. So I actually took a year off. I spent a year in Washington DC and I was volunteering full time down there. I was a tutor and a mentor to students in a under-resourced community. And I think at that moment I realized that I really wanted to make sure that I committed my life to helping other people. And so I think it was a really natural thing for me to say, hey, I already know that I really enjoy the sciences and I feel compelled to do them. But I also want to make sure that I'm doing something every day, that I feel confident that I'm waking up and I'm doing something for the betterment of other people, I suppose. And then I saw you nodding your head when Anne was talking about the University of Vermont and the beautiful mountains. What else drew you up here? Yeah, I think she hit the nail on the head, really. I think the other component that she is probably thinking about as well is that just the, I think really great sense of culture and community and I think collegiality between all of us as med students was really, really great here. I know that during my four years here, I really was shocked with the number of close friends that I was able to make and the strong sense of support that I got from both my classmates, but also the administration and the faculty as well. And that does not happen everywhere in every medical school. So that's very nice to hear.  They call them the preclinical years and then the third and fourth year, you begin to work with patients and learn from professors who are actually in the field. University of Vermont has changed that a little bit. As have many medical schools now, students are now exposed a little earlier now to clinical experiences. But in particular at the University of Vermont, there's this program that you alluded to the small groups. Do you want to tell us a little more about that? I will say traditionally those basic sciences were taught in large lecture halls with a professor droning or lecturing on students when they could stay awake, taking notes, and then you were tested on what the professor had said. Tell us about what University of Vermont does, which is a little bit different. Ben, please jump in this. But the active learning curriculum is based on a flipped classroom model. So students are prepared for the next day's material ahead of time, either the night before or a couple of days before, and then come into class. And instead of having the traditional lectures, like you said in the rote learning, we engage in problem-based case-based learning and work together. We quite literally sit in groups of tables and work through problems together. And then those are interspersed oftentimes with sort of many lectures to clarify certain topics. But our entire preclinical curriculum was based on this flipped classroom model. Now students, medical students have to take step one of the boards, usually at the end of the first two years. And that goes over the basic sciences. And it's important that they be able to pass those tests. University of Vermont has had this program in place now for several years as the pass rate on step one holding steady. You know, I can't comment. I actually don't know. I imagine so, though. Is that true? I believe so, yes. And when you got to your clinical years, was it helpful to have been in these small groups, do you think? Or do you think it made, of course you don't know from the lectures. But what about this kind of learning help, do you think? I think when you're working in the small groups, you are required to kind of voice out loud your opinions about certain things. And I think sometimes when we're working in clinical teams, that is what we talk about. Or we do end up having to speak out loud about physiology and anatomy. And in a way, working in those small groups kind of helps grease the groove so that we're already feeling comfortable doing those things. I also think it kind of facilitated a really sense of support and community amongst us as students. And I think that translated well to when we got to the clinics, to our clinical rotations, rather. So that we knew that when we were in those teams, we really did want to work as a team because we knew that we were better off supporting one another than we were working individually. Was there any downside that you could see to having the small group, learning through the small group? It's a lot at first. It's certainly a new experience. Definitely, I'd worked in a couple of small groups in college, but not to the extent that we were doing it every single day for most of the day. So I think there is an adjustment period to doing it. Like I said, every single day, preparing beforehand the night before. But then I think you do catch and do a rhythm towards the middle of that first couple of months. And then by that point, you feel like you know what you need to do and you know what sort of things are high yield and important and what sort of things you can maybe just save for a later date. That's super important. So then you move on to the clinical years, third and fourth year. Third year, of course, usually involves going from one rotation to the next, different specialties, learning some of the basics of those clinical fields. Fourth year, you continue to, you can start to choose some electives and also I believe you do an acting internship where you essentially function as an intern but under very close supervision from the rest of the team. Tell us about those years. In particular, I think last year's graduating class was probably even more affected by COVID. But certainly yours may have been affected as well. Talk to us a little bit about how COVID affected your training and also what those clinical years have been like for you. Sure. So I actually did my clinical rotations down at our branch campus in Connecticut where we have two community hospitals that we can rotate at, Danbury and Norwalk hospitals. So the transition from Vermont down to Connecticut was certainly affected by COVID. We had become really quite close to it as a group largely because of the pandemic and also just because UVM fosters that sort of environment. And so being physically separate from my classmates was certainly difficult, but we formed a cohort down there as well and really supported each other through probably, in my opinion, probably the toughest year of medical school. What was that? Third or fourth year? Third year, yes. Because there's a huge transition from being in the classroom to being essentially working in a hospital. And it was, I think, very interesting in Connecticut, particularly that area being sort of the New York Metro area seeing just how much the pandemic had affected people's access to care and also the stress on the workforce. I think particularly in the two hospitals I was in, see the hospital staff working maybe more hours or being completely understaffed as well. And so learning to integrate yourself into that team and not only be a medical student and try to learn, but also balance that with trying to be helpful in a particularly stressful time was something that I think I really got to learn because of the pandemic. How about you, Ben? Yeah, I think I do want to echo what Anna said. About third year kind of being the most challenging of the years of medical school where we are transitioning from a preclinical year or a preclinical curriculum to actually being in the hospital and really trying to apply what we're learning. COVID I think did kind of compound on that and make things a little bit more difficult because not only were we moving from a preclinical to a clinical curriculum, but we were moving from primarily online curriculum to an in-person curriculum. So there was a little bit of an adjustment period of, I guess, learning how to go back into the workforce and be in person and kind of navigate all the different rules and regulations surrounding COVID as well within the hospital. On the plus side though, I did feel like when the pandemic first happened and everything seemed to go remote, we did seem like we were able to still bond and connect and kind of feel like we had gone through a really challenging and unique experience in life together. And I think that sort of fostered a really deep sense of community amongst our classmates is knowing that not only did we make it through med school together, but we made it through COVID together too. Ben and I actually, we were part of a small group where we tried to keep the active learning curriculum alive through Zoom. And so we would still work through problems together as a group, but just do it all over Zoom. And so we did that a couple of times, even though some of us left Vermont and were scattered. Yeah, I came of age during training during the AIDS epidemic. And I think that in the 1990s, and I think there are some similar echoes in that time that you've gone through now with COVID.  Most people, as I said, go into residency training, which can vary anywhere from three years to case of neurosurgery up to eight years. And it's very interesting, we were talking about this before, there is something called Match Day for fourth year students across the country. And that's one day, it's kind of like the NFL or the NBA draft, because on that one day, everyone gets their envelopes and they see where they're gonna be going based on the choices they had put in prior to that and what the programs, how the programs evaluated them. So it's a very big day. Tell us a little bit about Match Day. What was your experience, Anna? It was a whirlwind of a day. It really ends up being Match Week. It's kind of a two part process where on Monday of Match Week, we get a letter saying we did match and really that's kind of when you get to breathe this big sigh of relief and say like, you know, I'm going to the next step and I'm going somewhere to continue my training, which is what you want when you've applied into the match and then on the Friday of that week is when you get to open up the letter that says exactly where it is that you're going and that's an emotionally challenging and unique experience because I can't think of another time in my life where I'm gonna open up a letter that's gonna tell me where I'm gonna go for the next, in my case, like five years. So, you know, I know that there are some classmates that are thrilled when they open the letter and they're absolutely ecstatic that they're going to their top choice. I know Anna is going to her top choice so she's absolutely thrilled. But I know that there are other people too that are a little bit more disappointed and I think there's, I think, you know, from speaking to my classmates at this point now we're all a little bit, even if we're not going to our top choice, we're still finding the silver linings to things and looking on the positives and kind of seeing it as an opportunity to grow in a different place that we maybe didn't expect. It also feels like the culmination of, you know, eight plus years, college, medical school, and even before that of work to get to where we want to be and so it's really very emotional. Well, you realize you're going to be, in your case, no BG1, you're going to be a radiologist, you're already, maybe it's the first day you begin to take on that, for real, that professional identity. Anna spoke about why, how she came to choose OBGYN. How about you and radiology? You know, I had an inkling coming into medical school that I was interested in radiology. I actually, I'd worked for a minute as a medical scribe for a little while prior to entering medical school and I had an experience where I was working with a physician who I developed a pretty close relationship with and prior to seeing a patient, he wanted to review a CT scan prior to seeing them in the room and he walked me through the anatomy of the CT scan and it was the first time I'd ever opened up and looked at any sort of medical imaging before and I remember just getting this really big grin develop across my face because I was blown away that we were able to look inside this person's body and see what was going on with their, in this case, their kidneys were over-distended. So I have a very specific memory of saying like, wow, that is absolutely incredible that we can do that. And so when I made it to medical school, you know, I still wasn't totally sold on radiology. I felt like I would have a hard time seeing myself in my ideal self as being a doctor but still working as a radiologist. So I definitely still tried to commit myself to several different specialties. I actually was surprised at how much I liked OBGYN. But when it came down to it, when it came to the fourth year, I had the chance to rotate through interventional radiology, which is a specific field of radiology that allows you to do image guided minimally invasive procedures. And I felt like I got to have this perfect balance of doing procedures, working with incredible technology but still getting to see patients every day and feeling like I am the doctor that I wanna be. Well, interventional radiology is a terrific field and in fact, many of the procedures that surgeons used to do now, interventional radiologists do, it's perhaps somewhat less invasively. So it's always changing. I wanna ask each of you a specific question about your chosen profession. For radiology, we've been reading recently, of course, artificial intelligence is having its moment and its moment may go on for quite some time. But the field that it seems to be affecting most immediately is radiology. We're reading that computer algorithms can read mammograms all day long without getting tired and in fact can read them perhaps with increased accuracy and other imaging studies as well. In the radiologists that you've spoken to, are they concerned? Are they happy? Are they concerned about their profession? What are you hearing? You know, it's been interesting for me as I've spoken to different faculty members across the different specialties. The radiologists do not seem to be particularly concerned about AI. In fact, they seem to be welcoming of it because they do understand that there are components of their job that could be automated by computer and probably done with a higher degree of accuracy. But I still think that they know that there is more than just looking at a couple of pixels on a screen and deciding you're able to make a clinical judgment about a patient. So as much as there are components that I think are going to be automated and I certainly welcome those things because I think they're tedious and a little bit boring, there are still much greater components of radiology that I think will not be replaceable for at least the foreseeable future. Certainly the interventional radiologists will continue to do what they do. That's right and I feel, you know, I know that that's a, the direction that I wanna head in with my career is interventional radiology, which I know will certainly not be replaced by artificial intelligence anytime soon because it involves hands-on interactions with patients. Yeah. And Anna, you spoke earlier about the fact that OBGYN brings in different cultures and you'll be in Washington DC, which is certainly a multicultural city and region and you'll be at my alma mater, George Washington University, so I wish you all the best there. You are going into the profession that perhaps more than any other, unfortunately right now is under the political crosshairs. And I'm not going to ask you your opinions on abortion in this interview, but there is so much, particularly obstetricians have been really in the crosshairs of this discussion. How does that impact you or how do you foresee that impacting you? I think like many other future OBGYNs, I've been very, very motivated by that. I think it can feel very overwhelming to think about the gravity of what's happening in our country and the political issues and the intricacies of bureaucracy and figuring out exactly the policies. But I think what I try to focus on is that our day-to-day interactions, one-on-one interactions with patients are what is really going to end up mattering the most. And so I'm hoping to really focus on that while also staying in tune with all the broader political issues. And I think being in our nation's capital will be a very interesting place to be for thinking about reproductive access and abortion rights. Is the field facing a lack of obstetricians in the future? Because of, well, various things. First of all, it's a very difficult residency in terms of the hours that you'll be spending in the nighttime, people have babies all night long. So you'll be up all night long for the next several years. But aside from the difficulty of the residency itself, are there, is it facing a lack of obstetricians? From what you know. My understanding is that actually match rates have, have decreased in the past years, meaning that there actually have been more applicants to OBGYN. And I think largely because it in some ways is a very, very biased, but is a very attractive specialty because it blends the procedural, also with a longitudinal primary care component. And again, I think many people are motivated by the political climate to go into OBGYN and make some kind of a difference in patients' lives or in our society. How about radiology? Are the numbers still robust? I mean, when I remember 20 years ago, it was one of the toughest residencies to match to to get accepted to. How about now? I actually do think this was a record year for diagnostic radiology applicants. I think there were, I think it was also a decreasing match rate is what you would say. So there are more applicants than there are positions that can be filled. And I do wonder if there's a component of the COVID-19 pandemic playing into that because I think during the pandemic, when everybody became remote, I think they started to realize how perhaps attractive a remote position can be in diagnostic radiology, certainly not entirely remote, but it can be and it lends itself well to that. So I do wonder if that played a role.  My experience is a lot of times radiologists, it's a very singular kind of profession, you're in a dark room looking at a screen and not having that much interaction. What do you, how do you envision that? Yeah, as a diagnostic radiologist, it's interesting because you do get to speak with almost every physician in the hospital.  So being able to let a physician know in real time that there's something urgently that needs to be done based on a scan, letting them know the details, if they have an important clinical question that maybe involves being in a gray area, so to speak, about what next to be done, those are times when physicians will come and speak with their radiologists. And then there's a sense of camaraderie within the reading room as well. Certainly if you're sitting in a dark room with a bunch of, with your colleagues, for 50 hours a week, you certainly become close with them and you get to share fun stories and get to know them really well as well. In the cave, as it were. In the cave, that's right. Well, before we finish, I thought maybe I'd ask each of you to remember one patient, obviously without names, but one patient experience that affected you in these, particularly in these last two years, third and fourth year. Anna, can you think of one patient in particular? I actually wrote about this patient in my personal statement to residency programs. We had a patient in the gynecologic oncology clinic, so a cancer, reproductive cancer clinic, and this patient walked in and, as a medical student, I go in first and usually you open with, hi, I'm Anna, I'm a medical student. What brings you in today? And this patient said, I actually have no idea why I'm here. And in that moment, I realized how reproductive health in particular, I think, there are some barriers to medical knowledge and access to understanding exactly sort of what goes on at the bottom. What did they mean by that? They had no idea why they were... They didn't know exactly why the appointment had been made and why they had been told to show up. And ultimately is because they were being enrolled for a HPV vaccine trial. This patient had recurrent, was at risk for cervical cancer. And so they had been advised to come to this clinic, but they had thought that there was something wrong. They were experiencing some pelvic pain as well and thought that there was something wrong with their ovaries. And so when I left and came back with the attending physician, he actually sat down with the patient, brought out a blank sheet of paper and started drawing the anatomy of reproductive anatomy. And I realized that in that moment, there's a lot of room for health education and particularly around women's health. And that, I think, has stuck with me as something that I hope to be able to do is to clearly explain to patients and meet them where they're at in terms of their medical knowledge and literacy. Did you ever get to see that patient again? Did they come back? I did not, no. Ben, what do you think? Can you remember one? Yeah, I had one patient interaction that really stuck out to me for a number of different reasons. It was the first patient that was assigned to me on my internal medicine clerkship. And the chief resident at the time told me that there was an admission overnight and it seemed like a typical case of community acquired pneumonia. So it sounded like a great place for a young medical student to start out. When I met the patient, I think this was the first time that I experienced what's called counter-transference where I felt like the patient reminded me of a lot of my dad and that gave me a lot of, I think it tugged at my heartstrings a little bit and made me feel like I was kind of instantaneously connected to this guy. He was a farmer from Vermont. He wasn't somebody that seen a lot of doctors in his life. He was a little bit standoffish and maybe a bit of a curmudgeon, but that kind of made me like him a little bit more. And as it turns out, this was also an interesting case from a clinical perspective. He didn't have a typical community acquired pneumonia. He ended up having a uncommon fungal infection of the lung that actually had disseminated to parts of his spine as well. So from a clinical perspective and then also a radiologic perspective, he had very interesting findings in an interesting hospital course. So as part of the treatment for this fungal infection, we had to give him a pretty nasty antifungal medication that unfortunately he had an allergic reaction to that required a rapid response called to his room because he was having difficulty breathing. And so I remember hearing that and I remember instantaneously becoming a little bit defensive and a little bit upset that, you know, that sort of thing had happened to him. And I think the component that really made me feel defensive was when the infectious disease folks said, well, you know, that is the medication that needs to be given to him. You're just going to have to pretreat him. And it felt like to me at the time as a young medical student that that was a little bit careless and I kind of wanted to protect this person from having to go through that pretty nasty medication again and having that nasty reaction, ultimately everything worked out fine. Obviously the infectious disease folks know exactly what they're doing. But so I think the bottom line of that story is that sense of defensiveness and feeling like I needed to protect this person from what I felt like was a treatment that might hurt him and that would maybe worry about him was the first time that I noticed that I had that sense of counter-transference in seeing somebody that was close to me in a patient that I was working with. Well, it's also the Hippocratic Earth oath, right? First, do no harm. That's right. Which is important. Well, I think that is a really important lesson that both of you talked about. And if you hadn't before, when you go through medical school, you see death for the first time up close and personal. Any particular reaction to that when do you remember first patient that died? You know, so the patient that I just spoke about with when I did follow up with them in a couple of months and by follow up with them, I mean, see how they had gone through the medical system. Unfortunately, it did pass away only a few months after their diagnosis and their treatment and it wasn't clear what had happened to them. Just to say that they had been deceased. So that was certainly a tough thing to see, although it's different when you are seeing the person, I suppose, in real life as opposed to just seeing their chart. You know, when you open their chart and you see the words deceased over there, and obviously your heart sinks a little bit, but I don't think it has the same magnitude as seeing it happen firsthand. Well, speaking of magnitude, it is quite, when you walk across the stage, I don't know if you'll be going left to right, but when you start on the left side of the stage, what is graduation day? May 21st. May 21st, okay. When you walk across the stage, when you get to the right side of the stage, you will be in a very different place. You'll be a physician's. And I remember thinking that the first thought I had was because I was taking a plane the next day somewhere and I said, oh my gosh, if they say is there a doctor in the plane, I'm gonna have to raise my hand, stand up or something. But it is, you're taking on a great responsibility. It sounds like you both have prepared well. And I think that University of Vermont's medical school, Larner Medical School has served you well, it sounds like. And I wish you both all the best. Thank you for joining us today and good luck. Thank you for having us. Yeah, thank you for having us. This was great.