Welcome to Sheboygan County government working for you. My name's Adam Payne, County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Mike Van Der Stien. Yes, you heard me. Mike Van Der Stien, as you may have saw on the paper and knew from watching previous programs, Chairman Gehring after a five year tenure has moved on. And Mike Van Der Stien was just elected by the County Board this week. And we're very pleased to have him with us. Welcome, Mike. Thank you very much, Adam. We're looking forward to continuing the program and focusing on departments and providing overviews of departments. And today our guest is Nan Todd, who is the clerk of courts. And Nan, it's good to have you back. Good to be back, Adam. And welcome, Mike. I'm very glad to see that you were elected on Tuesday night. And I look forward to working with you. Thank you very much. It's been a bit of a whirlwind right now. Chairman Van Der Stien is in the midst of his making his committee appointments and the executive committee will be taking that up. I know this is a tape delayed program, but County Board will be meeting soon to reorganize and just a lot going on. But one of the many program responsibilities or department responsibilities that just continues to go on is the important work of the clerk of courts department. And Nan, please begin by sharing a little bit about yourself and when you first were elected to the clerk of courts. I've been actually in the clerk of courts department for 30 years this year. I was elected in 2000, took office January 1st. And yes, it was New Year's Day, 2001. We actually did the swearing in on New Year's Day that year. A little tough, but we managed. I'm single at the moment. I'm widowed as Mike served on City Council with my husband many years ago. That's where I first met Mike. I have one son who lives in California, two beautiful little grandsons, seven and three, who keep their parents busy. And I don't get to see them very often, but I still enjoy them. Well, very nice. So 30 years with the County in this department. And I know it was a two-year term for a clerk of court. And now it's a four-year term. That's correct. So you've been the clerk of court again for how many years? This is actually in my third term. Your third term. Very good, very good. Now, if you've ever had to pay a fine or if you ever asked to be on jury duty, chances are you're familiar with Nan or her staff or certainly this department. And how would you describe, in short, the roles and responsibilities of the clerk of court's department? My department actually is charged with maintaining all of the records of the circuit courts, which includes keeping track of all the cases that are filed in court, doing all the scheduling for the courts, maintaining the jury system, managing that, staffing the courts, and just a myriad of responsibilities, also collecting all the fines, forfeitures, filing fees, making sure that all the judgments are prepared properly, do all the sentencing documents, and all of the orders that come out of family and civil type cases. So if someone's pulled over and receives a speeding ticket, they're either stopping in at your office or sending that payment into your office? If they have been stopped by a county sheriff's deputy or by the Wisconsin State Patrol. Very good. Circuit courts, how many does Sheboygan County have? We have five circuit courts. We have one full time and one part time court commissioner also that hears cases. Specifically, they do the small claims actions and the court commissioner every day does what we call our lockups. Anybody who's been arrested the night before and is in jail waiting for their initial appearance for the bond to be set appears before the court commissioner. So five circuit courts, you're providing response support for those circuit courts. How many staff do you work with? I have a staff of 29, I'm sorry. 29, it was originally 32 when I took office and over the years we've managed to put in some savings in ways that we've streamlined some of our activities and I've managed to reduce staff through attrition. Okay. Our viewers, most of them may be familiar with that letter they periodically receive asking them to be a juror. And it's quite a responsibility. Unfortunately, I haven't had the opportunity I've received the letter but working for Sheboygan County whether if there's a conflict of interest or something like that, I haven't had the opportunity to do so but it's an important public service. And when people receive that letter, they may, many of them may think oh boy, how is this gonna disrupt my life or work or what have you? How does the process work? How does one go about being selected? How frequently can that happen with the population that we have in Sheboygan County? Please give our viewers a flavor for how that process of being selected and becoming a juror works. Well the Supreme Court just changed the jury system in Wisconsin to have everyone on a uniform jury year. So the jury year now runs the calendar year from January 1st to December 31st. So last year we had the pleasure of sending out two different groups of questionnaires. It was quite a challenge for last year because we were on account on a year that went from June or actually July 1st till June 30th. So we ended up doing actually two jury years last year. For this year, we sent out about 5,500 questionnaires which are to see if people are qualified to serve as a juror depending upon the responses we get from the questionnaires. We had probably close to 5,000 of those that were qualified. Of those, we enter all the information into the computer from those responses and we set up 13 panels. Each panel is a four week term and each panel, we have five of them set up at each group. Each of those is from 240 to 280 people. So even if you're selected for jury duty, you may end up not even being called in during your term. So you sent out 5,500. So what you said, 5,500 applications or surveys of that 5,500, there were about 5,000 who were eligible. And is that something that you fill out once a year or once a lifetime? It's every four years, depending upon the circumstances, occasionally we'll have people who are not qualified because they're a student out of state. So we may end up just sending them a new questionnaire the following year or the year after that. We kind of try to keep track of when people will be graduating and follow up. Ordinarily, it's every four years that you may be eligible to get a questionnaire. They fill that out, they send that in and then you randomly are working with that pool. Correct. And then what happens? Well, the names originally come from motor vehicle. So anyone who has a valid driver's license or actually anyone who has a driving record of any sort, be it Wisconsin ID or actually a driver's license, their name will be submitted to us. Once you've done the questionnaire, then as I said, we set up the panels for each of the jury terms. So you're actually, if you are selected, you'll be sent a summons for that four week period and a calendar that will tell you what trials are scheduled during that time. You're given a phone number to call in on Sunday night and on Sunday night, we'll let you know what trials in the coming week are actually still on the calendar. Then if there is still something on the calendar, you call in the night before and it will tell you whether or not you are required to report by name. And as busy as people are today, what is the general rule of thumb, what kind of time commitment is there to be a juror? In the four week period that you can be selected to be a juror, if you serve on one case, you are done with your service for four years. You're not eligible again for another four years. You may be required to report to court a couple of times. We've had a lot of people who are never even required to report to court because as I said, each panel has 240 people. Of those, when we call in a jury, depending upon the size of the jury, whether it's six or 12 person, we may only be selecting 36 names out of that group and telling those people or asking those people to report. Last year we had 57 groups of people who reported for a trial. Only 50 of those actually went to trial. Seven of them, they wound up settling that morning so the people reported and then were excused. So we actually had juries for about 79 days out of the total of last year. So it's not a huge commitment of time. So if you receive it, you may not necessarily be selected and if you're selected, you may not necessarily actually be on a case. On the case, right. Depending on what happens. Correct. Very good. Last question before I turn it over to Mike. When it comes to serving as a jury, just to get to that process, can anyone say they wanna have a trial by jury? How does that work? It depends upon what type of case it is. If you're charged with a crime, you have the right to a jury trial. That comes at no cost to you. If you are involved in a civil action, a small claims action, a juvenile matter, in order to request a jury, there's a small fee that has to be paid which is actually $6 per juror. So if you want a jury of six, you pay a fee of $36. If you want a jury of 12, it's $72. In a small claims case, there's an additional fee set by the state. So it's a total of $89 in a small claims case for a jury of six. But anyone has the right to request a jury. Very good. All right. Thank you, Dan. Dan, I know that your case load continues to increase and there's been more attention focused on collecting the fines that you have. How many cases do you handle and approximately what kind of different areas do they fall into? Well, last year our case load was about 17,700 cases. And they're anywhere from felonies, misdemeanors, criminal traffic, which would be something like a second or subsequent operating while intoxicated or eluding or operating after your license has been revoked. To county ordinance violations, to adoptions, termination of parental rights, children in need of protection and services. Civil matters, large-claimed civil matters, we actually had about 885 last year. Actually, we had more than that, excuse me. We had about 1,200 civil matters and we had about 660 of those were actually foreclosures of mortgages. So that case load has increased tremendously. It went up about 200 cases last year. We also have about 1,200 small claims actions that are heard in court. So collection of fines is one small piece of what actually goes on in the office. Granted, it's a large source of our revenue. Our office handles about six and a half million dollars each year. Last year, we collected 4.1 million in fines and filing fees. We've recently seen a number of municipal courts open up in the county wondering how does that affect your office? What that has done is lower the case load that we have in the area of ordinance traffic and non-traffic cases. Things such as shoplifting, minor disorderly conduct, filler to stop at a stop sign, speeding, those types of actions have cut down in our office. The only ones we are handling now are state patrol and anything written by the sheriff's deputies. All of the other case types continue to be heard in circuit court. Municipal court can only hear those types of actions, the very small ordinance violations. How does the work that you do in your court differ from what municipal courts do? In our court, as I said, we handle all different case types. So we handle cases that require a lot of court appearances. Family actions, for instance, the action gets filed, there's a waiting period, there's appearances before the circuit court. Commissioner to set temporary orders, there's appearances before the judge for the final decrees, those sorts of things. In municipal court, basically you're issued a traffic citation. You can elect to not go to court and simply pay the fine. You can elect to go to court if you want to, but generally there's only one court appearance and the case is over with. Okay, what types of things does circuit court have to provide that municipal courts don't have to? There are a lot of expenses in the circuit courts that are not found in municipal courts. One of the major ones is that if you are convicted or are accused of a crime and you cannot afford an attorney, you have the constitutional right to have one appointed at public expense. So we provide attorneys in those types of cases. In cases where there is involvement of a child, such as in a juvenile court action or in a family court action where there is some concern over the placement of the child or visitation, things like that, we provide what's called a guardian ad litem. It is an attorney who represents the best interest of the child. Those two expenses are found only in circuit courts. We provide interpreters for all case types. I know that in municipal court, I'm sure they provide some level of interpretation, but I don't think they do to the extent that we do because the criminal actions require so many court appearances. Another area of course is a jury that you have a right to a jury trial in the circuit courts and in municipal court you do not have a jury available to you. That costs the county about $56,000 a year. Okay, thank you. What types of fees and fines do you collect and how do you go about collecting these? Any time a defendant is sentenced to anything other than probation, all the fines are paid through the clerk of court's office. If they're on probation, they're paid to their probation agent and then the money is sent to the clerk of court's office for distribution to the various entities. We collect filing fees anywhere from $83 for a small claims action, up to $256 for a civil action. We collected last year, as I said, about $4.1 million in fines and filing fees. What happens to the money after you collect it then? It gets divided up between the county, the state, and a few municipalities we're still collecting a little bit of money for. Last year, the county actually kept, I believe it was about two, it was about, let's see. The county actually got to retain of the $4.1 million $1,250,000. We forwarded on to the state about two and a half million dollars. So we're doing the majority of our collection, actually, for the state. Then we collected, as I said, a little bit of money yet for Outstanding City of Sheboygan and other municipal fines that are still on the books. But the majority of the money is either retained by the county in a small amount or twice as much goes to the state. And how is this different from what a municipal court does with the distribution of the funds they receive from fines? Municipal court, if you receive a citation, there is what's considered a base forfeiture. It would be, as I'm sure you've heard on TV, $50 plus court costs. In the city of Sheboygan, court costs are $23 for the city, $5 for the state. Then there's also a jail surcharge that goes to the county of $10 and a penalty surcharge that goes to the state that's a percentage of that basic $50 forfeiture. So the city gets to keep the $50 forfeiture and $23 of the court costs. If you're issued that same type of a fine in criminal court, if you're convicted of a crime and you're told $50 plus costs, you'll end up paying about $189. Of that, the county gets to keep $5 of the $50 fine and we get to keep $10 of the court costs of over $115. So most of the money goes to the state in those instances. Thank you. It's rather remarkable. I don't know if our viewers followed those last two questions closely or not, but for those who did, Nan just shared that they're doing the work. You're the one collecting the fines and the forfeitures and supporting the clerk of court's structure and collecting the fines. Yet what you just shared is from a county standpoint, we're keeping about what 25% or less and forwarding on the rest to the state. That's correct. And it's got to be frustrating. I mean, I give you a lot of credit having worked in that department now for 30 years, but now as a department head who has larger responsibilities with helping Chairman Van der Steen and the county board balance the budget and keep property taxes in check, that when you're collecting all this revenue for work that you're doing to support the court system and passing so much of that on, what's happening there? What's happened over the years? Recently I did a little bit of research on actually what's transpired over the 30 years that I've been in the office. A $50 fine used to be about $60 total. Small court costs divided between the state and the county. The state began inventing more and more surcharges that they added on to the fines. The penalty surcharge was the very first one that started out at 10%. It's up to 26% now that goes to the state was developed originally to support officer training on the state level, goes to training state patrol officers basically. They've added a lot of surcharges, fees, assessments that are all returned to the state rather than retained by the county. We're still keeping the same tiny little portion that we kept 30 years ago. Traffic citation, $7.50 and that's still what we're getting is $7.50. And of course I've had the opportunity to look at some of this information that NAN has done a nice job pulling together and it's rather remarkable. It's kind of out of sight, out of mind. I mean, how many people think about fines and forfeitures and collections and what's retained by the county and what's sent on to the state? I mean, frankly, who wants to spend time thinking about that? The three of us have a responsibility to do so. And once you start drilling down, you see the incredible disparity and inequity of the dollars you're collecting but then because you're forwarding so much of that on where the state has added more fines and surcharges that they're keeping. What's happened over the years is the property taxpayer is picking up the difference. Over time has cost of livings gone up, whether it's fuel operations to support your department, the property taxpayers paying more and more to offset that difference. And it's probably, and it leads to me to the next question, you know, when you look at your challenges ahead as a department head and trying to do more with less and work with modest increases in revenue, how do we attack that? What do we do to improve this situation? I don't know that there are any easy answers. One answer that does come to mind is that when the state public defender's office was created in the early 90s, they were charged with reviewing their qualification levels every two years when they were first established. It was set at the federal poverty guidelines. They've never raised those rates. The county continues to pick up more and more of the tab for people who should be eligible for public defenders and aren't. Last year that was $147,000. Last year we spent $147,000 also on guardians at Lightham. That's a huge chunk of money that should really be borne by the state. The state has changed some legislation recently so that they will be picking up more of the cost of interpreters, not 100%, but they will be reimbursing the counties a little bit more for the interpretation services that we have to provide. If the legislature would create a fee that was retained by the county that could be assessed on any fine or filing fee, I think it would be reasonable that it would provide some taxpayer relief on the county level without hurting the state. Register of Deeds is a great example. Some of our viewers may have gone into the Register of Deeds office to get a birth certificate or have something recorded. And there, that fee you pay to have something recorded or to get a copy of your birth certificate, most of that is retained by the Register of Deeds or at least a higher percentage than what the clerk of courts is able to retain. Therefore, no property tax levy is supporting that department. And our hope is we can get there with the clerk of courts. I think most county board supervisors who have looked at this would agree that why should the taxpayer pick up the burden of paying for the support for someone who gets a speeding ticket or has smoked marijuana and has gotten ticketed or fined for that? Why not allow those folks who have made the mistake pay for that mistake? And so it'll be something that we'll need to work on in the future. The last question before we close here, Nan, is 30 years. I mean, when I sit down with you and think about that, 30 years in that department, as you reflect back on that, and you must have a passion for clerk of courts work and there's certainly a variety of what happens in your office, but what would you say are some of the biggest changes that have happened over those 30 years? The increase in caseload has been tremendous over the years. The types of cases that we're seeing have changed tremendously. There didn't used to be the criminal actions that there are now. The majority of the cases were smaller. They were more ordinance type violations rather than crimes. We're seeing a lot more crimes in the city as we become a larger county. We have I-43 running through the county, which is a highway between Milwaukee and Green Bay, and I think it brings a lot of problems to our community that have all wound up in the courts. I see a tremendous increase in the number of family actions that are filed. I think there was more of a stigma in divorce many years ago. Then there is now. The number of paternity actions have increased tremendously over the years. I don't really know that I can blame it on a decline of public morals or anything like that. It seems like the world is growing so fast, and as our population increases and the economy seems to be getting a little worse again, it just brings about a lot more problems. We have a lot more mobility in people. People are more transient than they used to be. People are moving constantly. It used to be that...


John Robinson is the Titans general manager. I know you enjoyed the victory over Baltimore But you look at it a little differently when you come back and break down the tape John as you viewed the tape What pleased you most about last Sunday in Charm City? I think it's the way we you know We kept fighting Mike for four quarters and into overtime. You know, we were down there We were trading punches with those guys But you know our effort and our finish what seemed like drive after drive to keep trying to find a way to Come away with points and get a stop Whether it was AJ Brown's run where he had four or five guys helping him get in the end zone Defensively coming up with the stop a quick three and out once we started over time And then Derek's you know run there at the end to kind of seal the win and six or seven guys Sprinting right behind him to finish it off. It was just really impressive the fight that our guys showed For four quarters and overtime What enabled the Titans to get the passing game going in the second half of the game against Baltimore And what do you do to keep that going into Indianapolis? Yeah, I mean, I think it all starts up front with the protection You know, I thought we finally got some some clean pockets in there We bought enough time for Ryan to step up or get himself in position to make some throws I thought the receivers did a good job of getting open beating man coverage or finding those spots and zone coverage and sitting Our route down coming up with grabs and extending drives for us and we've got to continue that against Colts Colts also won in overtime on Sunday They beat Green Bay. What stood out to you most about the Colts victory over the Packers, you know I think it all offensively for those guys. They racked up over 400 yards. They rushed for right at 140 I think you know rivers through for three touchdowns the other side of the ball where there was special teams or defense They created turnovers I think he had an interception in three fumbles that they got so they got extra possessions for the offense So, you know all three phases of the game those guys were clicking on Sunday Do you get the feeling that Philip Rivers is really finding his groove with his receivers right now And if so, what do you do to throw him off? Yeah, he seems to be you know, he's certainly more acclimated You know now than he was in the early part of the season when you're first kind of kicking off Learning those receivers that the timing of the routes the skill set of the players, you know a lot of catch-and-run throws underneath We've got to do a good job of staying tight in our coverage and trying to create some pressure and and getting him off The spot when Philip can stand there on the spot and just throw the football. He's a tough guy to beat All right, John So what do you hope to take out of Baltimore and that victory into Indianapolis? that will key a win and First place in the AFC South well, I think it's what we led to show off with is you know It's starting with our effort and our finish and our and our fighting neck, you know, they're a good football team You know, we feel like we got a good football team. We're gonna trade punches back and forth They're gonna make some plays, you know, we're gonna make some plays We just got to find ways to come up with some stops on defense create some turnovers Offensively, we got it We got to push through some of those third downs and stay on the field and we got to be solid on special teams You know that that hurt us in the last game. We've got to firm that up and do a good job in a kicking game


This is the SDM32 graphics wall showing three types of partner solutions. GUI libraries, display modules and touchy effects experts. We know you need this wide range of software solutions for the flexibility and scalability necessary for embedded system development on our SDM32 MPUs and MSUs. So first for the GUI libraries, at ST we are proud to partner with market leaders covering all sorts of developer needs for different programming languages and two and 3D implementations. These utilize all the SDM32 hardware capabilities for running high-performing and reliable GUIs. Then you might be looking for a plug-and-play solution to kickstart your development. In that case, our second option, the display module makers are perfect for you. Their designs are based on SDM32 hardware and touchy effects. With this approach, your development team only needs to focus on the GUI implementation itself as the board support package and the design and testing of the hardware platform is already done. The third type and final type of partners on this wall are the touchy effects experts. These are companies with years of experience in developing touchy effects applications and are always ready to support your project from idea to finished product. At STM32 Graphics, we are helping you to achieve your visions for tomorrow's UI products. Now let's go to Emil to learn more about the ST Touchy Effects solution. Thanks, Sirm. Touchy Effects is our graphic framework that is designed and optimized for STM32 mic controllers. It enables applications to have a high-performance GUI with a low-memory footprint and is free for all STM32 mic controllers. With Touchy Effects, you get a stunning UI with a wide range of platforms going all the way from our low-cost MCUs to our high-performance MCUs. Getting started with your Touchy Effects UI is made quick and easy with our state-of-the-art PC GUI tool TouchFX designer. It makes it fast and easy to create your own UI by using any of our built-in widgets which can all be interacted with and customized through C++. Getting TouchFX into your project is now even simpler with the new TouchFX stock. For the TouchFX stock, you get the largest library of graphical assets ever provided by a GUI design tool for mic controllers. TouchFX stock is provided through the TouchFX designer and is ready to use with our widgets with thousands of different images divided into themes. TouchFX stock makes it simple and easy to create a great-looking UI without the need of a graphics designer. Just as with TouchFX, TouchFX stock is free to use on any STM32 mic controllers even for commercial projects. So check it out now.


There is no asset with higher inherent risk of theft than cash. Because of this, it is important to have strong internal controls in place to protect cash receipts and payments. Let's start by looking at the controls over cash receipts over the counter. When companies sell goods for cash over the counter, like in a retail setting, they are at risk of theft. In order to prevent this, they use the following control procedures. Receipts are issued for each transaction. This creates an electronic paper trail of how much cash was received at the register. At any point, the actual cash on hand can be compared to the receipt record to see if they are in balance. Without receipts, a customer could buy the goods and the cashier never rings up the order and just pockets the cash. If you ever see a fast food restaurant with a sign that says something like, your meal is free if you didn't get a receipt, you'll know this is why they are doing that, to make sure their cashiers are ringing up every order. A cash drawer is opened only when a transaction is entered. Often, this is overlooked as a control procedure, but cash isn't kept on the counter out in the open but rather locked up in a register and it's only opened when transactions happen. Otherwise, every checkout line would look like a banker in a monopoly game and chaos would ensue. At the end of the day, actual cash on hand is compared to the results from the register. Someone is responsible for preparing a deposit slip and taking the deposits to the bank. Separation of duties requires someone else to enter the sales receipts into an accounting system. If there are discrepancies, an investigation might occur. Cash receipts over the counter aren't the only ways companies receive cash. Many do so through the mail. Customers mail in checks or cash for payments on accounts. The key to good internal controls over cash receipts by mail is separation of duties. The person receiving the cash isn't the same person who is recording customer payments into an accounting system. You see that the cash goes to a separate department or person than the remittance advice. At the end of the period, we perform a bank reconciliation to make sure all of the amounts deposited in the bank are the same as what was recorded in the cash ledger. Some of you might not be familiar with the term remittance advice. Here is an example of one. Often it is attached to the bill or invoice and you just separate it at its perforation and include it with your payment check. It contains all of your account information that the receiving company will need to post a payment to your account properly. Strong internal controls over payments is important to protect cash as well. Companies need good separation of duties between operations and writing checks for cash payments. Payment by check is an important internal control for the following reasons. The check provides a record of the payment. The check must be signed by authorized personnel. And before signing the check, invoices and other evidence supporting documentation must be reviewed. To ensure proper purchases and payments are made, the following steps should be followed. A buyer orders products and provides a purchase number to the seller. This authorizes the seller to sell goods to the company. A copy of the purchase order goes to the accounting department. The purchase order should include the numbers of the items ordered and quoted prices. The seller then ships goods to the buyer and sends an invoice to the accounting department of the buying company. Once the items are received by a buyer, a receiving report is prepared detailing the items received and quantities. This report is also sent to the accounting department. Once the accounting department has received a copy of the purchase order, the invoice and the receiving report, a comparison is made to make sure everything checks out. If it does, this invoice can be processed and authorized for payment. If not, the discrepancies need to be investigated. And that concludes this short video explaining internal controls over cash receipts and payments.


And I ask that you guide us into the future to continue to build upon that legacy. Father bless our country and bless the 82nd year born to live with thanksgiving all the way. Ladies and gentlemen, please be seated. The military service is 11 Bravo in October of 1977 from his home town in LRB, North Carolina. 37 years career by the time he retired. The 2nd Battalion 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment is commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Michael A. Hamilton of Jacksonville, Florida with command Sergeant Major William J. Gallant of Hartley, Delaware. Ladies and gentlemen, the White Devils! Battalion 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment is commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Elijah Myers of Martin's... ...Division where he served for four years. He deployed six times which he served as the CJTF 82nd command Sergeant Major. And after retired Sergeant Major Cappell continues to tirelessly support paratroopers and soldiers across our army. His impact has felt and he's a member of our Hall of Fame... ...NC Gregorsen of San Diego, California. Spicer, the 82nd Airborne Division Chaplain. Systems to maintain his repressed posture, conduct the training and support for daily underage. The division, on any given day, nearly one-third of the division is ready to respond to any world-wide contingency situation. And the 82nd Airborne is prepared to survive. Forcing basic soldier skills such as individual forces, demanding physical training, and maintenance of weapons and equipment. Squad and platoon life-fire battle drills are given in special courses. Battalion-sized units are evaluated periodically on how well-built they've got more complex and efficient. Attention, Airfield C. Non-on-gun evacuation operations. Land and air assault written registration at Fort Polkoby, S.E.N.A. Every division is trained during Christmas in the night operations. Oh, oh, the night is the man-man for today's troopers. The 82nd Airborne Division uses more than 70- Distance of approximately 19,400 meters. Watching from your left, information you will see the A8-64 Echo Apache. And capable of carrying up to 11 fully equipped paratroopers. In trail is the CH-47 Foxtrot Chinook. The Army's heavy lift platform capable of carrying 30 paratroopers and executing heavy sling load operations and parachute operations. The infantry squad vehicle can carry 9 infantry men and can be dropped by parachute or move away.


This week is reading right right now. We've got the Red Shield Community Center Salvation Army going chapter five right now, so we'll start at chapter five The reason why we're here today is I have a scheduled weekly book reading program. It's on page 21, buddy Definitely work on the reading skills. All right. Here we go But also more importantly for them to really connect with with me as a police officer She was barefoot and wearing faded cut-off shorts and a t-shirt with a panda on it be able to identify that we're people too and We we're just like they are before he could scramble to his feet The massive beast was there this program is really close to my heart because I grew up in this facility This was my second home one second past Two I didn't think I would be you know part of this in my adult life, but I'm glad that I am


One of the most common questions I get asked is, you know, how do I start day trading? So what me and my mentor about it for our viewers on YouTube is create a free mentorship course that reveals our 12 secrets that every single brand new day trader should know before they get started. But please take note that there is limited seating every single week. So please reserve your spot at myinvestingclub.co. Link is in the description. All right, enjoy the video guys. Sorry we missed last week, had a bit of stuff that I had to do, had to handle. Get into control, still not under control but to working control, to working chaos.  So today's topic is, like I said a minute ago and you guys weren't here for this cause we just started recording but we were gonna talk about today the topic that I said I would never talk about because I'm simply, I'm just not the guy to talk about this in an educated fashion because it's not something that I do often but I have gotten a lot of questions about it and people want to know. And so today we're gonna bring on the man behind the scenes of the options basics videos in the library. Mr. A.K. Wildlife, Mr. Mr. John, Mr. John and we're gonna bring him on to talk about selling premium in terms of big key levels, 3,800, right? All those are big key levels and now 3,200, right? We got the 3,200 test, we didn't test it to the penny but when you're looking at this in terms of technical analysis, I mean, these are pretty much my levels that I'm watching, right? I think I said this today, I was like, I wanna see the spy hold 340. So in the SBX it's 3,400. I really wanted to see that. The resistance that happened was simply due to the catalyst. Okay, there was no technical reason for the pullback. Okay, every single short was underwater and getting raped, royally raped every second. I mean, there was several candles where we just literally melt up. Like we're just like, just skipping dimes, skipping dollars really, giving 50 cents at the time. Like it's nothing. And then tweet, all of a sudden the tweet validates the short thesis. No, no, no, that's not how this works, okay? That's not how this works. There is no technical reason for anybody to sure to break out of 3,400. Yeah, yeah, I think it's gonna be a false breakout. Okay, okay, all right, all right. I don't believe that, okay? I don't believe that. I think if you're shorting here, you're stubborn, okay? You're stubborn, you're stubborn. You don't wanna stop out.  Just fall apart.  Let me make my money, remember? No, I would like to see it survive, to be honest with you for the sake of all of us. I do not want to go into a recession. Mm-mm, mm-mm, mm-mm. And for those of you that, you know, I just said I don't wanna go into a recession, yeah. That's not a recession, okay? That's not a recession. Why do I say it's not a recession? Because for one, housing and lending has not slowed down at all, okay? Not at all. Housing values have not slowed down. People were saying here, right? People were saying here in March, I was saying housing is not dropping. Housing market is not dropping. Prices are not dropping. They're like, don't worry, give it time, okay? Well, that's six months ago. Housing is still not dropped. Residential housing is still not dropped. Commercial has because a lot of businesses, a lot of small businesses have been going out. And so there's a lot of supply in terms of commercial supply. There's a lot of commercial supply, but residential, people are not losing their homes yet, yet, yet, right?  Nobody's losing their homes yet. We don't know the damage of that yet, but I would think we would have some kind of indication on where that was headed six months into the future, right? Housing is gonna drop. Nope. Nothing. I'm just like, I don't think it's time to short, to be honest with you. I mean, this was an average correction, right there. Average correction. Calls for more help from Congress. There's low risk of overdoing it. Oh my Jesus Christ. What's futures doing now?  That level right there, this bottom right here, this is the next key level. Between here and here, I have no idea between here where we're gonna go, okay? Honestly, I would like to see us shed those 40, 50 points back to 3,300. Then I would say, probably looks like a long, probably looks like a long on the bounce, probably looks like a long. I'm gonna long it off at this level. Maybe stop under 3,291, something like that. Hey guys, my name is Tosh Bradley. I'm one of the head mentors and moderators at my investing club. If you have any questions about getting started in trading, getting started in MIC, MIC in general, text me at<PHONE_NUMBER>. This is not a robot, it is me directly on the other end of my business line and we'll get you in the club. We also have special promotions going on that I can get to you depending on your trading needs. Hit me up. That's pretty much where I'm at. In between here, snowman's land. I have no idea where this is gonna bounce, tank, rip, dip, go sideways.  So yeah, let's get into this. So let's bring old Johnny on. John, you ready?  Hey, Joe, can you hear me? I got you, bro. Good, sup. Not much, how is everybody doing? We good, ladies and gentlemen. Is everybody hearing? Loud and clear, you're good. Perfect, good. All right, so let's get into this. So what we're gonna talk about today is we're gonna talk about selling premium, okay? And I think the, what strategy are we sharing? What is this actual kind of option strategy called? So there's a couple of different ones, but the main, you know, obviously selling puts or put spreads, you know, vertical spreads, those are the two that we had kind of discussed. I use a variation. That's what we're gonna talk about is that version of the put spread. Yep, all right, so then I use a variation of that and I call it a wheel strategy, which starts with selling the put. So it's, there's a few extra steps, but this is something I've worked on for a while, but that's the very basic of it. It starts with the put, sell the put, tell the put spread. All right, so let's kind of just define here. And I think I'm pretty sure you've done this in your series. You've talked about what selling a put means, right? Yes, I think so. Probably go over that real quick.   Opposite for puts, right? When you buy a put, the price is gonna go down. So when you sell premium, right, you just have to think about the same how that works. So it's kind of the flip. So if you're selling a put, you believe that the price will stay above whatever short strike that you sold, right? If you sold the 95 put and the stock's at 100, in most cases, you hope that it stays above 95 anywhere, you know, or higher and you collect your premium and you have no obligation. Right, gotcha. So to put that into perspective, guys, I know a lot of people come from small cap short selling, okay? So let's kind of just graphically represent this really fast. So I'm gonna do this in the empty space over here in the chat box. So if buy, no, okay. So it's the same bias. Okay, buying a call and selling a put is the same bias. So let's talk about this. Let's say, like, let's say SPI for example, right? SPI, the small cap runner ran from, you know, four bucks to 40 bucks, right? So it was four and it was 40 and we short at 40. How much money can we make percent-wise? What is our maximum percent return? Somebody answer that, not John. So the maximum that we can make is a return from 40 and it would have to go to zero in order for us to make a hundred percent on the position, okay? That's short selling of stock, okay? So let's just think about stock. Let's not think about selling puts. Let's not think about anything like that, okay? Maximum profit, no, not exposure. Not talking about risk exposure. I'm not talking about any of that, all right? We'll get there. We're gonna get there. Maximum profit is 100% of whatever your position average is. If I short 100 shares at 40, right? If I short 100 shares at 40, that means my position costs $4,000, okay? It's not the amount of margin required to hold the position. My average cost is four grand. If the stock goes from 40 to zero and I never add, what do I make? Four grand, that's it. That's maximum I can make, okay? So why do people short small caps so much? When the edge lies, right? So the edge lies, that's where all of the edge is in small caps. In small caps, they all look like this. Four to 40, generally back to four, sometimes to zero. But they all go from four to 40 to four. They all do it, okay? So they all do it, yes, exactly. Yeah, after creating options, I don't know why I'm shorting small caps anymore. I don't know why you are either because people will brag, you know, they're like, oh, I shorted at 40, covered at 20, right? Nailed it. And in options, we're over here buying at two, selling at eight. And people are like, yeah, let's do whatever. This is the hero, right? That's what everybody thinks. That's what everybody thinks. But the dude that, you know, went from two to four, four to six, six to eight, made 300% on his money. Nope, not entertaining. But the one that shorted at 40 and covers at 20, I'm just using SPI as an example. I'm just like making it up. The person that makes 50% on a short is way more popular than the person that makes 300% on an option, right? Thank you so much for watching our video. If you want to see more of our videos, please subscribe to our YouTube channel by clicking the button here. We do our best to post a new video every single day. If you have any questions about MIC or any general trading questions, please text Tosh using the number here. Also, stay up to date by watching some of our most recent videos right over here.


This paper discusses the importance of accurate luminance measurements when designing lighting installations. It explains how two different types of luminance meters, laboratory and portable, can produce significantly different results if the measurement distance is not correctly chosen. Additionally, it demonstrates how incorrect measurements can result in energy savings of up to 40% when using the wrong type of shade on a luminaire. Finally, it proposes a new test distance for luminance measurements using ILMD meters. This article was authored by Dariush Suzuki.


Before I get into the topic of how to tell if a man is attracted to you I think it's really important to differentiate the three different types of attraction What I mean by three different types of attraction. There are certainly men who are serious about a relationship They're serious about commitment.   Okay, this might be also known as a Ambivalent attraction. Okay. In fact, many of you are probably experiencing it more from an ambivalent place What I mean to say is a man might invest in you because he seeks Companionship he might seek connection. He might seek sex.  It is an absolute mess out there it is absolutely frustrating and It's true for men and women alike sadly sadly more so for women because women will often times compromise themselves for For a man because women tend to want a life partner more so than men because men are driven by that Sexual attraction and then there are the men that are driven by the dependent Needy or the a bit ambivalent attraction And so you might be confused about men because they might express some interest So you're thinking it's the serious type of attraction when in fact, it's either a sexual Now those are pretty easy to spot. These are the guys who lead with sex. These are the love bombers.  They're dropping dick pics, you know, that sort of thing Those are rather easy to spot except with the love bombers if you're coming from a dependent place you might feed off of that validation and Surrender temporarily to this person who simply wants sex or he wants to use you in some capacity The tricky part are those spenders those men that have dependent needy or ambivalent attraction Because it represents about 60% of the men out there The users are about 20% and what's left is are those growers those builders those men who want a serious Relationship and that only represents 20% this is why I devised my private coaching to help you identify and Actually attract more of the serious type of guys and avoid those men who are going to use you That are dependent. They're ambivalent and they're needy if you need some support with that Look, there's a link in the description below to schedule a free discovery call with me to see if working with a coach is Right for you So today we're going to lean into the man who is serious Okay, the man who serious the man who genuinely wants a life partner now folks I do want to share with you You know a lot of you are experiencing casual Relationships a lot of you are experiencing what I call friends with benefits But you don't really know about it because you've agreed to physical intimacy with someone Or maybe you have acquiesced to physical intimacy without any clear understanding If this person wants a serious relationship with you and I want you to immediately Step into your power step into your sovereignty step into your self-worth your self-esteem yourself confidence In fact, I wrapped this up in my book called what the heck is self-love anyway a journey of personal development self-help spiritual work There's a link below to get a copy of my book. Why am I drawing attention to this right now? I want you to stop accepting Bread come bread crumbs. I want you to stop accepting bad behavior I want you to stop accepting men who are in it only for the short run So Serious men operate a little bit differently and serious men show up Demonstrating attraction in a little bit different way So today we're going to talk about those seven ways that men who are growers builders who want a serious relationship How they show up in the form of attraction Now some of these are going to seem like the dependent needy men the users they all do this But I think once you see the totality of it, you'll recognize the difference By the way, I think I have a leftover peanut in my throat Mmm, excuse me. So number one now this is in the early stages of dating a man will He will give you Genuine eye contact genuine eye contact and when I mean by eye contact, it's not just Staring deeply into your soul, but I know with my sweetheart. There's a picture of Marie and I on New Year's Eve. I Know that I find myself just staring at her at times. I just I'm so I'm so connect not connected. I'm just feeling this Desire from her, but it's not sexual. It's just I like looking at her And I was thinking of my best friend who shared the same thing with me recently He's he's been in a relationship for two years now And the other day she goes, what are you doing? He goes, I'm just staring at you because I like you When a man actually gazes into your eyes now, this isn't first second or third date This is when he's actually really of connect, you know, you've established a little bit of Trust with one another by the way, if you're not familiar with the work of Jay Shetty takes this he says it takes about 40 hours of face-to-face time Just to barely get to know someone and I've always said it takes about a hundred hours of face-to-face time Just to build the first layer of trust and it takes about 200 hours of face-to-face time doing social activities hobbies mutual interests to develop a friendship with someone and When someone has developed that friendship with you and they're still looking at you with a gaze of just joy That's a great sign. He's attracted to you Number two his acts are chivalrous. He opens the car door. He walks on the outside of the street He pulls out the chair for you. He stands up when you walk into a room That's certainly a sign a serious guy does this now We have to be careful because users do this and those dependent needy and ambivalent Men do this as well those spenders, but I want you to take look at the totality Totality of how he shows up Men who are serious are more apt to do these things than those who are a bit flaky And he acts chivalrous With you and that's a good sign that he's attracted to you number three. He's protective and territorial Again the ambivalent the dependent the needy guys do this the users do this But I know with my sweetheart once I once we agreed to explore being in a relationship with one another I wanted her off the dating apps. I wanted her off the market I expressed a desire to take myself off the market But I also wanted to covet her because men are territorial. We don't want you engaging with other men If we're genuinely serious about you now We don't do it from a dependent needy place Dependent needy men might do this but from a serious place It's demonstrating first that I am open to taking myself off the market and a request to take yourself off the market because men are Naturally territorial. That's part of what makes us protective Is this sinking in is this resonating? Please let me know. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this Okay, number four that this might be really confusing But if a guy is really attracted to you, he might Temporarily pull away. He might temporarily pull away And this usually happens right after you've been physically intimate with a man. I Know that in my experience in my relationship after we spent our three solid days together Really laying our cards on the table really being radically honest with one another. I found myself just temporarily pulling away Because in that pulling away a man needs time to really evaluate is this the person I'd like when we really like someone We do a natural Temporarily pull away. It might be for a few hours. It might be a day or two But we're really assessing is this the person I want to invest in now This usually happens after sex it can happen before sex and again. It's a temporary Pullback sometimes you don't even know he's pulling back it might be an energetic pullback But that's the time that he really Evaluates is this the person I genuinely want to invest in and what happens next is he expresses appreciation for you. I Know when that that brief little pull-away I had with Marie I Realized wow, this is someone I really appreciate in that brief moment of Pulling away in a way. I kind of missed her But what I realized was I didn't miss her. What I really did was appreciate her and then I expressed Appreciation by the way men who genuinely are attracted to you. I want you to really think about the words Grateful gratitude and appreciation grateful gratitude and appreciation. I continually say to my partner I'm so grateful you're in my life. I appreciate all the kind things you do for me I'm in the state of gratitude when I'm with you Those are great signs when a man uses those words when he demonstrates true Appreciation for you. That's a great sign that a grown-up is attracted to you because here's the thing The users they won't do that This the spenders those those ambivalent those needy those dependent men. They won't do that They might they might constant the users will constantly back and forth with you. They'll pull away.   They come back or worse if they're really dependent. They will smother you Okay, but these are men by the way most of the users as I said in the beginning of this broadcast They want companionship. They want sex. They want connection, but they're not capable of They're not capable of diving deeper into commitment This is the problem that plagues our relationship marketplace today because we because of these devices Because of our devices and swiping we have all this access to people that wouldn't otherwise have been in our in our in our purview And this is why ladies I'm here to encourage a different way to date mate and relate I'm here to Implement what I teach in my private coaching, which is called radical honesty pre-qualifying your prospect I'm here to encourage laying laying your cards on the table sooner rather than later and most importantly adopting the Rules of engagement and one of the rules of engagement I invite you to by the way Here's a copy of what's called my dating vows. Okay It's a value make before you give your heart to someone. This is part of the rules of engagement and And by the way, if you want a copy of the schedule that discovery call with me And I'll give you a copy of it when we meet on the phone So the dating vows simply is an agreement between two people and agreement to two people to Explore getting to know one another if there's going to be regular sex Do you agree to monogamy if you're going to have regular sex? You agree to exclusivity in the dating realm and you agree to spend how you're going to spend your time together But Jonathan if I asked for that a man might run away Who are you scaring?  He will adopt this I can't tell you how many of my clients now reach out to me and say Fact one of the things I'm actively doing is speaking to their boyfriends going over all the work We've done together so they can be on the same page and guess what these men are saying They're saying thank you for making my job easier because those serious men Might you know, they're genuinely serious, but they just don't know the mechanics to a healthy happy relationship They don't know the mechanics to true intimacy and intimacy is in to me you see into me you see if you're not familiar with the book Emotional intimacy by Robert Masters most of you focus on physical intimacy And I'm here to educate or to invite you to explore emotional intimacy and that again This is what we do in my private coaching I help you really gain a stronger grasp of true intimacy because many of you are in Relationships or you're talking to men and y'all you're doing is how's your day going? Did you have a good day? I hope you had a good day. That's Kramer from Seinfeld Okay, I said expressing appreciation. That's demonstrates a man is into you Was extremely attracted to you number six. He teases you His little kid comes out. I know I tease Marie in the beginning of our relationship. I called her Beverly Hills glam She's glammed up in that picture right there, but I called her Beverly Hills glam But when a man now again users might do this Spenders might do this, but when a man is genuinely attracted to you his little kid comes out You can see the difference with the little kid. It's not coming from a Agitated place. It's coming from that fun playful side I will tell you one of the best parts of any relationship is when our little kids come out and we can play to one another That's really the sign that you're actually building a deeper relationship with someone when you can actually step into Your little kid. We all have a little kid inside of us.  What's that? Oh, can someone remind me pigtails and snails and what's that nursery rhyme that boys are made of? Girls are made of sugar and spice and pigtails and nice something like that I can't remember it does anyone remember that but when our little kid comes out That's a great sign that he's attracted to you and number seven and This is the most obvious one of all but yet many of you aren't paying attention Because most men aren't doing the following this differentiates all the different the men who are in the user and spender category versus those men who are actually Serious about a relationship. I don't know why I continually wipe my lens of my glasses But anyway, he progresses the relationship forward. He's intentional and he devotes his available time to you I want to repeat that He progresses the relationship forward. He's an intentional and he devotes his available Time to you now a lot of people are busy and that's certainly a challenge these days But ultimately if you want a healthy happy relationship, listen Forget the first couple dates forget the first couple months Do you want a relationship where you see each other on at minimum two three four days and nights a week together? Doing shared activities hobbies mutual interest spending time Traveling together teamwork building skills both in your professional personal and professional life intimacy both physical and emotional intimacy is that what you want because many of you are settling for casual Cavalier ambivalent Relationships thinking that's something thinking magic fairy dust will change this guy if all he did was saw your value. I Can't believe how many of you will say after the end of the relationship. Why couldn't he see my value? Well, because you guys didn't establish early on the rules of engagement You didn't establish your standards before he got to have sex with you ladies. I'm sorry to say I know many of it.  There are a lot of dysfunctional men out there There's a lot of users. There's a lot of spenders out there And if you don't know how to to pick better men if you don't know how to track those men in and they do exist There are the growers and builders out there. They do exist It just requires a little bit more work on your part to find out who they are Is this sinking in is this resonating? Please let me know Please hit that like button. Please share this video Please subscribe to my channel if you're brand new by the way in the description below and certainly my coaching Link is there schedule a discovery call with me. Follow me in my membership group. Follow me on Instagram or check out all the books I recommend All right, those are the seven things men when they're what do when they're extremely attracted to you I hope this provided value for you. I'm gonna wrap up this videos I always do first off give myself a big gigantic job to bear it of self-love I'm gonna reach into the camera and give you a hug of love if that's okay I'm gonna ask you to turn to someone a pet teddy bear pillow and give it or them a hug of love Because hugs are a great source of love and let's face it. We could all use more love in our lives. Thanks a bunch. Bye. Bye now. Bye. Bye


The key to improving thinking, to thinking better, is to know more. So if you want to be a better singer, you have to spend time singing. Well the notion of desirable difficulties is that it refers to a set of manipulations that all have the property that they create challenges, a sense of difficulty during the acquisition process. We like to think we know how to learn, how we learn best, in what situations we learn best, and that we know when we've learnt something. We have no real insight into the basis of our behaviour. It's really difficult to predict what we'll learn and whether we'll be able to retrieve this stuff in the future. What we think works for learning. It's not even that there's no relationship between what we think and reality, but in fact it's a negative relationship. What we think works is the exact opposite of what actually works.


What's up guys, my name is Michael and welcome to my YouTube chat today. We're gonna do height checker so students are placed in a line and an Increasing order of heights for an annual photo return the minimum number of students not standing in the right position Okay, so this is actually very very very easy Okay, this is actually a very dumb question They just they're just trying to confuse you. Okay With all this non decreasing order. This is just increasing. Okay. This is just means increasing order So how do you do this? I'll tell you how to do this First we create a new vector And we're gonna call this a copy and what are we gonna do? We're gonna point it to heights so now The vector copy is a separate copy of heights because this actually caused a copy constructor and it copies all The values into a new vector called a copy. Okay, so now we have a separate array vector of Heights now what are we gonna do? We're going to sort it We're gonna sort copy From the beginning to the end Okay, and what does that do all my bad? What does that do that basically just says okay now? I'm it's gonna be in increasing order now because it's sorted Now we want to return the number minimum number of students not standing in the right positions, so we need a counter Number wrong positions and we set that to zero Okay, and we are going to return wrong positions in the end So what does it mean by number of students not saying the right positions? Well, we're gonna go through both of our arrays and if Heights at I is not equal to So if each height is not equal to the sorted height Then it's in the wrong position. So we increase wrong positions Positions positions plus plus After we sort it After we increase it. We just return it. So if you guys understand what I'm doing is that I'm just counting the the number of Wrong positions that is not sorted based on the heights that is not sort in the right order So that's essentially how you do this question This is a dumb question because they just try to confuse you which is what they probably do in a lot of these interviews But if you understand how to do it It would be very very good Anyway, ready come subscribe. I'll check you guys later. Peace


The gut microbiota converts cholesterol into caprostinol and bile acids into secondary metabolites through various conversions such as decontigation, oxidation, epimerization, 7-dehydroxylation, esterification, and desulphatation. These metabolisms have been known for decades, but their consequences on human health and disease are not well understood. This article was authored by Philippe Girard.


Mr. Gabriel Fahl, who's from the Gambia originally, as I mentioned, but has lived and worked in the UK for a very long time. And what Mr. Fahl does is very interesting because he's kept a very close relationship with Africa and works with the African diaspora to help with the development initiatives on the continent. So let's hear from him now. Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, it is a great honour to be here with you and we thank IOM for their kind invitation. I was like your story as migrants and descendants of migrants is always most fascinating at a personal level. Yet the stories of migrants in total tend to fall under what I call the five Ls. As one of the five Ls is a reason why we migrate. We migrate to protect life, limb or liberty. We migrate to improve livelihood and lifestyles. For those who migrate for the reactive reasons of protecting life, limb or liberty, their story is slightly different from the story of those who migrate proactively to improve livelihood and lifestyles. Mine is perhaps of all the panel the most boring of migration stories. I migrated from the Gambia in West Africa, a small country, to the United Kingdom, which was the colonial master, they shared the Commonwealth heritage. I do not know the answer to how one becomes a successful migrant in any culture, but in United Kingdom or British culture, having a sense of ironies would help. In the UK, we applaud winners, but most importantly, we celebrate losers. Now, in 55 BC, Julius Caesar invaded Britain, and of course, he famously said, I came, I saw, I conquered. I have always wanted to say about my migration to Britain, that I came, I saw, I left. Fortunately or unfortunately, I cannot say that because I did not leave, but that is what gives us the story. But wherever we are, there are the positives and there's the negatives. It is the balance that we gain that makes life interesting. When I left Gambia in 1987, age 19, we did not have a university, it's a small country, the population was about 800,000, so when you finish the top level of education there, you have to leave to go to university. But my family perhaps is a story of how communication, modern technology, have helped increase movement, perhaps at levels that the world has not seen before. Just in terms of efficacy, the world have experienced tremendous levels of migration before. There's epic biblical stories of tracks and movements of people, but in the modern world, we do it quite quickly. We take a flight, premium economy, and look forward to very lovely immigration offices in airports all over the West. Now, for a very long time, if I wanted a family reunion, I wouldn't go to Gambia, I would go to Clement, California, because most of my siblings lived there, and that is the story of modern migration. There is the question of where do we belong, the question of identity and citizenship. My view, and it is entirely my view, not even the view of the organization that I chair, is that the migrant is the person who has left and joined a new community. Remember, I speak mainly for the last two hours, the positive, the proactive migrants who are moving to improve their lifestyles and livelihoods. So I would say that there is a great deal of duty on them to know the people, their meeting, and to integrate themselves. In our own countries, the countries we've left, there is xenophobia, there is racism. In fact, the fact that we have migrated has helped us change our own views of the xenophobia that we used to display. Folliba Thibault is originally from Guinea-Conacre, there are generations of people from Guinea-Conacre who migrated to Gambia. As a child, I remember these guinea migrants being rounded up, put in the bath of lorries and deposited at the border. I remember that. So it is a xenophobic place everywhere we go. It's about how, so they're not particularly targeting us as migrants, they are targeting us because we are the weakest in the link. If we were not there as migrants, they will find amongst their own folk the weakest and they will target them for all of the ills. So there is a bigger global context to it, I would say. We have all mentioned that the migrants, ever so often, when we see the distressing stories Haitian trying to go to Bahamas, it's live now on the news, tragedies of Lampedusa, and from the 1970s the emergence of the bold people, we see weak and vulnerable people. That is true. But even those weak and vulnerable people do have a great deal of initiative in them. What they need is the basic tools to be able to look after themselves. I do think that Britain is my home. I perhaps even know the exact day that I knew that it was my home. I had spent in 1995, after eight years of living in the United Kingdom, I had spent several weeks in the United States from east coast to west coast, perhaps the best ever sort of trip that I had had ending up in California, which was bright, new and beautiful. And I returned back August day in the United Kingdom. I was carrying a Gambian passport, so you joined the queue that says everyone else. The lovely immigration officer is waiting to hustle you, of course he hustled me. I went through all of that, got out, it was raining, it was dark, it was miserable. I got a taxi, the taxi driver was impolite, he was, I remember he was smoking, and I said, do you mind, he said no and continued smoking, and I felt so happy. That's when I knew that Britain was my home. You see just before that I have caught myself several times complaining about things in the country. Now I know, I was complaining because I cared, prior to that when I thought I was just an itinerant student, I didn't care how much they wrecked their country, it didn't bother me, let them mess it up, I'm leaving. But because it's my home, I care, that's why I complain. But that is why I take on my civic duties to make so I play my part in keeping that home, that house good for me and for everyone else. And very quickly when you accept that it is your home, you treat it as your house, some of us are proud, some of us are not, but still we treat it well. The people who we meet there, we treat them well, we try to understand, we play by civil and civic rules. Now that duty I think is important for migrants and the diaspora, and it brings it down that it's all about people. You see, several times I hear politicians playing up on the xenophobic and anti-immigration sentiments and say let's close our borders and they've come, they've taken our jobs, they've taken our money, they've taken our women, let's get rid of them. Now, but often I also hear illegal immigrants or irregular immigrants who, because their children are going in a local school, the school, the family members would stand up and say no, these immigrants should not be deported. And I and many other migrants have also been in situations where your local friends, they may be white or not, may talk about all of these terrible immigrants and they look back and say of course it does not include you. It's all because as a person they know me. So I'm a very simple person. I think perhaps a way to deal with this is to know each other. And you know in some of the countries we come from we have very good traditional rules of how we know each other. In Gambia for example, if you come from even not another country but another village, you come to a new village or town, you go and find people and introduce yourself so that you become us rather than them. So there is a great deal of work to be done on that basis. Now on the wider questions of just can rich countries for example, welcome or take very many migrants, that to me is a fraught question because poor countries take actually lots more than rich countries do. The United Nations tells us that the stock for migrants is 232 million. That's incredibly low, unbelievably low. 232 million out of six, seven billion people, three percent. So what's going on? Actually people want to stay at home. So if we open the borders, there's not going to be any rush. People do want to stay at home. I think what we find in my case and many others is you find a migratory equilibrium. People want to better themselves so they migrate to places where they think they can earn more and have a better life. Now if there's no job opportunities, they won't go there. So the bottom line is for self-development to get a good life, migration is all about people having those opportunities. So it is important to link migration to development. That is for people to have the means so that when they choose to move, it's really a choice rather than absolute desperation. Ourself as a charity, as a diaspora charity, we were founded in 1994 by a gentleman called Chukwu Emeka Chikese. Some of you know him, IOM knows him. And at that time they were making this argument of the linkage between diaspora and development, saying that let's not concentrate on the active migrant, the one in the process. When we say migrant, there's a level of sort of activeness in EGSE in it. But yet there are the descendants of migrants. There are those who are settled for many years and all of them have a role to play in development. For many years, I would tell you, Ambassador Swing, that we as a small charity will not work with IOM because IOM we saw that was very much interesting in returning people home. In the United Kingdom it was a return. And in the United Kingdom the only other people who talked about return were the racists who wanted to kick us out. Yet we have seen, especially since the last high-level dialogue, a significant shift to say it's not just that returning people but it's about development. And IOM is taking a lead in talking about engaging, empowering and enabling migrants to contribute to development in that sense. And I think the future of migration would be about that. We have a choice to move, as most of you diplomats have, to move different places.  Why? Because countries who own sovereignty and are very jealous of the guards, they want prosperous migrants. That's the bottom line. They want prosperous migrants. Any country you want to go to, if you have money and means, they let you in. The ones that IOM are worried about, the distressed migrants, are the ones without means. Again, I'm a simple man. What's the fundamental answer? Let us have means. Let us be rich. Let us be wealthy. Then migration becomes a matter of choice rather than desperation. Now, I would say that that then leads us to a sense of transnationalism. In the United, sorry, in Europe, we've seen it. A number of countries that are wealthy. So we have no borders. We leave transnationalism. No borders within the EU because everyone is relatively wealthy. Now, is this not possible for the whole world? I would say it may be impossible, 100%. But perhaps we can do it 80%. Because right now in the United Kingdom, visa requirements for Chinese people have just become easier. Why? Because China's getting wealthier. So almost no Middle Eastern Arab country has problems getting visa. It is a question of are you poor? If you're poor, I don't want you in. We don't complain about all these rich migrants coming in, spending their money and hiring our staff. We don't complain about that. We make another complaint. So my story is, I said, my girls, it's ordinary and boring. Got to England, thought I'll be a student, I'll finish and leave. Opportunities arise, you take it home. Until you realize that that's where you belong.   I'm never going to beat a Gambian. Well, it's not true. We can have more than one home. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. It's very interesting to hear you say that we can have more than one home because I'm sure you know that a lot of people would disagree with you on that. But it's very interesting to hear about your experiences. Well, I think we'll open up now. The floor to the floor.


Live from Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE, covering IFS World Conference 2019, brought to you by IFS. Hi everybody, welcome to Boston. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of IFS World in the Heinz Auditorium in Boston. I'm Dave Vellante with my co-host, Paul Gillin. Paul, this is the largest enterprise resource planning software company that our audience probably has never heard of. This is our second year covering IFS World last year, which is in Atlanta, they've moved to Boston. IFS is a Swedish-based company. They do about $600 million in annual revenue, about 3,700 employees, and interestingly, they have a development center in Sri Lanka of all places, which is kind of was war-torn for the last 15 years or so, but nonetheless, evidently a lot of talent and beautiful views, so welcome. Thank you, Dave. I have to admit, before our coverage last year, I'd never even heard of this company, been around this industry for more than 30 years, never heard of this company. They've got 10,000 customers. They've got a full house next door in the keynote, and a very enthusiastic group. This is a focused company. It's a company that has a lot of vision about where it wants to go, some impressive vision documents, and really a company that I think is coming out of the shadows in the US and will be forced to be reckoned with. So as I say, they were founded in the mid-1980s, and then they kind of re-architected their whole platform around client-server. You remember the component move? It was sort of big trends in the 90s, and in the mid-90s opened up offices in the United States. We're going to talk to the head of North America later, and that's one of the big growth areas. They're growing at about three, they claim to be growing at three X, the overall market rate, which is a good benchmark. They're really, their focus is really three areas. ERP, asset management software, and field service management, and they talk about deep functionality. So for instance, although they compete with Oracle, SAP, certainly Microsoft, and Info, a company we've covered, Info talks a lot about the last mile functionality. That's not terminology that IFS uses, but they do similar types of things. I'll give you some examples, because okay, what's last mile functionality? Things like detailed invoicing integration, contract management, very narrow search results on things like, I just want to search for refurbished parts, so they have functionality to allow you to do that. Chain a custody for handling dangerous toxic chemicals, certain modules to handle FDA compliance. So real kind of nitty gritty stuff to help companies avoid custom modifications in certain industries, energy, construction, aerospace and defense is a big area for them, as well as manufacturing. This is a segment of the ERP market that often is under scene. There's a lot of these companies that started out in niches, PeopleSoft being a famous example, starting out in a niche of the market and then growing into other areas. And this company continues to be very focused, even after 35 years, as you mentioned, just energy, aerospace, a few construction, a few basic industries that they serve, serve them at a very deep level, focused on the mid-market primarily, but they have a new positioning this year, they're calling the challengers for the challengers, which I like, it's a message that I think resonates, it's easy to understand. They're positioning their customers as being the companies that are going to challenge the big guys in their industries. And at this time of digital transformation and disruption, that's what it's all about. I think it's a great message they're bringing out this year. Well, of course I like it because theCUBE is a challenger, right? Even though we're number one in the segments that we cover, we started out as a sort of a challenger. Interestingly, IFS in the Gartner Magic Corner is actually a leader in field service management. They made an acquisition that they announced today of a company called Astia. Astia. Astia is a pink sheet OTC company, I mean they're a very small, is a tuck in acquisition, and maybe they had a sub $20 million market cap, they probably do $25, $30 million in revenue. Darren Ruze, the CEO said that this places them as the leader in field service management, which is interesting, we're going to ask him about that. To your other point, you look around the ecosystem here, they have 400 partners. I was surprised last night I came early to sort of walk around the hall floor. You see large companies here like Accenture, and I'm surprised, I mean I remember the early days when we did the Service Now conference, say 2013 or so. You didn't see Accenture, Deloitte, EY, PWC, now you see them at the Service Now event. Here you see them, I mean, and I talked to Accenture last night, I said yeah, well we actually do a lot of business in Europe, particularly in the Scandinavian region, and we want to grow the business in the U.S. Europe tends to be kind of a blind spot for U.S. companies. They don't see the size of the European market, all the activities where some of the great ERP innovation has come out of Europe. This company, as you mentioned, growing three times the rate of the market, they have a focus on, they're very tight with those customers that they serve, and they understand them very well. And this is a, you can see why Accenture is serving this market, because they're simply following the money. There's only so much growth left in the SAP market, in the Oracle market, but as the CEO, Darren said this morning, half of their revenues last year were from net new customers. So that's a great metric that indicates that there's a lot of new business for these partners to pursue. Well I think there's some fatigue, obviously, for big, long, multi-year SAP integrations. You're also seeing, you know, at the macro, we work with enterprise technology research and we have access to their data set. One of the things that we're seeing is the slowdown in the macro. Clearly, buyers are planning to spend less on IT in the second half of 2019 than they did in the first half of 2019, and they expect to spend less in Q4 than they expected to in July. So things are clearly softening at the macro level, they're reverting back to pre-2018 levels, but it's not falling off a cliff. One of the things that I've talked to ETR about, it's sort of the premise we put forth, love to get your thoughts, essentially we started digital transformation projects, let's say in earnest in 2016, 2017, doing a lot of pilots, started kind of pre-production in 2018, and during that time what people were doing is they had a lot of redundancy. They would maintain the legacy systems and they were experimenting with disrupted technologies. You saw obviously a lot of UI path, a lot of snowflake and other sort of disruptive technology, certainly in infrastructure, pure storage was a beneficiary of that. So you had this sort of dual strategy, we had redundancy of legacy systems and then the new stuff. What's happening now is the theory is that we're going into production with digital transformation projects and we're killing the legacy stuff. Okay, we're ready to cut over to the new. We're not going to spend on that anymore. Right, we're not going to spend on that anymore. Dial that down, number one. Number two is we're not just going to spray and pray on all new tech, blockchain, AI, RPA, et cetera. We're going to now focus on those areas that we think are going to drive business value. So both the incumbents and the disruptors are getting somewhat affected by that slowdown and that narrowing of the focused. And so I think that's really what's happening and we're going to, I think have to absorb that for a year or so before we start to see new wave of spending. There's been a lot of spending on IT over the last three years. As you say, driven by this need, this transition that's going on now, we're beginning to see some of those legacy systems turned off, the more important they got to look at, I think, than overall spending, is where is that money being spent? Is it being spent on servers or is it being spent on cloud services? And I think you would see a fairly dramatic shift going on there. So the overall, the macro I think is still healthy for IT. There's still a lot of spending going on, but it's shifting to a new area and they're killing off some of that redundancy. Well, the ETR data shows a couple of things. There's no question that server and storage spending has been declining and attenuating for a number of quarters now. And there's been a shift going on from that core infrastructure obviously into cloud. Cloud continues its steady march in terms of taking over market share. Other areas of bright spots, security is clearly one. You're seeing a lot of spending in analytics, especially new analytics. I mentioned Snowflake before, disrupting kind of Teradata's traditional legacy enterprise data warehouse market. The RPA market is also very hot. UiPath is a company that continues to extend beyond its peers, although I have to say, automation anywhere looks very strong, blue prism looks very strong. Cloud Air interestingly used to be the darling is hitting sort of all time lows in the ETR database, which is by the way one of the best data sets I've ever seen on spending. Enterprise software is actually still pretty strong. Particularly Workday looks strong, Salesforce still looks pretty strong, Splunk because of the security uplift still looks pretty strong. I don't have a lot of data on IFS. Like you said, they don't really show up in the ETR survey base, but I would expect with the kind of growth we're seeing, a $600 million company hopes to be a billion dollars by 2020-2021, I would think they're going to start showing up in these spending surveys. Well, again, in Europe, they may be a more dominant player than we see in the U.S. As I said, I really had not even heard of the company before last year, which was surprising for a company with 10,000 customers. But again, they're focused on the mid-market and the mid-market tends to fly a bit under the radar. Everyone thinks about what's happening in the enterprise. There's a huge opportunity out there. Many more mid-market companies than there are enterprises and that's been historically a fertile ground for ERP companies to launch. JD Edwards came out of the mid-market. These are companies that may end up being acquired by the giants, but they build up a very healthy base of customers under the radar. Well, the other point I wanted to make and kind of started to you about the digital transformation is, as I say, people are getting sick of the big, long SAP complicated implementations. As small companies become mid-sized companies and larger mid-sized companies, they look toward an enterprise resource planning type of platform and they're probably saying, wait, I've got some choices here. I could go with an IFS, you know, or maybe another alternative to SAP.  Obviously a lot of references, no question about it. One of the things they've been dinged for, I saw this Gartner dinged them for API integrations, well, they've announced some major API integrations. We're going to talk to them about that and poke at that a little bit and see if that will sort of solve that criticism what Gartner calls caution. You know, let's see how real that is in talking to some of the customers. We'll be talking to the executives and members of the ecosystem and obviously Paul and I will be giving our analysis as well. Final thoughts here before we break. Just the challenge, I think as you note for these mid-market focused companies has been growing with their customers and that's why you see the Lawson's and the JD Edwards of the world. Many of these mid-market companies eventually are acquired by the big ERP vendors. Their customers, eventually if they grow, have to go through this transition. If they're going to go to enterprise ERP, they're forced into a couple of big choices. The opportunity and the challenge for IFS is can they grow those customers as they move into enterprise grade size? Can they grow them with the IFS product line without having them, forcing them to transition to something bigger? So a lot of action here in Boston. We heard from several outside speakers. There was Linda Hill from Harvard. They had a digital transformation CEO panel. The CEO of SUSE, who will be on later. And some other company, PTC. With Hankelman, Conway, former PeopleSoft CEO was on there. And then of course Tony Hawk, which was a lot of fun. Obviously a challenger. All right, so keep it right there. But you're watching theCUBE live from IFS World, conference at the Heinz in Boston. We'll be right back right after this short break.