and can do video chats.  Okay, cool. And I have a place here and so yeah.  No kidding. Wow, that's very cool. Very cool. I'm recording this video. It'll be uploaded to the Hyperledger YouTube channel. And I've posted the code of conduct and the Hyperledger anti-trust policy in the chat. So let's start. Kyle, thank you for taking time for us today. This is about metadata. It's about stuff that you're working on and moving forward. Tell us a little bit about DDX. Yeah, so DDX or DDX or yeah, I don't actually, I don't know exactly how they pronounce it, but in any case, ddex.net. So if you wanna visit the website, ddex.net. And DDX is the standard organization for digital music. It came about around the time iTunes came about and it's what the tech industry as well as the music industry use to pass data back and forth. It's very much as much not internet as possible while still being internet. So it's interesting being a Web3 and then interacting with this methodology. So in Web3, there are lots of public ledgers and permissionless people can query as much as they want. So one person puts up the data and then many people can engage with it. But with DDX, databases are private. They're owned by the companies. So oftentimes they're not even connected to the internet for the majority of the time. And then when the data is transferred to another database, it's just between two databases. So it's just one-to-one relationships. And it's only the need to know information. It's a very different philosophy than the Web3 philosophy. But it's what the music industry's built on. And there are historical reasons as well as modern practical reasons why that's the case. And so DDX is now building standards for Web3 and the conversation is how do these one-to-one methods of communication handshakes? How do they basically what I would call oracles? How do they become oracles in Web3? So how does the handshake happen over into Web3? And also a very interesting question is how much information is gonna be transferred and should that information be on a private blockchain or on a public blockchain? So we're still just early days out yet. These are important questions because if Web3 wants to use traditional catalogs, whatsoever engaging with the DDX standard is I believe it's necessary. So if Web3 wants to sell nostalgia and other highly lucrative emotions and sentiment and especially as Web3 is built on collectibles. And so a lot of that is nostalgia. The old action figures from when you were a kid, now you're much older and have a lot of money. You buy them as a collectible. And so that's the case in music as well. So the working group has its first meeting last week and its next meeting is on the 28th. So yeah, so it's really registered at the beginning of this but it is actually happening. So that's exciting. Are these public meetings? How are they being held? Yeah, so it's very much that sentiment of having closed databases that are hardly plugged into the internet at all. So the only way to really engage in these meetings is to be a member of DDX and sign NDAs and then do this all behind closed doors, which is really non-negotiable. If that's how the traditional music industry works. And so DDX itself is very open. It is tech people. They also understand who their clients are in and so they want to push the needle forward and that's why they made this working group and they also have to follow the modality that the music industry majors in such require. And yeah, that is membership and then NDAs. So I'm not in the meetings actually myself and what I've done is I've set up the meetings. So I thought, well, instead of having the traditional industry make these standards all by themselves, let's get some Web3 projects in there, especially Web3 projects that are very, that lean quite a bit into the ethos of Web3 of permissionless and composability and all that good stuff, have them become members and they can participate in these bonnicles doors. So at least there's representation. And then I am the liaison. So whatever is made public, then I'll be communicating that to the EVM standards and open access. So basically what I assume is their API exposure. I don't know if we'll be called API. That'll happen at some point and then I'll be sharing that with the wider ecosystem. But that's why it's important to get engaged with DDEX. This working group, because really the only way to know what's happening is to be in the working group. Kyle, is that in the true spirit of public and permissioned blockchain is the DDEX group being really protective of what it is that they're, or the voyage that they're embarking on? Is it going to be just a, is it going to be just a different type of, or different perspective for this industry or is it going to be more open and more collaborative and more equitable? Do you think once they establish what it is they're setting out to establish? Well, my hope, having Web3 projects involved in the working group is that it is as Web3 as possible, given the constraints of the traditional music industry. So I suppose in another future where the Web3 projects didn't join the working group, I would think that the standards that they're producing right now wouldn't really have the Web3 ethos in it whatsoever. And that's an ethos that is one that originated from my vantage, yeah, how I see it. The Linux culture, GNU Linux, and Web3 is, yeah, I feel part of that lineage. But DDEX itself, it's, again, the people that are running DDEX, they're engineers. So they think like us. The music industry, it doesn't really think like us. Music industry traditionally has actually been very litigious towards new technology, if we think about it. And so that's one of my hopes here is that we can mitigate the litigiousness, not relive the Napster's like all and all that. If we have to have notice, hopefully, something like notice and notice, not notice and take down. So that's to me where these battles are just looking at what has happened with the music industry and tech in the past. And the reality of it is we're dealing with copyright here. And so the copyright owners, and there are only now three major labels that own the vast majority of copyrights in music that are lucrative, they have an immense amount of power because they have monopolies and all that. And so to me, this is what is the most practical path because we do have to engage with copyright and copyright owners don't really, they're not passionate about tech, per se. They're passionate about music and they perhaps would be fine if they were still selling only vinyl records and there wasn't any such things in it. So that's how I see it. Yeah, it's not from the lens of, they're following the ethos I agree with, it's more from the lens of how do we have it so that we have a path for compliance and then the Web3 ecosystem has lower friction with that path for compliance with copyright and can build really cool products for the consumer. And then down the road when there's more CC0 and a paradigm shift, great, I'm all for it. But in the here and now, I feel like it's, I guess if we look at DeFi, it's that they're custodial and non-custodial. We have Coinbase, Coinbase engages with banks. And so that's what's happening here but with music copyright. Is it the intention of DDEX and the collaborators to make the industry more equitable in your view? Is that the, or is it to further protect their interests and maintain their monopoly? What's the, what do you think? I think for DDEX, it's equitable. The people running DDEX for their members. Well, I mean, that's one of the reasons why I've worked so hard to get Web3 members is because I do know those Web3 members that are DDEX members have that value of more equitable. If we leave it to only certain kind of members, right? And go, oh, we don't like those members. So we're not going to become members ourselves. Well, then we're not on the negotiating table. And so that means DDEX is pressured to be less of what we like. And so there's that difficulty kind of in many areas of politics where it's, dude, if there's something you don't like, do you then, for instance, say voting, do you just not vote or do you double down on voting? So we're kind of in that spot. And I also see that I don't, so the copyright itself is a monopoly.  So as long as we're engaged with copyrights, whoever owns that particular work, the main use they have is, or I guess lever they have economically is that ability to impose a monopoly. And there are compulsory licenses. And so it's possible with more, that would be a legislative change, it would be a big lift, but we could have more compulsory licenses down the road and that would make things more equitable. And that's one of the things that's already happened with on the music publishing side is people can cover songs. And so then labels are more free to do what they want. Publishers can't control them, but if publishers could say, hey, only I have to prove who covers, then we probably would see publishers much more in charge of labels, where labels tend to not have to, they tend to dictate the narrative. And so those are two different copyrights that sound recording and the underlying work. And there is a hierarchy that, and the labels are, tend to have more sway than the publishers. So yeah, so all of that, I guess I have faith in web three, the web three is building the more equitable future. And so my take here with the DEX is, yeah, have web three members join the membership so that that more equitable future voice is in the membership. And then the real goal here is that legacy content and culture and such can be used in web three. So it's almost like there's this strata layer in the geology, right? And we're kinda, and I think it's important that we have an ability that the earlier strata layer engages with the newer strata layer, but it's a newer strata layer that I think that more equitable future is being built on. And right now it's more just making sure that that songs from the 70s, we can engage with them somehow. I think it's a really big lift to have songs from the 70s I mean, that would be redistributing wealth and all other types of just, I don't think really possible. So it's more, and a hundred years from now, it will be quite equitable, but in the now, we have to live with what we got and build what we wanna see and have a way for those to communicate with each other. So there's lots fighting. That's kind of my philosophy here. There's a lot of talk and action in the NFT space from indie music people, film, et cetera. There is some legal challenges that they face thinking that they can do licensing, et cetera, et cetera, and sort of circumvent the traditional legislative avenues that the industry fits in. With blockchain, with distributed ledger technology, can something be built and live outside of the legacy industry outside of DDEX and be successful? Is it possible to start now with an industry that uses metadata, uses blockchain, uses crypto payments, uses smart contracts to manage the entire process from start to finish and not have the intermediaries that are in many cases consuming a lot of the income, a lot of the revenue streams that artists and content creators deserve more of. So do you think that DDEX, their focus is the current inventory and how to protect that, but there's risks associated with going forward, can we build outside of DDEX? So I see DDEX a little bit different as in they're not so much protecting the current, it's more they're actually having the current communicate where otherwise wouldn't communicate at all. So it's that there's a database that without DDEX, the information that database would not leave that database whatsoever, but with DDEX, it does leave it. And also it's easier for another party. I say Spotify strikes a deal with Warner Brothers. Well, with DDEX, another company like SoundCloud, it's a lot easier for them to strike a deal with Warner Brothers because that one-to-one handshake, DDEX has decided it. So there's not that extra transaction cost of, okay, not only are you able to use our copyright, you have to license our copyrights, but we also then have to build out a system of passing our metadata over to you. We DDEX goes, okay, well that system of passing the metadata over, that's standardized. So just follow DDEX. And what still needs is to happen though, because it's how copyright works, is that the parties have to agree on licensing. So I feel DDEX is more greasing the wheels a bit, having them a little bit less squeaky. Web three is definitely building outside of the traditional system and it's doing it well. So really kind of my main comments when I'm chatting with the web three devs that are constructing the future as we speak, I actually, there's been a long debate this morning in our telegram group about topics that are very proximate to what we're chatting about here. And yeah, I mean, there's a very smart conversation occurring. So really my point is, and that was part of our telegram chat, is recognizing we don't necessarily know that if something is uploaded, that we can trust the person who's doing the uploading. So the moment we allow people to upload, somebody could upload a song that they don't actually own the rights to and then eventually the rights holder comes and is litigious, right? So even with best intentions, right now the solution's, because it's a really small industry, it's manually betting. And we're talking about KYC and other ways to automate that. It's going to be tough with full copyright, always to engage with the way Web3 works out. However, there are definitely smart people working on figuring that out. And hopefully it's good enough, at least for safe harbors for the platforms and such. But we're so really now that, yeah, it's really just like, it's manually doing it, which I think is great actually, oftentimes we skip manual and go straight into automation and then we do a bad job because we don't really know what we're automating. And then the other one is CC0. So the devs are, I mean, at some point I'll actually engage with them because there's a little bit of a, it's a nuance here, but CC0 is still copyright. CC0 can't work without copyright, it's a license on top of copyright. It's just one that allows open use. There's issues with CC0 chatting with artists and that CC0 then means that a song can be put on a political campaign so the artist disagrees with that politician, right? That their song's on there and that matters because oftentimes that musician's identity is connected with their song, right? So then it seems like the musician himself is advocating. So say Willie Nelson, a musician known for his ethics, he's put on some political campaign and then it seems like it's Willie that's, you know what I mean? So that's tough. I think it would be dangerous for someone like Willie to do a CC0 even though I suspect that his values, he would want to do CC0 as long as he was making a good wage, right? It probably follows his ethos more. But yeah, so that is an issue with CC0. So moral rights, right now I'm thinking about how we can kind of separate and we have three economic rights from moral rights and that can help with those types of issues. So even when we say, okay, we're not gonna, we're gonna do away with copyright and the mode we can have that right now is that we do creative commons, CC0 is creative commons, zero means zero rights, right? So it just says I'm basically waving all my copyrights. It still relies on copyright because it's just a contract in copyright but we can think of it simplified as basically having no copyrights. So it's not quite public domain. That's when we have no copyright but it's about as close as we can ever have when we do have copyright. Yeah, so even that one's problematic. So we're just, we're really out yet but I do see that a lot of really smart people, really passionate people are when it's new songs. So like, especially EDM because that's the culture you're already, that's kind of pioneering how a system that's permissionless and composable that's a music industry, how that will actually work out. Right now the only way that it's being monetized is being monetized quite well. And so music execs are definitely excited about it but it's being monetized in a collectible way which means a very few, basically like fine art. So very few patrons almost, they buy the song or what have you and that's great that people are making money off of that but I don't know how it's scalable that is and it also doesn't necessarily jive with the point of music which is really about consuming more and more and more. It's about having Spotify on 24 seven and constantly engaging with it. So, did you call that EDM? Yeah, EDM is electronic dance music and so it's a very broad genre. Okay. But devs tend to have EDM friends because EDM artists often have dev skills and so it's fairly, and then it's also Gen Z tends to like it. So when I see music, a good chunk of the Web3 music that is testing this stuff out is in the EDM genre and there are cool things EDM can do as well because it is fairly digital. So there's my friend, Stemdow, they're a great team and they have, they've gamified stems. So stems are just like the baseline or the vocal line, right? And so they'll have a top artists. I think the artists they currently have is Elohim and they had a pull side in the summer and so Elohim has a song that's famous and so she then offers the stems and then people can remix it. And so remix is also really big in EDM and so they've gamified remixing and so that's fun. And that makes sense as a use of Web3. So it's very, well, I don't know if it's permissionless but it's definitely people are permitted to play the game. So it's very collaborative with the audience. And so that's where I hope music goes is this collaborative because that's what music used to be, a very collaborative, right? Still is, I mean, if you're hanging out with your friends but as far as like an industry. But I got a guitar, you got a bass, let's jam, right? Is Apple music big in this involved at all with the DDX? Are they one of the members of the... I'll have a double check if I'm fairly sure, yeah. Pretty much all the big players are involved with the DDX. So yeah, I'll look up real quick, but I'm pretty sure that they're a part of it. Yeah, so board members Spotify, PRS for music, Sound Exchange, Google, Yema, Sasem, Pandora, Universal, Amazon Music, BMI, Socan, and Apple. Yeah, Apple's a board member. Yeah, ASCAP, Cobalt, Sony. Yeah, that's interesting. It certainly tells me a lot of what to expect from that industry. I can't, with that sort of horsepower behind the industry, the little guys are not gonna have a lot of sway. I think, I'm interested in the concept of open source and the open source being hyper ledger, open source being a collaborative, anybody can play set of rules.  Do you think that something could be built to compete with DDX on hyper ledger, using Ethereum, using all the different tools out there, all of the different blockchains, and basically capture the new up and coming artists that firmly believe in the equitable side of music and film, and all of those things. What are your thoughts on building a competitor to DDX? Yeah, so to me, DDX, where I really focus with DDX on the engineering side of things is DDX is the creating standards for one-to-one database communications for databases that are rarely plugged into the internet, right? So they're like, before web one, you know, web one, one-two, web one, web two, web three. This is before that. So I feel it's less competing with DDX, because DDX is just the handshake for when it's a one-to-one communication and more having one-to-many, which is how I consider this. When I post something, I post a smart contract, I publish it, and then many people can use it. So that's why I think it's one-to-many. Then more and more parties will use one-to-many. And wherever one-to-one is still required, DDX standards are already there. They make sense. And DDX standards aren't dealing with one-to-many. DDX standards also are dealing with just copyright. And so they're not dealing with NFT, and I personally believe NFT is a new type of intellectual property. And you know, there's trademark and such, and I don't know, I think, I think DDX is fairly just focused just on copyright. So to me, it's less competing with DDX and more backwards compatible with DDX. That's really what it is. And so that's what I believe this working group, that's the main value I hope comes out of this working group is that there's backwards compatible with DDX and that backwards compatibility matches our ethos as much as possible. So there could be a few ways that this backwards compatible comes about. And so having actual Web 3 projects in the room, it's more likely that it's gonna come about in a way that is the most equitable type of backwards compatibility. But that's really how I take it. It's not where we're competing with DDX, it's that we're being backwards compatible with them. So then whenever we have to engage with that one-to-one relationship, then we have an ability to. So importantly, a major label can't come around with RIAA or something and sue a small Web 3 project out of existence because there's this a way to be backwards compatible and compliant enough that at least they're safe harbor sent. I mean, it's not like YouTube is done away with copyright infringement. It's YouTube has enough tooling that it has safe harbor and it can take advantage of digital millennium copyright act and so that's how I'm interpreting it.  And a reason why I set up this, I was able to set up this working group is because I also don't have a project, a Web 3 project at the moment. So I can be neutral. So I do sense that DDX is neutral. One of the reasons they were available for me to engage I'm also neutral. And then the working group, those are non-neutral parties, right? So there's a bit of jockeying and such. I went to their plenary and did a presentation about NFTs and that's all this working group came about. And I saw a little bit of that jockeying. I mean, it was definitely civil, but that's kind of the point of what DDX is. It's a way to have that back and forth between these major players and still decide on a standard that everyone agrees with, right? So Sony will be pushing in one way, Universal will be pushing another way, Apple will be pushing a third way. And so yeah, so I had a little bit of a exposure to that. So with this working group that we now have, Web 3 projects will also be able to do a bit of that jockeying. And so whatever this backwards compatibility that comes about, my goal here is that it's as fair as possible. And then what it will allow is Web 3 projects don't have to like what we're in the telegram group right now is concerned about copyright infringement. They don't have to be concerned because they know they have, if they implement these tools, then they can have Safe Harbor or something like that. I mean, we're still early out yet. And then the other thing I actually think is it would be fun, not just kind of heavy stuff, but fun is just being able to license some nostalgic pieces and have that part of the enjoyable NFT, right? And so it's gonna be a lot easier I think to bring in those legacy pieces if we have some DDEK standards that make that more straightforward. But we'll find out what the standards actually, what they produce that don't have a clear understanding of what they will or we're not allowed. Is there a roadmap established for this working group? There might be, they had their first meeting last week, but yeah, so I won't be able to, unless they share that with me, they decided it's public, I'm not gonna be party to it. And any thoughts on any opinions on what to expect a year, two years, six months? Is there any way to estimate whether they would succeed or whether they will commit to something in terms of finalizing these protocols? Yeah, I think they wanna move relatively quickly. I think their next plenary is in November and so they, I would assume we would wanna have a bit of a rough sketch and then maybe the plenary in May that they actually have something that they vote on and that is implemented. Part of it is the NFT market died down. So I don't know if they have as much fire under their feet as they did before that went happen, but they've also been aware of, I think they first started interacting with the technology back in 2018, maybe in 2017, something like that. So they've always been paying attention and I believe that they see this now as the Overton window. And so even though the market is cold down a bit, they might still have that assessment that it's the Overton window and they wanna get these standards out as soon as possible. So yes, majors can get a cut of the pie, totally. There's a lot of motivation when it was really, the market was really hot. And I think their belief is that it would be great if the standards are all there and their actual products that are using them when the market gets hot again. But I mean, obviously can't speak for them. I'm kind of just guessing here, but it does seem like they're moving, they're moving as quick as they can, despite them being an organization that requires a lot of consensus by fairly incumbents that often, well, in the past at least, we're a resident engaged with technology, but it does, I'm hopeful based on the conversations I've had that the incumbents are not so against technology anymore. They recognize technology is always going to shake things up, disruptions part of technology. And I mean, vinyl records were technology too and publishers used to be in charge and now labels are in charge. And so, yeah, so I do believe now I can't actually say, but it does seem like the music industry is aware that they just have, the way to work with it is to ride the wave, not to get upset at the wave and try to punch it. Yeah. Speaking of crypto winter, what are your, just a side note, what are your thoughts on when we may come out of this slump? And it certainly was the price action that got NFTs going and all of the, all of the ideas and surrounding NFTs, moving in an upward direction. When do you think we might see a change in sentiment and popularity of crypto again? That's tough, because there are macro considerations as well that don't have much to do with crypto, but the economy just generally having problems. And then the most recent news, I guess, with the economy is there's, for some people, over 50% chance that by spring we'll be in a recession. And also though, so this is my first proper cycle, I'm not as knowledgeable as people have been through multiple cycles, but it does seem like real actual products get built in a bear market like this. And then they're getting built and people don't really know about them. And then they get, people find enough word of mouth happens, a critical mass goes down and people go, wow, this is such a cool product, came out of nowhere, overnight success type of thing.   And so that's where this speculation goes down. And I see in Web 3, like I'm personally spending a lot of time in DAOs. And I see that's a potential product when it kind of gets that point where it's consumer friendly, that we can have another, that could be the thing that propels crypto backup into a bull market. And there could be other products as well, but it does seem like the hype over the NFT products, that's over now. So they've kind of died down to their actual utility value. And there can be ways to make NFTs even more exciting, right? And so kind of re-productize them. But I mean, it would be nice within six months or so that there's at least the people that are building that it starts to catch on fire, these products that are actually novel products and that's why they're catching on fire. That's why we get really excited. And the late majority gets a little bit too excited and that's what creates the bubble. But yeah, I mean, at least, I mean, personally, we're really busy, lack style because even when things are bad, actually in some senses, lawyers are appreciated more because when lawyers are kind of, when they're good, people go, well, why are you saying no? I want to do something. And then when they're bad, it's like, oh, help me here. I, you know, so, yeah. But I really would like to bear market down soon and later, I guess, but I can't really, I don't have a crystal ball, so I'm kind of just showing the dark hair. Well, I'll add that I think if you're, if what you're seeing as an estimate of the spring being a major recession, I think we probably have to get to that point. It has to happen before things will turn around. So that's maybe that's the magic period, the spring and summer of 2023 will be the next, the next move. I'm going to see if John, hey, John, how are you doing? Hey, sorry about that. I was in another meeting and listening with one ear and trying to be present and the other thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, welcome, welcome. Thank you. John, you've been following this great chat with Kyle here. Do you have any questions for Kyle? Can you maybe give us a little, a little something on what you're up to and are you in the industry or you, what are you building? Go ahead. Sure. Well, I used to work at Pandora and did some web three experiments at Pandora, which we presented to DDEX a while ago. I'm now in the working for an IDV company. And I guess my only question, this is great to see that DDEX is taking this up formally. So I'm really excited about that. I think that will help a lot when it comes to, you know, setting guidelines and maybe actual standards in which people can sort of innovate within. So desperately needed and that's awesome to hear. I'm super excited. I guess my only sort of generic question was, Kyle is, is there any intentional relationship to Hyperledger or is it just a, this is a great place to talk about this kind of stuff? Yeah, well, I mean, it would be great if Hyperledger thought about joining in some capacity as a DDEX member and then participating in this working group. So, yeah, I mean, if you are interested in that, I can definitely set up the introductions and that's what I'm already doing with other groups. And so far, I don't think it's been an entire blockchain, but that would be great. So far it's been projects, some of them larger projects though. So yeah, so whoever would be in Hyperledger, that would, how Hyperledger would join, but I think that's a great idea if Hyperledger is interested, yeah. Cool, yeah, I think Hyperledger is an interesting angle when it comes to industry because it's meant to be private consortium based stuff. I think there's a lot of overlap there with interest from, as opposed to using Ethereum or something like that, right? I mean, this may not be a chain choice. This may be protocols on top of that, I get that. But I think there's a lot of really interesting tie-ins with Hyperledger in terms of interests, a lot of overlapping interests there with the industries. I think that's interesting. I agree, yeah. And my thought is that majors would be more comfortable if they start to dip their toes into blockchain and to leave this databases that are hardly online at all, that they do a private enterprise and then something like Bazude can then go full. So it's kind of a midway. And yeah, right now it's kind of the way I see it is that there's the traditional system and then the Ethereum system and like that bridge is gonna be pretty tough to cross whatever DDEX does. And so I definitely, I mean, that's one of the reasons I'm participating, I mean, that's the main reason I am participating in Hyperledger definitely is that Hyperledger I feel has a way to kind of smooth that out and just on engineering practicality thought process that Hyperledger can, yeah, eventually goes over to Ethereum but how does it get from this one-to-one all the way over to the just totally open free market and Hyperledger I think, especially with something like Bazude can bridge that. I agree. And this may be controversial but I don't know that it necessarily ever has to be completely open. Depending on whatever the goal of the working group is or maybe not the output is as DDEX itself is sure it's a publicly published standard but realistically it's only used internally but not only but mostly used internally as a communication method between actors in the industry. So whether you publish the standards or not whatever people end up using whatever the actual product is may or may not need to be public. And I know that I kind of overheard when I was dividing my attention between the two meetings earlier I overheard a little bit talk about this idea behind being private and being public and all that stuff. And I just have to say that my experience in music industry is yes that there are certain times when sort of building in public is not productive. And I think that the industry itself does move better in a, and I would say to offer some perspective I think that the names you mentioned in terms of who's involved is actually a very large group for a music industry sort of partnership. And that's about as public as I would expect to get is having all those people involved. So I think that's actually a great usually it's always been like one or two or three people, right? And so setting the standards for the rest of them. And so I think it sounds like you've got a lot of great people from all corners of the industry involved. And to the balance the point, I heard that something like this does miss sort of the input from the public or from, I think we're just called the small guys or something like that in these. And so that's definitely a tough balancing beam. But again, DDEX is these standards are published. And so I think there probably will be room for comment at some point in some form or fashion. Well, they have, so that's again DDEX being neutral and recognizing that they're a facilitator. And so they have to facilitate in the way that the parties want, right? And so that's why NDAs and such are so important for them because that's what the majors require. They also though, one of the reasons they're successful is where they I guess had their own, they did have their own ethical opinion on things is that they see how much a project is making. And if it's an indeed and the membership is not that expensive at all. So it's rated out. So an organization that basically, they make sure that people aren't priced out and they can get their voice heard. They do have to do membership, so all that NDA stuff, but at least there's not an economic mode. They actually try to make sure that there's a bridge there. And so people that are serious about it, basically anyone who's serious about it, even if it's early stage can join DDEX, they can handle those costs. And yeah, so definitely DDEX is trying to be as public as possible, recognizing that it's a, they're creating standards that are private. And yeah, I mean, like it might change, but one of the ways that Pirate Bay, Spotify beat out Pirate Bay is that the user experience is just easier with Spotify. So we were talking about this years ago, in my community, when we were having debates about whether we should sue peer-to-peer or not, basically. And my side, we were not into suing peer-to-peer. Basically, suing peer-to-peer means you're suing your customers and so that just seems like a bad idea. And what we are, the way that we framed it is that people buy bottled water all the time. Even the water is free. So if there can be, I think it's a multi-million dollar businesses that are selling something that is free, even though music, yeah, maybe it's not supposed to be free or whatever, but there's a channel where it is free because we were just infringing and they don't care. Instead of spending too much energy dealing with that, instead spend energy on having the customer experience frictionless, enjoyable, just like buying a smart water bottle. And so the way that translates practically with music is metadata is really important. So when I listen to Spotify now, a lot of the songs, they have lyrics and the lyrics, as the song is progressing, the lyrics will be highlighted. So it's really easy to sing along. And so just as Spotify continues, there's more and more enjoyable experience. So it's not just frictionless, but also surprisingly fun compared to if I go on, downloaded illegally and none of that, right? And so then, and also it's much more, yeah, it's just more difficult, but more speed bumps. So instead of stopping something, just create some speed bumps on that side. And then on the other side, it's just a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more, have it be more enjoyable, more frictionless. But that's one of the reasons why a lot of this data that's in, I think that's in, that these organizations hold, they're not going to want to make it public, at least not in the short term. That's, we'll then, they'll throw away the way they figured out how to compete with free, basically. And that's a distinction to make that. Web three technology can be used in private situations, web three technology, you know, can be used in all types of situations. And these are industries that can benefit from web three technology. And that doesn't necessarily mean the public. Blockchain. And I, I for one would just vote that if anyone else is listening to this, that in itself does not make, you know, DDEX an evil organization or any, or the music industry in general, I think that there's plenty of opportunities in the music industry. When it comes to the accounting side, when it comes to the ownership side, when it comes to the rights side, organic, all these things, just like DDEX itself as a distribution method was a huge improvement to that system. You can add web, you can sprinkle web three technology into all those touch points and create value for artists, value for DSPs, reduce costs, you know, there's just lots of touch points for improvement on web three technology. And that doesn't necessarily require, you know, the public blockchain. That's very well said. Yeah. That's better said than I've said it so far. Thank you. I think there's a, there's no doubt that there's going to be some casualties in the, in the legacy music industry and the film industry. As a result of this technology that is. Parsi metadata and using it as a, as a main tool for whether it be distribution or payments and things of that nature. I think the industry fears just how deep those casualties will run. And it's understandable, but it's inevitable. And I think that I worry that, that they, they're going to be too protective of, of their, of the, of their inventory of music and film. And not give an opportunity to, to use the technology to see what it can do for them. That's my, yeah. I mean, my, I could be wrong, but my impression is that we're not talking about creating exclusionary technologies. What we're talking about is using web three technology to streamline an existing industry. And there are, again, the, the inefficiencies in the current industry really do create negative headwinds on artists and revenue that is lost because accounting is not done properly. Publishing is, is not accurate, right? There's, there's ownership rights get confused. There's millions of dollars spent on audits that don't need to be spent. There's, there's, there's a lot of places where web three can just create money that wasn't there in existing situation. And I don't know that we're talking about locking out technology from other people. These standards are usually published. You can certainly use the standards in your own system. You know, like DDEX itself is an XML format, right? Like that's not exclusionary, right?  That's my impression of what we're talking about here. I'm sure all these different actors have their own ways to capitalize on whatever new technology is created, but ultimately we're talking about creating efficiencies, which should benefit everybody. Again, I'm speaking from the outside. I don't know what they're talking about the meaning, but that's my impression. Yeah, good. Totally agree.  I have to jump on another call. I just want to say real quick that, so the one area that I guess it's problematic is sometimes people, certain individuals, they, their job is to, to create those efficiencies, right? And so they're intermediaries and those people will be disrupted to some extent. And I do know certain initiatives when they've kind of addressed that head on, then there's been not a basically political pushback from people that will, if it's actualized that way, we'll lose their job kind of overnight and whatever. And, and so even the efficiencies does, we do kind of need to be tactful with, but, but I, one of the reasons, so there's this, the way that I created this DDEX working group is I started something called Web 3 Music Coalition. And the reason I started that is because I saw that a, a bunch of the Web 3 people were basically, they're out with pitchfork saying we're going to disrupt you or whatever, right? And there's this morning that telegram group, similar thing, they're relating it to Uber and how Uber taxi drivers are, used to be all of transport. And now it's like, I think the, the stat I saw this on that blog post that was shared this morning was like 13% or 30%, something that, you know, less than 100 or whatever substantial cut and, it was disrupted. Yeah. Yeah. And so, and so that's, that's a narrative that is being pushed right now a lot. And that narrative, I, I will get people, their backs up. And we, so the narrative we tried first, which was, we're going to, we're going to make it efficient. Well, sometimes people don't want their books to be audited because either they're, because they're intermediaries or even sometimes a lot of companies actually have been fraudulent. They don't want, we know, right? So that one, the going head on with that one, that doesn't work. And this new strategy of like, oh, we're just disrupting. I don't think that one necessarily needs to work. What I hope happens is more, and that's why I'm leaning in on NFTs is more what in the music industry, when there were only publishers and then labels came about, and it wasn't like publishers disappeared. It's just labels made so much money in a whole new type of area of making money that now suddenly labels are such a big thing. And so that's what I, I think that would be a more helpful narrative is that there's publishers labels and there's this new third thing. And then NFTs like resale, that's a royalty that didn't exist before. And so looking at how there was neighboring rights that people didn't really care about neighboring rights 20 years ago, but now that's a big portion of royalties. And so that that's still a copyright, but now we have this whole NFT space that we can play around with different royalties. And we already see how resale is helpful. So maybe there'll be a new name for it, like publishers labels and then this third thing or not. I don't know, but really what is exciting is to me is this whole other, like basically continuing to diversify the revenue streams. And so consumers are going to be spending money in ways that they aren't now. And we see a little glimmer of it already. And so that way we don't, we can really avoid the disruption narrative. And I'm working with that in the legal community too with automating the law. Well, if you automate the law, lawyers are out of a job. No, lawyers are, they're just going to accountants have that in the 80s where accounting was automated in the 80s. And then it's not like accountants have gone away. CFOs are more important than ever. They are able to, they're more empowered. So the people that don't embrace. Well, that's tough. They're, you know, change, but with the people that do embrace what ends up happening actually is that just the productivity, right? Just the skyrockets. So that's what I'm really hoping here is that we focus on overall productivity. And, and, and people just continued education. So get them up to speed. And. Yeah, just. So I got to, I got to run, but. Kyle, thank you very much for taking the time for us. John Kyle is the lead of the hyper ledger music subgroup for the media and entertainment subgroup. I put the membership directory in the chat there, John, if you want to throw in an email address in there, get set up, then we can continue this discussion with the Kyle and other people in our groups. But Kyle, thank you so much. We'll talk to you soon, buddy. Take care of yourself. John, thank you so much for coming and J field LLC. Thank you for joining, for attending today. Take care, everybody. Thanks, Brad.


Welcome to NewsClick, this is Janaki. Now let's have a look at the current Tamil Nadu political scenario. There is a lot of anger among people against the current ruling all India-Anna-Dravidya Munnetra Kalagam, AI-ADMK at the state and the BJP government at the centre. People are fed up with the policy paralysis of the Modi government and the inefficient leadership of EPS and OPS combined. According to the latest trend from the ground, Dravidya Munnetra Kalagam, DMK in alliance with Congress is likely to get more than 30 seats out of 39 in Tamil Nadu, whereas ADMK-aligned BJP may end up with zero seats. The state is going for a single-phase polling on April 18th. AI-ADMK and DMK are the dominant Dravidyan parties competing with each other in the state. They are contesting in a major election for the first time after the demise of their top leaders Jailalitha and M. Karnanidhi respectively. Both the parties are contesting only in 20 seats and have left the remaining for the alliance. Interestingly, AI-ADMK and DMK will be facing each other only in eight seats. Congress has more presence than BJP in the state. Patali Makkal Kacchi, PMK, a major political outfit among the other smaller parties in Tamil Nadu is contesting in seven seats. It is the largest caste-based party in the state. The party has considerable support in the northern districts, especially among the one-year community, which has the concentrated odd share of five to six percent. But the party opposed to ADMK strongly till the recent times facing the credibility questions. Actor Vijayakant Let Desya Murpukku Dravidya Kalagam, DMDK is contesting in four seats. They allied with ADMK when DMK did not pay proper consideration. They were the principal opposition in 2011 to 2016 assembly period surpassing the DMK. But they have gradually lost their influence and have been forced to join the ADMK alliance this time, as their leader Vijayakant have been inactive due to health issues. Tamil Mahanila Congress, DMC, Pudya Tamilagam PT, New Justice Party, NJP and all India and our Congress, AI and RC have got one seat each. Actor Sarath Kumar's Samatua Makkal Kacchi has offered their support to ADMK without any seats. Communist Party of India, Marxist, CPIM, Communist Party of India, CPI and Vidadalai Sirithaigal Kacchi, VCK have got two seats each from the DMK front. The popular figure Vaikos Marumalarshi Dravidya Munetra Kalagam, MDMK is another prominent party in this alliance. But they are contesting in DMK's symbol. Indian Union Muslim League, IUML, Konganada Makkal Desya Kacchi, IJK, MDK and India Jananayega Kacchi, IJK are the other parties coming in this line. All of them have one seat each. Though they have a key role to play in their belts, they are contesting in DMK's symbol except IUML. All the small parties together had secured 30% of the votes in 2014 election. But now the political atmosphere has changed drastically. Many of them are not contesting in their own symbol. The distracted fraction of TTV Dina Karan's Amma Makkal Munetra Kalagam, AMMK from AIADMK and Kamal Hassan's Fresh Entry with Makkal Nidhi Mayem, MNM are isolated. AMMK and MNM are contesting in all the constituencies. Though there is a less probability of winning any seat, AMMK can prove costly, especially to the ruling dispensation, the AIADMK by cutting into their traditional Oatshare. Naam Tamilar Kacchi, NTK, a Tamil nationalist party, contests in all the 39 parliamentary seats alone with a 50 to 50 gender representation. It had secured just over 1% of the total votes in the last assembly polls. But the experts say that the party will increase its Oatshare in this general election for various reasons, such as the inability of the state to resist unpopular central governmental schemes. Anti-Drividian mood among a section of youth and its improved cadre building. This is all about the current Tamil Nadu political scenario. Thanks for watching Newslic.


from our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California. This is a CUBE Conversation. Hi, and welcome to the CUBE. I'm your host, Sonia Tagare, and we're here at the Palo Alto CUBE studios for an amazing conversation about women in tech and bringing men into the conversation. With us today is our guest, Ava Helen, who is the CEO and founder of EQ Inspiration and the board director of PrinterLogic. Welcome to the CUBE. Thank you so much for having me. So let's get started. So give us a brief overview of your background. So I was actually in tech for close to two decades. I came from Sweden in the mid-90s and joined a hardware company here in Silicon Valley and started selling hardware. One thing led to the next, and then I was part of starting two software companies, both with good exits. The last one we exited in 2015 when it was acquired by Citrix and the name of that company was Sambolic. So I was deep in the trenches of tech for many, many, many years. That's very inspiring. And from tech you went to being an advocate for women in tech, so tell us a little bit about that. Well, it was interesting. I mean, I was a woman the whole time myself, but I didn't take the time to reflect over a lot of what the other women were experiencing. When you run a business, your head is down and you work really, really hard all the time. So I didn't come up for air very often. But as we had been transitioned, we were on the East Coast and we were transitioned back to Silicon Valley. I started to really network as much as I could and met a lot of women and joined a lot of organizations and went to tons of events. And I thought they were fantastic and it was great energy and women sharing things and stories with each other and supporting each other. But I couldn't figure out where the guys were. And I'd been working in this industry for so long. I knew that all the decisions were made by men and I didn't understand why they weren't part of the discussion. So I went to a couple of guys and I said, well, if I start something called women in tech events for guys, will you come? And they're like, absolutely, we would love that. So said and done a couple of years ago, I did my first EQ inspiration, which is an event where 50% of the audience is men, 50% are women. And in a typical format, I will have experts or in the beginning, I wasn't an expert myself at all. So I would have experts come in and speak and then eventually I could take over some of those pieces, talking about equality, what things good things to do for women and so on. And then I would always have a panel of men that I would ask, what are you actively and actually doing for women in the workplace?  And all these amazing stories were coming out. So I thought, hmm, how can I get more of those stories and make them available to a broader audience? So that's kind of where I was in the beginning of last winter. And what spurred you to become a part of this movement? Was it a situation, an experience you had in your workplace or just something you saw in the larger women in tech or community? Well, I think I'd had my own experiences, obviously, since I'd been in the industry for so long and every woman has a way to tackle being the only woman in the room, the only one in the meeting, the only one at dinner and so on. We all have ways to tackle and deal with that. But like I said, I hadn't really reflected much over what other women were experiencing. So just by hearing what all these other women were dealing with, I thought I kind of need to help here because I'm not saying that my ways of dealing with it were the best or the way that I would recommend for others to be. I can be super pushy and very assertive and a lot of women are not like that. So my model didn't necessarily work for them. So I had to try to figure out like, how can I actually help them? And because there are so many ways that women are supporting each other already that are functioning really, really well, forums for talking about delicate things and more open things, I wanted to bring the men into the conversation because they're ultimately 50% of the population and a lot more than that in the workplace. So I just thought we needed to engage them to make them feel more safe in how they are supporting us. And do you find that the men who do come to these events, are they more at the leadership level or are they varied, who generally shows up? So it varies a lot, but if I could take a step back just to what I did when I said, okay, let me find out more of these stories because that will answer your question. So I interviewed, I did 60 hour long interviews with men in tech at all levels of the organization from CEO to individual contributors. And then I took all of that scripted material and I broke these people down into seven characters of men. And I say generously because we as women have been categorized into two categories by most men for thousands of years. So seven characters with different names. And at the top of what I call my matrix, we have Mark James Samir that are advocates for women. Then we have Memo Allen Chris that are allies of women. And at the bottom of the matrix, we have Richard who is opposed to change and concern that women will take over men's positions in the workplace. But by doing that categorization, I can see that it doesn't matter if it's a leader or if it's an individual contributor, it's a range of men that come to my events, but typically they're sitting at the higher end of the matrix, not the lower part because they're still a little hesitant to thinking, well, what can I do? How can I help? Right, so it doesn't matter exactly what their exact position is, but how far up the matrix they are or how far low the matrix is. Yes, exactly, exactly. So can you tell us a little bit more about the different categories in the matrix and why you created, you found those seven categories? Yeah, sure, so if we start from the top, the top character is called Mark and Mark is, he's really an expert. He has been working in HR or he's a diversity consultant or he can be a man who has lots of friends and he's very comfortable speaking up on behalf of women in front of these men, but he doesn't just address women or mixed groups, he actually talks directly to groups of men. The next category is James. James is a change agent, he's a leader, he has a very visible presence in the organization and he will take on things like culture change. If he notices in his organization that the culture is not exactly what it should be to promote equality, he will actually get to the bottom of it and dig deep to figure things out and solve them, maybe by hiring an external consultant like a Mark. The next level is Samir, he's the sponsor and there are lots of women out there that have had great sponsors and often at the EQ Inspiration events, I'll bring up a woman who talks about a sponsorship story. The sponsors make women visible and they also put their own name on the line. They're very comfortable promoting women and often they have experienced being an outsider themselves at some point, so they're very empathetic. The next level, now we get into the allies and the allies are Memo, Al and Chris. Memo is the mentor. Mentorship is a very interesting thing because it's a big step up from the level below. It really is not necessarily promoting but really asking a woman, what can I do to help? How can I help you? And there's a lot of informal mentorships that are going on and there are lots of formal mentorship programs out there. It's really important to formalize mentorship programs in organizations where there is a greater fear among men to do something that's not right. And I think that a lot of the informal mentorships are suffering because of the Me Too movement and all the negative press that we have out there. The next two allies are Al and Chris and these two categories have the greatest potential to actually grow into something bigger because the objective of course is to climb from one step to the next on the matrix. And Al is a happy go lucky guy. He says, I love working with women. I think it's fantastic. Just tell me what to do. I would love to help but he's not necessarily sure what to do. And Chris, the guy below him is, he gets uncomfortable more easily. So if a situation gets a little sticky in the office when they start talking about equality or something like that he might actually withdraw and close his door and say, no, I don't want to be part of this discussion. But if you talk to Chris he's already helping somebody who's close to him. Maybe his sister, maybe his partner, his wife or his daughter. And it's really interesting when you get to the point where they understand and they realize they go, oh, I am actually doing something. Maybe it's not to somebody in the, you know helping somebody in the workplace but maybe it's somebody who's really close to me. And then Richard at the bottom of the matrix he's the chauvinist and he's there and there's lots of them and they're opposed to the change. And in the beginning I was thinking maybe I just leave him out of the discussion but he's a really important reference point for the rest of the characters. And so I like that how you said that it's we want to have men go up the levels to essentially become a Mark or James or Samir but suppose you have a Richard in your workplace is there any hope for him ever becoming a Mark or is it even likely? Well, so the important thing is here you know, I'm not a big fan of the kinds of workshops where you throw all men into the same room and you give them the same message because you lose 70% of the audience right away. So the key thing here is to make them understand that you can climb one step on the ladder and that may be enough. And if you choose to stay where you are but as long as you're getting a little bit more awareness of what you're doing, that's okay too. But we're not trying to get Al or Chris the people who are towards the bottom to become Marks we just want them to climb one step. And Richard, he's absolutely not a hopeless case. The thing with him is there you can't tell him what to do but you need to find his motivator. What is it that motivates him to start thinking outside of the little comfort zone that he's in right now? And so maybe that motivator is maybe he does have a sister who's experienced a difficult situation. And so how does that relate to what's going on? Maybe his team is not coming up with any new ideas. So having the discussion of diversifying the team he might be ready for that one. But just finding his motivator is how we get him to at least get up to the level of Chris. And you mentioned that by the year 2030 you want 50-50 gender equality. Now for people who are at leadership positions who are Richards who maybe do have some hope that they might change into even a Chris but they still aren't on board with 50-50 gender equality. What do you say to those men and how can women deal with those men in their workplace? Well, it's that, you know, is the pie this big or is there two pies or is the pie growing? 50-50 is sort of something that a lot of people that are working towards equality are saying. Now, I'm really trying to support women in the workplace to get to higher levels. And we are more than 50% at the very bottom level of most industries and most working positions. And we know that I think it's 53% of all graduates today are women. So it's not so much we need to be 50-50. It's just that we need to change the parameters a little bit and change the format and change the expectations of how we lead our organizations so that it's not always done in a man's way. But rather something that's more accepting towards not just women, but all minorities that haven't had a place there before. And what do you say to somebody who's a Richard? Well, if he's open to having the discussion and conversation, try to meet him where he is and say, we're not taking your job away from you but we will give a woman the opportunity to apply for the job at the next level alongside with you. And it's the most qualified that will win. But the way that the criteria are set right now and the qualifications and expectations are set right now are really created very much so for men. So they end up winning that battle every single time. And so that's what, you know, and Chris can't or Richard can't change that. That needs to be changed from a higher level. And also alongside with them, worrying that we're going to take their jobs also because of the Me Too movement, they might be worried, oh, I don't even want to work with women because I'm worried they're going to say I harass them or do something to them. So I'd rather just not even bother it with it. So with those kind of people, how would you try to convince them that they're safe with women or that it's okay for them to be a part of this discussion? So Chris, who is just above Richard on the matrix, he supports women who are very close to him. So like I said, family members or maybe it's somebody, a woman on his team that he's worked with for a long time. And by making him aware that he's already supporting people that are very close to him and he's super comfortable in those relationships and that kind of support that he's providing, I'm saying, what if you were to take that support to somebody that you don't know as well? Maybe there's a woman in the extended team or next to you and you say to her, what can I do to help you? Is there anything I can do to help? And then treat that relationship the same way that you're treating the relationship that you have with that family member or whatnot. Make sure that it's completely transparent. Let the door be open. Make sure that you're inviting other people to the meetings, sit in an open area. Do things that are completely transparent, that way nobody will ever question, what your motives are, why you're doing this or if you're suggesting or saying something that's inappropriate. Right, right. And do you feel that more men are coming to these events or do you think that there's still a lot of progress to be made? So when I started this a couple of years ago, I said, okay, within a year, most of the women's organizations here in the Bay Area will have a track for men and it's starting to happen. So I'm so excited about that. I'm really, really happy that EQ Inspiration is not the only place to go, but that there's other organizations that are doing the same thing. And I will continue to, beyond the EQ Inspiration format, my objective is to go and speak at as many tech events as possible, where I know that the majority of the audience will continue to be mostly men for at least the near future. Hopefully that will change quickly. But now that I have material and I have a method and I know that there is a way to move men and make them individual contributors and make them excited about this, I want to bring that message directly to the core audience while all of the women's organizations that are sitting here in Silicon Valley will continue to build their tracks for men. That's amazing and you also mentioned that your material is coming out in spring, so what's next for you? Well, I mean, so writing a book is a difficult thing and for all the men who are listening to this, it will be a very accessible, easy book, not a lot of words, some pictures, images, hopefully it's gonna be a nice feel to it, so people will be happy to have it lying around. And really for me, it's trying to create a language that both men and women are comfortable with, having names on these characters, jokingly being able to talk about it, deep dramatizing the whole conversation around this. There's a big seriousness to it, don't get me wrong, but for what I'm trying to do, I really want to lighten it up a little bit and make sure that people don't feel intimidated, threatened, judged or anything like that by it. And so once the book becomes available in the spring, I'm hoping that tech organizations will pick it up and use it as conversational material, both for women's work groups, for mixed groups. One woman called me and said, I have found a great use case. She specializes in going into organizations that already have programs and processes set up to move the needle, but not enough is happening. And then she can use this material to actually plug in and engage the men more deeply. So I think the book will have its life and with the book, I will make sure that it gets in front of as many people in tech as possible, both men and women. And then I'm hoping to be able to speak about it in as many difficult places as possible because that's how I grow. Well, that's very heroic and it's such a great support for the women in tech community to have someone who's willing to kind of go out of their comfort zone and talk to men about women in tech issues when that's really not happening. So really appreciate all the work you're doing and thank you so much for coming in today. Thank you so much for having me. She's Ava, I'm Sonia. Thanks so much for watching theCUBE. Till next time.


I've been to the edge. I stared into the abyss and I didn't blink, you know? And it's like when you have that kind of mentality where you know you could go back to zero, somebody could take everything from you, but it doesn't matter because you're still who you are. I think that's true confidence, but that starts small. I was the most unconfident kid, but what happened? I started lifting weights and then I was like, oh, I got stronger. I bench pressed 300 pounds. I never thought I would do that. Let's do a bodybuilding show. Did a bodybuilding show. Everybody was like, Lane, you're crazy. Like all my friends from high school, like you can't win. I won. And it's like, oh, I can do something else. Let's try a PhD. This is like progressive overload for life.


Starting June 1, new laws will come into effect. While the province already has mandatory helmet and seating laws, these new standards provide more guidance to help British Columbians ride safely. All motorcycle riders and their passengers must now wear helmets that meet industry safety standards. Helmets must have a rigid head covering and a strong stiff outer shell. I know that some long time riders will wear a bristle, but it's time for them to hang up their beanies. Novelty helmets only give the illusion of safety. Regulated helmets have a rigid styrofoam liner in addition to the exterior hard shell. If you're caught wearing one of these motorcycle helmets after June, starting in June, you'll receive $138 ticket and you could face having your motorcycle seized and towed from the scene. We see the graduated licensing program and power restrictions, mandatory training in the standardized helmet as catching up to the times as the 1987 law is totally out of date as there has been so many needless and unnecessary deaths in this province. We want to thank Solicitor General Shirley Bond and Premier Christie Clark for stepping up to the plate and implementing motorcycle safety for all of our communities.


At IDBA Federal, we have four marathons that we sponsor, the Mumbai Half Marathon, which is happening on the 20th of August, then the Spice Coast Marathon in Cochin, then we have the Kolkata Full Marathon in Feb and the New Delhi Marathon, which is towards the last Sunday of February. We have close to about 50,000 runners who have participated in these marathons and their recall value, obviously, is high. Our marathons are not just about the day event. Most of our marathons, the entire event starts about four months prior to the actual date of the marathon. So in Mumbai, we started the entire action sometime in April, 16th of April, if I'm not mistaken, when we launched the second edition of the Mumbai Half Marathon. All the people who come to participate in the promo runs get t-shirts, get breakfast. So we have about four or five of these promo runs that happen and every time you come there, you get a t-shirt. So now if you go to Marine Drive and see people training, you'll probably see almost all of them running in the IDB Federal T-shirts. And that is where the huge recall value comes in. And that has also helped us get recognized as the trusted brand as well. So yes, the recall value is high. A lot of our customers have given us compliments in the way we have been positioned and the way we have been recognized in the industry. The volumes have seen a jump. Our business numbers have gone up tremendously. Last year we tripled the balance sheet as over the last three years. All this is a reflection of the way the entire brand has been built. And yeah, so that's where we are. So marathons have definitely helped us create a brand image for ourselves. There are a lot of good things that are happening in the industry if you were to look at it. The regulations that are easing up on the products, there are regulations which are helping us develop new distribution avenues. I think which is all positive from an industry perspective because it is only going to ease the way we are going to do the business. So recently the regulator gave us permission to start something called the POS channel. Now it allows us to have POS consultants who need to undergo 15 hours of training and then an exam, which is far more quicker as opposed to the agency where we have to have a slightly longer training program. That has helped us build a distribution much faster. And that is therefore helping us because you have the POS channel, you have the IMA channel, the independent marketing agency channel. So all these things are positive signals. So the regulator definitely wants us to build new distribution channels. The products are coming through much faster. Last year we had about eight products which got approved. We are hoping to have quite a number of products getting approved this year as well. The regulator has also allowed us to spend 20% of the first year commissions in form of payouts to the agency advisors over and about the product commissions. So all in all in my view I think these are all positive signals that are coming in from the regulator. The stock market is also doing very well. So I guess it is a great time to really look at the industry and build on the way things are moving ahead.


Audiology Associates at 1428 Northlake Drive in Prestonsburg. The Johnson County Trail Town Committee will be hosting a community bike ride Sunday, April 16th. The ride will go through downtown Painesville and is open to all ages and abilities. So this Sunday, April 16th, there will be a community bike ride that will be going around downtown Painesville. It is open for all ages. There will be prizes for the best spring decorated bike. I'm sure some people are going to have some fun with that. And then there will also be a prize for the youngest rider and the oldest riders. We're going to have the Paintsville Police Department, Paintsville Fire Department, really as many of our local first responders as we can get. We want to have them come ride with us and participate. And this course will be downtown Paintsville. And on Sunday afternoon, we've got the whole town to ourselves. This will be a follow the leader style ride, which basically means whoever's up front will zigzag or wave a hand or cut into a parking lot and that kind of thing. And everyone that follows just imitates that maneuver. The ride will begin at 3pm and kick off at the Paintsville City parking lot. There will also be three trikes available on a first come first serve basis. I think a lot of us have been just kind of waiting for an opportunity to get out and do something and to enjoy our city and our county and just to have fun. We've had several weeks with no fun involved and that's what this is all going to be about. There's no time. There's no races. There are prizes. That's about as competitive as this would get. So I'll have fun. Refreshments will be available after the ride. For more information, go to Johnson County Trail Town Committee on Facebook. Reporting for Mountain Top News, I'm Breonna Robinson.


Hi everyone, this is Jason here from Nathaniel and in this lesson I'm going to teach you a really groovy rhythm which is based on a Latin feel and we are going to use that rhythm over a 251 chord progression a very very famous jazz chord progression 251 used in a lot of Standards and also used in a few pop songs as well, right? So first let's look at the chord progression 251. We're doing a minor seventh We're doing D dominant seventh and we're ending it with G major seventh a minor seventh is the two minor seventh D dominant seventh is the five and G major seventh is the one major seventh Where does this all come from it came from the G major scale in the G major scale a is the two minor D is the Five major or five dominant and then the one is the major seventh Which is G major and all these chords are played using extended harmony or seventh chord So what you're finding is you won't be playing a triad G B D when it's G major you'll be playing a G major seventh Which is G B D? Plus a major seventh Okay, G B D F sharp Okay, so if we break down the three chords again, you have a minor seventh There'll be a C E G and then the D chord which is D dominant D F sharp a with the higher seventh flat seven for a dominant chord C and then G major 7 GB D F sharp So a minor seventh D dominant G major seventh now to play these chords This may not be a very piano friendly way So we have a voicing version or a voicing technique wherein you could play the root and the fifth in the left hand A E and Then what are the remaining notes of a seventh chord one and five is taken up right? the remaining two notes are the three and the seven which you need to play here and For a major seventh chord the three is major third and the seven is major seventh So for a minor seventh chord it's going to be minor third minor seventh for a dominant seventh chord It's going to be major third and minor seventh and then we also have other chords like a minor seven flat five Which we'll come to okay, so the voicing technique for the left hand Which is very important for this rhythm pattern because there's going to be an element of syncopation between the hands The left hand is going to do its thing the right hand is going to do its thing That's what creates that that groovy vibe Okay, one hand will create a very pulse like motion while the other hand is going to create an interesting pattern So let's look at how to voice all these chords in a very piano friendly and a really harmonically dense sounding way So you take a minor seventh the first chord, which is the two minor seventh Always play one five in the left hand that'll spread out the sound and then in the right hand You have the opportunity of either doing 73 this is a 73 voicing that'll be G and C G and C are not the major seventh and major third They are the minor sevenths because it's a minor seventh chord. So Now you could play that way or else You could play it this way Okay, that's one five three Seven so either seven three or three seven. Okay, so that's your a minor seventh And now how do I go to the D dominant seventh? You need to play the D fifth chord in the left hand one five and then you find a voicing in the right hand Which is convenient either you do the three seven or the seven three depending from where you came So if I'm doing a minor seventh like this D dominant will probably want to be like this Why because it's very close the voices are leading really well and also there's a note in common between the chords, isn't it? There's C which is part of a minor seventh and the same C is part of D dominant seven So why do you want to move this finger or why do you want to change that voice? It sounds nice It'll be smooth for the for the listener. Okay, so a minor seventh D dominant seventh now if I played it the other way You can do a e g c a e g c Okay, or And played higher up to you. It sounds good everywhere pretty much the voicing so a e g c Now where do I go for the D dominant? D a and F sharp C Okay, again, remember what's common between chords C, right? a e g c D a F sharp C Okay, so either we go from a minor seventh to D dominant this way or we go this way Okay Okay, so get used to that shift Okay, and what's the last chord two five one so the one will be a major seventh chord which will be played like this Major seventh in the left hand you can go one five three Seven major. Okay major seventh. So that's G D B F sharp Now why does this voicing work because it's very close to a minor seventh That's your D dominant and just slide the C down and you get G major seventh What happens at the top at the top what you need to notice? F sharp is the same for both the D dominant as Well as the G major seventh So when you're doing a two five one progression Just try to remember that at least one note out of the seven or the three will be common between the chords. So you go C G C F sharp B F sharp. Okay. A minor seventh D dominant seventh G major seventh Okay, the other voicing G C Right, that's a seven three voicing on a minor seventh now You go to a three seven voicing of D dominant seventh and then you go to a Seven three voicing of the major seventh chord It's sort of either going to be seven three voicing or three seven voicing as we call it And whenever I say seven three or three seven It doesn't mean that it is the major third or the major seven it really depends on the chord Right. So a minor seventh chord is going to be root fifth and then the minor seventh and The minor third or else minor third minor seventh The dominant seventh chord is going to be root fifth as always in the base Then you do either the seven flat and major third or else Major third and seven flat and last but not least you do the major seventh chord, which is the root the fifth third And then the seventh or else root fifth seven third So this is a nice way to voice the chords It allows you to play really deep or you can play it higher You can even orchestrate music this way or do like a choral or a vocal arrangement, right? So now that we've learned the two five one progression with proper voicing and all that we now have to put it together With a really groovy Latin rhythm, right? So the Latin rhythms over a 16th note time feel So to count the 16th note time feel what you want to do is say one e and a two e and a three and a four E and a right so each beat is divided into four units one e and a two e and a three so The right hand is going to play a pattern a pattern means it's not going to play everything That's not a pattern. That's rather annoying. So what the right hand will do is play a few beats for example this And the left hand is going to keep things really really simple by playing the pulse So actually let's micro in on the left hand That's all the left hands doing one e and a two e and a one e and a two I'm just going to show you for one chord the a minus seventh Then we are going to put it together for the entire two five one, okay?  And the right hand now has to play over These hit points Okay, that's one e and a two e and a three e and a four e and Observe that the first few hits. I am playing C and G together while the last three hits. I'm actually Playing them one by one because I don't know just sounds cool. It just adds to the vibe of the pattern, right?  I'm also snapping the pulse, which is anyway what you're going to do in the left hand, isn't it? So one e and a two e and a three e and a four e and a Okay over the shaker try getting it with me Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa one e and a two e, one e and a two, okay? That's your right hand So now you need to develop the independence of doing that with the pulse in the left hand So there are many ways to practice this one is just try to snap or tap the pulse While you do the right hand so pulse pulse right The other the other thing you could practice could be play the pulse Over the a-minus seventh chord and then vocalize what you're doing in the right hand Sort of like a melody right which I think your brain will start digesting a lot easily Ta-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-ra-re-ta-pa-pa like a rift Okay, once you are able to sing the right hand with the left hand pulse And then while you're able to tap out the pulse with the right hand chords I think then you can attempt to play them together. Otherwise things get really really chaotic Okay, so it'll be something like this Now you could map it out by writing this meets that at that particular point But to be very honest, it's more about Feeling the pulse while you play a pattern So you should be thinking more of the pattern and let the pulse sort of just be felt by the body Okay, and what you do in the left hand is more an extension of your Natural ability to just go with the pulse or your sort of human clock as we call it so Okay You know if you're finding it difficult to go from a to e you could just stay on a only Doesn't sound great. So eventually it'll be nice to eventually go to e Because this is your entire minus seventh chord. So instead of playing it like that, which is rather boring I'm doing it in this really groovy rhythm So we can do this for all the all the three chords in the two five one, what's the next chord This one D dominant seven. So a D major D dominant seventh rather A minor seventh D dominant seventh and then G major seventh G major seventh usually plays for longer for two bars in the progression. So second bar and The second time you play the G major seventh, you could do something interesting Instead of playing the major seventh You can come down to the major sixth. So it's like G major seventh G major sixth. So that becomes a nice movement. Okay What did I do that I did two going to one which is also cool, but now I'm going to do two five one G major sixth Four flavor If you're a songwriter or a singer and a piano player, I'd highly encourage you to practice this so that you can sing something, you know You might find it a bit tough to sing Expressively so focus on maybe one note for every chord So get your singing chops also going while you play this stuff Okay, finally, you can also play these chords by shifting the chords faster So you can do within a bar you can go a minor seventh D right a minor D G major sixth a minor D G G major sixth But if the shifting is taking some time when you're practicing then it needs to take some time So then give it a bar for every chord Okay, let's now do this super slow and then build it up and that's pretty much the lesson. So let's get this going G major seventh G major sixth A minor seventh play along slow Pulse in the left hand If you're not getting the left hand Just do the right hand right So on and so forth That's the pattern And once you've done this on the G major scale Well, it's a great practice tool to be able to do the two five one on as many scales as possible So I would encourage you to do it on another scale So maybe if you have to do this on F major what will be the two five one? You need to map it down write it down. So that'll be G minor seventh going to C dominant seventh Okay, going to F major seven. So that'll be Same rhythm pattern, right? If you're doing this on C major D minor seventh G dominant and then C major seven It's on and on you need to practice B flat or Maybe on E flat, which is F minor seventh B flat dominant E flat major seventh So you get the idea you need to be able to do this on as many keys as possible it'll really help you find your intervals find your chord voicings and Also play more confidently across a variety of genres of music, right? So this was a lesson. Let's recap We first looked at the two five one chord progression Which is basically two minus seventh five dominant seventh and one major seventh Then we formed it using an incredible piano voicing technique, which is either one five Seven three or one five three Seven and then we voiced all our chords using that shifted very very effortlessly and then we culminated the lesson with a really great groovy rhythm pattern, which is That one Of course, we've learned the majority of the lesson on the G major scale I would encourage you to do it on as many scales as possible great So thanks a ton for watching this lesson and if you haven't already do subscribe to our YouTube channel hit the bell icon for Notifications and do stay tuned for all the other lessons which we are going to do on harmony on rhythm on Production and a lot of other things coming your way very very soon. Cheers