Here we go. We are being recorded. Thank you. Great. Perfect. Okay. So when I call the meeting to order at 401 and I'm going to. Call out everybody's name. Here. Anika. Yeah. Alex known as Xander. Here. And Austin. Here. Great. Good. Okay. So where did my agenda go? Had an agenda up and it disappeared on me. Also got me in front of me again. Okay, there we go. So the first order of business is approval of the minutes of March 8. If somebody wants to make a motion. Approve the minutes from March 8. Great. That's second from someone. Second. Great. Does anyone have any comments on. The meeting minutes. Okay. Seeing none. Go ahead and move to vote. Anika. Yes. Alex. Yes. And Austin. Yes. And Alex is an eye. So that's a unanimous vote of the meeting minutes. Next section of the agenda. So since three out of the four people on this committee were not around for the first 2016 push around the feasibility, I thought it might be helpful to see some of the pages upon pages of comments from the community that we received. And just talk a little bit about sort of framework about community outreach. And sort of how we want to structure this going forward since it's a slightly different thing that we're doing now than what we've been doing in the past. We've been doing this for a long time. We've been doing this for a long time. So I sent you, I think some of the results of the surveys, also some of the results of the focus groups, some of the results of the interviews, but there were also. Patron group tours. There were individual tours with, you know, disability access advisory committee team that there was a middle school group at the elementary school. And so there's. So we had the surveys, patron groups, the tours, interviews, public forums, and then there were actually comment boards that were throughout the library. And I think I sent you those as well. So again, that was just kind of to get the three of us up to speed if anyone hadn't had a chance to look through that and have a sense of it and to help us sort of think about what we might want to do in the future in terms of community outreach. So I'm just going to open it up. If anyone has any questions, comments, thoughts about that. Oh, thank you for doing that. It was really helpful to see what had been done. You know, and especially the amount of responses that had come. Through for the survey. So it's like, we can double to know in terms of moving forward. What has been done and reintroduced. And I think this would also be, you know, helpful for community members at one around at that time, or paying as close attention as well. So thank you for that. Welcome. Yes. And I want to comment on one of the things that was helpful, at least from the survey. And again, the survey was, I mean, it was 910 people who responded, which was a great survey response, but certainly not everybody. We got feedback from, but to your comment, Anika previously about who's our target audience. You know, I did note that, you know, 95% of the people who answered that survey were English as a language. They were 30 and above 66% are masters plus 42% were at the highest income bracket. And 49% were already weekly users of the library. So it only tells us anything we probably didn't already know, but it sort of reconfirms that these are target groups. Go ahead, Anika. I'm sorry, did you say, what percent did you say were already library users? 49. Well, 40, they were all predominantly library users, but 49% already use the library on a weekly basis. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So I just thought that was an interesting, and again, this wasn't the only thing that was done, but it's sort of the easiest one where we could look at who, who we got information from. So. There's a lot of opportunities around that. After COVID. You know, where you have, I think a lot of people like moving on to looking at libraries that hadn't, you know, maybe been regular users or visitors as really a space for, you know, information and, you know, there's as many people that have had to transition professionally throughout COVID to really be able to see the, the library as a greater resource. Yeah. Yeah. I think you're right. I think, I think people will probably be looking at the library closer to probably the way librarians have been looking at libraries for the last 10 years, just the rest of us catching up to it. So the other thing that I put in there in the meeting packet was the building program. And Angela, I don't know if you can put that up if that's helpful. So while Angela is pulling that up, the reason I put the building program in, so we had a conversation the last time about, you know, sort of what we can and can't change. And we're waiting for the OPM to give us more details about that. And it's not to say that there aren't things that we don't already know. There are things we do already know, but, and so I thought it might be helpful to sort of take a quick look at the building program. So really high level, you know, the things that aren't going to change. And these have been consistent in terms of talking to the public throughout this process is, you know, the size of the building in terms of square footage were roughly around 60 to 3000 square feet. The location of the building. It's going to be in our existing building. The building program is another piece that's not going to change. And then the last is also understanding that the building has a historic preservation restriction on it, which is going to somewhat tie what we can do around the 1928 portion of the building. So anything we do to the 1928 portion of the building is going to be, is going to be with sort of the, the, the fence of the historic preservation restriction, but also that historic tax consultant because we're seeking state tax credits. So that's going to inform the conversations that we have with the public. So I thought it might be helpful for this group. So these are high level. What's up on the screen now, the building program and building program is just a fancy word for what do we offer in the building. What's the, what are the programming and services. And so this shows on the left, the existing square footage. And then what we're moving toward. And what you can see is, you know, adult circulation is increasing significantly. Youth and children. We're actually going to have a teen space, special collections. ESL is pretty significant. Shrinking administration. Stats about the same. And then what we're going to do is, you know, we're going to have a teen space. Shrinking administration. Stats about the same. And then facilities. That's, you know, where your HVAC systems and things go. And then the pages that follow are just the breakdown of the specifics of those. So. Those are, you can just see at the bottom. So the total adult circulation is the number that was on that front page that 5,500 to 81. And so those are how they break down. And so I thought that might be helpful for the group. But I think that's a good point. Because I think one of the first things that we can. Talk to the community about is within those spaces. So we know we're going to have a teen space where we really don't have one now, but what do. Today's teens. Want in that space. You know, what do they see in their own space? And so that seems, and again, I'm not talking where it's located in the building. I'm not talking about the square footage is, I think that's even two conversations.  I'm going to stop babbling and see if anyone has any thoughts or. Questions about what I'm thinking in terms of frameworks to start with. Yeah. So again. This is helpful and I'm sure if we have. Any other questions. If you have any other community members joining it is, and it's really exciting also to just see. How the spaces like another like for children and young adults. I mean, that's, that's really, that's fantastic. But I had a question and forgive me if this was. Listed with an outreach, but was there a teaming before in terms of community outreach with Angela. Jennifer moisten and Brianna. So the first go round as they. The original comments I have are all related to town meeting. We didn't have a charter when it started. So those community. Outreach positions are on the relatively new side. And I would say. Angela, have they been in existence? I mean, since COVID started, it's been. It's written into the charter. So since 2018. Yeah. Yeah. So I think we're probably the initial, all of the materials I provided was sort of that 2015, 2016 window when we were doing the community outreach for the. Schematic design and the feasibility. And so none of those existed, but I think absolutely. Moving forward, we would definitely want to take advantage of. That's a good thing actually that they were not included because they were not included. So I think that was one of the reasons why we. Like reaching out to. Different parts of the community. And Austin can speak out of this, but I think Austin didn't, I think the library used an independent. Somebody to do the survey. I think that was like independently done. If I'm not. This is like, somebody came. Survey was done as part of the strategic planning. Process for the, for the library. There are other parts of the outreach, which we should just note and remind ourselves about one is that talking about independent facilitators, the town organized a set of conversations, if one might remember, where they brought in facilitators and people were invited. I don't know, I don't remember maybe Angela or the rest of you do to several of these occasions. And so that was that was also done and we used a facilitator there. Alex, may I just raise a question while I'm here? So on the on the non changeables, the library, both to town council and to the library, both to town council and to the public made commitments about sustainability. Which I've shown in particular in the program design. And I would take it that people came and said, well, we want to make the library less sustainable. Can't imagine that exactly. But that would be another one of the things that we would say is not not changeable in its basic commitment. Is that right? Yeah, I was actually putting that into a separate bucket. And maybe I shouldn't be Alex last time and sort of commented about the community expressing values through this process. And so I was sort of putting and again, that's because I don't know what I'm doing. So please feel free. I mean, put these in different buckets was sort of the the fixed things of being, you know, the, the, the building, the square footage, the programming, and then the community values that were expressed. So that it be welcoming and accessible, that it be sustainable and historic preservation. And those were sort of the three things that overarching things that we heard from the community in terms of expressed values. And I guess, so that can be part of the same not changeable piece. May I just say, I think that's very helpful. The thing that I think we need to think about was what were the commitments that the library made to the town council and to the public, I think you've gotten mostly, but I think we want to just keep those in mind as things that we might not want to, we might not want to reverse those commitments. What we're trying to do is to engage people in helping us flesh those commitments out and make sure they work for various communities in town. Yeah, Alex. Yeah, I think that that's all really helpful to think about. I would also, in the spirit of yes, ending that add on the, as you pointed out, Alex, that survey is representative of a population, which is already at the top of the bracket or socioeconomic bracket overly educated or I don't want to say overly educated, but highly educated versus maybe other parts of the population. And so how do we also honor the people who are not in that, right? Like, I guess the question I would have is, do we want the future Jones library to service the same people as the current Jones library? And that question I think will really help guide are we looking to expand the population that it is supporting? Because if that is our goal, then I think we have to figure out how do we bring the participation rate more in line with maybe the town population than the current survey statistical population. Thanks. Okay, so I, the things we're going to, so again, I'm looking at sort of buckets around this.  And so having the community define what that welcoming accessible means, as well as the sustainability and the historic preservation, because, you know, one person's idea of historic preservation is keeping all the woodwork and somebody else's idea is going back to wood floors. And again, much of that would be dictated, especially when it comes to sustainability and historic preservation, much of it's going to be dictated by the HPR and the tax consultants. So I don't know what that conversation with community looks like, but I anticipate difficult decisions ahead of us. And by us, I mean, the larger design and Jones Library Building Committee, because we're going to have to make choices about, you know, do we do this thing that's going to make the building even more sustainable, or do we do it that's going to be, you know, where we where we the trustees agreed to, I'm sure we could go even further, right? Or, and so I think there's going to be have to be some understanding of community values around the priorities that may be at play, which doesn't mean they go away. It doesn't mean they're still not a priority. It just means when we have to make difficult choices, we have a sense of community priorities. That makes sense. Anika. Yeah, so I'm doing a lot of walking. I don't want to be.  Yes. Do we want to expand? Yes. You know, just even quite literally, the library is going to be bigger. It will fit more and not just programs or people, right?  We know what is set in stone. We know what, you know, and leaving room for things that could change that we do not see coming, but focusing on like, okay, that's still information that we can convey to the public. And then also in terms of outreach in our target audience being who we do not have and who we're seeking. And, you know, so these would be, you know, various forms of people realizing that, you know, we do have, because this is the original studies were some time ago, there are advancements in technology and just in other avenues that we do have, you know, to reach people. And so you would have both, you know, Zeta and I, we wouldn't have been around, you know, for these studies at this time. So it is important, you know, for us to know what has happened. So we're not reinventing the wheel, but like oiling it and changing the wheels, you know, making sure we have more efficient wheels. And, you know, so I think all of this is helpful as we realize where there is the flexibility to, again, make sure that when we're communicating, we're as clear as we can be about what we're already committed to is already happening. Where is their room? Where is there not room? So we can really focus on where those opportunities are. And, you know, for a community that wants to hear, okay, this is, I'm here to know where is the progress, what's going on there. There you go. For the community that's really interested, I want to know where I could have input and make change, whatever that is, I want to be involved. We're engaging them appropriately as well. Okay. So I think four and five are kind of seem to be sort of agenda items that are sort of doing it at the same time. So I believe the schematic design phase, which is theoretically what we're in is somewhere between eight, let's say eight weeks maybe. And when we get to the end of that, right, we're confirming the programming, we're confirming the sustainability goals, like we're giving the architects sort of the go ahead to really start to like, finish up where things go and what some of the details are. So I mean, apps and us getting a timeline from the OPM, I'm just trying to give us a rough sense of things so we can start figuring out when we need to start doing things. And what we want to do first, I know that Austin had suggested sort of a first meeting being getting out to the community and talking about what is the JLBC, who are they, what are we doing, what's this outreach subcommittee giving a lay of the land, people have thoughts around that being a first meeting and when and how and what that might look like. And what do we need to be able, what do we need to have information wise for that to happen that we may not have yet. Do you have your hands in? Yeah, sorry, I've also got a dog that's like trying to sit in my lap and so like, it's I apologize for moving the camera around. The thing, so I think going into that meeting, I really appreciate all the work that went into the preparation for today and being able to show what we, at least what we do know at this point. I think continuing to flesh that out into something that is easily digestible as well as something that community members can leave having put some input on where like, I personally would like to see each meeting that anyone who shows up feels that it wasn't just a class they took, but a cooperation that they took part in and were able to leave having said something that was communicable. So yeah, full stop there. So do we, do we think the first sort of the first thing that this committee should do is structure a meeting where we're informing the public of, you know, where, where are we, what's the timeline? What is this new committee that exists? That's a town committee, you know, what are the expectations? I mean, does that make sense as a first step? I think so. And I think it had been mentioned before, maybe it was you, Alex. Maybe it was you who has said that, you know, it could be a nice idea to have something set up, we're getting into spring, maybe where there's even a chance to engage at different tables, knowing some of the programs where people can, you know, just be reintroduced and, you know, excited, ask questions they have. And, you know, so if this was something that's in person, whether it's, you know, set up where people can make comments there, you know, sending comments and suggestions, so maybe, you know, something like that could be interactive where people are not only able to engage with, you know, with us, with other folks in the library, but also with just community in general and bounce ideas off each other. So does it make sense that a first meeting would be, you know, the lecture portion, as Alex calls it, is the here, here are the new town committees that exist, here's their role and function, but then also have maybe some ability for people to start weighing in about priorities around values or what they hope and like have each of the building programs like ESL teams, etc. and have people be able to somehow have some sort of interactive relative to that and start giving feedback or what do people envision? Yeah, I love the idea of having different tables and spaces for people to interact with each other at whatever level they are. I mean just in our first two meetings, I think like we've already raised some really big questions that we could use input on, right? Values being one of them. On a different level, what goes in these individual spaces, right? And then also, you know, given the results of the survey and who took it, who are we missing? Whose voices do we still need to hear from? And I think by putting that back out into the community and we share a sense of ownership so that like if my family showed up, I might send my kids to go draw what they want to see in the kids space on, you know, blank pieces of paper that have an outline on them. Whereas I might want to go to the who else do we need to take a survey, you know, and like pitch those questions back to people after like you said a brief lecture on who we are. And is that, oh go ahead, Austin. No, I was just going to ask, I was just fleshing out more details but it sounds like you're going to give some. So I was going to ask like is it the whole JLDC that's there? I think we ought to have a meeting as early as it can be arranged. I think the meeting that we ought to have or to focus almost entirely on an introduction of who we are, the we being the building committee and an overview of the process. Who's the OPM? Who's the architect? I think that it would be important not to get people in the first meeting drawing their visions of rooms. The reason being, I think we need to talk with the architects about the process that they've used elsewhere and what's going to be most helpful in terms of their architectural work. I also think it'd be really important to try to engage people in a kind of snowball with us, which is help us think about the outreach process, how to reach the various communities that they will come from. So I just, I worry that the first meeting, which I think should be really kind of introductory process oriented, you know, encouraging people to be involved as the process unfolds, talking about other processes while unfold rather than in that first meeting, jumping into, you know, think about the way you want these rooms to be worked up before we've had a conversation with the architects about where they are in the revision of the schematic designs. So that would be my sense of things. The other thing is, I think that our outreach effort has to be for everybody in the community, though it'll have to take different forms for different communities, because so much has changed, as you all have pointed out, that the people, the 900 people that took the survey or whatever, we want to hear from them as well as we move this process forward, though the outreach efforts may have to be different to different communities in order to reach everybody equitably. So I would just hold back myself from the getting into, you know, imagine what you would like to see in the library in this first meeting.  I think that, you know, I mean, even if we look at the school building committee, I think they're doing a great job. I mean, what we're talking about is a forum, you know, to start. And I do agree with that. That gives, you know, people an overview and again, just, you know, reiterating what we do know, where are the potentials for involvement and community input. And I think that that makes sense. But and I do think and I don't want us to think like when we're saying target audience that we're just specifically talking about any one group of people, you know, we are talking about just in general, yes, that would include an audience that we don't have. But that could very well also include an audience that we don't have that are do would have been the same exact audience you would have had during these first surveys. You know, so it's just out there. But I do think that also going forward, it would be important for us to at least try if possible to have something where we can engage in person and people could actually come and interact and, you know, see tables. I think that's often one of the downfalls of outreach when you're not actually like going to people making sure that, you know, you're getting out there and going to places where, you know, some of the audience that you do want to attract that you do not have access to are, you know, so that also speaks to Austin's point, the more people we involve, the more organizations that and, you know, committees, whoever it is that we involve, invite to this initial forum, if you will, will be helpful. And then we can, you know, together be able to move towards like having them because it would be important to have like on top of if we did something was in person, on top of tables to the programs that are within the library have, you know, committees that would be, you know, relevant to help bring community there as well. You know, because they're going to bring along their own audiences and even just in terms of advertising or promoting whatever meeting and events that we're doing will have, you know, will have all that going in at once so that will just gain us a, you know, naturally a wider audience. I have mixed feelings, Austin. I think I keep seeing sort of public comment in two buckets and one gets into, you know, what is what are the interior finishes look like? What is the exterior finishes look like? But then one is what do you want the feel of the space to be and what do you want to see in that space? And to me, I mean, I guess I feel like the sooner we can be engaging the public about what what's going to be in those spaces in terms of, you know, what do teenagers want to see in their teen program? I think the sooner we have that conversation, the better, because if we're identifying, you know, if we're identifying things that are important to teens now that the architect needs to be considering, then I think the earlier we're having that conversation the better. But also I think it gets people, I'd be way more excited about coming to a meeting where I could talk about what I wanted to see, you know, in the teen space than I probably would be about learning who the JLBC is, but that's just me. So I don't know if there's some way to have a little bit of both in there. I mean, but again, that's just me. I mean, Anika and Alex, you guys weigh in. That's just Austin and I, we often, we don't agree. Well, I think that like, I think that feelings and specifics are different. I mean, you can always like feel has nothing to do with dictating what is possible necessarily.  I mean, they can still participate and see these things. And these are ideas that I would imagine could be taking on to architects and how that, you know, because these are our feels and they're more about atmosphere than necessarily the size of room, the shape of room, where it is or building something that's not. So I do think that it's possible to open the floor for that, which would, yeah, that would make it more exciting for people to come to, you know, and be able to share and we can compile those. I think it's just a matter of like how it is communicated. So it's clear. Okay. So I heard Austin saying meeting as soon as possible. For Anika saying in person would be good. I think it would be a meeting of the whole Jones library building committee. So we would recommend this at our next committee, trying to have some actionable steps for what would be next. Yeah, I mean, I could imagine to be transparent, like I'm not a big, I keep showing up to a movement because of the personalities that being said, some of my longest relationships have come from movement building.  That being said, I think like, for those people who are going to be attracted to the project by knowing the players more, it might make sense to have an area, you know, to do the, this is who we are, this is who the, or this is what the project is, sort of speech to the group, and then also very clearly announced like, and we have work stations around the room. And one of them is that you can go meet the rest of the Jones library committee, right? And we want to make sure that there's a space for people to have that for folks who are interested in dealing with this other question. There's a flip chart over there for those who want to deal with this other and you don't need to stay in the same space, right? And I think that also will be a really good benchmark for us going forwards to see where we have engagement and where we don't. So we can figure out where do we need to start asking people to get involved or looking to cultivate interest, if that makes sense. Because these questions aren't going away, like we can't, we can't get to the finish line and not have clear values, but everyone really knows who the five of us are and call it a success. At least I hope so. Yeah. So how do we want to advertise for this? And are we leading toward in-person and where would just be a matter between me working with folks in the town and the library director figuring out what a venue might possibly be? Could this happen either? Well, I hate to say things that are always like outdoors because you never know about weather, but what about at the library? Whether it's in the front, so there's like, yeah, there's space to spread out. You can have, depending on how the stations are, I think there's there's opportunity to collect thoughts, questions, ideas, and along with giving information at every space. And that's if it's in-person. And if it is, if it's virtual, I mean, thank goodness we've moved along with Zoom. So I think there are ways that to do something where it's still exciting and engaging and you can give information. But I think ideally, it might be nice to have something in-person. There's also the flip side of the audience could be smaller. So maybe there would have to be two options or two meetings scheduled. So if one's online and one is in-person, starting online even. And what do people have in terms of thoughts about day of the week, time of day? Maybe weekend day to accommodate more people. Weekend days? I would think because it's always hard. I mean, I'm just looking at traditionally, I think this is a big Monday through Friday, like eight to four community. I'm a polar opposite. I have no regular schedules. But I think that even if we look at that, we would want to be able to make sure that we have as much participation as possible. So I would probably say like, good mornings or after noon. So that would leave weekdays to evenings, which is also inconvenient. But if we did a weekend day that also, and if there's something for kids as well or whenever it happens, that will allow people to bring their children, which you would want to happen. There may be more flexibility if we can do this on a Saturday or even a Sunday. And I don't know how quickly something like this pulls together, having never tried to pull something together. I don't know whether, I mean, Austin, when you're saying as soon as possible, you probably have a better sense for what is as soon as possible. And I'm thinking April break for schools is I think the third week of April. That's also, I believe, the first farmer's market, which is something potentially interesting to glom onto that might get more people. So I don't know what timing wise you were thinking, Austin, when you say, yeah, okay. I think whenever we can, whenever you can pull it off, I mean, when it makes sense to do it, I just the way I've been thinking about this is I just think that the outreach effort ought to start right away before, you know, we're gonna have to do a lot of design work and a lot of that. Let's get out there and begin to talk to the community. And what you know, we're spending a lot of time talking about how to talk to the community. Let's get talking to the community. So that's, that's kind of whenever that is, whenever it can work out. The other question, Alex and Nico and Xander may know, we might want to look at what the schools are doing or have done and try to benefit from their experience, what is work, what what do they think might work, so that we're we're kind of learning from an effort that's also underway. Yeah, I think part of that is that the MSBA requirements relative to the OPM are much different than they are for the MBLC. And so I think there's a certain element of community outreach and design website, designing of websites, et cetera, that is mandated upon the OPM that's not in the same way. That's my understanding. Doesn't mean we can't do it. It's just may not necessarily be in the costing that we have from our OPM, because it would be atypical. The extent to which it is for the MSBA is my understanding, but I can double check. Yeah. So I forget when spring break is because I'm evidently a bad parent and employee of ARP. So yay, two birds one stone. But I think it would make sense for it to do three weeks. And like the reason why is just one week to put together materials. So article or, you know, some sort of announcement for newspapers, print, et cetera, some sort of flyer to get out to businesses. And one week to actually get those out to said places, including all of the schools, right? I would want to team up with ARPs to see how do we, how can this be in every principal update? PGO, you know, kids backpack. And then so use that first week to settle that up, second week to execute that. And ask people to RSVP if interested and include a phone number email. So that in that third week, we can set out reminders. See you this weekend looking really forward. And that might also be a good place to start doing some of the introductions, hearing interactions, et cetera. So coming into Saturday, it's not the first time we've heard from folks, but in the actual reservation or not reservation, but in the actual reminder, you know, if you have any questions you want us to address, make sure to shoot us an email before Sunday. We'll see you there. April 15 through April 24. And then also like keeping in mind, there's a lot, there's quite a bit of planning going on for different events that will be coming up around the summer that are also, you know, partnered with the school system and all that. So it's like also, you know, going forward to, you know, keep relevant, keep engaged, you know, have presence at, you know, some of these different events and things like that to just keep it going. Because again, this is the start creating buzz. I absolutely agree with the three weeks. And I think it would be important to have a safe date, maybe out as soon as possible. So people can concede. I think there are a lot of community members that are waiting, you know, just waiting to know, okay, when, when are we going to engage, you know. Okay. Along that sort of same vein, in the last meeting, Alex, you had asked if we could have the folks from the library who are involved in the community partnerships attend one of our meetings.  And they both are super on board and totally not available Tuesdays at four o'clock, either one of them. But they are putting together a list that we'll have for our next meeting of sort of the partnerships that the library has. And we have, we've heard of partnerships that we're constantly working with, and then we have ones that turn off to be one-off situations, but maybe this is a good chance for us to develop them even further. And so I'll have that for our next meeting so that we can maybe springboard on those partnerships as ways to get the word out for these meetings as well. And then they both are, you know, want us to keep them in the loop in terms of, you know, the library, getting the word out that they'll use all their various and sundry methodologies as well. So. So one of the things that is just familiar to me, and I, I don't like this language, so I apologize in advance, familiar to my organizing background is the idea of testing relationships with very simple tasks. And so it takes some of the guesswork out of like, like you said, some of these relationships are really vibrant and ongoing, and some of these are one-offs. I'm curious if we, if we ask for them to go back to all of these community partners and open the Rolodex and get a flyer out to everyone or to invite them to participate in this, it might be a really good barometer of how vibrant those relationships currently are or are not based on who shows up. Good point. Okay. Okay. So I guess I, there's, sorry, I'm struggling with the fact that there's no like staff person here. There's no, I'm sort of trying to figure out what the role of chair is and who's executing these things because we don't have a library director as part of this as we normally would. And so I'm sort of struggling with how things move forward. In Austin, you have a look that tells you you have an idea. So if, if, you know, okay. So I'm just sort of trying to figure out like, okay, so we have some ideas. I mean, one of the things I think that, you know, Annika talked about last time is an inventory of available tools for communication. So you know, I don't know whether, I don't know how that happens. I don't know whether we divide and conquer. I don't know whether I go and ask that of somebody. I'm trying to sort of figure out how do we move whatever we decide in this group into action? Like, I think that we have a lot of people ready and waiting. I think that again, with a save the date, I think we have no shortage of folks who we can send this to who can spread the word to, I mean, even, even just central, you have library, you have the town and you have different organizations and just, you know, ask them, you know, we post this, but I think it would be a matter of, you know, again, getting, getting a little something as far as save the date and then having, you know, an email to ask with it and sending that at once to, you know, all the stakeholders that we want to send it to. Who creates that document, who approves that document, who sends that, like these are the things I don't quite know how that's happening and who's directing it. It's what I'm trying to sort of get my arms around. It's assuming it's us here.  Like, I'm, I'm willing to get a flyer together for people to look at if there's no one else. But I think that, you know, again, we also have, you know, we have folks that we have, you know, Jennifer Moyster, and we also have, I'm sorry, why do I always like what do we have? Then we can also ask Breonna at the town hall, she does these types of things. So I think that we need to look at this as not necessarily like reinventing the wheel, but just what wheels do we want? You know, what wheels do we want to put on it? And then the people are there. And, you know, just ask them. And, you know, because if you think about that, especially the people that they do this all the time, right? So they're people who are always organizing, you know, especially around outreach and flyers and getting that out. We can also help because we'll have broader networks, you know? And, you know, we can talk to others and make sure I'm just even, you know, amongst our cells. I said there's a lot of, you know, events that are being planned. So I know you'll have some of us that are already working with different organizations and different capacities. And so, you know, whether we did a check in, we could have a list in this week, just making sure that we're aware of all the organizations to reach out to, make sure we haven't left anyone out. I'll look at that and just, okay, you know, have we left someone and start to communicate. But I think that if we're talking about three weeks, that should be, you know, that would need to be a priority because we would want this information, whatever it is, to get out fairly soon as a safety date. Okay. So are you, are you offering to reach out to Brianna? Do you want me to reach out to Brianna? What's- I'm happy to. Yeah. Okay. I don't want to put more on you. I know you already have a lot on your plate. So I want to be cognizant of that. I can, I'll check on availability of the library tent because I know it does, I know it's going up soon. And I know it gets booked by programming. So I'll find an available date for that. And then I'll circle back with the community partners for that piece. Okay. Okay. And then hopefully, I don't know, we have a different lead for our OPM. So I don't know whether we want to set our next meeting or whether we want to wait to find out what that person's available to give us, whether they're just going to send us the list. I just want to make sure that didn't get dropped in terms of that sort of structure of process from the OPM. I'm sorry. I had a little bit of weirdness here in you. No, it's okay. It starts long when I say anything. I'm just trying to figure out for our next meeting. Do we just want to set a meeting for two weeks? Do we want to- Yes. Great. Thank you, Alex, for- Thank you. So let's see. Two weeks from today is April 5th. Does that work for folks? April 5th at four? If you said April 5th at four p.m.? Yeah, I believe that's Tuesday. Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm just putting it in. So we do have a couple members in the audience. So we do have a public comment. If anyone who is in the public would like to share a comment, thought, question, we welcome it. Raise your hand. Be happy to hear from you. Nothing from the audience. Thank you for attending. Appreciate everybody in the audience who's attending. Okay. I think- Is there anything that I didn't speak to ask, talk about that someone would like to speak to, talk, ask about? I think the biggest thing that I actually had on here was Austin's comment from the last meeting about what it means for this committee to make recommendations, what that piece of our charge means. I think at some point, preferably before we have this meeting with the community, we need to come up with some kind of agreement of whether we're collating public comments and passing them along, whether we're making some kind of recommendation, what exactly does that piece of the charge mean? If people- Yep, Austin. So not on this question, Alex. I'm sorry. Something else I think that we might consider doing, and here you could reach out to the library director if you think it's a good idea. Many communities, as you very well know in western Massachusetts, have recently renovated their libraries. And I wonder whether we could benefit from finding out what kind of community outreach was done, what they thought worked, what they thought didn't work. And there, if you think that information might be of value, you might ask Sharon whether she could solicit such information over the kind of library director's lists or something like that. Yep. Thanks. Okay, so we'll table the conversation about what recommendation means for another day. I mean, I guess one of the things I want to maybe not to dodge the question, but at the next Jones Library committee meeting is like asking them, what do you expect? Like, what do you expect from us, right? Maybe not in that tone. But just that way, we have an idea of what the charge, you know, I'm assuming they're the ones who set the charge. So like, let's get some clarification from them and then figure out how we make that work for us. I think that's an excellent plan, Alex. Thank you. I like it. Good. All right. Unless somebody has anything else? Oh, I just wanted to ask last library committee, someone mentioned that something had happened with the OPM and so we had a new project manager. Can someone fill me in on that? Austin, do you know more about that than me? I mean, I just know that we have a new project manager. It's still Colliers. Colliers shifted the staff person. There were some communications issues which I was not involved with between, I think, the library director and the staff person. And the question was just about rapidity of response. And in any case, when that was raised with Colliers, they decided to switch the person who would be our representative. That's what I know and that's what I believe happened.  So it's not like we lost somebody who we've been working with for years. Colliers we've been working with at the beginning, but not this particular person. So yeah. Okay. Good. All right. Thank you, everybody. I appreciate everything. And we'll see you in two weeks or whenever our next JLBC meeting is. Thank you. Thanks, Alex. All the meeting adjourned. Thanks, everyone.


From Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE, covering Cloud Foundry Summit 2018. Brought to you by the Cloud Foundry Foundation. Welcome back to theCUBE, I'm Stu Miniman and this is Cloud Foundry Summit 2018 in Boston. Talking a lot about digital transformation, love when we get to talk to the users here at the show. One of the great stories told on the keynote stage this morning was from T-Mobile. So while Rob wasn't on the stage, he's involved in the activity. This is Rob Hanson, director of operations at T-Mobile. Thank you for joining me. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me. So Rob, you know, we were talking beforehand. You know, the Twitters, there's lots of stuff that goes on but everybody, you know, it was a great story talking about 1700 developers and only 10 operators underneath making those works. So maybe before we get into it, tell us a little bit about, you know, your role, your background, what you do at T-Mobile. Sure, so my role is I lead a team on the operations side. So we operate the software and, you know, when we look over the last 10 years or so, you know, that software has been predominantly large monoliths. Look at, use Tipco as an example. We've been a heavy user of Tipco BW for many, many years and my environment supporting Tipco BW accounts for about 2,000 physical servers across multiple data centers and, you know, that carries a high operational cost. We're doing all our changes in the middle of the night. Things break, seeming randomly at times causing customer impact. So just a lot of pain and patching. One of my favorite topics is patching, you know. Oh boy, Tuesday's your favorite day of the week, right? Oh my God. It's Taco Tuesday and Patch Tuesday. Yes, exactly. You know, every quarter you get the list of servers. Here's the list of servers that needs to be patched and it's just a nightmare, right? So, Rob, can we talk a little bit about kind of the developer and operator interaction at your company? I interviewed Solomon Hikes last year at DockerCon and he said, believe it or not, I created Docker mostly for the operators.   So, you know, historically, before we got into kind of the cloud native space, it was really an us versus them, right? There's that mentality of, oh, it's an ops problem now. There's a great meme out there.  So as we've gone through this cloud native journey and we've moved into using Pivotal within our environment, we've seen that community within our organization come together and really start working closer and closer together. And right now we're going through a migration into the typical container addition project or application and as we've been doing that, we literally have our ops-based folks and the development-based folks sitting in a room together day and night, just working together and, you know, historically, developers have a point of view, operators have a different point of view. It's really brought them together into a singular point of view and ownership of the software and just providing business capabilities. Rob, could you give us a little bit of picture, kind of your application portfolio? How much have you been kind of moving onto the platforms? How much do you build new on the platform? Those kind of things. Yeah, absolutely.  We were about 2,000 physical servers. Right now, I'm trying to remember the actual application count, but we've taken one of our historical job applications, moved it completely into PCF, running a complete spring boot now. We're doing that with our TIPCO environment. We have a number of other applications that we've spun up, running in spring and whatnot. And what we've been able to do is just explode the amount of stuff we're deploying and just a new functionality. We're able to develop it much faster. And so when we look at like the developers, more people are coming on board because you can just get the code out there so much faster and really in smaller increments. So a lot of times when we've developed things and we've delivered functionality for the business, because you're dealing with large monoliths, you have to change, you know, one of the applications I mentioned, you know, you've got 200 services, about 600 operations bundled into the same ball of code. Now we've separated that out into a bunch of microservices. So now we can just implement this one thing with very little to no impact to the business. And I think one of the big fundamental shifts that we've seen, you know, we have historically done the large Saturday night deployments, right? You show up Saturday night at 7 p.m. and you hope you get to go home Sunday. And we've really shifted that model. So in Q1, in MySpace, we did 86 and a half percent of our changes in production during the day, right in the middle of the business day. Is it scary? It was at first in all honesty because you know, my biggest fear is having to explain things to leadership, you know, why did it go wrong, the root cause and all that kind of stuff. But because we're able to move so fast now, we're able to get the code out there, we're able to see, okay, is this working? Roll it back really quickly, leveraging blue, green. Scale is another thing, you know, every year, iPhone. iPhone is a scary time, I think, for pretty much any wireless operator. And historically, we've had to go out and buy more physical servers. And so, you know, you're buying these servers, you're building them, it takes months to build them, stand them up, and you're doing that for a two day event a year. And you end up carrying the costs of that hardware. Well, this last iPhone in September, you know, the iPhone 8 and the iPhone 10, because we were predominantly running in our cloud native environment in our cloud foundry environment, spun up the containers. And does that live in a public cloud or? That lives in a private cloud, on-prem. So we just spun up the containers, got through the event, spun them down.  Yeah, well, and we're able to target the specific services, right? And in our Tipco landscape, we operate in the old BW environment, we operated about 200 years, comes out to about 1400 services. So you're, you know, when you're scaling up, you're having to do it more or less for everything. But in the, running in the pivotal environment, we're able to just target, okay, this, you know, like a get customer info, it's like a basic call when you log into my TMO. You're able to just take that, double it, triple it, whatever you need to do. Maybe this other call over here, you know, we don't have to touch that. So you're just being way more efficient with your resources. So Rob, if you can do these updates all the time, do you still love patching as much as you used to? The patching is the double.  I meet with them on a weekly basis and we kind of go through the state of things and planning and all that kind of stuff. And almost every time I end that meeting with I just don't want to patch anything anymore. So the more we get onto this environment, you know, the easier it is for me. And as we're trying to do this DevOps transformation at T-Mobile, you know, we're getting there and we're doing it. But you know, one of the things we ask ourselves is should a DevOps team have to care about patching? Right, why is a developer going to say, oh, my OS is a version behind, I need to take care of that. That's not useful to the business, right? That takes away time that that developer can be creating new things and adding value. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you think about, you know, in a public cloud environment, I don't think about that. You know, what version of Azure where you're running isn't something that people ask. Private cloud, if it's going to live up to what we want it to, it should have a similar type of dynamic. Exactly, and our platform team is amazing. I mean, they take care of that stuff for us. And I'm a heavy user. So, you know, I think Chuck talked about this a little. He didn't really talk about the volume, but you know, we started, we started on our pivotal journey a couple years ago. I think, you know, first started dabbling 2015, but we really didn't start converting our large monolithic middleware until the beginning of 2017. So right now, we are doing 250 million transactions a day on our pivotal platform. Just with two, or I'm sorry, three of my platforms running in there. Last thing I want to ask you, Rob, what key learnings have you had going through this transformation? What do you say to your peers that they could do better or look out for or plan to help them? You know, I think the main learning that we've had is just how important it is to partner together with the hardware people, the developers and the operations people. Coming together, you know, it's a cultural shift in many respects and, you know, like they say in DevOps, a lot of people talk about it. They don't realize how hard it is to do, but hardware has to be a part of that. So, you know, coming together, luckily we had a couple of stumblings in the beginning, but we were quickly able to huddle together between these kind of three core groups and really work together and overcome those challenges. And, you know, I think the second thing that's really important is just to be open and honest with each other. Everybody makes mistakes. I think a lot of times there's cases of, oh, this is a platform problem. Oh, it's a software problem. You know, there's a little finger pointing here and there from time to time, but getting through that, being open, honest, communicative with each other, it just makes the world so much easier and better for us. Rob, my entire IT career, it's, you know, we've wanted everybody to hold hands and get in a circle together and bust through those silos. So, you know, making progress though. Thank you so much for sharing the story of T-Mobile. Lots more coverage here from the Cloud Foundry Summit here in Boston, Massachusetts. I'm Stu Miniman. You're watching theCUBE.


One very common problem for English learners of every level is using the wrong word because English has a lot of words that seem very similar but they're actually used in different ways. In today's lesson I'm going to teach you 8 pairs of confusing words in English and show you how to use each one correctly with lots of examples. If you like today's lesson, check out my e-book, 100 Common Errors in English for more easy to understand explanations of confusing words and common grammatical mistakes. Enjoy today's lesson. Deny and Refuse Deny means to say something is not true or say that you did not do something. The teenager denied stealing the DVDs from the store. He said he didn't do it. Refuse means not to do something or say firmly that you will not do something. The employee was fired after he refused to do with the manager asked. Notice that after deny we always use the ing form and after refuse we always use the to form. Afraid, scared, and frightened. Even in the passive voice, after the verb to be and before of, you can use afraid or scared with no change in meaning. She's afraid of spiders. She's scared of spiders. However, when used in the active voice you can use only scared or frightened. The loud noise scared me. The loud noise frightened me. You can also describe something that causes fear as scary or frightening. It was a scary experience. It was a frightening experience. Staff and Employees Both of these words refer to people who work at a company. But staff is always singular and uncountable. It describes the entire group of workers as one thing. Employees is countable and plural. It describes the collection of individual workers. The entire staff was happy about the extra day off. All the employees were happy about the extra day off. Notice that with staff we use was and with employees we use were. Whenever you use a specific number use employees or staff members. 30 Employees Received Races 30 Staff Members Received Races Interfere and Intervene Interfere has a negative connotation. It is when someone or something affects a situation and you don't want it to.  Intervene has a more positive connotation. It is when someone or something affects a situation in a good way. Bob and Joe were about to start fighting but Pam intervened and calmed them down. Problem and Trouble Problem is countable and trouble is usually uncountable. I'm having a problem with the computer. I'm having trouble with the computer. The bad internet connection caused problems for the students. We have two major problems. Don't say we have two major troubles. Trouble can also be used as a verb. These test results are troubling me. That means making me worried. Relation and Relationship Relationship can describe a connection between two people. It can be romantic or romantic. I've been dating my boyfriend for three years. We have a great relationship. He has a terrible relationship with his father. Both relationship and relation can describe connections between two things. I'm studying the relationship between education levels and poverty. There's a close relation between smoking and lung disease. The word relations, plural, is used with general connections in a specific category. Like international relations, diplomatic relations, race relations, etc. Suppose and supposed to The word suppose means something like think, believe, imagine or expect. He's not answering his cell phone. I suppose he's already gone to bed. After all, it's midnight. The expression suppose to means something should be done. But it was not or is not usually done. I was supposed to go to work today.  We're supposed to park our cars in the company garage. But most people just park on the street. Switch Switch and change The word change means for something to become different. The word switch is more specific. It means to stop using or doing one thing and start using or doing another. I'm going to change a few things in my life this year. Could you switch seats with me so that I can sit next to my husband? This means the two people will exchange seats. Her personality has changed a lot recently. I wasn't happy with my Nokia cell phone so I switched to a Samsung. This means I stopped using the Nokia and started using the Samsung. For more lessons on errors and confusing words, you can get the e-book 100 Common Errors in English, available at espressoenglish.net.


Look at the castle. You guys have never seen my room in the fraternity house, have you? I'll give you guys a tour right now. Yes, so welcome to the vlog. We're going to formal in Toronto today. We rented out this Airbnb mansion. It has 16 beds, 13 bedrooms. There's gonna be 26 people, so each guy has a girl that's coming with them. I'm so excited. Okay, I'll show you guys my room because you guys have never seen this. Kayla, are you in here? Awesome. It's actually really nice.  All right, here's my room. Yeah, I got the ceiling fan. I got my own bathroom. Okay. This is the dungeon. This is where Kayla goes when she's being bad. Is this where you're wearing to the club? Yeah, this is it. Wait, we're going to the club tonight? No, I'm at tomorrow. I would love to be there. She's going to the casino. Yeah, that's good advice. Listen, kids, never gamble or I'm coming straight to your house and I'm clapping your cheeks.  Are you? I guess as long as we're here, I'll give you guys a tour of my home. Yeah, for those of you who didn't know, I don't live in the apartment where I record all my videos. I'm in a fraternity here. It's called Psi Epsilon at Michigan State. Actually, the president, so good flexed on. But yeah, here's our castle. I love this place, but obviously a fraternity house, look at that. Isn't that so dope?  And then I go back to the studio to record videos. Huh? And this is where I stand to get naked. I'll give you guys a tour. Here's the seal. You're not allowed to stand on it unless you're a brother. So don't stand on it. It's kind of dirty right now. Pretty. Yeah, you guys should love this vlog. You're gonna meet a lot of my IRL friends and we're gonna have a blast. And it's legal to drink alcohol. But it's still not legal to jewel because don't jewel, it's not cool. Hey Toronto, we finally made it. Took us forever. The Airbnb thing totally like did not work. Airbnb gave us a refund because our hosts sucked basically. But now we're in a hotel. It's awesome hotel, so that works. I'll see when we're in there. We got unpacked. Good morning everyone, we made it. We had a fun night in Toronto last night.   But that's okay, that's just why my voice is like this.  All right, order of events. So we're gonna go to brunch. I think me and Kayla are gonna go shopping. I think some of my friends will come with us. I don't know if they want to or not. I wanna go shopping really bad, so. We're gonna do that. I'll definitely take you guys to both of those. And then we'll probably get ready for whatever we go do tonight and you guys won't come with us for that. I'll see you guys there. Yeah, nice man. That was so good. I do, I'm really good at it. I would totally do that. I would totally do mimosas, except I understand that alcohol is bad. Yes. We promote underage drinking. Who is on crack? No we don't promote underage drinking. Yeah, try that again, let's try that one more time. We do not promote underage drinking. All right, we're gonna eat breakfast. We'll see you guys later. All right, so we are headed to, there's a huge, huge, huge shopping mall. Shopping mall. And right next to that is an aquarium. And I've been wanting to go to the aquarium for about, bro, she will not shut up about the aquarium. And Matt's like, no, we're not gonna go.  Wow, okay. Yeah, that's how I'm saying that. That's how I'm taking it. And here we are, everyone wants to go, so it's gonna be a big group of us going to the aquarium. So yeah.  Well, I'm not, but like I want to. Actually, no, there won't be any of those. So everyone's kind of taking their time, so we probably got about an hour or two before everyone gets there, so we're gonna use that time to go to the mall. Hopefully you find some cool stuff, I'm excited. Matt has a shopping problem. I do have a shopping problem, it's a big problem. Spends way too much money. When you sell out as hard as me, you go shopping at the mall all the time too. Clearly, clearly. Do you know where we're walking? All right, well, we'll get there when we get there. All right, we're getting really close to the mall. Finally. Finally. This city is awesome. I might know a lot of cities, I think this might be my favorite. Really? Hasn't been, oh yeah. What do you think? I am probably 9.5 out of 10 enjoying myself.  What's your favorite city though? Uh, probably, get antsy. Somewhere in California.   Um, no. I can't think about it. You're spacing out today. You're just all over the place.  Very air-hugged today. Classic, yeah. But I'm not touching my hair, so. I think our combined IQ is 200. I'm at 160, you're at 40. I'm intelligent. Don't you forget it. That's what all intelligent people say. All right, I'll see you guys when we get to the mall. Am I Casey Neistat yet? Wait, why do you- Casey Neistat, please, please do give me your clout. Dude, I needed so bad. Is he here? All right, you're getting muzzled. All right, everyone on three. Kaylee gotta stop talking. One, two, three. Kaylee gotta stop talking. Oh, we're here. We're here. Oh, he's teleported. The Toronto Eaton Centra. Shit. All right, we're gonna put it back. Now do a little. Quick little outfit change. I really did not like how I looked. I got this jacket from Lulu. Everyone sleeps on Lulu Lemon. Oh, look at this. Look at this material, it's so nice. And then I just got a basic white t-shirt from Zara. And then the rest of the outfit's the same. Yo, I've been saying this for years. I've been wearing triple black, Steph and Janasky's since I was like 12. And I'm 20. That's eight years. And I have no shoes. Yeah, not the exact pair, but. Oh my God. My feet grew a little bit.  No, casual. This is in the middle of Nordstrom. Just a little bar in the middle of Nordstrom. We love it. We love it. Fun. All right, so I saw this flannel. Now keep in mind, this is Canadian dollars. But I saw this flannel that was 400 Canadian dollars, which is like 315 American, which is still so expensive. I do not advise this at all. I wasn't gonna buy it. I was leaving.  So I'm going to get the flannel right now. And I'm gonna wear it out of here because it's really cool. Here we go. I feel like it's worth that money, no. Is it? No, this flannel. Probably not. However, think of it this way, okay? That's three bundles in Madden. EA wants this or three bundles, okay? So yeah, sorry, I'm not opening packs for you on a video anymore, but I am gonna have a pretty cool flannel. All right, here it is. The $400 Canadian man. Worth it. Woo. It actually is. I'm so happy right now. It's such a good call. Yo, shout out Seagate, shout out Swagbuck, shout out Peeblit, shout out App Bounty, shout out Petal, shout out, shout out my old coin sponsors from two years ago. Shout out Phil. Phil? Oh, shout out Phil for hooking me up. Let's go get a belt. If a thought has blue hair, you gotta run fast. What does that mean? I'm turquoise hair. You're what? Turquoise. What if she has turquoise hair, you're straight. Exactly. Onto the next store, baby. I will in a sec. We've been here for like, how long have you been here? We've been here for like two hours and we haven't even done, we've only done the first floor. There's a whole second floor and first floor, so. All right, you guys, what is going on? Connor, what is this thing? Is this new? How? All right, straight up. This is symbiosis.  But who thinks he's his mom? Like, he'll follow him everywhere and like, he'll meet on him.  But it's like the only place you can stand on him. And Buddy likes it, I guess. I, Buddy was purring earlier, bro. He loved it. You guys are weird. They've switched to a new position. Oh, he's back. I am shook by this. Buddy, what has your life become? It's big spoon, little spoon. You guys are cuddling. Where's the little, where's socks? Where's Goose? Where's Goose? Where's Goose Bear Goose? Hi, Goosey Goose. Are you doing kiddo? How you been? Goose will clap your cheeks, you know that, right? Goose, I am gonna clap your cheeks, I hope you're aware.


Merry Christmas to all of you out there. I don't know if that's politically correct to say Merry Christmas, but I'm a Christian and I'm going to say Merry Christmas and I mean that from the bottom of my heart. So I'd like to talk about the Grinch who stole Christmas. And here's what I mean by that is that all of us live in associations. For whatever reason we get some owner typically who disagrees with the board, and we end up as an association spending large amounts of time and large amounts of money if we have to hire a lawyer to handle the most simple of disputes. I want to remind everybody that the fundamental concept of a condo associations is self governance. So, you know, we as an association or you as an association are self governed by an elected board of directors and yes there are 514 b statutes that say what some of these you have to do or not do. And certainly at rubbish rules was helps guide you to run a good meeting. But at the end of the day, most governing documents provide a great deal of authority to the board of directors to make decisions so if the board of directors decides to do something that's lawful. And you as an owner don't like that you don't really have much standing, other than to talk to your board and, and try to share your view but what happens more times than not they write the man letters and they follow lawsuit. And I don't think that the board's premiums go up because this boards are insured protected by the director of reliability policy, and you get into this endless discussion with the attorneys who probably paying for their kids education through this, and we get this endless problem. And at least that particular owners stole Christmas because of the fact we're dealing with this. I was reading an article in the mainland quite interestingly enough that kind of leads into this not totally applicable to Hawaii but where a association to mainland follow the bouncing Bob said, Well, we have rules that says you can't put up Christmas decorations until Thanksgiving, and they have to be taken down by the first Saturday after New Year's. Okay, that's a rule they want to control what the aesthetics of the building looks like so an owner and their wisdom said okay well I hire someone to put my Christmas decorations up. I'm going to put them up four days before Thanksgiving. I'm not going to turn the lights on until it's legally. Okay, so I'm resisting them to be turned on Thanksgiving the legal day. I'm putting him up theoretically early because I'm hanging him on the wall. And so what do you think the association probably did, they sent him a demand letter to we're finding you $1,000 a day, if you don't take down your pre hung Christmas lights. Now, to me there's a degree of common sense about this the purpose and fundable purpose of rule is have some control about what the uniformity of the project looks like. And you know people have solar panels up they have other types of host decorations up. And so someone's hung some lights around and aren't turned on I doubt anybody notices them. And then to these things so they sued the owner and the owner hired a lawyer, and there's been no resolution by the courts in this matter yet, but it flunks the common sense test to me that yes we have rules we have to be able to position those rules to enforce them with some kind of common sense, something logical to it so here's what I'd like to tell you about Hawaii. There are several ways you can resolve a dispute with another. The easiest way is to ask for a meeting with the board of directors. You know you can do that in executive session you can do that privately, you can do that and just a meeting outside of a regular board meeting as a committee of the whole. If you don't talk to the board, and discuss this and seem to can find resolution. And you just simply hire a lawyer to write letters you're, you seem to be already getting off on the wrong foot because you put the board in a defensive position. I'm happy to talk to you. And you have to help with a fair to, when you have a concern, not first talk to the board I have another case I'm involved in right now. Those of you may not know I do a lot of expert witness work in the association Mr. And it's a situation where the owner of second position contrary to the board. The board meeting in a couple of years hasn't ever asked the board why they, they believe their position is correct, and it's simply started to write nasty newsletters to the owners and hire the lawyer. I'm not sure where that's productive for the association because, argumentatively, you have those nasty things you have to disclose them when you buy and sell real estate, and probably the terms on the property value I can't prove that but be logical because you have the baggage out there that someone might want to pay less for the property so, but the first little thumb is in dispute resolution is number one. Only your board of directors and number two you have to respect what authority the board has within their government documents because you can have your own logical ways why you think it should be different but the board has authority to do what you're doing you're not going to win this at the end of the day. The board is going to be. The board has the right to be wrong. They made a business judgment of business decision and what they believe the best interest of the association is no conflicts like they hired their brother to do something it's not Rages price but I don't see that too often I'll get in towards the end of the show we see are the common claims made today by owners against boards. So the first thing I just want to say at the outset is based on self governance he's association and boards have authority to find in their government documents state law. And the best way if you have an issue is to talk to the board. And a personal note, my condo where I own in Hawaii. The front doors are all the same and they were a metal door that's kind of got a patina green frame. Well the board at some point in time got the owners they all agreed to make it a brown frame. You have different owners bought new doors with the brown frame and some owners could take their existing frame like me and have a painted brown so still masses you wouldn't know the difference. And so, I frankly like my green door, but you live in a condo you go with the rules of the condo you go with the majority so in January by green doors being painted brown is just part of living in a condo you have to make sacrifices and give rights to make personal decisions when you live in a condo that's just how it is. And it's logical why it's that way. So let's just say you have that owner who doesn't want to listen to anything I just said, and you're going to have a dispute. You know that there are several methods in the current statute for condominiums HRS 514 be that defines the different types of dispute resolution that are available to you. Let's begin with the first one the oldest one on the books. It's not that popular, but it's still available and certain small claims may have some value and simple claims I should say, and that is called facilitative mediation. A lot of people just say mediation you know there's two types of mediation, facilitative and evaluative. We'll come back to that part in a minute. Facilitative mediation has a set of rules just like everything has rules I guess who stays. And basically, the two sides agree to mediate the matter. And then independent persons hired to try to get both sides to come by and come together. Under the rules of facilitative mediation mediator can't take sides. He's not trying to say you're wrong and he's just trying to express to each other mutually both sides point of view and see if you can find some common ground. And you have a law who anyway mediums mediation center in the Pacific. This is different ones in different islands, where you for a nominal fee to nonprofit, I'm going to say $100 a person. Go to the mediation and try to get a resolution voluntarily. And that is if you decide you want to hire a lawyer you got to pay for that on top of it. If the other side hires a lawyer they got to pay for it on top of it. And the fundamental basis to it is you're going to, you're close enough you should be able to find a way to make compromises to agree. This has been around for a long time under condo 514 day. The problem with it in general is that if the two sides are in a transgender position. It's unlikely you're going to be able to get both sides to find a compromise. And number two, you don't get a report that can be used like who's right or wrong. You end with no no agreement. And you go on and you've paid your 50 to 100 bucks ahead in person, and it moved on and it works for some simple things I would I would say that. But for a lot of things, depending on the complexity it doesn't work. I said there's two types of mediation there's facilitator and evaluate the mediation, a value of mediation was introduced in the Hawaii statutes, two or three years ago. I think it was after 187. So my memory is failing. 196 basically said that as an additional option. You can choose a value of the mediation. Now there's a distinct difference between facilitator and a value of the mediation. In the case of a value of the mediation you're picking again a neutral mediator. It's not a stunt through one or two organizations, and it's a retired judge. Under the rules of the value of the mediation mediator can take side it's almost like a settlement conference judge. And he can say you know if I was the judge in this case, I would make you pay all their legal fees. If I was a judge in this case I'd rule against you, you know the best you can do is getting this, but not these other things. These are the most popular forms of mediation today, because the judge who normally they're judges that doesn't have to be. But these people are kind of like a settlement conference, they'll take the gloves off, they'll tell each side exactly what they think of your case, looking for a way to get some form of compromise. Another example may be a deductible insurance time who's responsible. Maybe there's a middle position that makes both sides happy and they can move on and get things done but the big difference we facilitate a value of mediation is that the mediator makes a much stronger position. And what's interesting under the as you may or may not know, condo associations pay into the real estate education trust fund. There's money in there. Last time I look at it's like two and a half million dollars, where the way this works is that the first hour of the mediators time, which is normally let's say less than $400 is paid half half by the two parties. So worse, you're at 175 200 bucks to have this done by diet of mediation, and the balance of mediation is paid to the real estate education trust fund up to a feeling of six thousand I think it is. And then after that the mediator can request additional funds, if he feels that it is something he's close to settling. So, in this case you get a much stronger mediator with a lot more authority to advocate basically the law and the truth and what this is and, and it's probably the most popular method today. There's some statistics on that and, you know, about 75% of the cases resolved through this process, about 25% resolved then no resolution but what was interesting is, of those 25% 100% resulted and no one filing suit. Because no one's pride theoretically say well I don't agree with you I'm not going to admit that I was wrong, but then when you finish the mediation and the judges warned you about all the potential risks. Yeah, you basically drop it that goes away so I think the, in my little brain I say it's much more successful than 75% because it results and I'm sure there must be cases that result litigation, but I just haven't seen them. That's a value to mediation. So that's the first to the mediations, but we're at a point of a break time. And so we're going to take a short one minute break. And we'll be right back to talk about the other methods of resolving disputes among, not only owners and board members, but board members themselves and management companies. So we'll be right back in one minute. So thank you so much for being lenders physical therapist and board certified orthopedic clinical specialists and I am the host of movement matters. A show that is designed to bring you the best physical therapy tips and exercises so that you can have your best body and do all the things that you love. So every other Tuesday at 11am on think tech Hawaii.com where I show you instructional videos from the top of your head to the bottom of your toes to get your body feeling its best. Remember, life is better when you listen to your physical therapist. I'll see you on Tuesday. Hello, welcome back and I'll say happy holidays for everybody else. Those who didn't like Merry Christmas, and we're in this show talking about dispute resolution and just briefly the first part of the show talked about self governance is how condominiums are based. So the first method to deal with the dispute is talk to your board. Next method is facilitative mediation, which is a kumbaya try to get consensus and the other mediation form is a value of mediation, which allows you to have a retired judge or someone more skillful, take a much stronger position. Again under act 196 some of the changes were made after it was adopted was this is not just between an owner and the board. This can be between a board member and another board member, and this can be between the board and a management company, or maybe an owner and management company so they expanded the number of parties that could participate in this program. Number two, when they amended the law, subsequently, they also said we'll pay for this if both sides voluntarily agree to make it binding arbitration so you could very easily to avoid potential non agreement. So let's say let's make this binding arbitration, and then in fact the real estate commission education trust fund still pays for it but you get a firm resolution to the to the dispute. Now what is the another method of dispute resolution which goes back pretty close to the original 514 b being adopted very rarely used and I'll explain why but I've seen it use. The right for board the board to ask for non binding arbitration. Now that seems to be a conflict and saying non binding arbitration because basically under Hawaii law arbitrations are binding. They're not appealable to courts.  It's going to take fraud or failure to disclose a conflict of interest, something fairly egregious to overturn arbitration award. So what is non binding arbitration well it's a it's a process that was developed before we had a value of mediation.  Now under Hawaii law you can't force somebody into binding arbitration, they're entitled to a trial will be by judge or by jury depending on the circumstances. And so it's non binding because at the end of the day, either party can say, I'm filing for a trial the Novo, which means that you want to set aside this non binding verdict. You want to start all over again, but the statute poses some risks and doing that. If you do that. And in fact you don't prevail on the next trial for lack of a better word, by at least an improvement of your position by 10%. Then in fact, all those legal fees and costs since the trial of the Novo and excuse me the value since the non binding arbitration award was issued, you'll have to reimburse the other side for those costs. That's how I read it so you have some risk if you get an award from a non binding arbitration, and you say my office testing the waters I don't want to comply with it. And usually this is before judges again retired judges. Then you run the rest that you may be responsible for some of the costs the legal fees to take it to the next level. If you don't position yourself in vans favor over what the track with the arbitration award said so, and that arbitration is as visible as evidence in the in this new trial wherever that may be or whatever.  My short scenario about that. But the fact is under the under the statute you have a right to a form of non binding arbitration mandatory because I would tell you for boards, especially, you know, if you didn't go to this application and or the non binding arbitration is considered under the statute, a breach of your fiduciary duty. As such, your director of social liability insurance may not cover you for that. So the status legislature wants people to try to resolve these things. They want to try to keep them out of the court system. And I guess they're basing that hope on common sense and people wanting to resolve problems but I'm sure the people out there who don't want to resolve problems. They want to get even for some reason I don't know why. At the end of the day it costs everybody the money and comes from the common pot. And so I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense. You don't do facilitative mediation, you don't do a value to mediation, and you don't do non binding arbitration, which are by far the cheapest and fastest way to attempt to resolve the dispute. Then you can go to litigation follow lawsuit. Recently, where the owner followed a lawsuit on a matter that subsequent halfway into the lawsuit with discovery and deposition filed under the statute saying, I've changed my mind I want nine binding arbitration.  You can't go backwards and say tip of hand trials and litigation anyway, the judge tries to force you into mediation. So why not start with mediation and hopefully avoid a lot of this cost and expense and consternation. To me I just drink more wine because I like wine. The reality of it is, if you don't find a way to resolve these to the statute opportunities. Solitative mediation, value of mediation, non binding arbitration, or just meeting with the board. I really hope so I then as the file litigation or a lawsuit. And then you may voluntarily agree to put that in binding arbitration but you can't force a party into binding arbitration. They have to both side have to voluntarily agree to it and you know binding arbitration is pretty much like a court.   I like the binding arbitration because the issues are quite simple, and it's easy to get a solution much quicker. But then there may be a lot of other complicated issues that the board or the owner don't want to do binding arbitration they want to have a trial judge and or jury rule on this matter so that's kind of where the rubber hits the road on on your choices. Now, let me just tell you about the most common disputes that are filed with the real estate commission as I said, you have this facilitated a value of mediation opportunity, and the real estate commission because of all these firms and agencies that serve us have to get paid they submitted to real estate commission, they keep a statistics on, on these cases and the status resolutions non resolutions and, and those types of things. Well, let me tell you the most common things that I have seen as what are the common issues that we see before the mediation process. Number one is insurance deductibles. Insurance deductibles, as you may know, a long time ago, the law was changed to allow everybody h o six policies and, and the force deductible on the homeowner for the h o six. So in that particular case, they're arguing over who's responsible for the deductible, some other unit may have been damaged but use the one that caused the damage and the statute gives the board the right to make that decision. And then there's issues of when you have an assessment maybe, whether it's a limited commel or commel know who's responsible to pay for it. Very to follow the governing documents. And my notes here, and very to produce documents as a statutes pretty clear that owners are entitled to certain documents but they're not entitled to everything. And I'll be told by the board, we're not going to give you this because I'm required to but those are the basic issues and the common sense test to me says I don't know why we can't resolve those types of issues without filing a lawsuit, but I can tell you having done a lot of this as an expert. I would just encourage all of you to take a deep breath and realize that condominiums are based on self governance and condo boards have rights to make the decision, and you may not like that decision, but you're going to be stuck with it. You know, you can certainly go out and try to fight change the board and I see all those problems to, but at the end of the day, you live in self governance, but if you're not happy. Remember, go to the board, the soul to the mediation, I do it mediation, non binding arbitration, and if necessary fall lawsuit, but I would tell you that's the most expensive slowest way to go with the greatest risk. And they said the great soul Christmas by following a suit against up condo association. And I'm going to say again happy holidays to everybody and thank you for watching condo insider. We hope to see you back next Thursday at three o'clock. We have another interesting topic and condo and Aloha, and again, Merry Christmas.


Market share has become a mantra both in industry and at business schools. There are three reasons. The first reason is economies of scale. So firms with a large market share, large companies are able to reduce their costs more than small share companies. The second reason is market power. So the market leader is able to demand higher prices from their customers and to negotiate lower prices with their suppliers. And the third reason is from a consumer perspective that consumers use the market share of a brand or of a company as a quality criterion in their purchase processes. There are actually reasons why there should be a positive relationship between market share and financial firm performance. But is that really still valid in times of digitization and globalization? The internet allows small share companies to market their products via e-commerce and search engine advertising to a global audience. Customers are able to use the internet to increase the transparency of their purchase decisions, for example via product review sites. And then there are today lots of startups, small companies that are actually a lot more agile than the large corporations. That are all reasons why there should maybe not be such a strong relationship between market share and financial firm performance. So the general first research question of our work is how the relationship between market share and financial firm performance is, whether it's positive or negative. And then we are also interested in the question whether there are actually certain circumstances, where the relationship between market share and financial firm performance is stronger or weaker. So for example, in certain regions, for example, in certain markets, there might be a higher or lower relationship between market share and financial firm performance. So what method do we use? There have actually been many studies on the relationship between market share and financial firm performance, many individual studies. But the limitations of these individual studies is that they are always limited to a certain region, to a certain industry and so on. So it's difficult to generalize from these individual studies. That's why we use an analysis method called meta-analysis. A meta-analysis actually tries to achieve two aims. The first aim of a meta-analysis is to find an average relationship between two concepts. In our case, market share and financial firm performance. This effect size is in our case the so-called elasticity. That means how does financial firm performance change in percentage if market share is increased by 1%. So this first aim of the meta-analysis actually matches quite well to our first research question. The second aim of a meta-analysis is to find moderators. So situations in this case where market share is more or less relevant for financial firm performance. So again, that fits very well to the second research question that I outlined in the beginning. How does our database look like at the end? So in total we have 863 elasticity that stem from 89 individual empirical studies. The timeframe is quite impressive. We are looking at studies that were published between 1972 and 2017. They used data from 1949 until 2013. Also in terms of regions, it's very broad. So it covers companies from six different continents. And in terms of industries, we look at manufactured goods, we look at services. We also look at different types of customer relationships. Business to consumer and business to business. So in total we have a very broad data set from which we are able to get generalizable results regarding the market share of financial firm performance relationship. My co-author Alex in the Adeling has raised the question if it's always worthwhile to be the number one or number two in the market. Based on that we have derived our research question if firms with a high market share are awarded with a better financial performance. What we find with our meta-analysis is that the relationship between market share and financial performance is not what it seems. Specifically, if market share increases by 1%, the firm financial performance increases on average by just only 0.13%. That means the average elasticity is just 0.13%. Furthermore, 45% of all the elasticities are in the range between 0 and 0.1 and 18% of the elasticities are even negative. So let us focus on this average market share performance elasticity of 0.13. This sounds small and it is small. Let us put this number into context. Other research has found with regard to very important marketing assets like customer relationships and brands that their elasticities with regard to firm financial performance is 0.72 and 0.33 respectively. What does that mean? That means that the impact of customer relationships on financial performance is 6 times the impact and the impact of brands on firm financial performance is 3 times the impact of market share gains alone. My co-author has also raised the question if there are certain conditions or situations where the impact of market share on firm financial performance is more or less pronounced. We identified 27 factors that may influence the elasticity. Let me highlight three important situations that we have identified. First, for manufacturing firms the impact of market share on firm financial performance is stronger than for service firms. So obviously for manufacturing firms they benefit from high market shares with regard to higher efficiency and market power. The second situation or the second difference is with regard to B2B versus B2C firms. What we found is that the elasticity for B2C firms is more pronounced than for B2B firms. So private consumers typically show low price sensitivity with regard to strong brands while for B2B situations business consumers typically follow a more rational buying process by having bidding processes or buying centers. Finally, what about the regions? So what we find is that the elasticity in emerging countries and in Europe is more pronounced than in the US. Why is that? Probably in the US we have a very highly competitive environment and a very mature market where market share gains can only be achieved at the expense of profitability. The main implications of our results refer to the design of performance measurement systems and the determination and allocation of sales and marketing budgets. So first, market share is a very popular metric that is often used in performance measurement systems of companies. And this is understandable because market share is easy to measure and is motivating for managers to beat the competitors. However, our results show that market share doesn't have such a strong performance impact. It's better probably to focus on more customer-related and brand-related metrics because they have a stronger profit implication. What could that be? So for example, include in your performance measurement system customer satisfaction or customer loyalty also regard to brand, brand awareness or brand image. Of course, these metrics are more difficult to measure and it takes more time to change them. But what we show is it's really worthwhile to think about these metrics and trying to invest and to change them because they have much stronger profit implications. Of course, what we have also shown is that the impact of market share on firm financial performance is different for different situations. So naturally, performance measurement systems should be adapted to certain contexts. So for example, with regard to certain industries, regions or if it's more B2B or B2C relationship. Market share should not be the one-size-fits-all indicator that should always and everywhere be given as a target figure. Second, our results have also strong implications with regard to the design allocation of sales and marketing budgets. What we provide with our results is to structure this process more from a quantitative kind of view. Market share should be allocated in proportion to elasticities. So based on our results and the derived elasticities we have in our study, we recommend the following with regard to the allocation of the sales and marketing budget. 60% of this budget should be allocated to customer-related measures. So for example, building a customer service center in order to improve customer satisfaction. 30% of that budget should be focused on brand-related activities. So for example, creating a certain campaign in order to create a certain brand awareness or brand image. Then the final 10% should then be used for trying to change market shares, for example, by having promotion campaigns. Investing more into these long-term-related measures has a very strong profit implication. So in short, managers should really focus on building marketing assets, not boosting market shares. So what are avenues for future research regarding the market share financial firm performance relationship? First of all, there are some companies that were enabled by the Internet. For example, Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook and these four companies are firms that actually have a very high market share. So they're very dominant and they are also very profitable. On the other hand, the Internet has also produced many small niche players that have a very low market share and that are also very profitable. So this begs the question, what is the relationship between market share and financial firm performance in industries that are very much driven by digitization and the Internet? That's something that our meta-analysis was not able to answer. A related research topic are platform firms. So companies such as Facebook or Google are platform companies that serve two sides of one market. Other examples are Uber and Airbnb. For example, Airbnb serve both hosts and travelers. One interesting research question could be how the market share on one side of the market actually affects the profitability of these firms. Or a second question could be what is the relationship between the market share of these platform firms and the financial firm performance of traditional companies in these markets such as Hotel Chains, Hilton or Sheridan?