Welcome to First Unitarian Society of Madison. This is a community where curious seekers gather to explore spiritual, ethical, and social issues in an accepting and nurturing environment. Unitarian Universalism supports the freedom of conscience of each individual, as together we seek to be a force for good in the world. I am not Steve Goldberg, my much more energetic and engaging colleague. You may get to see him later. My name is Karen Rose Gretler, and on behalf of the congregation, I would like to extend a special welcome to visitors.  As we gather in this place and this time, let us remember we are all visitors in this life. We come together to find meaning and hope with all the other visitors in life. Let us join our hearts and minds together as we celebrate this life. Please silence your cell phones as I invite you to join me now in a few moments of silence for contemplation, meditation, prayer as we settle in and come fully into this time and place together. Please rise in body or spirit for our in-gathering hymn, number 354. We will be singing verses one and four this morning. Even life, we believe in the strength of love, and today we have found a way to be together, each from our separate paths, coming here to journey together. As Karen Rose lights our chalice this morning, we will recollectively from the order of service where together we say, we light this chalice in honor of first steps for beginning even when the path ahead is unclear, for the courage it takes to trust that the way will reveal itself, that light will come to clarify our vision, that friends will be by our side. I invite you to turn toward your neighbor for a friendly greeting. Are you ready for a story? The young and young at heart are welcome to come forward. Good morning, good morning, sunny, Sunday morning, good morning, happy St. Patrick's Day, everybody, have a book today to share with you about a journey, a very exciting, it's called I Had Trouble in Getting to Salah Saloo. Who is it by? Does anyone know? By Dr. Seuss, yes. Some people know this book I hear. There is, let's see what it says here. I was really happy and carefree and young and I lived in a place called the Valley of Vong and nothing, not anything ever went wrong until, well, one day I was walking along and I guess I got careless, I guess I got gawking at daisies and not looking where I was walking. It is so bright in here you can hardly see the screen, but I will tell you I need some help reading my book with the pictures. So what happens in this picture? He falls down, he trips on a rock, yes, he lands on his bum. And so then he says, now I never had ever had troubles before, so I said to myself I don't want anymore. If I watch out for rocks with my eyes straight ahead, I'll keep out of trouble forever, I said, and then he gets bit on the tail by a quail and there's rocks everywhere. So he decides he's going to look forwards and backwards at the same time. How easy is that to do? Not easy. Something might come from the side, well, we know something came from above and something came from below. So he got stung on the head and bit on the toe. And so just as he was, just as he was dealing with all these critters, there I was, all completely surrounded by trouble. When a chap rumbled up in a one-wheeler wobble, young fellow he said, what has happened to you, has happened to me and to other folks too. So I'll tell you what I have decided to do. I'm off to the city of Salah Salu on the banks of the beautiful river Wahoo, where they never have troubles, at least very few. It's not very far and my camel is strong. He'll get us there, he'll get us there fast, so hop on, come along. Well so they hop on and travel all through the dark, night over rocks and cliffs and trees, and then the camel ends up getting sick. So they have to pull the camel themselves up a very long and windy road. And what do you know what happens next? He has to pull both the camel and the camel driver. That does not seem fair. Well, next morning we located Dr. Sam Snell, who knew all about tonsils and camels as well. Our camel, he said, had a bad case of gleeks and should lie flat in his bed for at least 20 weeks. So he couldn't travel by camel anymore, so they told him go down the road and take a bus. Well, the bus stop was there and that part was just fine. But tacked on a stick was a very small sign saying, notice to passengers using our line. We are sorry to say that our driver, Butch Myers, ran over four nails and has punctured all tires. So until further notice, the 442 cannot possibly take you to Sala Saloo. So now he has to walk a really long path, way into the distance. A hundred miles later, my feet were so sore, then once you know it, it started to pour. But way in the distance, do you see that little house? He's going to go into that little house. But that house has holes in the roof. And there are birds and rain coming in. The owls and mice are trying to take shelter too. But he has a beautiful dream. Then I dreamed I was sleeping on billowy pillows of soft silk and satin marshmallow stuffed pillows. I dreamed I was sleeping in Sala Saloo on the banks of the beautiful River Wahoo, where they never have troubles, at least very few. But when he woke up, the house was being washed overboard. What's going to happen? You thought that might happen? Well, I floated twelve days without toothpaste or soap. I practically almost had given up hope. When someone up high shouted, here catch the rope, then I knew that my troubles had come to an end, and I climbed up the rope calling, thank you, my friend. But when he got up to the top of the rope, there was a soldier on horseback saying, we are in a war, and we need you to help. We are going to give you a weapon called a pea shooter, a pea shooter. He gave me a shooter and one little bean, which was not very much, if you see what I mean. Then he yelled, get that pooser, attack without fear. The glorious moment of victory is near, and the glorious general led the advance with a glorious swish of his sword and his lance and a glorious clank of his tin-plated pants. It looks kind of like the guy with the camel, but it's not. Well, the soldiers were so scared that they ran away, and the poosers were about to surround our little character. And look at all those poosers.  I had trouble staying alive, and I saw an old pipe that said vent number five. I didn't have time to find out what that meant, but the vent had a hole, and the holes where I went. So he went into the vent and down into the ground, and there were all sorts of critters and creatures. Can you find him in the picture? Yeah, he's kind of up here running the wrong direction against everyone else. I see a fishbowl. I see someone saying vote for somebody. A tuba, some dishes piled high and an umbrella and a drum. Then just when I thought I could stand it no more, by chance I discovered a tiny trap door. I popped my head out. The great sky was sky blue, and I knew from the flowers I'd finally come through to the banks of the beautiful River Wahoo. I couldn't be far now from Sala Saloo. And there it is, Sala Saloo. Someone last night said, it looks like it's made of candy. Well, welcome, he said as he gave me his hand. Welcome my son to this beautiful land. We welcome to sweet, sunny Sala Saloo, where we never have troubles, at least very few. As a matter of fact, we have only just one. Imagine just one little trouble, my son, in this one little trouble. As you will now see, it is this one little trouble. I have with this key, he can't open the door. There's only one door into Sala Saloo and we have a key slapping slipper we do. This troublesome slipper moved into my door two weeks ago Tuesday at quarter to four.  It's very bad luck to kill any slipper and that's why we're stuck. And why no one gets in and the town's gone to pot. It's a terrible state of affairs, is it not? And so said the doorman of Sala Saloo, my job at the door here is finished. I'm through and I'll tell you what I have decided to do. I'm leaving, he said. I'm Sala Saloo on the banks of the beautiful River Wahoo, where we never have troubles, at least very few. And I'm off to the city of Bula Bubaal on the banks of the beautiful River Wahoo, where they never have troubles, no troubles at all. Where they come on along with me, he said, as he ran, and you'll never have any more troubles, young man. I'd have no more troubles, that's what the man said. So I started to go, but I didn't. Instead, I did some quick thinking inside of my head. Then I started back home to the valley of Vang. I know I'll have troubles, I'll maybe get stung. I'll always have troubles, I'll maybe get bit by the green headed quail on the place where I sit. But I bought a big bat, I'm ready, you see. Now my troubles are going to have trouble with me. And here's a picture of the maze that he went through in order to get to that decision to go back to the valley of Vang. He has to get through a big maze. And he had to really think and really listen close inside to his heart to hear what he should be doing. Should he stay or should he go? And speaking of listening, we get to listen to the choir today. It's a special treat. So before you go to classes, we're going to listen to what they have to say. Today's reading comes from Unitarian Universalist Minister Victoria. You know, we do it every day. Every morning we go out blinking into the glare of our freedom, into the wilderness of our work and the world. Making maps as we go. Looking for signs that were on the right path. And on some good days we walk right out into our oppressions, or right out of our oppressions. Sometimes the other way too. Those things that press us down from the outside or as often from the inside. We shake off the shackles of fear, prejudice, timidity, closed-mindedness, selfishness, self-righteousness, and claim our freedom outright. Terrifying as it is our freedom to be human and humane. Every morning, every day we leave our houses not knowing if it will be for the last time. And we decide that we'll take with us. We decide what we'll take with us. What we'll carry. How much integrity. How much truth telling. How much compassion in case somebody along the way needs some. How much arrogance. How much anger. How much humor. How much willingness to change or be changed. To grow. To be grown. How much faith and hope. How much love and gratitude. You pack these things with your lunch and your medications, your date book and your papers. Every day we gather what we think we'll need. Pick up what we love and all that we so far believe. Put on our history, shoulder our experience and memory. Take inventory of our blessings and we start walking toward morning. Please join in singing hymn number 391, voice still and small. I invite you to rise in body and or spirit. We will be singing this through twice. Voice still and small. As some of you know, I am currently studying to become a Unitarian Universalist Minister. It took a lot of listening, listening to that voice still and small to get to this place where I am with you today. In this month when the theme is journey and on this weekend when the topic is journey of lifelong learning, it seems only fitting for me to share some of my journey into the ministry with you. For those of you who had the chance to read my column in the March newsletter, you'll recall that I reflected a little bit on maps as they relate to our journeys. Maps are not only beautiful, but they can be very useful, especially when you know where you want to go. In my case, however, I have not always known where I have wanted to go. As the Reverend Victoria Safford described in our reading today, and much like the Dr. Seuss character traveling to Salah Saloo, I have been making maps as I go, looking for signs that I'm on the right path. Indeed, maps for me have been more about helping me to see where I have been. They have been a tool to help me reflect. And truth be told, reflecting is something I'm quite comfortable with. You see, even as a young child, I was encouraged to reflect on my life, to listen to that voice still and small. Perhaps it started at the age of three when my family moved into a cooperative living situation called the Religious House. It was in this setting that we were introduced to rituals and spiritual practices that would carry us through our lives, even after we moved out of the house the following year. One such ritual was the Bedtime Ritual. At the end of each day, my sisters and I would reflect on the highs and lows of the day. I have heard young people in our religious education classes call them brags and bummers, or hapies and crappies. Here in worship service, we tend to call them joys and sorrows. In my family of origin, we called them yeses and noes. So each night, when I was getting tucked into bed, one of the adults in my life would do the Bedtime Ritual for me. It would include asking me, what did you say yes to today? My response might include things like playing with my friends or enjoying a favorite TV show or getting to eat chocolate chip cookie dough. Then they would ask me, what did you say no to today? And I would mention the splinter that had gotten stuck in my foot or how one of my sisters had hurt my feelings. Then, in the comforting and repetitive nature of the ritual, my grown-up would ask three questions to which I would answer in the affirmative. The yeses and noes are all received, right? Right, I would say. The day is complete, right? Right. Tomorrow waits for you to create, right? Right. This ritual helped me to acknowledge all that had happened during the day so that I could restfully prepare for the day ahead. Yes, reflecting on our lives was the norm in my family of origin, not just at the end of each day, but after other events, too. For example, my family would reflect on movies after we watched them together or even pieces of artwork. We would ask each other, what did you see? What did you hear? And how did that make you feel? And how is our life different now because we have experienced this? So it wasn't just the what of our experiences that we reflected upon, the yeses and noes, but it was also the so-what that we explored. It seems to me that the so-what of life is similar to that voice still and small. In order to reflect on how our lives are different now, we have to, each of us, listen for that voice. What is it calling us to do? What is the so-what of our life? Voice still and small deep inside all I hear you call singing. As you can imagine, the decision to leave a successful and satisfying career for a path marked with uncertainty is not an easy decision to make. And yet moving towards ministry felt like an authentic next step for me. Part of the reason I finally started on the path towards ordained ministry is because I noticed patterns in my life. I listened to that voice still and small. In fact, there were actually many moments when I listened for that voice. I listened for my yeses, and I listened for my noes. I listened for the so-what of my life. And upon reflection, it turned out that most of the time I was listening in church. It was in 1995 or so when I first stepped into the James Reeve Unitarian Universalist congregation. I was still in my first graduate degree program at that time, and I was seeking a congregation where I could lay down the burdens of my academic life for at least an hour a week. Two or so years later, thanks to an adult religious education program there, I fell in love with the woman who would become my wife, Bev. I myself became a family woman, eager to raise Bev's daughter, in a spiritual community that accepted our family for who we were. As with all congregations, there were a lot of volunteer opportunities. Early on, I was asked to become a religious education teacher. So eventually, I co-facilitated the sexuality curriculum for seventh and ninth graders. I assisted with the preschoolers. I coordinated the coming-of-age program. Passionate about racial justice, I helped to host conferences and trainings and classes. Having grown up taking music lessons, I joined the choir. Eventually, I headed up the library committee, joined the hospitality crew, co-chaired the remodeling task force. Also, I served as president of the board and chaired the stewardship team and served as a worship leader. What a rich variety of experiences. Now, of course, I couldn't do all of these things at once. I was working full-time, after all. So each year, I would listen to that voice still and small to determine where I wanted to volunteer next. What was I really interested in? What was calling me? Was I starting to feel obligated and resentful? If so, I knew it was time for a change. Was I excited and invigorated to share my gifts in order to co-create a beloved community with fellow congregants also on the journey? Well, that's where I wanted to be. Voice still and small deep inside all I hear you call singing. Unitarian Universalist minister, the Reverend Eric Walker Wickstrom, wrote a book entitled, Serving with Grace, Lay Leadership as a Spiritual Practice. In his chapter called, Know is as Sacred as Yes, he underscores the importance of listening to that voice still and small when he writes the following. Where do you want to spend your time and energy? How can your talents best serve your congregation? These are questions that often go unasked because the needs of the congregations can seem so overwhelming that, to put it bluntly, it often seems that they just need a warm body and those of us willing to answer the call go where we are told we are needed. Questions such as, what do you want to do and where might I best be of use? Also are not considered because of the way our churches often ask for help. He continues, if our service to the church is to be a spiritual practice and not just a road to resentment, then it is worth taking the time to practice the ancient art of discernment. What if, he writes, during the membership orientation, you heard the idea that in this congregation, your know is as sacred as your yes. That here you are expected to say yes only when you could say it with an open heart and a clear conscience and that you are expected to say no as often as that felt like the right thing to say. Then he concludes the chapter with this. As Howard Thurman once said, don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and then do that thing because what the world needs is people who are more alive. The same goes for our congregations. And so for years, I was seeking to become more alive while listening closely to my call within the church. And then that call started to sound slightly different. It started asking me harder questions. What if my call is not just to this beloved community but to the unitarian, universalist faith as a whole? What if my desire for justice-making that is rooted in spiritual practice? What if my vision for connecting people with their passions? What if my love for living from a mindset of gratitude and abundance? What if all of these things needed a different context, a different environment in order to more fully bloom?  Sometimes the sound is so faint. And sometimes life just seems too busy to slow down long enough to pay attention. And sometimes we may hear calls to places that we do not feel ready to go yet. It's not always an easy journey and yet it is our journey nonetheless. Voice still and small, deep inside all, I hear you call singing. We are in a unique moment, my friends. Yes, as individuals, each one of us has circumstances that we are facing. Sorrows or challenges, doors opening and ideas taking root. Every day brings us another opportunity to listen to our yeses and to our no's, to our so what's. We get to reflect on the maps of our lives to see where we have been and to listen to that voice still and small within. To learn where we might be headed next. Maybe that listening is happening within the congregational setting for you. Where are you excited to serve? Or maybe it's happening out in the wider world for there is no shortage of causes to which we can add our time and energy. And beyond our individual circumstances, we are in a unique moment as a congregation, as a community of people. Because we are in an interim period between two called ministries, we have an opportunity to listen to the yeses and no's, to the so what's of our shared life for folks committed to First Unitarian Society. We have the opportunity to reflect on the map of this congregation and to listen to what may be collectively calling us into the future. In the weeks and months ahead, I invite you to take some time to slow down long enough to listen deeply to your voice still and small. Make space in your schedule. Make space in your life. Maybe try journaling or drawing a map of where you have been. Do you see themes coming up? Do you see patterns that have something to tell you? And if you need, find a trusted friend or a small group to engage in this reflection with you. Telling our stories, sharing our maps, speaking our yeses and no's aloud, these can bring us more insights, help us make connections, and remind us of our fellow travelers. Wherever the journey calls us next, both as individuals and as a community, remember this, we travel with companions. Together, what seems daunting at first might actually turn into something delightful. I will close with this encouraging reminder from Unitarian Universalist minister, Wayne Arneson, who writes, Take courage, friends. The way is often hard. The path is never clear. And the stakes are very high. Take courage. For deep down, there is another truth. You are not alone. Blessed be an amen. The offering we take each week, we hope is not just a stale habit, but an opportunity to recommit to this place and to this people. Our offering is an affirmation, a yes. When we give, we say yes to something we value. With our gifts freely given, we say yes to the values of our faith. May our offering help us practice Unitarian Universalism within and beyond our congregation as tools to empower our mission. And the mission of this week's outreach offering partner, the Wisconsin Network for Peace, Justice and Sustainability, a coalition committed to a sustainable world free from violence and injustice. We thank you for your generosity so that we can all together say yes to the lights of hope, love and peace. Thank you for all the ways you give to this community. In addition to our many financial gifts, we want to express a special thanks to those who helped to make our services possible. Our greeters are Gail Bliss and Claire Box. Our sound operator is David Bryles. Our ushers are Brian Chanas, Bissnitschke, Marty Hollis. Hospitality, the coffee and lemon water is being prepared by Franz and Eleni Mossaret Varga and Eleanor. And I can tell you that Eleanor was helping them from her high chair and she is also a volunteer. Our lay ministers are Anne Smiley and Dennis Collins and our welcome and information table is being staffed by Dorit Bergen. And now the aforementioned much more engaging and energetic colleague, Steve Goldberg, will indeed address you. Thank you for holding your applause. So I'm excited to provide an update on our 2019 FUS stewardship campaign. And when you think about it, everything we've experienced this morning at this service is an example of what stewardship looks like. It looks like the music we hear every time from our staff as well as from, in this case, the teen choir. It looks like the story for all ages after which those youngsters went to their religious education and youth programming so that they can feel valued here. And stewardship looks like the fellowship hour that we're going to be enjoying in just a few moments right after the standing ovation. Stewardship looks like everything we experience on these weekends at First Unitarian Society and everything in between. And stewardship provides the so what at First Unitarian Society. So I'm excited to explain what stewardship looks like in terms of our campaign right now. Because of the generosity of 200 stewards so far in our campaign, with a goal of $1.5 million, we have received pledges and commitments totaling and exceeding $600,000. And of those 200 pledges, half represent an increase over last year's total and one fourth represent multi-year commitments from FUS members who have decided to become sustaining stewards by making year after year commitments not just one year at a time. So if you're one of those people who has made a multi-year commitment or increased your commitment above last year's level, I'd like you to stand so we can see what stewardship looks like. Please stand. Remain standing. Remain standing, please. Stand back up. Come on. And now join them standing if you are among the others who have made a commitment of any kind to our fellowship campaign, I mean our stewardship campaign. And this is what stewardship looks like. You may be seated. Thank you. So keep that in mind as you are wondering if it's time to stop procrastinating about the pledge card that you received and your opportunity to participate in showing what stewardship looks like at First Unitarian Society. The campaign will end in April 5, Friday evening when we have a big celebration here called our Because of You celebration. Because of you and because of your stewardship we are able to provide the so what that is so important to First Unitarian Society. But we are also celebrating every week not just April 5 and every week we recognize somebody who has participated in the stewardship campaign by providing them with a $25 gift card to food fight restaurants and wait for it, wait for it. This morning's winner is Marty Hollis. Now she has to go back and sort the money from the office because she was also an usher today. Thank you Marty. Thank you to all of you stewards. And to give us another line of sight into what stewardship looks like I'd like to call Roz Woodward to the front. So Roz as you're making your way forward let me just say that Roz has offered to provide some observations about why she has long been and certainly today is an FUS Steward. Roz? Steve wanted to fire questions at me and I don't do very well on my feet so I decided this was a better option. In 1972 my husband David and I bought land in Vernon County, Wisconsin. We'd both been bought up in England where there's a strong legacy of land stewardship. Now over 40 years later my understanding of stewardship has matured. It means looking at the big picture anticipating the future and doing the best I can with the means at my disposal to make things better than they were to leave it for the benefit of those who follow. When Doug Watkins, our interim minister heard our collective values he gathered them together as stars. I can check off every one of them. Some are inevitably linked. I don't know how you separate stars one and three music and deepening spirituality. David and I had always sung together in a choir so shortly after we found FUS in about 1998 we joined the society choir where I can give and receive the blessings of shared harmony. Add to that as a midwife with every birth I was confronted by the absence of the feminine God figure in Western theology. I have exposure and support here for deep exploration of other beliefs as we learn and sing together. And how does star number two, social justice not link with star number four small groups? Margaret Mead pointed out that a few committed people can change the world. We have those here. Because of that every year the peace polls spring up on Mother's Day. I had an idea that was able to be nurtured and fed here and still goes on and grows every year and you'll see them this year as we pass to participate. Because of that every year we support one another too. Most specifically I commit to lay ministry, lay worship which are different things and healing journeys, grief group. Star number five is the spirit of space and we only have to open our eyes and look around us to share the wonders of our new unique facility. This place feeds my soul. When I see something that needs doing I can make it happen here. Like my land its beauty and treasured memories are very special but unlike my land it's an excellent investment. Please join me in whatever way best suits your style so we can move into the future with the confidence we will leave this place better than we found it. Thank you, Ross. That's another example of what stewardship looks like, everybody. And if you're wondering how your pledge should look in this effort of stewardship do you have any questions about it? Two of our staff members who are working on this campaign tirelessly, Florence and Cheryl understanding at the back of the room they can hide no more and they'll be available in the commons during the fellowship hour to help you understand what stewardship might look like in terms of your pledge if you have been following the 11th commandment which says thou shalt procrastinate at every opportunity. So with that I'll say thank you for your stewardship so far and thanks to those of you who are contemplating the kind of stewardship you would like to show as we continue delivering on the so what here at First Unitarian Society. Thank you, Steve, and thank you, Ross. We gather together each week with hearts filled with gratitude for the gifts of our lives and with deep sorrow for life's losses and pain. This week we hold in our hearts the great joy of the Yancei family celebrating the end of Phoebe's cancer treatments and her very clean scan last Monday. We join our gratitude with theirs and we send our continued prayers for more clean scans in Phoebe's future. Our hearts are with Susan Malar and family as they mourn the passing of Terry last week. A memorial service is planned for next Sunday, March 24th at 3 p.m. with a visitation at 2 p.m. here in this room. We also send our love to Jerry Moser whose brother passed away recently and to co-Williams whose sister suffered a brain injury after falling on the ice and is being taken off life support. And we pray this day for the 49 members of the Linwood Mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand who lost their lives in a senseless act of violence and hatred. As the candles burn outside that holy place, we pray for strength for those who have lost their loved ones, those who have lost the sanctity of their religious community, those who wait and pray by the sides of the injured. So much sorrow, pain, and loss. So many tragic and violent acts, one following the next. We ask today that a spirit of life and of love helps us to hold hope as a flickering flame. Helps us to build solidarity, to witness, to grasp hands, to build courage, to do everything we can to bring forth the power of love in this world. Blessed be, and amen. And I invite you to rise in all the ways we do for our closing hymn. We're going to sing verses one, three, and five. Blessed is the path on which you travel. Blessed is the body that carries you upon it. Blessed is your heart that has heard the call. Blessed is your mind that discerns the way. Blessed is the gift that you will receive by going. Truly blessed is the gift that you will become on the journey. We extinguish our communal flame, but not the quest for truth, the warmth of community, or the fire of commitment. Those remain within each one of us until our journey brings us together again. I invite you to be seated for our final gift of music.


Hello, my name is Kelly Shopland. I'm a member of Comox First Nation and the director of Aboriginal Education at North Island College on Vancouver Island. I'll be talking about the Aboriginal Leadership Certificate Program. This is the first year we've offered this one-year certificate program throughout the North Island College region. The program was developed using a community-based approach where NIC held a series of community consultations with First Nations representatives and leaders from different communities that identified the vision, the outcomes, the delivery and the courses that would make up the certificate. And through these sessions it was determined that a successful and respectful program would support student growth in cultural leadership, management, finance, while incorporating Western governance systems as well as recognizing and celebrating Indigenous ways of governance. So the program itself, it is designed to give students the practical skills and knowledge that is needed to work at management and administration levels in Aboriginal governance and organizations. The delivery model, it's a hybrid model. So it's delivered online so that students throughout our whole region, throughout the North Island are able to participate, but it does incorporate face-to-face components where the students come together for two-day intensives and those intensives, the location changes throughout our region and into different communities to incorporate that unique local knowledge. Being that this is the first offering of the program, our success measures, we haven't had graduates yet, but really what we're looking at right now is the personal growth of students and the development of skill sets that are going to prepare students to work in leadership positions, whether that's within an organization or cultural leadership within their communities. The goal is really to prepare workers for executive level positions within Aboriginal organizations and that was what was identified by community as a real need within our region. Another initiative that we have been working on at North Island College over the last few years is the introduction of provincial ABE, so adult basic education, upgrading courses in Indigenous language and we have been offering, we have three different Kwakwala courses and two new channel language courses that we have been offering throughout our campuses. I'll speak to the Kwakwala classes first. So those were introduced in the Port Hardy region about three years ago and it's really successful, huge community intake and they're immersion-based classes so the goal of the class is to speak as much Kwakwala and as little English in each session as possible. So starting with an introductory course and this year we've introduced an orthography course to introduce the reading and writing systems. The courses, because they are ABE courses, they are tuition-free for students so access is readily available. The Kwakwala courses are articulated so that they can be used towards adult graduation diploma credits. To give students the opportunity to take a course outside the math and sciences, something that's really culturally relevant, local and that they can relate to. Feedback from students around these courses is that for some students, this is the first opportunity that they've had to take a class that they really relate to when they come to a post-secondary or into any educational institute, a class that really means something to them and that they feel at home at. So in Mount Waddington in our Port Hardy region the language courses have expanded into what we're calling the Awinakola program which is a cohort with land-based learning. So they're taking their English upgrading their math upgrading and their Kwakwala classes and actually going out into the land onto the land to do cultural activities while learning that subject matter. This semester we offered the Kwakwala courses for the first time at the Comox Valley and Campbell River classes and they're taught in a co-teaching model. So we have our instructor who acts as a facilitator and has language skills but they're also bringing in other fluent speakers from the community, elders and emerging speakers, to support the small group work and the immersion content and goals that the class has. They've been really great classes. We've seen almost some full families come to the class of all ages and taking the activities and the skill sets that they're learning to practice language and taking that back into their homes and into their communities to work as a family on that language revitalization and proficiency. From my perspective, Indigenous education at North Island College is community driven. So when we look at what initiatives we would like to see the college move forward with or what kind of programs we'd like to offer or develop, our first thing we do is we turn to community for their input and their guidance. It's important that it's relevant and meaningful to the learners and recognizes various ways of knowing and perspectives and as much as possible. We like our learning outcomes and programs to be local and land-based if possible. But as I mentioned, really our first step is to work with our partners in community. We have an Aboriginal Education Council as well as regional advisory committees that guide all of the work that we do in Aboriginal Education here at North Island College. They identify the services they would like to see for students, things like our elders and residents and our Aboriginal advisors. They indicate the development of programs such as the language courses and the Aboriginal leadership. Those were all community-led initiatives. We were approached by community that there was a need, that there was a desire, and so we move forward from there. So that's how I view Indigenous education is really that it's the ownership of our First Nations communities within the region that guide the college on how we should move forward with incorporating new classes and programs and services for students. Over the next 10 years, I think our Indigenous education, I'd like to see a growth in the integration of language and culture throughout curriculum. They go hand in hand and I think continuing to make programming more accessible. So continuing with our in-community models, bringing education to our remote communities and recognizing the huge impact that that makes. Again, working with our council to identify the needs and really listening to what they bring forward, what they would like to see for the community. So that education is community-driven and education is reflective of what's needed within the regions and for individual communities. So within the next 10 years, I think I would turn to the communities to ask them where they would see it in the next 10 years and then work from there moving forward.


QuickBooks Online 2023. Free 30-day trial set up. Get ready to start moving on up with QuickBooks Online 2023. Here we are online in the Intuit website. Intuit being the owner of QuickBooks. You can find it at intuit.com. That's intuit.com. We're gonna be looking at the free 30-day trial within this website, but before we do I'm gonna open up another window so that we can search for the QuickBooks test drive which is the other free option so that we can see them side-by-side comparing the test drive to the free 30-day trial and also to demonstrate that it is possible to have the test drive open as well as your company file open. You can do so by opening up an incognito window in your current browser. I'm in Chrome by hitting the three dots up top and go to the new incognito window. If you're in another browser the process will be a little bit different or you can do a similar thing by having two different browsers open. For example we've got Google Chrome open. You also might open another browser like Firefox or something like that. So I'm gonna go to the three dots up here. I'm gonna go to the new company to the new incognito window and then in here I'm gonna search for that test drive. Support accounting instruction by clicking the link below giving you a free month membership to all of the content on our website broken out by category further broken out by course. Each course then organized in a logical reasonable fashion making it much more easy to find what you need than can be done on a YouTube page. We also include added resources such as Excel practice problems PDF files and more like QuickBooks backup files when applicable. So once again click the link below for a free month membership to our website and all the content on it. So I typed in QuickBooks online test drive and then I'm gonna search and I'm gonna look for the result that has the Intuit.com and the URL to indicate that it is indeed owned by Intuit the owner of QuickBooks. I'm gonna use the United States version of the software and verify that we're not a robot and then we can log into the test drive. Then typically I'll close the prior tab here and there we have it. Now note that if you're logged into the test drive and you're logged into the Intuit account your Intuit account for your QuickBooks file it can cause a problem but the idea here is that if I have this test drive separate I can have it on another screen or something like that and it shouldn't cause me a problem if I'm also logged into the Intuit website with my account that being the idea so I can have both windows open at the same time. Okay back to the Intuit website with a 30-day free trial. So I'm gonna go to the QuickBooks up top note that if I go to QuickBooks the software owned by Intuit and I scroll down they have multiple softwares by the way that's why there were multiple icons up top they usually default to a sales page that is for QuickBooks online but it's a little bit different than if you go to directly the QuickBooks online page and it doesn't have that free toggle option up top which is a little annoying so you might first get to this page and you're like they've eliminated the 30-day trial don't worry they've had it for some time so so you should be able to search for it if you don't find it here scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and they've had this kind of like the setup where they have the products at the bottom of their page for a long time even as they've changed their website and then if I go into the QuickBooks online that's the kind of software that we're looking at here then you go into a similar page basically selling a sales page for QuickBooks online but now you have that toggle feature now if you don't find the toggle feature here and they change that for whatever reason it's been this way for some time but they could always change it then they'll probably still have a 30-day trial because their competitors have it you know so it's usually a good sales technique and therefore you might just want to search into your browser window a search engine for QuickBooks online free 30-day trial and see if you can find it that way sometimes for whatever reason it's easier to find stuff outside of the Intuit website than within it by just doing a browse search for whatever it is that you're looking for but right now you can find it here and then you can toggle back and forth between this free 30-day trial now remember it's a little bit scary because they're gonna try to sell the software to you by giving you a discount as opposed to the free 30-day trial so let's just think about this first from the from the perspective of QuickBooks what does QuickBooks want they of course would first like you to pay upfront because that locks you in for sure once you start using the software with your own company data you're pretty much locked in because it's not nice it's not fun to change accounting software but if you're testing the software out then what they would like to do typically is give you a 30-day trial and hopefully you're gonna add your own company data into the system which means that after 30 days you're almost guaranteed to keep on working at that point in time because now you've got your data in the system and you've been doing accounting within it so you're gonna continue with it at that point in time so that's where they gave you this kind of little scare feature if you switch over to here then the prices go up so that basically means my interpretation hey look you get the 30-day free trial but we're gonna up the price after the 30 days is over from that from that time frame and therefore you might want to purchase it upfront but notice the idea here is that we're gonna be doing a test file and so if we apply the 30-day trial then after the 30 days is over if you want to be using it for your own company file then you might want to be looking for a discount at that point in time talking to a QuickBooks distributor or something like that or set up another company file where you should still hopefully have access to you know the cheaper price basically upfront by that point in time so that's the general idea every time you remember that also that QuickBooks online is different than the desktop version once you buy the software you only have access to that one company file whereas on the desktop version you could set up multiple company files with the software so that means that every even if you have an account with QuickBooks you might still be able to use the QuickBooks online software for another company file because QuickBooks would be thinking okay now you're gonna add another company file and if we can get you to put a month's worth of data into the system for that company file it's likely that you're gonna pay for another subscription another company file after that point in time that's the general idea again what we're trying to do is use the 30-day trial just for the 30 days not enter our personal company data into it but rather work through the practice problem along with the instructional video to get an idea and then purchase the software separately for our own company file once we once we have a good understanding of how the QuickBooks works that would be the general process we're thinking through okay so we're gonna toggle on the 30 day trial you got your different options here you got the simple start the essentials the plus the major differences are down are down below between these options so the the essentials might be good enough for for most people you want to make sure that obviously you pick the the item that's right for you but it has it has the connect three channels it includes three users that users is often one of the problems but if you're a sole proprietor it may not be an issue to you you've got a bill management so the bill management isn't on the simple start and then you've got the entering of the time which may or may not be something that you definitely need but that's different than over here we're gonna be using the plus which is the most popular or the recommended and the big item they add here is the inventory so if you're tracking inventory then you want to go here if you're not tracking inventory then you might be able to get away with with one of the first two options but we want to show the inventory option so we'll do this also projects is a specialty kind of area which could be useful depending on like the industry that you're in so that's a neat tool but it's kind of industry specific so we're gonna choose their most popular item here for the plus for the example problem so we can track inventory remember when you're picking your own company file the differences are these items in bold and you want to determine whether or not those are gonna be deal breakers for you when you're choosing which plan for your actual company file so I'm gonna choose this plan and then once again we're gonna say it says continue with payroll so now the payroll is an add-on type of feature which it always is basically for any kind of software in practice you've got to be thinking whenever you're thinking payroll you want to think do I want to do payroll within my QuickBooks software or whatever accounting software you're using or do I want to hire a third-party payroll professional to help with the payroll and so with the practice problem we'll try to see if we can get a free 30-day trial for the payroll and see if we can basically practice with the payroll so I'm gonna try to add the plan here and then it gives us another kind of scary page because it has the total here at 160 a month but on the left hand side we have the free trial for 30 days and I believe you can go through this process without even entering like a payment information like a credit card information in order to access that free 30-day trial but remember that QuickBooks is always gonna try to be pushing you to be picking up the discount and purchasing it at the point in time instead of using the free 30-day trial so I think we're still good on the free 30-day trial I just want to point out with the payroll one more time that when you're thinking about payroll for your own practice then you have those two options do you want to be doing the payroll through QuickBooks or having an external payroll provider and when you think about those options you probably don't want to talk to QuickBooks directly first or to a payroll provider first but to a neutral third party just for advice like a tax preparer your CPA firm or something like that because then you're talking to them and asking them just for advice as opposed to talking to someone who's trying to sell you the payroll that they provide right and then go to buy the payroll we'll talk more about payroll within the practice problem though so I'm gonna say check out now if you don't have an account set up then you're gonna have to then set up an account if you do have an account set up you should hopefully still be able to take advantage of the 30-day free trial because Intuit is trying to sell you another company file so you have a free 30-day trial for a different company file not the company file that your current company is working in note that it is asking for billing information now so we want to make sure then that we cancel it within the 30-day time frame as you're entering you know the billing information for it so then it's gonna give me one more kind of scare screen here saying hey look you can pay right now and you've got the discount but we're gonna try to take advantage of the 30-day free trial so instead of hitting the big green button I'm gonna say I want to continue with the free trial here so I'm gonna continue with that and then we've got the intro screen to set up our company file so this is some data some of which is useful for QuickBooks to set up the company file but much of which is kind of internal data for QuickBooks for Intuit so let's just go through this process quickly welcome we're glad you're here here's what we'll do together right now so tell us what you need help with we'll ask a few questions to get to know your business we'll bring in your transactions and organize your money so okay great next so now we're gonna say what do you call your business so I'm gonna say our our practice problem will be called get great guitars I'm gonna call it get great guitars this is my legal business name so if we have it as your legal business then you can check that off as well I'm gonna say next then it says how have you been managing your finances no matter where you're coming from we're here to help so we're gonna be pick nothing I'm just starting here so you might be moving from another software for example such as QuickBooks desktop QuickBooks desktop is really different than QuickBooks online it's like a completely different software but if you're moving from desktop to online then you can go through the setup process on that Sage is another accounting software other bookkeeping software spreadsheets or pen and paper and other note that if you're coming from a nut there's there's kind of two scenarios when you're starting a new QuickBooks file one is that you're starting a new company a new business and therefore you don't really have any data from a prior software to you already have data from a prior software or some other accounting system and you're just switching to get that data within the QuickBooks online if you're moving from another accounting software to QuickBooks online then the question is do I want to get all the past data from prior years in the in the prior accounting software into QuickBooks online or do I just want to draw the line at some point and then say my prior software is what I used before and I'm just gonna be putting the current data into QuickBooks online in that latter case you're gonna be using hopefully a whole year's worth of data in other words I don't want to start entering data into QuickBooks online starting in the middle of the year and then I have to process two accounting softwares to do my taxes say for the end of the year instead if I'm starting in the middle of the year I want to add the whole year's worth of data into both accounting softwares if I've already entered it into the prior accounting software I would like to enter it again if possible or pull that data from the prior accounting software into the current accounting software so that we can have everything in one spot so that would so no problem we'll we'll walk you through this so I'm gonna say next so what's your industry so start typing and select the option that fits best you can always change it later so we're gonna you could pick in you know an industry so we might say construction or something like that and it'll start to populate the industry down below so notice that you would think that if I put the industry in you'd say well QuickBooks is gonna use that in some way how is QuickBooks gonna use that to help me and you would think maybe they would adjust the chart of accounts based on the industry but I believe they still have basically one chart of accounts that they kind of apply to every every industry that you put into the system and so we'll see that when we enter all the data so you want to be you want to give them the proper industry here but it might not have as big an impact you would think on the final product such as the chart of accounts that they provide you with that you otherwise would so it might not be as important as you as you would think but I'm gonna choose an industry that is gonna be indicating that we have inventory as well as service items because because I want to be I want to be using a Geo account that has service items and inventory items so I'm gonna pick this option all other general merchandising stores we're gonna be imagining that we sell guitars but we'll also enter service items so we can get a feel of service items and selling merchandise within our practice problem so I'm gonna say that one will be our generic industry I'm gonna say next and so then what kind of business is this tell us about your business structure we use this to help categorize your transactions so you got this would be the the structure of your business in terms of is it a sole proprietorship partnership corporation s corp not for profit now again you would kind of think that picking these would have a big impact on say the chart of accounts but I believe QuickBooks is still gonna give you pretty much a general chart of accounts that's trying to trying to encompass all of these different all of these different types meaning for example you would think the sole proprietor account in the equity section on the chart of accounts would change from retained earnings calculation to a sole proprietor owner's equity you would think on the partnership the capital accounts wouldn't be retained earnings but it would be capital accounts for the partners you would think in a corporation then then you would have the retained earnings and so on and you'd have different terminology for not for profit that wouldn't indicate profit although it's still the double entry accounting system but no matter which so you want to pick the one that applies to you but it's probably not as big a deal as you would otherwise think because I don't think it's gonna have a big impact on say the creation of the general ledger so so what we'll say okay the chart of accounts I should say the chart of accounts that they're gonna create so how does your business make money we tailor your accounting categories based on your answer select all that apply so provide services and we have we sell products so we tailor your accounting categories meaning the chart of accounts so that would indicate if you sell products they should be given you an inventory account right and a cost of goods sold to count which you wouldn't need if you just sold services I still kind of think that they're giving you basically a general chart of accounts no matter what you pick here but but and I keep thinking they're gonna change that but it seems to me they're still giving pretty much an overall general chart of accounts hopefully and possibly at this point they're changing their chart of accounts as they do in the desktop version which has very different chart of accounts depending on the industry that you're choosing and whether you sell products or services for example so we'll check that out shortly I'm gonna say next and then it says what's your main role so we can say that we're the we're the owner partner we can say we're an employee a bookkeeper or accountant this is most likely more for internal use for for QuickBooks informational purposes I'm gonna say we're the owner here so it's probably not again gonna have a big impact on the actual data input that you're gonna be putting into the software who works at this business help us understand who is part of your team so this also is something that I think might be more for internal use for QuickBooks to understand for their data then something that's gonna change your actual QuickBooks file sole proprietor employees contractors so so we could I'll say contractors other partners and so on I plan to hire in the future so if you check that off what would you expect to happen they're gonna try to sell your payroll right they're gonna try to give you more payroll information and whatnot which we we added in our practice anyways but so what apps do you use for your business will help you connect them later on to bring in your data so if you if you're using the apps if you're setting up QuickBooks specifically to link to Shopify or eBay for example then we can set up some of these apps that help us to pull in some of the data PayPal has an as a system to pull in the data but we also can think of bank feeds with regards to PayPal now apps is a whole another kind of world in and of itself we might get a section to talk about how to how to get the data from from some of the most popular apps and pull that information in but right now and right now we're just gonna move forward without them note that this information is something that you don't have to worry about like well what if I pass it up right now I can't do it later no you can you can add the app typically later so and that's what we'll basically do so I'm gonna say skip for now and then it says what do you want to do today help us understand your goals set up QuickBooks start using right away explore QuickBooks before I set it up so in our practice problem I'm just gonna say set it up right now and you might want to do the Explorer it might be a give you a little map thing there but I'm gonna say set it up for five or link your accounts and see every everything in one place so QuickBooks will automatically bring in transactions and save hours of manual entry one securely link your bank and credit card to select and accounts you'd like to bring in free see what your cash flow looks like so this is linking to the bank feeds this is one of the major draw points of QuickBooks online is they have a really sophisticated more sophisticated link to the bank feeds and credit card feeds financial institution feeds then some other softwares so we'll talk about that in its own section or course in and of itself I just want to point out now one you don't need to set up the bank feeds here you can always set up the bank feeds later so if you if you feel like well I'm gonna pass this up and it's gonna it's gonna mess things up I won't be able to do it don't worry you could set it up later and two we're not gonna focus on bank feeds at the start because what you really want to do first is understand the accounting system so that you know where the bank feeds fit in to your accounting system we'll talk more about that later but if you just turn on bank feeds and you just start adding in the bank feeds and you have no idea what the accounting system is doing you'll end up with a pile of bank feeds a pile of data that's not being used in order to generate the financial statements and you may be overwhelmed at that point in time so we'll talk more about that later but I'm gonna skip it for now and then what do you want to set up next you got the invoice customers track receive and bills so these are kind of some advanced features on the invoicing system when you're doing the invoicing process then of course you're gonna want to make the collection as easy as possible and QuickBooks has some some capacity to have an account with QuickBooks for example and so that you can go through that process these are things again that you could set up later so I'm not gonna go through them right now we might touch on them more at a later point and don't worry about it if you if you skip them at this point because you can typically turn them on they're kind of possibly kind of like up sales for added items so what is everything you want to set up your choices help personalize your setup you can still use every part of QuickBooks so this also seems to be to be more and information for QuickBooks internally than something that's gonna change your your setup when you set up your file organize money in and out yeah I'm gonna invoice customers track receive expenses pay employees track sales manage sales tax accept online payments now notice if you don't check some of these off like if I didn't check off manage sales tax it doesn't mean that I'm not gonna have the capacity to manage sales tax this seems to me more in internal information for QuickBooks rather than something that's gonna change your company file for the most part enter time and bills time track manage inventory protect my business with insurance that's a sneaky one because that looks like an up sale like QuickBooks wants to sell you insurance right there so no track mileage maybe but I'm not gonna take that off it has a nice little mileage tracking thing so I'm gonna say next and then now it's gonna go through the setup it could take a little bit of time depending on your online your online speed and then I'm gonna say let's go let's go and there's our QuickBooks file has been set up we got the get great guitars up top on the QuickBooks file so I'm gonna close this up it says welcome let's show you a round you might want to use that and take a look at it I won't do it here I'm gonna close this up and there's our file now notice I still have the QuickBooks because I had the incognito mode I can pull in the QuickBooks in terms of the sample company file Craig's design and landscaping in a different window because I used the incognito mode I couldn't just do that I couldn't just go over here and type in you know QuickBooks online test drive because it would mess up the login if I go into it it'll mess up the login because I'm logged into another company file but if you open it in another browser or incognito mode you can have them side by side that's useful because it allows you then to test things out possibly in the in this sample company while you have your company file open now we'll go into this company file in more detail but notice what we don't have in this company file is that if I go into the business overview and the reports there's nothing in the reports so far right there's no balance sheet data so we're actually gonna build the balance sheet in income statement and you'll see it from the ground up being constructed as we do the data input now in terms of the chart of accounts if I go into the bookkeeping on the left hand side and look at the chart of accounts then I'm gonna say see the chart of accounts it gives us this chart of accounts now this is still it gave us an inventory account that's great because we told it that we're gonna be dealing with inventory although again I think they're just giving us a default long chart of account pretty much no matter what we picked so notice all the equity accounts that they're putting in here this is quite a long list of equity accounts because they're trying to take care of you know every type of circumstance and so so like I say it doesn't look to me like they're really customizing their chart of accounts depending on the picks that we made but that's what it is so we'll have to go in here and we'll we'll do some customization on their chart of accounts which is one of the primary things we need to do to set up and get things rolling from here that's different than then this file which has data in the reports the thing that's great when it has data in the reports is that when I open up the balance sheet then I can drill down on the balance sheet and find how the data was input in order to create the financial statements deconstructing taking the engine apart then we're gonna go over here and now we're gonna put the engine together from scratch by building it up and the first thing we'll do is set up the chart of accounts and then we'll do our data input up top and so we'll take a look at that stuff in future presentations


Look, I think when you're reinventing right now, number one, the energy is fantastic. 23 is going to be a building year, right? We've got a lot of difficult times ahead financially, but it's the time the ones that come out of 23 stronger and more efficient, right, and cost optimized are going to survive the long run, right? So now's the time to build.


I can speak French. Nice. So you're selecting some languages right here and then you're wearing the super cool blade of music. And hi, so who are you? Hi, my name is Nick. I'm the CTO of Zoey Meat. This is Zoey and you have the website Zoey Meat. So where are you from? I'm originally from Singapore, but we are Dutch stand-up from Rotterdam. And you're wearing the small glass. Why? Because from here we can transcribe whatever that's been said and translate it. There's live. It's also saved into the archives and processing done on keyword triggers, meeting highlights. So where do you get the source material? Is just anything that's been spoken? Yes. In front of you. So it could be TV? It could be TV. So basically what happens is that we developed this app that is multi-device, device agnostic, multi-platform, synchronized across all devices. And then we met Vuzix and thought, hey, isn't it wonderful and the meetings of the future, the workplace of the future, whether you are repairing a car, doing a call center, or just sitting in a meeting room doing a presentation. Soon all your voice, spoken knowledge be captured. Shouldn't it be notes being taken and processed in different languages? That's the future we see. So you can be sitting at the meeting, let's say I could be going to a meeting of a Chinese company. I could just be sitting there with the smart glasses on. And I get, in real time, I get the translation. Yes. And in real time, it translates to all the languages. I would know exactly what's happening. You would get an idea of what's happening. So different language has a different accuracy. That's the machine translation accuracy right now. English and Spanish is top. Spanish, French, German are good. Chinese to Japanese is also very good. But English to Japanese is about 50% to 60% accuracy. But it still gives you an understanding. And the most important thing is transcription. Japanese transcription, English transcription, French transcription, German transcription, not taking. How often have you sat at the meeting and wondered like, hey, what did he just say? Did he say Tuesday or Thursday? You can review your notes, you can edit your notes. So what I'm seeing here, you're seeing right now in a glass the same? Yes, actually I'm seeing in Japanese because I was set to Japanese demo. So then you see in Japanese what's happening in front of you, yes, correct. Do you, I don't know if you can capture it in your camera? I got it right here. So, I just keep focus on it. So if we keep speaking, you can see the Japanese translation going on. Once again, I need to go with manual focus. I assume you'll be editing and cutting. Yeah, I can see it. Yes. So all this basically is Japanese, very bright. You have the font to be very visible and very bright. We have green and red in case you are colorblind to green. So that's really, really, really awesome. So you could just be a Japanese guy right now, could be walking around America on the street and understand what the hot dog salesman is saying. Yes, that's the future of AR. That's a killer app right there. So is it available now? Who will have the blade? The blade is for sale. The people who have this, they can download that. You have a blade? Look for us in the blade in the Vuzix app store. Currently, it's free trials. It will be a subscription coming and we'll be making a very special offer specifically for Vuzix users. Thanks to your support. Can I pay you some little tip and you can add Russian and Ukrainian and some other languages? It will come. It will come. We're at the start of this new revolution. It will come. Danish. I need Danish. How do you add more? You just look into the Google Translate. The accuracy is very important. Accuracy is very important. Look, current machine translation is all trained on text data. It's not trained on spoken data. There's need to do spoken. Spoken data is very unstructured. So you can copy and paste the text and you see that accuracy is pretty good. But yet, when you do a spoken meeting, the accuracy drops and we have to take care of our machine learning team to make sure the supplement that... But you're connecting to the Google API and Microsoft and which one? Which is exactly about 20 of them. So we aggregate and we pick the best of the best. That's why just now I told you one language pair came from a very strange source. I shall not say again where it is from. But this is the aggregation and from the aggregation, we also understand that there are corporate names, your product names, your Bitcoin terminology, your AR terminology. They're not being picked up by a general generic conversation. But everybody's talking about AI and it's now. So we should be able to solve this in the next three years. The technique is there. The models are there. Data, data, data, data. So every time you're using it, spoken data is helping to train the spoken translation. I'm happy with 50% accuracy. I'm happy with this. I think you get to 80% next year. Precisely. You know what? We've actually been live betaing this at a meetup, about three to 400% meetup since December last year. The people who don't understand Japanese, like me going to a listener of Japanese, picking up 50% means I understand. I'm so happy I understand. The person who came up to me and said, hey, he's not really accurate, he understands both languages. This is a heavy mind blowing because this opens up new opportunities for traveling to new places and not feeling completely out of the place. I love coming here to Japan. It's really amazing, but it looks like I'm in a cartoon and it looks like I don't really, you know, it'd be cool if I could get a little bit of understanding what's happening.  Everybody's life, if you can get there, right? So you, this is a great killer app right there. That's really, really exciting. But how far are you from changing the world? So for meetings and closed spaces, this works. So when you go out in the public, right now, just like you're saying, when you go out to the public, there's noise factors, yeah, how far the language is. So sometimes it works very well. Sometimes you have an idea. But in a meeting room, in a meeting room, in a meeting space, it always works. I have an idea. You need to have a shotgun mic in your hand. And you point to the person you need to get the translation from exactly and it cancels around surrounding sound. But eventually some algorithmic noise cancelling microphones could be integrated in the glass that only takes straight ahead and that doesn't take some of the work. It is possible. So I would like to appeal to everyone who please bear with us. This is a new innovation. It's starting here. We will get there. We will start checking the boxes. With your support, we'll start taking them one by one, one by one. And yeah. The blade already supports Bluetooth. So you can basically pair a wireless mic to it. Yes. And you can clip it on the person that you need to have perfect translations from. Do that. Already increases the accuracy by 20%. Do exactly. Do that and give me the feedback. Please. I'm going to try. Yes. I will love you. Cool. This is really awesome. But this is just one, you just one corner of this booth. I'm just one corner. The physics booth is amazing. I'm going to do a tour right here. The booth. Thanks a lot. Thanks. I'm going to check out your app. So hi. Hi. That's one of 10%. So hi. So who are you? Hi. I'm Wilfred. I handle marketing and sales in Asia for Musics. This is a company that's been doing smart glasses for two decades. How long? Sorry. More than one decade, right? A long time. About 20, more than 25 years. 25 years. More than 25 and then half of those years even. We supplied US military. The military. US military. So how about the Chinese military also? No, no, no, no. Japanese military. Okay. They're part of the but I would say that, you know, the technology is still being used at this time. So we're literally battle tested. Right? Battle tested. That's so but you are showing some like what's happening is that actual normal people are able to buy it now and it's potentially changing society more and more now. Right?   You see a restaurant. You can see the menu. Just looking at the logo of the restaurant. You can see the menu here. Make a call and it will automatically and right here, for example, you're just showing that this has been on the market 17 to 19 and this these are real people can just pay and buy. Yes. People now can buy this online. And this is not a hundred fifty thousand dollars. This is a hundred and fifty yen. It's okay price, right? Yeah. Yeah. Just about fifteen hundred U.S. Fifteen hundred. It's totally affordable. Very, very affordable. The blade is for sale. How much? How much is the price of this one? 1997. What's the latest price? 899. 899 dollars. It's like cheaper than an iPhone. Yeah, exactly. Right? And basically with the blade, what is fantastic about it is you can do augmented realities. A lot of people are using this for training. They're looking at the glasses and you're looking at something and they can actually see the breakdown of these things and say, oh, this is the point they need to remove, right? So this is being used for training and even for medical things. So that's really awesome enterprise kind of solutions. But my mind is blown when I see this kind of potential consumer killer consumer, right? So the consumer is like, as I mentioned earlier, you're walking down a mall and you can see a store and it's because the store is basically, you see the logo, the menu would come up and say, okay, this is where you buy the latest shoes and this is the price and you can make a selection and you can make a call and you can make a, actually just say, I want to serve for this item and it's the cool thing about it because it connects to your phone. But what you're describing sounds like one of these dreams that people have had for decades, but it'd be nice to see it real where all these apps be available. Can you show some of the demos you have here with those you have partners here in Japan? Yes, yes, this is our partners, but basically this is more for the smart classes. This is KDDI. KDDI basically, it's for remote support where a technician in the field is working on a very high and the specialist back in the office can see what they're doing and they can actually talk. So this one right now is live streaming to that one there. Yes. You can see that this is what they see. This is what head office can see. The panel system that they have and this is, so what you see here, it gets reported back and you get the Vista Finder MXR. So this is a real solution. This is a real solution and the expert can actually make annotations also on this computer and say this is the wire bit you need to remove and the technician wearing this will see it immediately. It's very easy for him now. So it's really deployed right here in Japan? Oh yeah, definitely. So there you just pointed out something needs to be done there? Yeah. The control? Cool. That's really cool. Let's go around.  This is one doing video conference and for a video conference, this is awesome because for example we have right here, you can see live, you have like one, two, three, four, five, six, eight different groups and you say hi and they would actually, you know, you could connect live. This is live. If you could say hello, you could act with somebody you want there and say okay, which station are you talking to? And then actually, and this is live by the way, using the internet, right? Nice. So I could activate my microphone. Hi everybody and just saying hi. I hope I'm not waking you up. I mean, I'm sure you're not sleeping. This is all in Japan. It's in the middle of the day in the office, right? Cool. This is JMS, Japan Media System and I think the number one in Japan right now as far as video conference is concerned and we're partnered with them because it works with our smart glasses. So it's video conference company and they have it integrated with your smart glasses? Yes. Yes. And then other here, we hope also another group that does remote support. So what are you showing here? What is going on here? This is like the smart glass here and you also have the live stream going on there. The live stream going on. And you see this is a very nice way of an application where you can clip to it with a high hat. So it's worn by folks in the field. Similar to what we're working in Singapore with a company that does cargo loading into aircraft. Very simple. So for loading the cargo into the aircraft? Yes. And then so it's industrial kind of deployments also. Industrial too. And here's some other demos right here with the smart glasses integrated all kinds of different ways, right? Right here. You're not involved with the Tesla? But I'm sure they're using musics also and the Tesla. Well, eventually. This is one. We're partnered with Toshiba and Toshiba actually made a Dynabook. This is a small computer that connects to our glasses and this is a, this is something that's not ongoing. Time C? Time C display? Yes. So it's using a display port system? Yes. This is the display and this is your mini computer there. And you have a computer, a heavy weight computer that you can wear. Yes, and this is your... And running the battery off this too? So battery forever? Yes, yes. This is an awesome application. So who's using this? Oh, a lot of companies are using... Well, some companies are looking at this now for different applications. One for like airport, they're boarding passes. They want to look at this and say, okay, I recognize you, your passport the same. I don't need to go to the airport. Which airport? I want to go there. Singapore is looking at this. Singapore airport? Singapore is looking at this. I'm not yet. Not yet, but they're looking at this. Maybe in a few months later. Yes. Yes. I've never been to Singapore. I want to go there just to see this. I just want to go to the airport just to see this demo. Because that would be the coolest passport control. It's just under the Dina book. Famous Toshiba Enterprise branding. All right. Cool. And here you have another solution in this corner. Yeah, this is another partner. This is basically for, again, remote support. So what's happening here? So this... You have the smart glass going on and then you can do a remote call. And then remote support of who? So once it's connected, there's a remote call going on with a customer support system. Something like that. You also have this one? This is something else? This is a translator. Yes, yes, yes. Okay. All right. But this is the big story of Vuzix and the smart glass in general. This is the coolest kind of thing, but you need to have killer apps, right? Oh, yes. And these are... How they're coming? They are there even. They're there. We have a bunch of partners that can do... That's the app already. The blade, even have a contest, ongoing contest right now. If you have come up with a nice application, you get a really nice... Tesla? Well, maybe. All right. Cool. Okay. All right. This is very nice. Ah, it's a nice demo here. Yeah. Is it ready? Yeah. Ah, it's doing from one to the other. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if it's connected now, or is it? Yeah. Is it connecting? No. No, no, no. Okay. No problem. No worries. So where are you most busy right now around the world? Because the headquarters is in New York, right? Your headquarters is in New York. Singapore is actually a very, very good market for us. As I mentioned to you, this company does cargo loading into aircraft using our device. This is happening. It is happening now. This is clean. And not just a little prototype in the corner? No, no, no, no. This is like... We're talking about 600 units. Really? Yes. Fully deployed. Yes. And then we're looking at a company, I can't say the name right now, but a company in China is looking at using this for doctors. And they want to see that, you know, that's the doctors looking at working on the patient. Several doctors that can actually also help him out while doing this. And this is live, right? It's freeing up their hands. It's very important. This is, yeah, it's free. And this is very important. Humans, one of the cool things we have is hands. Exactly. We don't want to be busy holding a tablet or something. Phone or laptop. We need to do something with our hands. Yes, exactly. And have the smart glass. Exactly. Music. That's the way to go.


Good morning, my name is Marcus Meyer. I am product marketing manager in the microcontroller group with ST micro electronics today I'm going to show you Our new product the SM32 H7 dual core device as well how it works together with our SM32 cube.ai tool which allows you to convert free-drain neural networks into code running on the microcontroller the SM32 H7 SM57 is a new product in our SM32 microcontroller family It has two microcontroller cores on it It has one Cortex M7 core running up to 480 megahertz and it has as well a secondary core and Cortex M4 core running up to 240 megahertz So it comes together with a lot of peripherals. It has USB to High-speed USB on the go several New York's I square C's graphical interface as well as 2 megabyte of flash and up to 1 megabyte of RAM One of the other interesting features of this family is that it works together very well with our new development tool the SM32 cube.ai What is the SM32 cube.ai? So the SM32 cube.ai is a tool which allows you to Take a pre-drained neural network and convert it into code which can run on the microcontroller So What what what does it do? So you have different steps in a process to develop a neural network. So you need to capture the data You need to clean up label the data build your neural network And then when you have done those steps Then you use our tool the SM32 cube.ai Convert it into code then your process analyze it and test the code directly on on hardware So in this specific example demo what we are showing here is we are using an SM32 h7 Discovery board which has a nice display and we also have a VGA camera on back and We are basically taking pictures of this tablet here which displays pictures of food and We're using a neural network which basically can detect what kind of food is displayed So you see here for example in the example a cappuccino and you see how our software using a neural network How it can detect the different kinds of foods so What we've done here we use the neural network based on the FD mobile net technology from a public Domain we use that data set in the public domain then we implemented the cameras So we continuously we can continuously take pictures or do a one-shot mode and Then we use either floating point or mix floating point fixed point algorithms to basically compute the food so Just also to give you an example What the our tool does in terms of footprint so in this specific examples? We're using a 205 kilobyte of RAM and 190 kilobyte of flash and so with our device Which is running at 400 megahertz the results. We're getting Running at 400 megahertz. We're getting 6.2 megahertz so 150 milliseconds per inference Which gives you about six frames per second and an average accuracy of about 80% To summarize we're using an sdm32 h7 discovery board with our dual-core part With a display so then we're using a camera on the back taking the pictures of the food Running the food detection algorithm and presenting the result and the accuracy here on the screen If you want more information about our new sdm32 h7 dual-core Microcontroller as well as our sdm32 cube.ai Tool, please go to our website at sd.com slash sdm32