I want to talk a little bit about being an adaptable product manager. I'll walk you through the framework that we use at Lola and how we think about developing our products. But first, I thought I'd just start by sharing a little bit about my background, how I became a PM, what I think PM life is like, the dream team in my mind, and then how to thrive in chaos and some of the benefits of having unique paths into product management different than your typical like engineer to product path. And then some resources that I really enjoyed and have helped me along the way. So to get started, grew up in California, did a lot of push ups growing up. My father was in the Marine Corps. We would often, I have two older sisters, we'd often be fighting somewhere, restaurant, car, driving down the road in the middle of the rain. And my father would say, you know what, we're stopping, drop and give me 10. Anywhere we were, that happened. So, you know, I started out life and it's influenced me along the way, this military background for my family, which led me to my freshman year of high school when I went and visited my sister at the Coast Guard Academy. And I said, you know what, like dad, mom, there's no way I'm going to the service academy. Like I see what they do. I see all the rules. I'm not doing it. Then you fast forward four years and I'm swearing in as a cadet at West Point and starting my journey, my own journey as for military service. Four years later, I graduated from West Point with a diploma in one hand and then a commission as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. I had an obligation to serve five years, so over the course of five years I had the opportunity to lead soldiers in combat, both in Iraq and Afghanistan. And this is really, the reason I share this with you guys is because it has driven so much of who I am and how I operate today. And I'll kind of share more of that along the way. So my path into being a PM started at Lola where I am currently. I got out of the military, moved to Boston. My wife got a job here and I said, you know what, like I'm no longer in the military, what am I going to do? So I started with, what did I not like about the military? Well, there were a lot of rules. I did a lot of push-ups. It was a really tough environment, which I absolutely loved. Like I loved being in combat because we actually got to go and execute all of the training that we had done in stateside. So I said, okay, I don't like big companies, maybe. I really like the hustle of being in the military. So let me look for a startup. And that led me down some random internet, like black holes. And I woke up one day and I had been connected with our former VVIP product at Lola, Ellen Chisa. And she said, let's grab coffee. I said, awesome. That'd be great. I'm really interested in being a product manager. She's like, what do product managers do? I was like, no idea. Absolutely no idea. But I think I might have the skills where I can apply them and do it well. She said, well, okay, let's start with just starting to learn a little bit more about product management. Unfortunately, we're not hiring at Lola right now for a PM. But we are hiring on our service team. So I said, you know what, I don't have a problem working hard. I like starting at the bottom. This is an amazing team, Paul English, who's the former, he founded Kayak. He was starting this team and it was really from ground zero. I could go in and start at a company. So I said, great, I'm going to do it. And I was on the service team, which really introduced me to how incredibly hard it is to provide service for a product, especially not a well-built product or an early-stage product. And really gave me a lot of empathy for the customer, which I think can often set you up really well for when you become a PM because you're really serving the customer with everything you do as a product manager. So after about a year on the service team, I had the opportunity to move over into product. I think it was kind of a combination of people were tired of hearing me give feedback about the product. Maybe they thought I was passionate about it. All these things really led, I just voiced over and over and over and over ways that I thought we could think about the product or feedback from the customers and they gave me the opportunity. So I advocated, but also people saw it in me and gave me the opportunity. So that was about two years ago. Since then, I've gotten to take on a bunch of different projects. And now I lead the product team for our admin tool. So we do software for business travel. So it's everything a company does.  And that's been an amazing opportunity. So I don't know if anyone uses Concur, but one day it's going to be instead of Concur. Okay, so this is what I call hashtag PM life. There's a lot of inputs into being a PM. You probably are fielding questions and feedback from every single team at the company every single day. In addition to talking to customers, interfacing with stakeholders, it's an incredible amount of information. And you have to make a lot of decisions and make them quickly with the information you have. So the framework, well, actually, let me take a step back, the dream team. So quickly starting with, I fundamentally believe that you're going to build the best products if you work hand in hand with your design and engineering team. And personally, what I felt is there's a lot of, you hear this term CEO of the product. And that means that you're leading everything, right? And I have felt responsible for making sure we know exactly what we're building. Do I have the spec written? Do I have the designs? Have I communicated with it? Do I have all the right meetings set up? But what I realized over time is it's not so much about being completely organized and getting all these meetings set up and making sure everything's squared away. It's about having the right team with you. And starting together from ground zero. So I often now just think of them as my thought leader. So I look at product as the base to power design and engineering to really put forth the best product possible. So the way that we do it is right from the beginning, bringing design and engineering into the conversation. So that means we're all hearing the customers, understanding the customers. We have a really, really deep knowledge of the customer. And I think that could be everything from bringing design and engineering into customer interviews, going to user research, sharing with them how you're thinking about and making decisions. And then asking for their feedback, being hungry for all their feedback and debating things back and forth and letting people question exactly what you think you should build. So you always start with the problem, right? If you can define the problem, then that's the first input.  All of that is a lot of noise. And what I would say is just all synthesize and analyze it down and start with the problem. Next, you really want to start to define the outcome that you want from the problem. So you say, for instance, we have hotel guidelines within our product. So we're trying to figure out the best way that a company can apply a rule across any city in the world to allow their team to book hotels. So the outcome that we want is that the admin has control that they need. But the traveler's experience is not sacrificed. So how do we do that? That's really the outcome we're trying to achieve, right? So then we start to say, okay, what solutions can we do? What ways can we think about this? Not just the usual set up match budget across any city in the world. No, really, what are the different taxes we can do? And I would say, although it says determine the solution, you're gonna have a lot of different tactics, right? You're not just gonna be focused on one single solution that you need to solve the problem. It doesn't always work that way. If it did work that way, that'd be amazing. But I wouldn't be afraid to just think completely outside of the box to try and understand what are all the different tactics we can use to get the desired outcome that we want. So once you're thinking about these things, determining the solution, you then want to measure the impact. A lot of teams become feature factories. So they just measure the output of the teams, right? They're saying, build, build, build, build. But that does a couple of negative things to both the team and the product. What it does is the team is just looking to ship things. They're not connected to the customer, right? They don't know how what they're doing impacts the customer in any way. So you really want to move the goal line to measure the impact. And what that can look like is when you have your outcome, you can tie it to a metric. So you want to tie it to a metric that allows you to know whether or not you're on the right path with the tactics that you're doing. And it also does another thing for the team mentally. It says, okay, we shipped this. Now, what did it do for the customer? How are they using it? Did they use it the way that we thought they would? Did it move them needle enough? And you really just extend out the goal line so that they're focused on that instead of just shipping. Additionally, what you see is that they're excited, right? And they're driven to really solve these problems for these customers. They're not just looking to ship the next feature. So it's both mental for the entire team and then also for the customer.  So it's kind of a two by two matrix. If this helpful to you, you can see problem solution, outcome impact. This is the simple framework that I really like to think about when we're developing the product. To really reduce the noise and take all of that feedback and input and come away with it with an action plan. So that you can go forward and execute. I think what I've seen along the way is you don't have to do everything at once. You just need to start with the problem. Then you need to determine what your outcome is. And then you need to look at what the potential solutions are and then measure it and see what the impact is. And go ahead and start over, right? You may discover a new problem when you solve a different one. And it's okay, it's constantly iterating and developing and iterating and developing, iterating and developing. I will say it's similar to combat in the sense that you don't know what you're gonna encounter. So you don't exactly know how a customer is gonna use the product or what they need. And when you're in combat, we would do a lot of convoys. For instance, my unit was in charge of going and providing engineering resources. So we would go and push a lot of dirt around in a lot of different places. Mostly to build fighting positions for people or to provide more barriers. But as we are convoying, we would encounter all types of different situations. And we really had to start with saying, okay, what's the problem here? What do we need to address first? And what are all the things we can do to really handle this situation? And then we just had to make a decision and constantly iterate as we got more information. So it's funny how history repeats itself. It's done the same thing in my experience from combat to being a product manager. So I talked a little bit about in the key takeaways that I wanted to share with you guys from this talk was really what are the benefits of unique past? How many people are getting here are current product managers? A couple? Okay, how many of you came from an engineering background? Two? Interesting. So most of you, all different types of backgrounds want to get into being a PM. The way that I think you can sell it, right, are when you don't come from this traditional background of engineering to PM, that's a great background way into being a PM. But I think you have a lot of hunger, right? You have a lot of hunger to really prove yourself. You don't know if you can do it. You lack a technical background, which for so long I think has been the driving force to people to say like, you need an engineer to product. Like that's the best person. I'm not saying that it's not good. I think it can be awesome. But you have a hunger to prove yourself and this desire to constantly learn more in a prior framework so that you can succeed. I also think you bring a unique perspective. So if you're coming from a technical background into being a PM, you're trained as an engineer, which is great. And that's one perspective that you want. But you want diversity. I think there's been a lot of stats recently about how Fortune 500 companies are performing with higher levels of diversity. And they're often outperforming lower levels of diversity. So I think it's the same thing when it comes to product. You need everyone thinking about it in different ways because you don't know where the next best idea is going to come from. Or for instance, I was in a meeting today and we had design, engineering and product all thinking about it. And we are just riffing off of one another. But we are all thinking about it completely different. So the designer was thinking like, how do I design this? Like, what would this be? And the engineer was thinking about how do I build this, right? And product was really saying, okay, what are all the problems that we've identified from the customer? And everyone coming together with these unique perspectives drives for the best product. And then the last one, team. This is me personally. I don't know if this is true of everyone. Always identifying with the team before yourself. So I think when you don't necessarily know how you fit in coming from a unique path into product, you're really driving to push the team forward. And I think what's great about that is like, your team is serving the customer. So you're always, again, focused on the customer through serving your team first. So here are some resources that I've used that have been really helpful. Other PMs.  I have a few good friends that I meet regularly with to grab coffee that are PMs. And it's fascinating to see how they're approaching problems or how they're doing things in their company. So I would say, if you're looking to get in to be a PM, just reach out to someone. Like, ask them for 30 minutes. Have them sit down and talk to you. You know, grab coffee with them. Like, you're gonna learn so much. And I've also found that like, similar to different perspectives and wanting the dream team to be design engineering product, that it's been the same way meeting other PMs outside of Lola. Because we do things one way, right? But we aren't necessarily always looking outside of ourselves to say, how can we do this differently? And those PMs have shared ways with me that I can bring into Lola to really improve our product management team. The other thing is Silicon Valley Product Group. Marty Kagan is a huge thought leader within product management. I definitely would recommend checking out the Insights blog. They write regularly about product management. And his frameworks have been incredibly helpful to me in applying them both in real time and thinking about product and how we develop the best products. The High Growth Handbook. There's a whole chapter just on product management. It's pretty cool. I don't think you have to take any of these for like, this is exactly how I should do it. But it's interesting to think through, okay, this, it was written by a VC. And so he's seen thousands of companies and thousands of product teams. And definitely worth checking out. And then lastly, Gibson Biddle. He was the former VP of product at Chag and at Netflix. And he's got some really great ways to approach product management.


Everybody loves a good anime duo and more so than that everybody loves a good 2v2 match. That is why today I am playing an anime game with over 200 characters and a built-in 2v2 mode so that I can put as many iconic duos up against each Other as possible in the pursuit to find the strongest duo in all of anime obviously first up We've got to go with the classic. We've got to go with Goku and Vegeta now It might be a controversial duo to pick first but we haven't seen him in the game yet So I'm going with Eren and Mikasa as our second duo a picture Look at this picture. We all knew we'd see this eventually Goku versus Eren a very likely matchup But in this game, I really have no idea how it's gonna turn out. Oh look at Eren just sitting there He regrew his leg. Damn Eren actually looks really good in this game All right, like I said, it's 2v2 simultaneous damn Eren's 2v1ing all of Dragon Ball V Mikasa is just charging up. Eren's a titan ship. What? No shot. It's the attack Titan the declaration of war has been made He's sneaking up behind Vegeta. He's using the power of the war armor. Oh my god. He's not flinching. He's super armor Oh my god, but she didn't go cool. We're not ready for this Eren's don't why is that cut the kite? Who's saying cut the kite? Was that a thunder spear? This is cheap errands. Oh, look at the jungle combos Erin's fighting him like Gil from Street Fighter. This is actually unreal Eren is going crazy. He's hopped out of the Titan. He wants to do the rest on foot Actually, he wants to watch Mikasa do the rest on foot, but that's only round one The Dragon Ball Z characters don't even start transforming until round two. So we haven't not seen anything yet Oh, uh, it up back me out.  I guess these are single match duels So Goku and Vegeta inherently lose because they didn't tap in any of their transformation Well, you know the rule if a duo wins, they've got to go up against our next duo Now maybe not so much a duo, but how about rivals? What if we put all for one and one for all on the same team now? I'm gonna be honest I have not seen these two in the game and they're not even teammates So I don't know if they're gonna be able to stand up to what Eren and Mikasa have going on I'd love to see I'd love to be proven wrong though. Okay.  Oh Mikasa putting in good work though Eren's just kind of wave dashing another huge uppercut.  He's fighting the air Mikasa using all their meter to throw out a thunder spear Don't know don't know if I agree when Eren's getting juggled like this in the corner Somebody save him. We needed the thunder spear gives Eren a chance to transform Eren's almost out of the match He's dead all for what it all might have a good chance at winning here All they've got to do is put away Mikasa. Oh my god. This could be a devastating duo Oh huge combo Mikasa on the ropes, but she's not giving up yet a huge happy birthday combo But this might be it. No, she gets up doesn't have much bar She's gonna need to catch a huge happy birthday combo and said she catches a huge punch to the face And that is the end of our attack on Titan duo. I'm gonna be honest I'm not playing these two again, bro. Their voice lines are so loud instead I think we're gonna go ahead and move on to something maybe you know, maybe people weren't expecting this You know, I maybe we could do a whole another duo video because I'm seeing a lot of duos But I'm kind of feeling Luffy and I'm kind of feeling Zoro since we're just doing the generic like big anime right now We might as well go over to Naruto and just do Naruto and saw actually why not do Kakashi and guy That's a better duo Naruto and Sasuke obvious, but Kakashi and guy that's that's Rock Lee Hold on guy might not be in the game. Okay. Well, uh On second thought it appears I've made a mistake. I remember what I said about Naruto and Sasuke being a little obvious We're doing it anyway Look, okay if guy was in the game I would have loved to do Kakashi and guy, but he's not so we have to do the next best thing. Oh Look at that intro for Naruto and Sasuke. They're actually looking kind of good Luffy late to the party as always Bro showed up and dropped his entire backpack. All right. I'm expecting this one to be one of the best so far I'm gonna be focusing more on Zoro. He's lifting weights. Damn bro lifted weights into a double kill Naruto and Sasuke need to start performing actually Luffy needs to start doing something He's actually just not doing anything Naruto spawning in some shadow clones He's intent on making this not a 2v1. Our characters are splitting up It's gonna be hard to focus on both, but actually Luffy just doing it all himself. Oh The reverse harem Jutsu Luffy does not care bro does not care.   Oh my god, Sasuke is already out of the fight.  Oh my god Sasuke got taken out quick But Luffy and Zoro were not here to play. Hold on hold on hold on Can Luffy and Zoro take another Naruto combo though? Can they handle Madara and Obito? Would they have been able to beat the tentails? I gotta find out I've yet to see Madara in this game as well. Look at Obito and Madara a couple of menaces here Jaringon activates pre-fight.  Oh my god Zoro getting targeted here Luffy's got to do something to save him. They're split up. They're getting up on Madara Not a bad choice. We've got to get rid of that Susan oh one way or another and especially when Obito is fighting the air What what is he doing? He's casting Fireball Jutsu down the stage and throwing Zoro across the stage as well It appears Obito is great at keep away so much that he's keeping himself away from the fight What is bro doing? Madara's dying. He needs help Obito.  He's still he's just skipping to his loo not impossible for him to win though He just can't get ganged up on he's got a combo He needs a move that hits both ways Zoro and Luffy are playing too good for him He needs more chakra. He manages to get it with the tentails, but Zoro's got his captains back. No way Oh, he pushed them both away. He needs time to gather up chakra. It's not over yet double Sunday One piece duo gonna get him and they've got him They locked it up a close match but Obito selfishness dealing with Madara pretty much sealed the deal for him our one piece Duo wins another match. All right Well, let's see if they can take on Yusuke and he a oh he already pointing the spirit gun at him Why Yusuke standing so zesty like that? Luffy late to another fight, but so far the results speak for themselves They've been fighting really good. I want to see something out of Yusuke and he a here I want to see another duo take the stand what did Yusuke really just spend a bar to stand there? Ro is being selfish. Oh my god, they're doing the thing where they gather up on one again. Oh Yusuke saying that it was worth the wait he a slices through both of them But seems to miss unless his swordsmanship skills are so good that he just cut between the atoms Oh my god, Yusuke's beating up on Luffy and he is beating up on Zoro It seems that 1v1 the one piece duo aren't standing up nevermind nevermind nevermind nevermind they've switched it up a little bit I'm gonna focus in on he versus Zoro here.  Oh my god.  You don't look away from him Damn the combo against Luffy. He's got a lot of health left, but they're juggling him an amazing combo Spirit gun follow-up this might we've might have seen the last of all one piece duo They might be able to get he a down and if they can do that Maybe they can jump Yusuke, but they've got to be careful about how they approach that might be the end of Zoro It is but it's not 1v1 Luffy clutches off Yusuke's on his last bit of health But a counter from Yusuke. He's not out of the match yet, but now he is he ran out of counters But that was a really clutch move Luffy actually stands up and does it for the team Unreal that I have to find another duo for these two to go up again Is there nobody that can stop them other than gone and kilo of course?  I know it's technically pronounced going by the way But I watched it and I watched it before I saw the English dub.  They said his name anyway, but I just read it as gone Okay, so it's going versus kilo here against our undisputed duo champ.  This is why the one-piece duo has been able to do it for so long. See I well usually they're working Oh He thought he got away with murder there caught Zoro lifting weights. Oh my god that fishing rod was brutal Once again, our one-piece duo is going for a split-up strat Zoro is the one gaining the meter for him and then Luffy is just going to town But it appears we've once again seen a split up for a couple of 1v1s Zoro versus gone kilo versus Luffy Oh, but now the two the duos are back and right now it looks like one piece has corner advantage This is brutal. This is truly brutal hunter hunters gotta get out of the corner But I don't think they have the time over the health anymore. Any one hit will do it. That's kilo gone That's going gone and keel. No wait neither both of them are still up No goons dead after that and keel was surely assumed to follow there. He's gone. He's gone They they they lost in a hurry. All right I'll do two more duos if Luffy and Zoro can get through two more duos I don't know what to do. This is insane. I'm sorry But this might just be the duo to end it Yugi and Kaiba teaming up in the tag duel for their lives They've got to stop them here if Yugi and Kaiba can stop them here Maybe they still stand a chance in the battle city tournament. They've both drawn their opening hands This is going to be the greatest tag duel of all time. I just hope Yugi and Kaiba know that their opponents aren't playing any cards It's a fight to the death and they're on Huge summon bait of the Magnet warrior followed by dark magician and strap card was that catapult turtle We saw Yugi shuffling his hand. It's a one-to-one duel time wizard. He throws Zoro and put oh my god. Luffy is just throwing hands Luffy is throwing hands What is happening?  That was cheap. That was actually just cheap I don't know where Zoro and Luffy got that but that breath that was not a card game Well, I've waited long enough. Everybody remembers the most iconic 2v1 in all of anime Anonyme and Yugi it was a 2v1 and they were doing great, but can they handle a 2v2 I had these two in my mind the entire time I was planning this video out. I knew it had to include them I didn't think they'd be going up against god mode Luffy and Zoro But I don't know a captain and his right-hand man versus a teacher and student This is gonna be a crazy match one way or the other we're either gonna see the undisputed king god duo or the new runner-ups We need a new kid on the block. Okay, Yugi. Okay, they're just getting comboed again. We're seeing another one-piece combo fest Oh wait, oh We're seeing some good combos from the other side here. Jujutsu Kaisen has a strong showing it's Zoro's reach though They're having a strong hard time dealing with Zoro honestly and Yugi's really letting down Anonyme Anonyme was doing really well, but Yugi's just not doing anything. He's just Wade dashing bro. He's doing nothing wait He's got a super now. He's just Wade dashing again It's always up to Anonyme Anonyme always has to clean up and right now. He's getting cleaned up your second from Luffy Not me once again jumping in he's just blocking not me kind of built like a happy was character I don't know how to describe it other than that rose a little weird wait the cursed energy from Yugi though I think you just missed. I don't know what he just charged up and did but he's just missed. Oh my god It's it's rough. It's over. There's no way there's no way they make it out of this Yugi back dash It's 1v2 now. He's got a clutch up.  He's getting bodied. He's done It wasn't even close Luffy and Zoro remain the undisputed God duo in this game. They simply can't be stopped Wait, maybe one more duo might be able to do it. What if we do Jotaro and Dia? What if what if this wasn't the duo I was originally thinking about what if you know I didn't picture them in my mind when I was making this video But maybe just maybe they can put a stop to this one piece rain. They are already posing up a storm Come on. We've got to see something big out of JoJo's here. Oh, we're seeing some big stain work some big night throws from Dia as well They're posing. They've got almost three bars. They're gonna spend it earlier to stop time. He's posing while time stopped They can't do anything. Time's resumed, but it's it's only a matter of time until they pause it again surely Oh my god They're beating up on Zoro and Luffy's doing nothing to stop it Maybe he just has trust that the swordsman can hold out. We've seen big stamina feats from Zoro before can he get another health fee? Oh, he turned Zoro to the pro Zoro. He was charging up JoJo. Oh, they stopped time The sad part is even his teammates is up and he was just waved ashy for fun In combos on Luffy doesn't do a ton of damage Somebody stopped time Zoro's in crazy mode and said he's just gonna throw an ice out of them Oh my oh, it's a good thing. He stopped time He's saving his teammate. This teammate was about to get jumped on great use of his super Dia responds to it Naturally just combos Luffy. That was a big time stop there. Yotaro needs to do it again I don't know what happened. I think this is a deal super They need to be able to stop time one more time surely if they have any hope of winning wait a big double Sunday combo from Jotaro And he stopped times again to throw a weapon to deal. I don't know if that was on purpose or maybe he just dropped the combo I think you just dropped the combo. Oh, no, he's dead. It's just do now, but maybe this is what he was waiting for Oh, no wait Jotaro lived with zero health. He's comboing Luffy while time stopped, but one hit will kill Jotaro He's dead now. It's up to Dio huge double Sunday combo. He throws a bowl. Dio might be able to do it.  Dio let down Jotaro here And so it looks like one piece is our undisputed duo champions for today's video If you guys want to see him come back and fight even more duos Make sure to like button subscribe share the video and check out some of these videos that's on your screen I have been Dada Doya and well, I guess one piece wins this one.  It wasn't even that close


People say that you become the average of the five people you hang out with the most. You may have heard this as a common success tip. Well, I think these days, well, because so many of us don't hang out with people as much anymore and we consume so much social media, whether we're watching videos like this on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, or we're reading social media posts or whatever, emails. What I think is happening is that we become the average, or at least I should say, our ambitions and our values, become the average of the five creators we watch the most.  You can go to your Instagram, your YouTube feed and just notice, oh yes, I watch that person often, I watch that person often and feel free if you wanna comment below and share with us. But I also want you to notice what values and ambition are they influencing you towards? So for example, let's say I was watching somebody, like people in my industry of business and marketing, some people are like, they look like they're always on vacation or they show glamorous lifestyles or they're always just on the beach or somewhere, like, oh, I'm so successful, I just push a button and I have money coming in and I'm always renting out some amazing Airbnb or something like that. It suggests that that is the definition of success, is to be barely working and yet be able to travel all the time and have wonderful experiences. Now, if you're a travel agent, of course, you need to show those kinds of experiences, but most of us are not travel agents, most of us are doing work from our home office. And so those values suggest that, number one, you should be traveling a lot more. Number two, you should be working as little as possible and spending money having glamorous experiences. Those are not the values that I'd like to influence you towards because I am probably one of the influencers you watch. I don't know, one of the top five, but I'm one of them. And I have become very aware over the years of how I am being influenced by the creators I watch and I invite you to starting today. And I also, therefore, am aware of how I am influencing my audience, the imagery of everything that I do, all the creators you watch, the backgrounds of their videos, the lifestyle that they describe to you, all that influences you into what your ambitions should be or are. And so know this, what I do. I have very boring video backgrounds, the same one all the time, because sure, I could show you around my beautiful city of San Francisco and make you yearn for living in a beautiful place like this, but not all of us can. Not all of us have easy access to nature and gorgeous sights and everything. No, so that's why I prefer to be boring in my videos. I'm not saying that's right or wrong, but I'm very consciously kind of going against the grain of what most Instagrammers or YouTubers do, is to say, no, I want you, here's what I want to influence you towards, ready? I'm about to reveal to you my hidden ulterior motive and how I'm trying to manipulate you. Okay, here it is.  What I hope to influence people into is to love work. Yeah, I've said it because everyone else, not everyone else, but so many other Instagrammers and YouTubers are influencing you to hate work. Just like somehow devalue work and say work is for suckers or it's like to be successful means you push a button or you have a team that does all the work and you're just sipping margaritas or whatever. That doesn't help us grow as people, as you know. It doesn't help us serve and innovate and add even more value to the world.  Okay, let me tell you what the first work should be. The most important first work I think everyone needs to be attend to is rest. Yeah, the first and most important work is the discipline of rest. I need to say it because so many of us are taken up by watching social media too often. The fact that you're watching this video means that there's a danger of you going down rabbit holes watching video after video after video and you need to be set boundaries with yourself. So that's really the first work is boundaries with ourselves, not going into rabbit holes and resting enough so that we are renewed and refreshed to be able to work. So that's the first work is discipline of rest, resting before you need to because by the time you need to, it's already too late. So the first work is discipline of rest. Second work is to then show up to your work, whether you're creating or doing some administrative work or doing some kind of solving some kind of tech challenge in your business. When you show up to work, then the second work, first work is discipline of rest. The second most important work is to attend to the values that are possible in this moment. Meaning, if I'm solving some tech challenge in my business, I could just be getting things done and just be like, let me get rid of this problem as fast as I can. And that's practicing impatience and that's practicing disconnecting my soul's calling from this very moment because I'm just trying to solve this problem so that I can then do my soulful work. Now, all of it can be soulful work, whether you're doing bookkeeping, boring administrative work, solving a tech challenge or creating content or it's being with your clients. All of it can be soulful work if you're willing to attend to what is the possible value in this moment. Is it practicing patience? Is it practicing playfulness and curiosity? Is it practicing gracefulness, courage, love and compassion, kindness towards self, gracefulness and sort of like joyfulness in what you do. So that's all I wanted to say is I hope to influence you towards the love of work, not that you have to work more hours but the love of bringing your values into the moment so that you can be happy now and not have to chase results. And by being happy and fulfilled now, you'll show up more often, you'll practice more often, you'll grow your skills and naturally the results come as a result. So I hope this is beneficial for you and may you become aware of how you're being influenced on social media and become aware of your values and embodying that in every moment of your work. Thanks for watching.


You're right also. Good morning there is some European central bank news today and Just to kind of simplify it. It's more to do with What the monetary policy will be for them going forward now? ING have really good analysis and they have their I guess their scenario analysis, so I I like the sheet and what it basically does is just highlights and Shows you what? They think is likely to happen to price on the right-hand side if these so if this certain criteria is met, so ING's base case is that the European Central Bank will be neutral So the central bank European Central Bank have got you know, they're gonna comment on various different Aspects of their monetary policy and this is basically what ING think is gonna happen on on on all four And if it does happen on all four then the likelihood Again, we're dealing probabilities here is that the euro will probably stay around the 120 mark because there's nothing really to Suggest that it should go higher if they are hawkish meaning that on their inflation outlook they start talking that risks to the inflation outlook have somewhat become more balanced if that's the The the the language I guess on the growth outlook so the economy at the economic recovery in the second half Would be stronger than anticipated. That's what the central bank are thinking Or they say and vice and all of these then you should probably see a push-up to one to two If they do come out as dovish meaning that on the inflation They think that is a return to low correlation in 2022 growth outlook recovery will be gain momentum over the summer But high Uncertainty etc. etc. Then you're looking at one one eight fifties. So and we could see a very dovish ECB and Again, my personal view is I have no idea what is gonna come out Obviously, you know that the base case is what you want to go with you want to go with the experts So it could be a non-event if anything out of the ordinary anything Interpreted to be hawkish or dovish by the market will either push the mark you know push prices of the euro up or down but Just my thinking and it's not a prediction or anything like that is just from a bigger picture perspective is that the Europe and and the ECB actually don't want an expensive currency yet If the currency gains In in value and appreciation in fact what it does is it hampers the economy And inflation and I have a video about that about this in the if you go to The number four under fundamental analysis interest rates and inflation is this this webinar here that I posted a Few maybe a month or so ago this this is definitely a Worth of watching it really explains the relationship between inflation interest rates and GDP and the effect of an expensive currency on on on on inflation and and the economy so going back to You know to this The point is really is that Is that I think I don't think that they'll be hawkish before they've even had a chance Sorry, they before they've even had a chance to even for their for their economy to even grow that is probably very Unlikely even though obviously it can happen probably base case is to be more a bit more neutral to see what happens But they there is a possibility that they could also be dovish simply because they want a weaker euro They actually do want a weaker euro the And the US actually want a weaker dollar the Federal Reserve want a weaker dollar Or actually matter of fact, no they don't in a sense that that they've already they're already achieving their inflation target So in fact, they don't necessarily want a cheap Dollar but they would want one if they hadn't reached their 2% overall inflation target so the central bank of The ECB actually want a weaker and a devalued currency so that they can reach their inflation target and Actually, in fact the Federal Reserve Probably want a more expensive currency at the moment so that they can kind of stem inflation so That if the central banks can get their way then In fact that should lead to a euro dollar Downside if the market does agree at the moment the market seems to have a different opinion on the euro dollar I don't really I Understand it but it goes kind of counter to what I know about the fundamentals It's a bit different at the moment So when in doubt, you know best not to necessarily even trade the currency pair until it is a bit more Clear as to what is going on. Sometimes we shouldn't really force trades And force our opinions on the market whatever the market thinks and whatever the sentiment is if it if it's counter to What we know to be true. Maybe it's just time to not trade that pair until you know Something that was a sentiment and the fundamentals do become clear. So there's conflicting Lot of conflicting flows around the euro and around the dollar So for me, it's not as it's probably becoming a pair that I'm gonna not be too interested in because there is a lot of Conflicting and confusion and confusing information But anyways guys that's gonna be the news for today So if you see prices start to shoot up or shoot down, that's probably this is probably the reason why Anyways guys take care and I'll speak to you soon


People have strong beliefs, I think, about whether something is good if it's natural or bad if it's unnatural. What do you think about that? Well, this is a romantic notion that it's a complete fallacy, it's a lie, all right? People think that being natural means being good, and everything must be natural today, from your shampoo to, I don't know, the linens in your bed, all right, you know, even toilet paper, you know, it's advertised as all natural, all right? The truth is that nature is not good and nature is not bad, you know, nature is just neutral. There's nothing more natural than an earthquake, and that's not very good, you know, there's nothing more natural than malaria, and that's not good either. So being natural doesn't mean being good, but today everything, especially on TV, there is this romantic notion that if we put natural on a product, call it a jogger, or a pair of socks, I'm going to sell more, and that's where it all comes from, you know, just advertising. I was looking the other day, there is some trend now in the U.S. and some parts of Europe, that people are now saying, we've got to drink the milk absolutely natural as it comes out of the cow, without even pasteurizing it or even boiling it. There are now official signs by the U.S. government saying like, what, signs, I mean, advertising say, do not do that, because there are a huge amount of cases of listeria by getting the natural milk out of the cow without any kind of manipulation, just because of the concept of it can be any better than just out of the cow, drink it. Thank you. So why do you think we have a propensity towards liking things that are natural? Because it sounds good, and it looks good, and it makes you feel good about it, right? It's natural, so, and there's nothing artificial, it's like artificial things are bad, natural things are good, but you know, artificial things like electricity is not that bad, and that's very artificial, all right? Artificial things like vaccines are not bad, and they are extremely artificial, but in general, you conceptualize like natural means good, artificial means bad, nothing natural can harm me, because it comes from mother nature, but what you don't understand is that mother nature is not your mother, it's the mother of yourself, and the mosquitoes that give you malaria, all right? And the lion that can eat you in the middle of Africa. When they invented the microwave, people wouldn't take it, the people wouldn't buy it, because something that can heat up things in 10 seconds, that can't be good, all right? So with this myth going around that microwave would make food radioactive, and people wouldn't buy it, and now there is a microwave in every house. So there is a tendency to resist innovation if you have a perceived risk. So what would you say to somebody that says the risks for genetically modified food are just too high? Well, the risk is too high, it's a perception that I don't find it justified by science and by facts. We've been growing GM food now for a long, long time, and there isn't any reports saying that there's any bad consequences for human health. By the way, there are plenty of reports that normal foods end up in food poisoning. I just heard today that a couple of Australian cities have died in Bali out of food poisoning, eating in a restaurant. There's no GM there involved, all right? So there is risk. In GM, in non-GM, there is risk in everything you do in life. When you cross a street, you run a risk, all right? But if you don't cross the street, you're stuck in a corner, all right? Like you're going to go places, you're going to have to cross the street every now and then. What you do, if you think about the risk and the consequences, and how to minimize the risk, and then you take a decision. When you're crossing a street, you look left, you look right, you know? And say, there's no cars, I can cross the street, all right? Or you look left and right, and you see too many cars, say, I'd rather find another place to cross the street. So that's what you do, you minimize risk. With food, it's the same thing. GM food, as a matter of fact, the regulation is so strict that GM foods are completely tested of everything, and normal food are not. Therefore, the risk in GM food is a lot less than in normal, what they call normal food. By the way, there's no normal anymore. What do you mean there's no normal anymore? But there's nothing that we eat that is natural anymore. Food has been manipulated for thousands of years, for our convenience. So you can have bananas without seeds. Because bananas with seeds are not convenient for humans. Or you have food that is a lot more nutritious. If you go to the original foods, they will always be smaller, have a lot less yield per hectare. And the nutrition is going to be a lot less. By the way, there is this thing going around that, you know, just because they are old, they are better. No, things that are old are just older. They're not better by definition. What advice would you give to people about how they can make better decisions in their everyday life based on your research? Well, you shouldn't get too serious about using science for everything, because otherwise you wouldn't end up doing anything in your life, all right? But there are things that may be important for you, that you should use science for at least fact-based decisions. And my specialty is foods, all right? So there is a lot of food that's been sold in the market with this myth that they are better. Do your research. Find out if they really are. There are some foods that are labeled this or that that say they are better. You know, they have less residues or they are more natural. Do a bit of research. Find out the facts. I know you're going to pay twice the price to buy that particular food. And you're free and I will respect your decision. But find the facts. If the facts say it's better, go for it. But most of the time, those things are claimed that are unsubstantiated. My name is Jimmy. I think about life.


Tom here from LearnSystems, and I am roaming around the office So I can show you a video about Wi-Fi roaming. If you look over here at this tool I'm using called Wavemon. You'll see the mode managed connected to and you'll see the MAC address of the different access points that it's transitioning to. Now I'm going to be doing this demo with Unify and It's not specific to Unify though. This is a generalized Video that dives into the different methodologies and how roaming works and how to optimize it for your network During this little intro here I have now wandered through three different access points and switched three different times and you can see the ping is consistent So we're going to talk about how that works how 802.11R works and whether or not 802.11R is right for you Before we dive into the details Let's first feel like to learn more about me and my company head over to LawrenceSystems.com If you'd like to hire a short project, there's a hires button right at the top If you'd like to help keep this channel sponsor-free and thank you to everyone who already has there is a join button here for YouTube and a Patreon page your support is greatly appreciated if you're looking for deals or discounts on products and services We offer on this channel check out the affiliate links down below They're in the description of all of our videos including a link to our shirt store We have a wide variety of shirts that we sell and new designs come out Well randomly so check back frequently and finally our forums Forums.laurentsystems.com is where you can have a more in-depth discussion about this video and other tech topics you've seen on this channel Now back to our content We're gonna start talking right here about the client and I'm holding a Pixel 4 XL phone Which does support 802.11R so I don't have any problems roaming my laptop supports 802.11R It doesn't have any problems roaming whether or not you have all of your clients that have proper support for the 802.11R standard is really important and Let me explain the client makes and has the biggest influence in where it connects to it looks at the Scanning of the networks around it. It looks at the SSID. It's associated with and says hey There's that same SSID, but it's a signal that is stronger and I'm just gonna go over there it is Constantly conflated with calling it meshing and things like that, but it specifically is called roaming meshing is something different and what I mean by that is The ability for your device your client to roam from like this access point here to another access point in the office is Very much a client decision now these do influence it So that's the part we're gonna talk about but it is important that the client has full support And I bring this up because well if you're doing a lot of corporate networks You'll find a lot of oddball devices and even though they may have been made after the 802.11R Adoption in 2008 and a revision in 2012 and you're like but this device was made in 2018. It should completely support it Anyone who spends time in the corporate world realizes well some of these weird devices and special OEM devices are not always built on Complete following of the standards Therefore, this is where the first problem you run into is now for home users Usually on an issue at all because most home users I know have a lot of modern devices They have their phones and their laptops that are relatively new and the standard's been around a while So they fully support it and they will roam seamlessly between these networks Now I'm not gonna dive through but leave you links of course So you can read through the 802.11R standard and I think there's a good article right here I'll leave a link to on Wi-Fi fast roaming simplified and it breaks down some of the details The too long didn't read is there is an eight-step process They break down for how you authenticate to an access point now with 802.11R That only has to happen on the first access point every subsequent in the same grouping of Devices access point that you have can do a four-step process because once you authenticate to the first access point It can automatically skip those steps when we've already authenticated you we're just gonna let you associate here This allows that fast transition for roaming which is outstanding It's how I was able to walk without any ping delays going from device device device was with this turned on Once they authenticate to the first one It just passed me off to the other ones very seamlessly now It still works if you don't have fast roaming and it can reauthenticate and in 2020 most modern devices authenticate relatively fast But that is further complicated by two things one if you're using WPA PSK Yes, it does work with that if you're using something more advanced radius Or other authentication methods where there's a server and authentication servers got to be passed along to him Behind that actually becomes more important to use something like 802.11R for seamless transitions because it does work for both It has to do do that more complicated Authentication each time that could create a real problem and cause a delay Now let's dive a little bit deep I said this is more or less platform agnostic But I'll show you where the settings are inside of unify But you'll can find the equivalent settings in most any of the modern wi-fi devices wi-fi access points Unify lists fast roaming as beta This is them favoring the corporate networks that well They know have a lot of strange devices and they turned it on by default More people would have problems because these devices not completely supporting it as I said in the beginning But as I said for most home users and devices Or networks that have a lot of modern devices turning it on I've generally not found any problems It's not absolutely necessary and this is the fast roaming overview Just like the network world article it breaks down by turning this on how the transition happens Before a bss transition the transition process and how that process is simplified by turning it on Basically the authentication I talked about there pretty straightforward Then is the other option and this is really important too and that's the bss transition frames once again It has to be supported by the client these unify access points such as the one next to me does support this And they have a list of which ones do which most of the modern ones all have the support But bss transition when a device has a weak signal the uap will send bss transition frame instead of a disconnect frame for the client Now that option when you create a unify network is right here allow bss transition with Wnm and what those are is management frames that are sent to say hey Your signal is weak you should go somewhere else and it's a soft ask if there's not somewhere else to go It's not going to go versus a let's just disconnect because if we the client clearly doesn't want to transition We're just going to kick it off the network and it should bounce over to here These are a couple different ways that this transition happens when there's something else to transition to Now there's one more thing that's really important as well and that is the often misunderstood rssi and signal strength and people assume they want to start tuning these so when you have The device and you say hey, I want to kick people off when they don't have a signal because if they Transition to the other device are going to have a better time and it's going to be a better and faster Wi-Fi experience and why won't my client switch? So this is where we go into switching the rssi Now this is a place where I see people getting themselves into lots of trouble And what do I mean by that they set these minimums that are unrealistic that they Either connect fast or not at all and they do have some recommendations in here And they've actually added some warnings for people who set this wrong So much of our consulting work is fixing when people started Monkeying with all the settings instead of leaving them at auto I rarely ever have to actually set this because it isn't as necessary as people think but If you have designed a network and you really want them to always the clients that are connecting to be on the fastest one You can carefully tune this and troubleshoot this what this does is that's a minimum standard by which the access Point will allow a client connect. So if the signal is too weak, sorry You can't hang out here the signals too weak go somewhere else the problem becomes If I have an access point here and we'll just pretend this is an access point I didn't grab another one and I want it to go to whichever one is the closest that works What if I'm over here and there's not a closer one? Well, now, you know, let's say you're just on the edge of this access point outside It keeps kicking you off because it says your signal doesn't meet the minimum And this is sometimes a problem and wi-fi is well Challenging at times because of all the different materials it does or does not pass through and it can create a lot of problems So my best recommendation is only use this as absolutely necessary and look for other methods such as Proper placement of wi-fi and proper distance between them and even turning down I know it sounds backwards turning down the access point power if necessary So you have a little bit less overlap. So it chooses the right one And that's another tuning option in terms of you know, when you're thinking about these make sure the channels aren't overlapping Make sure the power vans don't completely overlap or yet you're going to confuse the device as to which one it needs to go to So as far as turning this on It's pretty safe generally speaking to have fast roaming turned on provided you have a lot of modern devices And they have properly followed the standards that have been out for a while and implemented them in each device Even without that on as I said with the bss transition in this is specific to Unify which comes with this default turned off. Yes, it was sold transition It's the same thing with a lot of other access points as well. I just don't have everyone to set up here as a demo So hopefully this helps you understand a little bit better how the roaming works I will leave links to each of these so you can read a little deeper the network world article dives a little bit deeper into the topic Overall, uh, but i'll the unify ones and if you look up sysco in the same kind of search terms of How bss and fast roaming works in sysco or any of the other popular devices almost every company Over your major company has a write up on how it works and where the options are for their devices All right. I'll leave links below and thanks And thank you for making it to the end of the video If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up If you'd like to see more content from the channel hit the subscribe button and hit the bell icon If you like youtube to notify you when new videos come out If you'd like to hire us head over to laurance systems dot com fill out our contact page And let us know what we can help you with and what projects you'd like us to work together on If you want to carry on the discussion head over to forums dot laurance systems dot com Where we can carry on the discussion about this video other videos or other tech topics in general even suggestions for new videos They're accepted right there on our forums, which are free Also, if you like to help the channel in other ways head over to our affiliate page We have a lot of great tech offers for you and once again, thanks for watching and see you next time


Can you hear me? No? Yes, so of course, big thing to the team. I understand that the situation changing so quickly. It's sad that we can't be there, but we managed to make it happen. To thank to you, Roland, to Dan, Marco, Mr. Guy, Weed, Ted, Ambrose, Eden, Bela, Sunshine, Isaac, Shruti, all the volunteers that have been helping us. Without you, of course, the event has not been possible. And I want to say that this is the first time that we have to deal with so many challenges in the beginning about half a year ago when we started to prepare for the event. We got so many people, so the interest that they're going to come and we have up to almost 200 speakers confirmed. We have very, very good content this year. And the number go down and down until I think like two or three weeks ago, we still have 150. And it's just changing so quickly until today. And just the last day of the event, we realized that none of the speaker or participant who have been travel outside of Singapore can come to the venue. But on the other side, we have been learning so much from this event. So we learned how to make the streaming. So previously, we always have somebody who come and support us with the streaming. But this time, the team managed to make everything possible ourselves. There are a lot of questions how to handle Q&A, how to manage with different partners and suppliers. So I just feel that we have so much to learn after this event. Yes, and so what's going to happen next? So I don't know when the situation will be resolved, but since we see the last few days, people, everyone around the world still need to be able to say connect and to work together on solutions. So we brainstorming some ideas. We already have a lot of feedback from you who are in the room, but also from the people online. We're hoping to organize some kind of online platform where people can come and share digital solutions around the COVID-19. You know that there are people working from Italy, from Germany, how the situation in Vietnam, people develop solutions locally and it's not that so on the news. So we basically see information about all the number of cases in Greece, this and this got long, but it's more important that we should highlight the development he's been going on around the world. And we hope that in a few weeks we're going to boot up an online platform because we learned so much on an online event, but we focus on this topic for people from different nations to share their development around this. So the idea would be like, I don't know if we can pull it off in three to four weeks. I mean, we're always making things very stressful for ourselves, right? But we can't really wait. I mean, the numbers of people affected, they go up and it's not just people affected by the virus, it's like economically, it's in many ways. And I just saw a projection that if we actually slow down the virus, it also means that this crisis will go on much longer. So projections right now are at least until March next year. So that is a long time and we really need to work together and find ways. So we had a few chats with some speakers today as well. And the idea would be to have like three different kinds of ways how people can collaborate. Of course, we can have talks where people can share their ideas. Talks can be followed like in the JITZI session, like what we had today. Secondly, we could have online workshops. These workshops can also take longer and we cannot have too many people in a live workshop on JITZI, but we can actually also stream that live workshop and share it with other people. So that's the second idea. It would be to create open collaboration channels in an event where people could work together like let's say over a weekend or over three days.  So people are very open to this idea. And yeah, we will share more about this. We will discuss this with the team, but that's our idea for now. And I think that would be really a next step forward, right? So we need everything to be absolutely open. Yeah, I wonder if Harish is still in the room? Yeah. Okay. So maybe like we can have a short circle around what is the feedback of people so far? What are our next steps in the community? Okay, opinions please. How did you find this event? Right, so that he can hear and then he can pass it on to the second microphone. But then he can't hear what they say. We can look at that somehow. Any opinions? Okay, Hong, can you hear me? No, I have JITZI over here as well. Okay, Hong, can you hear me? Okay, never mind. Looks like Hong cannot hear me, but I think you guys are. I think that while the social events were a little bit lean, but I would say that the talks were all considering the amount of changes we had to go through. I think that that was very well executed, very well put together. And I think a lot of willing hands came along to help out when they were needed. Any further feedback, chance? Anyone else? I mean, for me, I really enjoyed it. It was good. And the food was good. Okay, thank you. Any issues that anyone found or run into, something missing? What I understand, you were not allowed to put on the clip mic, right? Because of safety and all that. Ah, this guy, yeah. I mean, that's the only PT part, you know, because when you're doing the recording of the talk, it would be very nice if there was a mic, so it would be very nice and clear. But that's, I mean, it's inevitable.  On the first day in the lecture theatre, another one, yeah, there was some live speaking through the internet, the Google, the Google lady, right? I'm just wondering, would it have, would it, would connecting a LAN cable solve that issue? Was it because it was connecting through the Wi-Fi and all that? Yeah, that's right. Oh, I see. So, security. I think there's something wrong with their projector. They used to have two projectors and... Oh, is it? Okay. Anyone else, like, see the streaming at all? Did they have any feedback in this side of the stream on the streaming itself? I didn't... Of course, but they may have seen also. Okay, I attended the flask training conducted by the students.  I mean, he didn't rush through, he didn't get frustrated and all that.  So, I really, really appreciated that. It was really great, the flask, the flask teaching. And what's the other one? They are also done by students at Dunman School. Yeah, SQLite, yeah, SQLite. Yeah, so the students' presentations were very good. The SQLite as well, yeah, that's all. Yeah, I just wanted to share that. And SQLite by the students at Dunman School. They're from some organisation, block SG or building block, building block. Yeah, yeah, okay. Further feedback? Yeah, so here we go. Any feedback here on the conference? What did you experience? I'm talking about COVID-19, if you... You want to hear about that now? So there's a community project about tackling COVID-19. It's called Project OpenAir, projectopenair.org. So there are several pieces of the problem that open source communities are already working on. There are mechanical ventilators, which just alleviate the need to use your lungs to diaphragm to breathe. There are people working on the oxygen therapy, the cannulas, the supply control, the whole lot. And yes, but I think not for this session. But yeah, in terms of Mario's question, there's a bunch of stuff that has to happen and it's worth taking action sooner than later. Any feedback on good, bad or room for improvement in our much reduced summit? I can't really say except I think thanks everybody for putting the time in to make it happen. Our pleasure. Gentlemen here, fit good, good, bad, good, bad, indifferent, room for improvement? I think there's no room for improvement, even though this is my first time. And when I came here, I was a bit shocked to find the turnout was very low. At first I thought, is this the usual turnout for all for Asia? So I guess it's actually the COVID-19 has determined many people from coming to Singapore. Also at the travel ban restriction. But after, I think everything else is all very well done. I got to learn many new things because I'm also a fan of open source. Just I never hear about this open source summit or seminars. I usually go for the big commercial IT fairs. But it's my first time coming. So I'm very grateful for being able to attend this talk. I hope to come back again next year. Brilliant. So a first time attendee at the Foss Asia Summit who has had other involvement in open source, appreciating that it actually works and it's here and surprised at the small numbers. But you'll know why that is. Thank you. Yourself? Nothing more to add really. Okay. That's good. It's been interesting. Start at the back. It doesn't matter. Backward fun. Any feedback here that you can give it? Things to improve. Good, good. Anything we can improve. It's great. All right. Good. Hello. What are you showing me? Okay. Stanley? I got it. I got it. We can't sanitize. I really appreciate that you all put the time in and like raise again time to put all this setup up. But I think like looking forward to the like as in looking to the future like with all these outbreaks happening. I think maybe we should prepare ourselves for like fully online conferences. Yeah. So the feedback was we may need to prepare ourselves for fully online operation and that's sort of where we're going. And one of the big questions that raised was how to do workshops, which is part of the discussion you've heard here. So yes, we are already swinging it because so here's a point for those who hadn't realized at least one eagle eyed person asked me why this year's t-shirt doesn't have a date on it. It is a year, but not the dates. And part of the thinking had been that if the ministry of this is six weeks ago when we were young and naive, if the ministry of health declared Dorscon red, then we wouldn't be able to go ahead. And so at that time, the discussion with LLI was that we would be willing to and they'd be willing to go ahead with a September event. That may still be possible, but frankly, I'm starting to think it will not be because vaccination and really the as far as I can tell, the end point is why it's pretty vaccination programs have been performed. And that's really due next year, maybe a little earlier if we're lucky. So not only is September unlikely, March next year is looking unlikely. Not yet certain. We'll watch, but it's conceivable that we can't even do it then. And so yeah, we don't really want to hibernate for the next 12 to 18 months. And so I think we have no choice but to work out ways to do at least some useful things in a completely online form. So this will transform how we function. But yeah, whether we get to do the second event and use the same t-shirts with the same year on them, I'm not sure, we might not get to. All right, video guy, do you want to, anything you would like to improve? Any, yeah. Please don't touch the microphone. Please don't touch the mic. Okay, fine. Oh yeah, all I've got to say is that the perspective of a video volunteer, this is really an eye-opening experience and I'll definitely come again next year. But the perspective of a video volunteer is this is a really eye-opening experience and I'll definitely come again next year. Thank you. Let us hope we have, well yeah, perhaps late next year we will. Because thank, it's, for a little while we won't be able to. How about you Dan? I mean, so I'd say that given the constraints, like I've been really impressed everyone coming together and then like finding their role and also contributing and actually adapting to like things changing like often hour-to-hour minutes a minute. So that's really impressive, especially like Kudos to Ambrose for getting on the video uploads and streaming. I'd say that Dan is pointing out that you're impressed at the degree of adaptation to changes sort of daily hourly and sometimes minute-to-minute and a call out for Ambrose for the video team in particular. Where is Ambrose? He's resting. Sleeping maybe. His work is incredible. I really appreciate it. Yeah, I don't know that I have anything concrete to offer at this time and no doubt I will think of things afterwards. Anyone on the call wish to, I'll now switch modes, but does anyone on the call wish to provide feedback? Hong-Fu-Kul hand control over to you because I have to mute myself. So, Michelle, so you've been to post-Asia almost every year, the past few years and also in Vietnam Cambodia everywhere, how do you feel about like the situation? How can you continue to engage with us in the future? So I'm really missing the event that was the highlight every year. I like it to travel. I like to travel to Singapore. I like to make projects with you. I like to do hacking and like to meet all the people who are curious and watch a talk that I'm giving. And so this is like a big festival. And it's so bad that so many people are putting so much work into this event and now the participation is so limited by, because people, I think people like the physical experience to walk around and to be curious and it's something about to be a discoverer, to discover things. And so these are all things that we are missing right now with all of that. This is the chance to learn a lot of new things and new ways to work. I don't have an idea what it could be, what we can do in the next year, but it's a really good opportunity to find it out. Yes. Yes, so thank you, Michelle, and you are a good opportunity for us to find out what we can do. So in the organizers, not only so the team put in a lot of effort and volunteers as well they come very early, I think that they also like in the fact that they can learn how to set up the video and for us also we learn a lot, but I just want you to know we don't have that many participants, yes, I met Alvin that really changed my, that make me become very positive the way that he come like with a very open mindset to the event. He recorded the session going to be and also want to share and learn what kind of like in different sessions he knocked down everything like the people he met or what being shared and this is really a big motivation for me to continue to run the event. As Roland mentioned a lot of sponsors broke out and we don't also don't receive the support from the people who promise to support the event but we still manage to make the event happen and I think that even we only have one participant or two participants we still want to continue to create the platform where people can actually share and work together. We did it before 10 years ago, we were very, we never get that people like support us but we still together with the community, we make it happen and now I think that in the difficult time and even also people can show up physically, we still have people who come in who take the event very seriously so that really make the organizer feel that our work got paid off and the good thing is that all videos are available online and people can still share and continue. So and I think that I'm really glad that we two be able to, yeah, we will continue. We will clarify solution one last year. So as soon as people are allowed to get together again, however it takes, how long it takes, it will be becoming a big festival everywhere and every kind of opportunity to meet and two things together will be taken so I think you must carry on the First Asia Conference and other events because there will be a time after the corona crisis and people will be so happy to participate again. I'm very sure. Yes, thank you. Yes, also we are happy if we can see you again in person. So it will be a big festival if this is over and I think for a long time. Thank you, Mr. Back to Roland. Well, I don't think we've got much else to cover. We've said thank yous, we've sought feedback from everyone. Final thoughts from anyone before we wrap completely. In the room or on Jitzi. Sorry. I have a question from a friend of mine who is from the United States and I think it's a good question. I'm not going to. I have, with some mixed feelings, not participated in social events outside the venue this year and as organisers we can't sanction because we can't implement reasonable controls. Of course you are free people in a relatively free country, you can in fact walk into it and at the moment restrictions are not such that you can't go and have dinner with friends so there's no objection to people who are here by virtue of the summit deciding to do so but as organisers we can't sanction. But personally I will not, if I'm real, a show of hands perhaps if people plan to go to Bluejazz tonight for those who are in the room, Alvin you're asking you have to raise your hand. No? Not even? There we go. Hello. Go ahead. Behind which camera? Who's the video guy? Hello. Who are you please? Who are you? Is that the question? You're asking who? Sanitise it. Hello. My name is Shijie. I'm basically the video guy. Shijie. Shijie. Yes. Shijie. In that case, let's call it a wrap. Foster's year 2020 Covid edition is now closed.


Wai named Simon from New Zealand Or the Kiwis in the audience, put your horns up Okay, I'm from Mintz research I was looking through the DEFCON programme and I saw these people like founder of XYZ company So I thought founder of XYZ company and so I thought I can be a founder of a company too So I'm founder of Mintz research Kei, so the original concept for the contest came about when I was drinking beer at Deep Sec with a dude called Rich. We're talking about the PDF Mail To Vulnerability which had came out and we got the sample and like ran it through virus totals all detected, then we modified it a little bit, ran it through virus totals again and then you got like two or three, maybe four engines detecting it so we thought hmmm, this isn't very good. The signatures for this kind of stuff are a bit shit, then so we released the idea for the contest that we're going to be running a race to zero at DEF CON and the media got a hold of it and they went mad. Some good, some bad and a lot of sensationalist reporting. So we got the guys from offensive computing, let's say a golden opportunity for the anti-virus industry. The entry in micro came along, it will do more harm than good and Kopersky my favourite. What about a live bank robbing contest, attempt bank security systems, maybe a drug distribution trial ends at school to test in our colleagues police. I think that's a good idea Eugene. Then so fast rocked up and they're like, do you want to be a victim of this game? Cheers to the vaudev guys there, you might have seen these t-shirts around. So motivations for the contest, we wanted to highlight the shortcomings in blacklisting technologies. One to see which vendors were doing a good job and observe the real-world difficulty of avoiding detection by the different AV products and also look at the cost and the time spent on each of the samples to get them through the different engines and how much skill was required and also I was a pearls ellip from way back and everyone's like pearl sucks pearl sucks you've got to get into python so we're all right then I'll learn python and so the whole engine and interface stuff was written in python. So what's the main problem that with the anti-virus? We all know that signature or pattern based blacklisting is dead but things are starting to get better in the AV industry particularly in the home versions of software they're starting to incorporate the behavioural based technologies yet things are slowly getting better but there's still problems with your browser like your browser is almost like a little mini operating system nowadays and there's still all the file based exploits as well however AV in the enterprise is still a big problem and it's still lagging behind the desktop versions of the software so with the desktop version they've got the behavioural based technologies in there but that's sort of like the sounding board before it goes into the enterprise this is F secure have got a lots of honeypots all around the world and they collect like they look at boxes that are sending out more wear and they lock the IP address and load it into Google KML or the key markup language and then plot it on Google Maps and you can zoom around and you can see all the infected hosts on the net and here we see there's a navy dot mailbox that's infected it's probably running antivirus the antivirus might be out of date or it's probably just hasn't got any behavioural based detection in there just before I came over to Vegas I was involved in an incident at a corporate in New Zealand 3000 seats which is big in New Zealand like it's nothing over here I suppose but um they had got a virus that antivirus in the desktop and the users had gone to their web mail via HTTPS and downloaded postcard.exe which is the those that Hallmark virus that got released recently and clicked on it and then it just went all through the organisation it was copying itself to sandwiches and other people were clicking on it and it was just a mess and they wondered well we've got antivirus why why isn't this picking it up and it's because the signature there's no signature for it yet okay so the real problem is and this is a quote from a mate of mine because the finally Rena realize and they meaning the antivirus industry that you have to assume your users have the mental capacity of a two-year-old they're more likely to smash it on the keyboard than actually use a product correctly so user even if they've got this behavioural based technology we have to make it as simple to use as possible for them because they're just going to be clicking next next next postcard.exe wants to connect to the internet must be downloading some more postcards for me next next next so even when you've got this products that have got the behavioural technologies in them that normally when you install them it'll be an extra option will be like the advanced feature set or the expert level or in McAfee's case here the maximum protection but normally the users when they're installing a product they're clicking next next next next and they don't see that there they just maximum protection I'll just go with standard things so if there's one positive message that comes out of this contest after all the negative shit there's mum or mom and dad at home need to enable their behaviour based detection and if they haven't doesn't have it or it's out of date or it's an average product go out and buy the upgraded version and then turn it on and there's also the whitelisting technologies like core trace which are sort of the alternative to AV but then you still need to include AV with those products to detect exploits for unpatched software as mum and dad don't patch their boxes so they need to have detection for like the JPEG exploits and ANI, WMF. Okay, so we'll get on to the engine. I developed this on Zen so each of the VMs down the bottom there were so where it says AV that's a copy of Windows XP running in a Zen VM and so all 10 of them were running on this laptop so it's pretty with a 256 mega RAM each. At the top the Cherry PY would accept connections. It would auth the user and then that upload the sample. The sample get archived and then dropped on the SIF share and then the session schedule would connect to each of the AV instances and say, hey, go and check on the SIF share. I've got a new file for you to scan. The results would then get stored in the database and then I could look at them and analyse them after the contest. So when we did it in production out in the contest area, it was two VMs were ESX iBoxes and they each had five VMs on them. Okay, so the engines I used, Clam AV, Nod 32, F-Prop, Virus Buster, all the common ones. Symantec weren't in there because the way that I integrated the engines was with via the command line scanner. So I'd wrap that up with all the different parameters like slash heuristic and slash archive and all the ones that they had available for each of the engines. Some of them were quite minimalist and that probably wasn't a good indication of how well that antivirus product may perform in the wild. Most of them were pretty good. And this is an example here of after someone has uploaded the file, it'll scan it through and this is the stoned virus, which is a very old DOS one, just showing all the detection. So it's 10 out of 10 detection rate. The samples that I gave the contestants, there was 10 levels. So the first one was the old DOS stoned virus. And then we went through a few Trojans, NetSky, Bagel, Sasa, all the common ones there. And then level eight was MS Word vulnerability, I think it was MSO 7014. Then the ANI exploit and finally was the Slammer exploit, which is the SQL.  Probably all seen this on XKCD. Okay, so were malware or exploits harder to bypass through the engines? With the black nesting technologies, the malware was once the teams had worked out the first malware sample or after stoned, stoned was probably quite hard and I shouldn't have included it as level one, but it sort of weeded out the real players. Once they got past that and then they got the Trojans, all they needed to do was work out their packer and get it working and then they'd fly through all the virus samples. Then they'd get onto the exploits and then that's where people slowed down again and took a bit more time. I enabled heuristics where available, as I said before, and the exploit signatures for some of the engines were really tight and that's where those products were winning. Okay, so techniques that the teams use. Team 4919 used a custom Trojan dropper to get through all the virus samples, protected and executable with T and decrypts and executes at runtime. MGM used git count, so they were just spinning the CPU for a long time and the AV engines would just eventually time out and with the way I was doing the scanning, if the engine didn't return a result within 60 seconds it was task killed and then it would just return a clean. So I didn't want it locking up but then they can get through, get past it with tricky techniques like this. Team Retim also did a custom Trojan dropper and they included a Mandelbrot fractal generator inside their dropper so that when you executed the code popped up the fractal. It was pretty cool. But the problem with the droppers was that the file that they dropped was exactly the same as the sample I'd given them so when the user sees the CXN on the desktop and they go to run it the antivirus is going to pick it up anyway. But for the concept of the contest they got through the engines alright but I probably should have stipulated more that it should actually be modifying the samples more, not just repacking them and if they did pack them and drop them then modify them so they're not the same. Okay so some techniques for the exploit stuff. Team 4919, within the original Slema payload there's a loop for a reserving space on the stack and Team 4919 replaces with three push AD instructions saving for three bytes and they did some other obfuscation mechanisms there and they also replace the RNG loop with a single RD TSC instruction. There are only four teams managed to complete the contest out of the total of 10 so and the teams that didn't complete the contest they pretty much couldn't get past level one. So this graph here shows the number of detections for the particular engines and we can see there that McAfee pretty like got 90, I think there was over 200 samples and McAfee there detected about 90 of them 90 to 200 so just under 50 percent.  NetSky.p again samples would be uploaded the engines would scan them this is a result for level two NetSky.p trend micro there did pretty well. Now gets a bit more interesting when you get into the exploit samples because if the Abe company have written a really tight detection for that sample then it's going to be bloody hard to get it through all the engines so if they are targeting the actual exploit like in the text field if the like a line here is longer than 255 characters it's going to be a virus or it's going to be malicious because we know it's never going to be any longer than that. So you can see there Kapersky did really well on MSO 7014 exploit and no well one team did get past this but the problem was with Bitdefender the Trojan included an executable and the Bitdefender engine was looking for the MZ header within the word doc so team four 919 couldn't get past that but the Kapersky engine had the actual targeted code for the exploit. So here we looked at the Chicago street sweepers that Exor encoded the executable within the word document so they bypassed the Bitdefender check that team 4919 was missing and but then they were hit with the roadblock of Kapersky and they couldn't get past that until they thought well maybe Kapersky is checking the version of the word doc and also for this and matching that against the check basically the length check which was exploitable. So they then modified the versioning number and got the sample through but I haven't tested it fully to see if it would work because I didn't have a vulnerable version of office and a lot of the teams didn't have a vulnerable version of office to test it on so made it quite hard. Now if the slammer exploit this was the hardest level 10 and a lot of teams took quite a while to get this one sorted and see their McAfee was pretty good on detecting all the variants that they were uploading through the portal. Okay Kanuaia of David Scott Lewis from Wargames Up here please. Okay so the results so only four teams managed to complete all the levels Honourable mention for reteam in two hours and 20 minutes and he didn't use IDA to do any of the reverse engineering or anything. So reteam up here please and they also the dirtiest hack because with the word exploit they just packed it up in an EXE and then called office when run it. So one of the things I just want to mention why I was interested in being involved for those of you here last night you know that I was the model for David Leitman in the movie Wargames and for those of you who subscribed and wired it's also in this month's current issue. So that was really kind of my interest looking at this because I think we all know signature based detection methods really suck and we have to go to heuristics behavioral based modeling but even we talked about it last night at the Wargames Q&A about the adolescence of P1 if you've never read that using agent based systems genetic programming learning systems even before John Kosa really formalized this at Stanford. So really the AV companies really have to move to the next generation and can't rely on any of these signature based detection systems. That's really what excited me about all this and the Mercury I'm sorry Venture Beats going to be having a little story about this as well. OK the team most deserving of a bear was a team that included a loop in the dropper looking for the string bear. So can that team please come forward I can't remember who you guys are but yep choice.  The Chicago Street Sweepers