Okay, so let's get started Thank you for coming everyone My name is Carlos Pérez Aradros. I'm a software engineer. I work for Elastic And work on bits specifically so if you were in the previous talk We have been working on that So probably you already know the elastic stack You know elastic search lost us on Kibana Uh We used to call this the elk stack, but then bits came into a position So now I we usually prefer to call it the elastic stack Because you know belk or lkb sounds weird And we just released 6.0 a couple of weeks ago and I really love this this animation because somehow it's It it shows how the elastic stack is made of many pieces But when you put all of them together they work really great And I like that really much So today we'll be mostly speaking about bits and Kubernetes, of course So let's get started with that. So what's bits bits a family of lightweight seepers that collect and see all kinds of operational data to elastic search What do we mean by lightweight? Well, this may have many meanings, but for us is Everything is good in in go We see everything in a single binary that Doesn't require any external library And yeah, the cpu and memory consumption. It's usually low depending on your needs So meets the bit family the bits family This is it packet bit metric bit. I will be speaking about all of them This is the list of bits that are maintained by the bits team are officially supported by elastic But just for you to know there is a community of bits out there all over github so The official bits doesn't fit your needs. Maybe there is a community bit Supporting your use case I'm going to go quickly over all of them a step for window bit, which is for windows event logs But as I'm doing a demo later on I'm going to try to do this quick Okay, so logs. How do we get logs? With we have something called file bit. It tells some chips logs for you It does a lot of things like backpressure Control this means that if it's ingesting your logs into elastic search for logstars It's able to detect that system is overloaded and stop or throttle So it waits to the system to cope up with the load We can do a structure logging that means we can first parse the log lines and extract metrics from them for you Also multi-line for for instance if you logs contain, I don't know stack traces. We are able to Compact all the different log lines and put them together And we do many other things For metrics and events we have many different bits The main one to me will be metric bit It pulls api for the api of different services. It's a common use case for a monitoring agent So it talks normally to the service you want to monitor and takes the metrics from it for you It stores things in elastic search in an efficient way And actually we're still improving this and with six zero it went down by a lot And it also supports application metrics from from other protocols or standards like Getting metrics from java application with gmx or promissus for instance A packet bit you can think of it as a Like a distributed wire shark it taps into the network speaks different protocols and can extract what's going on for you Basically it it understands Protocols like http mysql whatever It reads for all the packets in the network and then extract like a transaction from them So creates an event in elastic search recently we added tls handshake parsing. So This is that's really cool for security use cases. So you can get what's going on when your users are using ssl Her bit is like uptime monitoring. It can talk to your services from time to time You can schedule checks and check that everything is available and running An audit bit. This was the last one added to the list Basically connects to the linux audit framework. It can work with audit d as sidecar or or standalone and Something cool that it does is You know linux audit framework gives you a lot of events on on what's going on with the security on With on your system What audit bit does is Read all that events and correlate the ones that are related And create a single event in your elastic search and it also does file integrity monitoring So you can check if someone changed some of your files for instance binaries Um for traces Recently a op bit A company that was working on apm joined forces with elastic search it was it it went acquired by elastic and And since then they have been working on open sourcing A lot a lot of their code It's in alpha state as of now i'm showing later on but just Taking the quantities in alpha, but yeah, they are doing really great stuff on on apm By the moment there are no jay some python agents Which support for things like flask or jango and of course more cunning So today i come here to talk about Kubernetes and and docker in this case This year we have been working a lot on supporting this well using bits I want to thank you especially bj Samuel He worked for ebay and they contributed a lot of code here. They use bits internally And yeah, we are really grateful for that. So bj if you're watching thank you So what's all about With containers infrastructure with microservices Basically when you are using this kind of architecture everything is a moving target You static Static configurations that are not valid anymore. I mean you can you can expect everything to be in place and not moving So we need the specific specific tools to track things down And we have implemented a few primitives that you can use to monitor what's going on with containers First of all, we added docker. We have we had it already actually and we recently added the kubernetes one So you can monitor the overall the overall state of Of your of your kubernetes. So I think we saw that in previous talk Uh, we also added metadata processors That helped you and reach your events anything that is coming out of your bits can be enriched with information that gives you context On where it came from And that's really useful when then you want to navigate That data that metrics that logs whatever are even correlate them So we have something to add information about what cloud you are running on something to add information from docker And something to add information from kubernetes. I will show all this in the demo Uh, this is an example of how an event that comes from file bit So this is a log Looks when you are using the the different processors and of course you can use all of them or any or only the ones that you are interested on So what you are seeing here is a log line from file bit Actually, it's telling that it's connected to elastic search But then you get a lot of metadata of where this line this line came from So I know the pod name the container within that pod the name space and even the labels And also I get information from the cloud it's running on so in this case is google cloud as you can see And this is how it works. Basically, we are pulling the kubernetes api constantly And every time that a new pod is launched we get the event And we create metadata for it and put it in our internal catch So when we read a log line from docker or whatever We parse that get the container ID and then use that container ID to check on this table And normally you find a match and getting the metadata information for for that for that container Then we get that metadata put it with the event and seep it to elastic search logstash or kafka ui Let's talk now about auto discover This is not yet released, but it will be released really soon. It's already In the release branch, so you can expect it in the following weeks We are getting auto discover What is this about it's we watch for docker events and react to changes so allow you to define a set of Prefine templates to apply when something goes on for instance in this case We have a condition which is if the image the docker image is etcd We want you to launch this configuration on metric bit launch this module to monitor it And as you can see we get the host the ip address of the of that container from the Auto discover, so we just put that in the template and it will automatically spawn the the right ip So this is how it works More or less bits watching for the docker events api When you launch a new container or Kubernetes does you get an event With all and we create like an internal instructor With all the information about what happened. What's the event about Then we take your configuration and do Condition matching in this case the condition of etcd matches. So this spawned a new module We take the template that you gave us in the configuration and do the bar expansion so from the auto discover event with the bar Bar expansion to the configuration that you gave us and you end up with the final module that we launched for you In the same way the container goes out We do the same thing, but the other way around we detect that and stop the module Let me talk about how to deploy this and deployment strategies how we normally deploy all the different bits So when you are running bits on a docker host we normally run them from a container You could do that also from the host itself, so it's up to you But we provide both documentation and docker images on how to do it And depending on what you are doing We would like to mount Things from the host for example on metric bit. We mounted the proc file system. So we got get access to all the host Proc information so we can monitor that with the system module. We will see that in a while And for the file bit case to strap the logs we do it in the Similar way we mount barley docker containers and read the logs from there And as I said when you are reading the log then Enrich that with information from kubernetes or docker Then we send everything to elastic shirts and you can see it in kibana And if you are deploying in kubernetes, you will do the same thing but We provide demo sets files manifest example manifest so you can use them or modify them to whatever you need So, yeah, let's jump into a demo Basically, this is the demo in sewing that url you can visit already It's a really simple application written in python with jango Wsgi with engines front ends Just be careful. It's not elastic. It's like an internal url, so it's el stc So the idea of the application is that you can submit questions out of this talk If we get the right questions, I can answer from there. You can also vote them So the questions you want to get answered you cannot vote them And this is how the application is running We have a mysql pod single one. This is really simple deploy. It's just for testing just for showcasing this And a couple of pods. I think it's three Running the application itself with an engine front ends So what we are doing and of course a lot balancer on the public IP What we are doing here is getting the logs getting metrics metrics from this using auto discover to For instance detect that mysql that engines and monitor them also doing network analysis Using packet width and application performance metrics using the elastic apm Okay, so this is the Demo application. Let's see if you are doing anything with it. Okay, so some people is submitting questions. That's good. Thank you And let's see how we can monitor this how this is going I don't have file bit deployed yet, so I don't have logs here, but I'm about to deploy it so I can start Getting the logs into my elastic search instance. This one is running in elastic cloud But elastic cloud runs the same elastic search that you will download from Our page is open source. So it could be running anywhere So I'm opening this repo with information on how to do this demo So you will get access to all these jammel files Let me deploy File bit Okay, so this is now creating the file bit demo set and doing some setups It it takes care of set up in anything from dashboards to anything and Logs are flowing in already. Let me put some reference times here Okay, so as you can see I'm I'm getting logs from All my different containers Let me sort this Okay, and after bootstrapping everything it's able to Tag everything with the proper metadata So as you can see here, I can get information from the pod name Or the container name for everything and maybe you just saw that it backfill The whole last 15 minutes. This is because we are extracting the timestamp from the docker Logs so we'll get that timestamp and submit the event with the correct timestamp So now I got logs from everything that happened before I deploy this which is cool And the important thing about metadata is that allows you to navigate everything On your infrastructure. So if I'm watching logs here I maybe want to watch logs for all the engines that I have deployed and as you can see in the pod name I have different pod names around maybe in this case. Yeah, I have different pod names here Uh, so I'm seeing the logs for all of them And maybe I want to focus in only one of them That's something you can do too. You can see how the log lines change And I'm getting now the logs only for that specific pod, which I think is cool Forgot to say that we are also using auto discover here. Can you read the text? Okay, so if you see these lines I'm detecting the engines container and I'm passing the engines module for file bit What the engines module does is do all the handling of the logs for you and extracting information So you have metrics stuff instead of of the log lines So this way I'm getting both I'm getting the logs, but also getting Metrics from file from file bit for for engines So I can go and open the engines dashboard for file bit And this gives you an overview of all the visits I'm having and We have people from other sites probably in the streaming. Hello And a lot of information on you know, user agents what you are visiting what you are voting actually and Volume data. So this is really cool. This is coming from all the logs And now we can jump to do metrics So metric bit can monitor both your host system Also the kubernetes layer and everything that you are running on top of them So I enabled system module here kubernetes module here And I'm using auto discover to monitor the different cities that I know that will be in the system And for instance my school I'm matching the condition here So if you see a my school module launch this, uh, sorry a my school container launch this module to monitor it You can do a lot of tricks here because At the end we get an auto discover module. Sorry an auto discover event And can react to that and do whatever we want. So in this case we could be doing Something based on annotations on that on that pod So if I see this annotation like I don't know promissus scrape I can launch the promissus module So you don't need to hard call things here. This is just an example My school And also engines. So I'm launching this now So Probably we'll see logs from metric bit here. Well, if I remove the filter And it will start CP information about What's going on in the host? So let's open the dashboard So I'm opening first the system overview that gives me An overview of the hosts that are running this kubernetes instance as you can see I have three hosts Sorry, this is because of the resolution Uh, and I get an idea of the cpu on the different Host as you say from the name I'm running them on world cloud And I get an overall idea of the cpu memory disk network. So And as you can see here the histogram on host cpu We don't have metrics only for like the last 30 seconds But this will be full of the information of what happened in the past minutes So I will say this is the host that is running my school Only one of them is running my school and because of the memory usage I will say this is the one So I let me jump into it and we can see Information about that host and you get more detailed information here like Everything we show before plus more detailed cpu memory profiles And of course the top memory and cpu usage processes and there it is my school In the top Uh, okay So this is for the system module on metric bit. Let me open now the kubernetes Overview dashboard as I say this is directly set up by A metric bit. So when you deploy the manifest all these dashboards come come with it metric bit takes care of deploying them So here we are seeing that we have three nodes a cluster of three nodes with nine deployments going on Everything looks good. We don't have any unavailable pod And you can see also the cpu usage per node And so on and also top cpu and top memory intensive processes Taking into account that we are running all the different bits here So we can see five bit around here for instance or my school okay We are also monitoring my school Thank you to the auto discover feature. So we detected that my school is running and launching the my school a module for it And there it is we get an idea of The different queries that are happening now on my school active connections or this kind of metrics that you may be interested in As we say I just launched this so we don't have much history on this, but you will see the full graph for it Let's now take a look to packet bit as I say packet bit listen taps into the network and Understands what's going on on the different protocols. I configure it this one to understand dns htp on my school And I tell it's the ports. I'm interested on because It's too expensive to listen in too many ports. So I'm listening only in the ports. I'm interested So this is deploying packet bit for me And we should start having some information from it and I really like this because It gets you a lot of insights From what you normally don't see It may be cpu intensive depending what you are doing But I think it's really cool for some cases For instance, this is what I get using packet bit for my school It's able to understand the my school protocol and and tell you what are the queries that are being run So these are the queries that are happening as we speak probably Or the traffic generated by you And yeah, I get a lot of information that I can also get with metric bits. So you too It's depending of your needs, of course And We also have with packet bit the htp person so This is how it looks. I mean packet bit doesn't know anything about these web services. It's agnostic But it's able to understand what's going on. So actually I get information not only for my My application demo application, but for other services, but This is a cool use case Actually because as I said everything gets stuck with metadata. So I can filter To the name space I'm interested on so I'm getting all the metrics from packet bit from all the For the whole cluster and I can decide To to Listen only or to watch only the ones for my default name space I can add this filter here. Ah, sorry. So It already gives me the possible values from from the document the existing documents But I can add that filter and then I'm only watching the The request the htp request for for my name space where the application is running So this is thank you to having all these processors with metadata information We think they are really useful and They are available in all the different bits And let's check apm. I I did a trick with this one I let it run for the whole for the whole demo. So it's already running. I'm not deploying it now As I said, this is just in alpha status, but it's already working and it's really great So it's open source. So you can have a look to it In this case I instrumented my Django application. You can see that once I open the repo But it's really easy to instrument And it's getting information about all the views that are available and that you are hitting in the web page As it speaks Django, I get the exact name of the view from Django And as for now, I can see the traces using this So you say you see the response times and and the results of the htp request in the dashboard But I can also see the traces for any specific view. So in this case I get information on time, you know, about the MySQL queries and so on Alpha state, it's already released and really cool. So get that at right um I created a dashboard I created a dashboard for for kubecon So what I'm trying to show is the power of having everything in one place and having the code metadata to navigate all that and correlate all that I think it's really cool when you can do that So this dashboard was created for this demo Basically, the only filter I have here is using this covenanted metadata and instructing Kibana to filter only to the default name space, but this could be everything I mean, I can't even disable this and I get information for my whole cluster, which is probably too much But for this demo, as you can see, I can see as you can see we we have All the running let me do this bigger maybe all the running pots with the containers inside. I can I have here this So I can see that there is a mysql with a mysql container on it this is a the application pot with a Both the application container and the engines container and these other two are also pots I get the logs for everything here. So everything in this name space logs are here I get cpu usage per both I get memory usage per both Also, I took the file bit View from the logs from the engines logs as you can see I I can focus for instance to see what's going on in these errors So the whole dashboard Changed for it. So I went here and then I can check maybe the logs for what's going on and I can see here Something's going on we'll check later Let me go back to the view of Last 15 minutes for instance So I think that's really cool. I mean I can have everything in one place and correlate all that all this data. So That's really useful. The same goes for apm there. It is an information also how mysql is answering and Yeah, the same way I drill down to some time range. I can do it for An specific pot so for instance I have all the logs here for all my applications in this name space But I may want to watch only the ones from mysql Well, in this case mysql doesn't have any logs because it's not logging anything So let me focus on if you want. So maybe only this pot I get the logs for this pot only and in this pot. I have both engines and application So these are the hdp records that are being answered by this pot and only this pot And the same for apm. So if only one of the pots is that what you are interested in This is a good way to Using metadata to to navigate that And within this pot, I have two containers. So engines and the application itself. I can focus in one of them So logs for engines These are so this will be the exact log that we will be seeing with Watching docker logs for that container and I can watch all the system usage for it So I think this is everything I wanted to show today Thank you for coming Maybe you have some interesting questions here. I might can also take questions from the mic if you want World Joe. Thank you Okay Yeah, I'm publishing the slides. So yeah, give me Couple of I don't know. I will publish them during today. So if you go back to the cube con It said these slides will be published there I don't know what I'm having for lunch. Thank you Non-standard log formats Hi vj so, yeah, we are working on some things but Always you can use the ingest pipeline or logs task to do the heavy lifting there if you need to process Some format of of your logs. You can use both elastic search and and logs task to process them and We just see them Is beats an alternative to promissues well I'm not sure I don't think so maybe depending on your use case, but we can work together with promissues We can get metrics from promissues. We speak the promissues protocol and I think we are doing different things We are sending metrics for later analysis. So Can you compare file bit versus 24? Well, this I guess this This is a long comparison. I don't know I invite you to Test it and see what you think and maybe someone can do the comparison for me So, thank you and you have any other question Yeah So for packet bit we are Listening to packets we use pickup. So it's not over the wire, but we are getting them from the kernel And then we are parsing the packets from from the post Yeah, yeah, it may be expensive in cpu depending on what you are doing on your loads Normally, you may want to prefer to use logs and metric bit packet bit maybe something more specific for something Depending on the use case Yeah, of course if it's encrypted. Yeah, you don't see that worries Awesome Yeah, I think it's on right now. Yeah So, uh, ebay works very closely with the beats team to contribute a lot of stuff We recently also open sourced the collect beat Which is one of the community plugin to make it easier for I think our vision is that as a developer and the vt developer when they deploy the application on top of Kubernetes, right? So all they need to do is that define. Where is my metrics? What type from the s drop wizard? Where is my log file standard out different things and We wanted to be able to make it easier so that we can automatically script the log and metric and send it there, right? So we've been working with your team very closely on that one One of the things that I'd like to you know, please is that So there is this thing a community about using from tears. They use kibana, right? And then they use logs analytics. They use kibana So one of the thing that ebay has been trying to do is that can we actually try to unify those two so that we have like one Um, you know kind of open source console to actually look at both and to be honest with you We actually invested heavily in kibana. So we actually We added a lot of plugins Even stuff that were not natively supported by kibana. We actually intercepted the call to kibana We created the cube watch so that we can actually get all the aps servers data We somebody in my team actually presented that yesterday, right? But I think one of the things that we could work together as part of the community is that can that be one potentially, right? Let's say kibana, right? So because you have the timeline support as well that you can actually pull the you know metrics One of the things that I feel kibana is much more adopted on the operational You know team You know, but this I don't know the answer But this is something that we could work together potentially Making kibana can support a much better visualization on the time series data as well Yeah, for sure. This is something we are targeting all the time like improving kibana to to see to watch time series information And we actually have something called the time series visual builder Which is an easy interface to watch for time series metrics And yeah, uh, totally agree with you I mean you have been doing great work and it has been Really cool journey working together and putting everything in bits And yeah, there's still many things we want to do on that regard Thank you. So thank you everyone


Welcome Chief Justice Beasley. Good evening. I am Carrie Dixon, Chancellor of Elizabeth City State University. On behalf of the faculty, staff, and students of ECSU, I would like to welcome you to this virtual HBCU Road to Justice event. I would like to offer a special thank you to Ms. Shanta Corner and the ECSU student ambassadors for helping us to pull this event together. We are living in unprecedented times where we continue to witness the enormity of our country's pain, anger, and demands for justice. Let us strengthen our resolve to be a part of the creation of a better world, a world in which reason and compassion prevail over ignorance and hatred. ECSU prides itself in creating a supportive, nurturing environment for all students and employees. We remain committed to having an inclusive environment while we honor and celebrate our diversity. There is a continued need for intentional conversations around racial and social injustices. As an institution of higher education, it is our responsibility to offer opportunities for our faculty, staff, and students to come together for an event like this one this evening and to participate in courageous conversations. So it is my pleasure to welcome Chief Justice Sherry Beasley of the Supreme Court in North Carolina and all guests to this evening's program. Welcome, Chief Justice. Thank you so much, Chancellor Dixon. I am delighted to be here today. We are delighted to have you here. So thank you for taking time out to spend with us for this very critical conversation. We greatly appreciate that. Well, I appreciate you being here. I'm really honored that the chancellor came for this. But I'm not at all surprised. I'm very, very thrilled. And I was very, very excited when you were selected to be the chancellor of the university. I'm thankful also to associate vice chancellor Wade, who was instrumental in helping us get here. Dr. Crawford, of course, Ms. Poiner and the student ambassadors and panelists and the ECSU community at large. So thanks so much for having me. Thank you. Thank you. We are honored. OK, I turn it over to Dr. Crawford. All right, wonderful. Good evening, everyone. My name is Dr. China Crawford. I am the chairperson of the Department of Social Sciences. We have criminal justice, home and security, interdisciplinary studies, and history within that department. At this time, I will go ahead and introduce Chief Justice Beasley. After that, I will do a quick introduction of our student panelists. And then they will begin asking their questions. Chief Justice Sherry Beasley has been more than 20 years dedicated to the rule of law. She began her judicial career as a district court judge in Cumberland County, where she served for a decade before being elected to the North Carolina Court of Appeals in 2008. She served as an associate justice on the North Carolina Supreme Court for seven years before being appointed by Governor Cooper to lead the North Carolina Supreme Court last year. She is the first African-American woman in the Supreme Court's 200-year history to serve as Chief Justice. Chief Justice Beasley has been her entire career advocating for courts that are independent, fair, and accessible, and that serve every person with dignity and respect. As Chief Justice, she is advocating for a court system that not only solves legal disputes, but also helps people better their lives. By engaging local judges, educators, and law enforcement, she is helping to reform discipline in our schools and keeping kids out of our courtrooms. She is committed to expanding specialized treatment courts that better serve the needs of North Carolina's children and families. She is also working to leverage the power of technology to make sure our courts are efficient and accessible. She has lectured extensively to remote the administration of justice, the importance of an independent judiciary and a fair judicial selection. She is also active in her community through leadership in her church, first Baptist of Raleigh, her support of hunger-relief efforts, and her mentoring of students from elementary school to law school. She is a graduate of Douglas College of Rutgers University, the University of Tennessee College of Law, and Duke University School of Law, where she obtained her LLM. She and her husband, Curtis Owens, are the proud parents of twin sons, Thomas and Matthew. So join me in welcoming Chief Justice Sherry Beasley. So at this time, we have four students, ambassadors. First, we have Nomar Proctor, Mr. Elizabeth City State University, who is an aviation science major. We also have Miss Makayla Stokely, who is Miss Elizabeth City State University, who is a social work major. In addition to Miss Stokely, we have Mr. Jimmy Chambers, SGA president, and a double major in criminal justice and homeland security. Finally, we have Miss Angel Oxendine, Attorney General, excuse me, and a double major in criminal justice and social work. Students, you may begin asking your questions. We'll start with Jimmy. You may ask your first question. My first question is, what topic for you is hard or sensitive for you to vote on? And let me say this first. So the Supreme Court of North Carolina, of course, is the highest court in the state. And of course, we have a federal court system and a state court system. So we have trial courts, district and superior courts. Those cases heard there can be appealed to the court of appeals. And then the cases from the court of appeals, some of them can be appealed to the Supreme Court of North Carolina. So at the Supreme Court, we don't hear evidence. We don't hear from witnesses, no testimony. The issues that come before the Supreme Court are really legal arguments to determine whether or not the court below or the trial court aired, made a legal error, not a factual error in the case. So, you know, the Supreme Court certainly hears some very difficult and frankly, very moving cases. But I'll tell you, you know, when I was a trial court judge in Fayetteville, I was a family court judge, juvenile court, civil, criminal and traffic. And often hearing from witnesses and hearing the passion of their testimony and the cases involving children, some of those children have had to endure some real trauma. Probably at that level were some of the most difficult cases for me to think through. And whether they were on the criminal side where something either happened to a child or the child in some way committed some kind of a criminal offense or the child that were custody issues or something like that or abuse or neglect or dependency. At the Supreme Court, all the issues are tough, frankly. You know, the cases don't make it to the Supreme Court unless they are indeed tough. And this year we have dealt with some very tough issues around the Racial Justice Act and around race being engaged in jury selection and a host of other issues. And sometimes it's just bad things happen to folks and it's just, you know, it's just tough to know that people are experiencing those kinds of things even when my role really is to follow the law. And then my next question for you is what advice would you give someone who aspires to work in local, state or federal government? You know, my advice to young people, frankly, regardless of whatever it is you wanna do is to find somebody who is doing something that you might be interested in. And by the way, I don't think you have to know what you wanna do. When I was your age, I really had no idea what my path might look like. I had no idea. I knew I would go to graduate school but I really didn't know in what area. I mean, I applied to law programs, social work, public health, business, public administration, hospital administration and law. And so I thought about a lot of things. So it really is okay not to know but I do think it's important to be in touch with people who I don't think you have to know but I think it's always great to know more about the things that you just would like to explore. And so I can say the following in a room of 2000 and maybe two people might do what I'm about to say. You should pick up the phone and call Joe Smith who is an aviation scientist and say I'm really interested in what you are doing. I'd like to know more, I'd like to have coffee or a Zoom meeting or something. And the reason Joe Smith will take your call is because number one, I can say it in a room of 2000. Nobody's gonna do it, right? Because nobody wants to pick up the phone, right? But people my age who mentor and hire still pick up the phone, right? So picking up the phone is really important.  Nobody else is going to do what I just suggested that you do. And so knowing more about what people do and knowing more outside of our own universes, you know, a university to provide a wealth of experiences and a wealth of opportunity around scholarship and certainly ETSU does that. But also speaking with people outside of that universe is really important and knowing about their experiences and engaging in, and I'll just give you a sort of an offhand example, but I was on a vacation with my family one year and trust me, it wasn't a great vacation, we were just away. And we met a family from London. And the dad said, you know, next summer, we're going to send our kids to South Africa for sports camp. And I thought, people do that, right? Emma does at the time, by the way. Wow, people do that. Now, I never thought about sending my kids to sports camp and trust me, they didn't go, but to be thinking about the fact that people do that, that was an experience completely outside of myself. And if I had not been speaking with this family, I never would have known that people send their kids to sports camp. So that's what I mean. I think it's important to be exposed to it. And even though I experienced it vicariously, it's great to have those kinds of experiences and you can kind of pick and choose what of those experiences work for you. Getting my kids to the Y at that time was about as far as we were gonna be able to do that, but it is important. It was very important. I never forgot that I had the exchange with the gentleman, the family from London.  Yes, ma'am. And then my next question for you is, in life, everyone has a Y. So what was your motivation or simply what was your Y to want to run for Chief Justice? You know, in North Carolina, all judges are elected. And so I have now been a judge for 21 years and I had served on the District Court. I had served on the Court of Appeals and on the Supreme Court. And so I had good experience. And as soon as my predecessor retired, I started getting these calls from peers saying you really ought to think about doing this. So the encouragement was really helpful. And certainly I talked with my family about yet another run. This is my fifth election this year.  But, and so that piece was very important to me. But the other thing too, and this is the piece that I really want you to be thinking about is, I think often when we hear about these things, then certainly when I was your age, 2021, I could not have conceptualized that I would be here. But I think often along the way, we find ourselves in situations and we find that there's an opportunity. And we think of all these people around us who might be better suited for the opportunity, right? And we think about somebody who might be, you know, better, well-connected. We think about somebody who might be smarter, more creative, in a better position. She's involved in this activity over here and I'm not. She's prettier, he's more handsome. He's certainly got a better opportunity because he's got this, this, and this, and this. And it's not that the people around you don't because you surround yourself with people who are also very talented. But often we decide, we think about all these reasons why we're not the person for the opportunity. And so I would encourage us to think differently about that, that it is important for us all, all of us to surround ourselves with people who will encourage us. And not to be, for us not to be blinded when people around us cannot embrace the vision that we might have for ourselves. Because sometimes it just doesn't happen that way. That's okay. People can support you in the way that they can. But it's okay to think outside of that box and to think about what happens if I explore this opportunity for myself. And not to stop ourselves if we don't know how to get there. Because we can always figure out the way to get there, right? We can always figure that. We don't have to know the answers for ourselves. That's why it's important to surround yourself with people who know more and who know things differently. And that's not more, it's not that they're smarter. It's just that they know, they've had different experiences. Okay.  And so, Jimmy, let me also say this. And so I knew I was qualified, okay? I wanna say that because often we're afraid to say that I knew I was qualified to be Chief Justice. And I also knew that I had nothing to lose. And that I hoped that I could be of service to people in North Carolina. So we ought to also be comfortable in saying, I know I'm qualified. And I don't know everything about this musician. I'm not walking in it saying I know everything to do. I also continue to surround myself around people who would know a whole lot of stuff and a lot of staff and a lot of people who understand a lot of this stuff. And so we don't have to know it all in order to be able to go for it. So, you know, Jimmy, I'm so busy doing all the work. I really haven't thought about my legacy. I really haven't. But what I do hope is along the way. It's been really important to me to open doors for young people. And that this journey, you know, I do want to win this election and I do want to hold this seat. But it's only a temporary, it's not my seat. It's not my seat. It is for me to hold to make things a little bit better so that when one of you is interested in doing this very same kind of work, the journey will be a little easier. I'm the first African-American woman. The Supreme Court of North Carolina is 200 years old. And there is something frankly, a little disheartening about the fact that I'm the first in 200 years. It's something disheartening about the fact that there are only two African-American women in the whole country serving as Chief Justices and Chief Justice Burnett Johnson in Louisiana will retire in December. So as you all decide that you're gonna go to law school and professional schools, we wanna be telling a different kind of story. I wanna be supporting you all differently as you go forward. And by the time you're ready to do this, I want you to have been more of us in places where we have yet to be in service, where we have yet to have the opportunity to be in service. So I am hopeful that my generation will offer that gift to you. Just a minute. And thank you. And once COVID is all over, Chancellor Dixon, I hope we can get her on campus. Well, I would love to come to campus, but I would also love to have you all come to the Supreme Court. It is a beautiful courtroom and there's obviously a lot of history there, but it's also your Supreme Court. And so I would love for you to be able to see it. But you have a beautiful campus. I've been there many times. This is absolutely gorgeous. Yes, ma'am. All right, who will be asking questions after me? All right, we'll go ahead. Mr. Proctor, you can ask your question. Okay, good evening, everyone. And I just wanna give a special thanks to Chief Justice Beasley for even being here with us tonight. I appreciate your presence. My first question for you is, what were the biggest adversities you faced while progressing through your career and did those adversities ever make reconsider your position? I'm gonna answer the second part first. No, they did not make my adversities never made me reconsider. And remember, this is all hindsight. I'm a little older than y'all. And so I never reconsidered. I always thought if I can't go in this direction I mean, y'all know the good stuff about my resume but you've not heard about the tonsils and I've been told no. And for whatever reason, when I was told no, I just always sort of figured out another way to do it. And certainly there have been adversities. I mean, there is a reason that there has, I'm the first African-American woman to service Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina. There's only been one other African-American Chief Justice Henry Fry who's still alive and well and wonderful. And so certainly race and gender have been, have offered its own set of challenges along the way. But I will tell you this, I've not been in anything else other than an African-American woman. And so I have been comfortable navigating in my skin. And it's never been my problem. You know, sometimes it means that there are folks around who just hadn't seen it before and that's fine. But we got to work through it and move on. And it should never race nor gender or the other isms should never be a barrier to do what it is you wanna do. Which is another reason why you have to surround yourself with people. And that's why it's important to make the phone call to people who you don't know, who don't look like you, who've had diverse experiences to be building, this is really about building relationships. It's not just about making a phone call, having coffee, being done. It's amazing the folks I can look back over the years who in some way test my life, not just through a phone call but that we established a relationship and that they took an interest. And these are non-lawyers. These are not necessarily people who knew how to encourage me in the way through my career but people who planted something in me along the way. All of those relationships are hugely important. And when you face the challenges that really take you off, it's important to have people around you.   And there are very few people who just want to kind of tell you the truth but it's important to have people around you in your circle who will say, Sherry, you really must think about this this way or yeah, yeah, this is wrong over here. So it's important to be grounded like that. And certainly having sons does that but professionally it's important to have that as well. And by the way, my sons are 19, so they are your peers. All right, my next question for you is from your experience as a leader, what do you consider effective methods to get community members motivated and engaged to make a collective difference? Well, I hope these kinds of events really for all of us and still how much coming together is important. And I really do hope. I mean, your Chancellor Dixon has talked about and wonderfully outlined the really difficult challenges that we in North Carolina and in this nation have faced around race. And we know that the death of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery and Brianna Taylor really pushed the conversation. It's not like we didn't know that these problems existed before, but really pushed the conversation and really helped a diverse group of people to see that these issues really do exist. This is not a figment of our imaginations and that we really have to address these issues. And so I'm really hoping that we'll continue to build on those really important conversations and be moved by them, not just talking, but really move the action by them. But I also hope that most of you are old enough to vote. And I think often we think voting is something that we should do for the sake of voting and it really is so much more. And let me just give you an example. You have a wonderful small community that is being strengthened by a wonderful history and legacy of scholars and people who really believed in educating African-Americans. You have a wonderful leadership in your Chancellor Dixon and so many others and people who are important to the university really care about the work of the university. But I think often we don't associate. So I think, two things, I think protest is great. I think it's important and it's an important expression of anger, fear, hurt, rejection and all of that of systems around us. But I also think that if you're protesting, you've not finished the act unless you have in fact voted. That the protest really means nothing unless you take the responsibility to also make sure that the people who you choose to be in service for you are in service for you. But so I think I'm sure you all think that as well. And if anybody wants to know about our history it's not too late, I know we heard October 9th but it's not too late, you can still do that. We can talk about that. But the other piece that I think we often don't realize is if every student and faculty person and administrator and cafeteria staff and ground staff vote, we never make the association between those kinds of things and research dollars. But what does it say about your university when you take that kind of a stand? I mean, all kinds of folks start to take notice about not just your voting strength but your strength period and a whole host of areas. So voting is not just, I don't vote just for me. I certainly don't run just for me. And I hope you know that you're not just voting for yourself, that really you are voting for your universities, you're voting for your community, you're voting for your the children and the children's children you don't even know. And all of that is really important. And that's really what service is. It's doing things that really make a difference outside of ourselves. And that's really important for all of us. That all of you are scholars and that piece is very important too. But all of us really must have, I think, a service component to our lives. And your service component doesn't have to look like mine. You choose what that looks like for yourself. But I think all of us really do have an obligation to give back in some way. Okay, thank you for your response, Chief Justice Beasley. Now I can recall that we did a march to the polls recently. And I definitely feel like what you said about like influence the community regardless of the cafeteria worker, student staff that it definitely can make a difference in our future based on getting everyone to vote and exercise their right. So that's the last of my questions. I will now turn it over to Ms. Elizabeth City State University, Makayla Stokely. Hi, Chief Justice Beasley, thank you for being here with us today. My question is, what inspired you to become a public defender and did you ever see yourself becoming Chief Justice? You know, actually before I was an assistant public defender I was actually in the district attorney's office. And most people feel very strongly about one side or the other. I really could have done either one. I really enjoyed being in the district attorney's office. I could easily see good being done from that perspective. And it just so happened frankly that I landed a permanent position in the public defender's office. And in the very next week I got an offer from the district attorney. If I had gotten the offer honestly from the district attorney first that's the job I would have taken. But I'm so thankful. I don't believe in coincidence. So there's a reason that it happened that way. I'm so thankful that I went to the public defender's office. I learned so much. And obviously I had great trial experience and all that piece was really important. But more than that, I learned just so much about people and about hopes and dreams and whether I was talking with victims or defendants or the parents of victims or defendants or other community folks who were engaged in the cases before the court in some kind of way. It just really solidified for me that it really is important that however we come before the court and people don't come before the court when great things are happening in their lives. They've come to the court where there's some very difficult things happening in their lives. But all of us regardless of who we are have the same hopes and dreams and fears and cares and concerns for our families and our community. And that really does offer us a humanity for all of us. It doesn't, I mean, whether we are highly educated or not educated, whether we have a conviction or don't have a conviction. I mean, we all really do. The essence of who we are really is the same. And we don't, there are people who don't really know how to get there and don't need to know how to find a peace in their lives. And there are a host of reasons that that might be. But I think it's important to always consider the backstory because all of us have one. And my backstory doesn't trump the person. I may wish I could use that word, but it's not a bigger or better story than the person who comes before the court. And so I just think it's always really important to be mindful of that. And I'm not sure I would have left the public defender's office with that really important lesson embedded in my mind for the rest of my life. And I think because of that, it made me a better lawyer. It made me a better judge. It made me a better wife, mother, community person, all of that. And I think that's really important. Did I ever see myself becoming Chief Justice now?  So no, I did not. And I often talk about the fact that, and I was a lawyer by the time I saw an African-American woman serving as a judge. I was. And I remember looking up in the courtroom one day. In fact, I was in the District Attorney's office in Wake County at the time. And I looked up and I thought, oh my God, look at this beautiful African-American woman who is presiding in this courtroom. She's got great command of the court. And I mean, I was just, I was in awe. I was in awe. And little did I know. And so when I went to Cumberland to become, a Cumberland County to become assistant public defender, little did I know that I wouldn't end up practicing before that. I didn't know she was from Cumberland County. I didn't know that. I ended up practicing law in front of her. And literally she was a district court judge at the time that I became a district court judge. And she went to the Court of Appeals. And then I went to the Court of Appeals. And then she was the Supreme Court. So when you see it, you see it so much easier to think about yourself in that way. And so that's why, I mean, it's never lost on me why my service is important. The work of the court is obviously very important. And it's really awesome to lead all the courts across the state of North Carolina. And there's a great opportunity to really make some changes and create impact. But the other piece of the importance of my service is that so you all can see somebody who looks like you in service in this way. And one of the most wonderful things when I became the Chief Justice, I literally heard from people all over the world from as far away as Australia, who in some small way saw my appointment as Chief Justice as a victory for themselves. How awesome is that, right? So this is, it's never lost on me how important my service is. And often frankly, when I think about the outcome of this election, and thank you Jesus, there are only 13 more days. But those are the kinds of things I often think about is, what more work do I have to do it? And what more do I need to be doing in service to make sure that young people are brought along and cultivated so that they're ready to become a judge or to become a construction lawyer or whatever it is you wanna be in your life. Thank you for answering that question. I have one more. Are there any cases in your career that you believe had a significant impact on your personal life? Geez, a lot of them. A lot of them because I mean, these cases are about people's lives. And I never had a case where I thought that it was only about the case file. A lot of these cases I've taken home with me in my heart and in my mind and lost sleep over and really toiled not just about the situation, even there were times when the decision was clear but that the situations were just so difficult and so dire that even with a clear decision in the case it was just people who come to court are suffering. And so yes, I take a lot of these cases home with me at night. Thank you for answering those questions. I will turn it over to Angel Oksadar. Good evening, Chief Justice Basley. My name's Angel. I'm the Attorney General of ACSU. I just have a quick question. If you could go back and change anything differently, would you and what would it be? You know what Angel, we all have challenges and obstacles and good days and bad days and successes and times that don't work out just right. And you know, all of us often feel this sense of the need to like control every aspect of our lives, right? As the good master above is laughing at us as we think we can do that. And I certainly believe that it's important to make plans. But if I would go back and change something, I would have messed it up, right? I'm gonna mess it up. I mean, this is my journey. And for every single challenge, you don't really get to the other side of the challenge unless it was a challenge, right?  But you don't feel any of that unless you have the challenges. So the challenges are hugely important to our journey. And that's where the growth comes from. That's where the exploration, that's how we determine, we tried it this way, but we're gonna, that didn't work out, so we gotta try it this way. But you don't have to push yourself like that if you're never challenged. So I would have changed the thing. Okay, I just have one more question. As the first female African-American Chief Justice, were there any, what were your challenges of your journey? Like what was your challenges with your journey? Like did you have anyone down you? I know you have people that put down you, but personally, did you have anyone down you or something? Tell you that I have. Now there are people who have not, not to my face. And there have been people who have certainly been uncomfortable and not known how to interact. And I had one person to tell me that. And it was somebody who actually, a big staff of folks who, and commissions and all this stuff. And so it was somebody who ended up working for me. And, but ultimately we really have worked it out. And I think the world of him, I know he thinks the world of me. I'm also in a position where voters have the ultimate say. And so if they really don't like me, they don't have to be right. But I just, I haven't had that. And it's not that I don't know that it exists, but I also don't have the bandwidth to entertain that. I got work to do, I have a lot to do. And my service is really important and it is so much bigger than myself. We have changes that we must make in our court system. We know that we have, I think the death of George Floyd and the others really helped to change the conversation and the realization around the understanding that in our courts, we have had disparate outcomes and we have to acknowledge that. We have to acknowledge the very difficult history of race in our courts and in North Carolina before we can go forward. So I'm excited about the fact that even before George Floyd died, but I think the fact that George Floyd died, he didn't die in vain because I think he's moved us all forward in a way that we really would not have moved but for this tragedy. And so there are challenges. There are supposed to be challenges. We will address race, but it won't be easy. I mean, the courts are 200 years old and this didn't just start yesterday. So we're talking about the systemic issues that we really must address. And so I would much rather focus on those kinds of things and the outcomes of cases and deciding the cases at the Supreme Court and all of that than to be engrossed in my feelings about how somebody feels about my service. I just choose to channel my entities differently. Everybody's not supposed to like you, by the way. Everybody, so you're not doing something right if everybody likes you because all of us really must push and pushing means that some folks will be uncomfortable and that's okay. Thank you so much and I hope to meet you in person one day. As do I, thank you. That concludes our student portion of the event. Chief Justice, do you have any final statements or final topics you would like to address? Well, these questions were just absolutely wonderful and I'm really delighted that we've had a chance to engage with each other. But I really do hope that you will, and I've heard about your majors, I really do hope that you will think deeply. And I think often when we make phone calls to people to find out more about their careers or their lives or whatever that we feel like we must have to have some kind of an end, we've got to know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody to make that happen. And I would just urge you to take down all of that stuff. Is it a little scary to pick up the phone and call somebody and I'm like, mm-hmm, it is, it is. But what do you have to lose, right? You have anything to lose in everything you gain, right? You're right really, so just do it. Please do it, please do that for yourself. And I really do hope that you will feel this sense of empowerment. And I know that ECSU has been engaged and cares deeply around racial disparities. And I hope gender disparities as well. And that piece is so important, not just from a social justice piece, but I think that piece also develops who we are as professionals, as family members, as community members, as students, scholars, and all of that. I think all that's really hugely important. But I also hope that you too as leaders will feel that sense of empowerment around voting and around being engaged in civic engagement and whatever capacity is important to you. And I do hope that you know that even though you're young and you are leaders on your campus, that you really do set an example for those around you. And so this pandemic is tough, right? I mean, school doesn't feel like it's supposed to feel right now. It's really challenging. We all wanna make sure that we're safe and not sick and everybody's not back on campus and homecoming is messed up. I know I try to go to the down east game, which is always a lot of fun, but ECSU and we'll have any of that this time around, right? And so, but we have to think about the fact that in the very same way that that coming together really keeps us uplifted and keeps us grounded about who we are and what's important and that sense of community. We have to think about different ways to develop that even though we can't always be in person, but that connectedness is really important. And one of the things we don't talk about, we're still not comfortable talking about is mental health. And the reality is all of us, but I think it's, I won't even say especially students, since I'm talking to students, I'll talk about this, but I talk with lawyers about the very same thing because you know we're lawyers, right? We don't talk and we don't have mental health issues, but we do, but we as African-American students have to think differently about mental health. And that coming together, that's the piece that we all miss, right? I mean, we feed off of each other and when we go to the party or to the calf and we can see everybody and that coming together and when we can't do that, we have to understand that that feels like a real loss for ourselves. And so please make the, because now it's a greater effort to stay connected, right? But when you connect with somebody, you feel that sense of goodness in your heart, right? You know, you say I saw Jiminy Day and I talked with him and he told me this joke and all this stuff. And certainly that's easier when we can do that in person. But I think sometimes we think we're the only ones struggling, right? Because we're afraid to talk about it. And the reality is all of us are feeling the same thing. But coming together is so important for all of us. I was actually out last night and I'll tell y'all what I was doing. Roland Martin came to Raleigh and so I was interviewed and I was on a show. Y'all know who that is? Okay, so I was on a show. So, but there were people out there and there weren't a ton of people out there. But when I saw, because you know he's an alpha and so the alphas were out there. But it was just so great to be with Roland Martin. But it was so great to be with alpha men who I know and who I respect. But it was just the coming together and to be physically in the same place. So we really do need each other. And when we're not able to come together, which is how most of us are navigating these days. It is important to keep those connections. And it's really okay to say, I'm kind of suffering right now and I'm feeling a little down, a little blue. And those are the things we're often not comfortable saying. But it's important to say it. And it's also important to say, I might need a little help with this. And to be able to allow our peers, because you all are the leaders, right? To be able to come to you to say, I'm struggling right now a little bit. And so just keep that in mind. It's really important. But I do want you all to know that I'm very proud of you. I'm excited about the work that you are doing. I'm excited about the fact that ECSU is really on solid ground and leading the way in some really cool ways. I'd love the whole cybersecurity piece and all of that. And so in all the ways that you are excited and curious about whether it's your career path or something else, I just would encourage you all to reach out. And to really know that you at this time in your life, you're not supposed to see the end goal. You just are really not supposed to see the end goal. I mean, I was, I'm sure doing, y'all are far more focused, I'm sure, than I was at your age. But stay the course and be curious and don't be afraid to act on your curiosity. And you're not supposed to know what's around the bend, but you are supposed to be active in seeking opportunities and serving the community around you, whether it's the university community or outside the community. So I'm excited about all you do. I'm excited about the ways in which you are already engaged. I'm excited about your potential. And I'm excited about the opportunity for us to win this pandemic thing, cools itself down for us to come together and continue our dialogue. Well, I would like to thank you so very much, Chief Justice, for joining us tonight. I'd like to thank the students for all of their questions. And Dr. Dixon, I will go ahead and turn it over to you for closing remarks. So Chief Justice, we want to thank you on behalf of Elizabeth City State University for spending time with us this evening to have these critical conversations that I know our students will learn so much from in their development as they think about their future. And I appreciate the fact that you acknowledged that you did not know that you were gonna be Chief Justice at their age. That was just the path that you were on and you were obedient to that path. And so I greatly appreciate your acknowledgement of that because it's okay not to know at this age what you're destined for, but I know that we have great students at ECSU. I'm excited about the great things that they're gonna do in this world, the great impact they're gonna have to fill the seats for when we retire. They're gonna be ready to step in those seats. And so I'm grateful to lead such a wonderful university who's making a great impact in Northeastern North Carolina, the state of North Carolina and beyond North Carolina. And we are thriving and we are building a foundation to sustain for the future so that we continue to produce great leaders who are gonna be prepared to take on these great roles that they have in their path and their life as far as their journey. So we do thank you for all that you do. And we thank you. We're so privileged and honored to have you the first African-American female Chief Justice. We're so proud to have you join us this evening and thank you, Dr. Crawford. Thank you, Dr. Wade for helping us, for pulling all of this together and thank you to our student leaders and everyone who joined us this evening for this very important conversation with our Chief Justice, Sherry Beasley. So thank you all for joining us. Thank you all so much for having me. This was great.


Hello everyone and welcome. My name is Melissa Armell and I own the Stock Swoosh and I wanted to review three days of trading the golden gap here because it's earning season right now. It's a huge, hugely busy time in the trading room and for gaps and you get big moves in stocks. It's the entire month of August and it's a great time to make money. Clay, frankly, it is just the perfect, perfect time to make money. If you're interested in more information, you can email me at melissa at thestockswoosh.com or call me at 929-3200 gap. You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. On Tuesday, it was LL and this was a short, so the stock gap down, I mostly do shorts but occasionally will go long but I'm always doing gaps. That's all that I do. Profit on this day with a short, 1440. This is with an advanced risk for an advanced trader.  And then cake was a really good one. I love the gap in cake. Stock close to your gap down. Again, what you would learn from me in the class is what stocks to watch to know to do cake. Huge, huge bearish move in a sell-off in cake, $6,870 in the cake. Trip was a great short. Again, this was now on Thursday, so Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, the stock fell really big again. That was a short profit in the trip. Here was a trade, it was $2,860. Again, shorted at $49.98, getting out $48.55, more than a buck, nice trade. Beautiful move. This is exactly what you would learn with me how to take the trades and also the rating system. So the rating on the trip was 22 points. And then Apple was a beautiful, beautiful trade called the Trade Wednesday Morning. Here is the gap. Had the secondary move then on Thursday and here was the call. Went out before the market opened on Wednesday, here was the trade and it just hit all these crazy numbers and the stock is still running up. It's actually not even over until the 10th. But if you took this on Wednesday and got out of it yesterday, it was a huge trade. 352% return on investment if you risked $3,800. You would have made $13,400. Just what a huge, huge move in Apple, just a great trade. So Tuesday, you could have made $1440. Tuesday, cake, 6870 Thursday was Apple and Trip, huge day Thursday, $16,260. So you could have made $24,570 in three days. I gave the calls in the room. So if people were there in the open house, they got the calls. And it's very interesting because people always want to say, oh gosh, trading is so hard and this and that and the other thing, it's not for me anymore. I've been doing this now for 10 years. I'm extremely good at what I do and I'm extremely good at predicting where stock's going to go when it gaps. And that's what I do, that's how I make the calls. That's how I knew these things would happen. Just all in all, everything's been going so great this 2018. And to have these kind of profits in just a short period of time in a couple of days is just fantastic. So if you'd like more information, you can email me. If you want to sign up for the Golden Gap course and get into trade in the room for this month in August. The class is August 4th and 5th this weekend, 9 to 5. Class tuition is $54.99. Class is online, you have to sign up by today. It's the 3rd, it's a deadline. If you want to sign up for the options letter alone, it's for an annual subscription, $29.99 for the year. You get the trade zine domains to email to you like Apple. And you just take the trade when you get it and manage it. So definitely reach out to me if you're interested in the class. Today is the deadline. Have a great, great weekend everybody and I will talk to you soon.


So we are going to the first one It's called us versus them by Hal Peller Thank you Thanks So us versus them How many folks I think back on all the experiences in your life when you were in a scenario Where it was us versus them? How did it make you feel? Relaxing stress-free or Was it like your hair was on fire? right so us versus them How many folks were in the management position leadership position? Right, and what did you how did you feel about your your direct reports? That you could do it better than them Right If they were slightly incompetent maybe a little slow maybe less accurate and If you were subordinate, how'd you feel about your managers? Then there's the green new deal versus climate deniers While the planet is burning Republican back in the states we have a deadlocked nothing happening Congress because the red states are fighting with the blue states All the time and nothing gets done Then there's gender Boys versus girl men versus women when I learned how to play softball as an adult. I I Didn't throw very well. I said I said back then I threw like a girl but after only 15 minutes of Practice I Said I wish I threw like a girl Some of the women on my team could really rifle it in from out in the outfield Then there's generational right boomers versus Millennials. I had my neighbor. I asked him to I Had some heavy speakers. I wanted to bring to the second floor and he was young and strong So I said can you help me and he said Yeah, hold my beer boomer Then it is our tribe Versus people who are not in our tribe when I talk about our tribe. I'm talking about all the improvisers In our in our I love this tribe So generous people in this tribe is so generous so careful so thoughtful So they want to make sure that and it's just in their DNA to to create a safe space for all of us How does that feel? Don't you wish your friends and family can join in on that feeling of Of the joy of being in this tribe of mostly improvisers There's three factors that create us versus them Scenarios There is a fear of the unknown There's lack of trust and Then there's the inability to identify with community Or in their sense of alienation That's what causes the us versus them scenario And let me tell you FTC There's no greater harm for a culture than the this fear of I mean the lack of trust or the lack of community then us versus them scenario You want to avoid it or get rid of it as quickly as possible? And let me tell you something buying foosball tables or having a vice president of happiness and joy are only band-aids The true solution to us versus them is Is improvisation So who wants to play a game? I need a volunteer from New Orleans. Come on up Yeah, so this is Jessica Yes And you're not a plant, right?  Eight No, really Okay, hey, I need another No, another person to who thinks that they are about an eight or seven or an eight to come play with Jessica Need another seven or eight. This ought to be good and your name sir Ben thanks for your volunteering Ben Extra credit by the way Yeah, there's no term paper for you folks at All right, so what's the game? This game is like a tug of war without the rope Okay, and cash prizes Right, so here's the line We need you to grasp each other by the wrist You see like in the picture by the wrist There you go, right? now when I say go and remember Nobody gets hurt unlike the squid games We're gonna keep it safe and every time You have the one of the one of you gets the other person to cross this line here I'll pay you a euro or a dollar. Oh All right, no remember All right now nobody gets hurt remember it's very important and you have 10 seconds every time that somebody crosses this line. I'll pay the other person the euro or dollar okay, and Go what time time Yeah, 10 seconds One time.  There you go All right, two more people Quickly, please two more people perfect and remember Nobody gets hurt, but every time Let me remind you every time that Somebody crosses this line right here Every time somebody crosses this line right here You get paid a dollar. Oh, there's two people coming No, no, no, I'm sorry I'm sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry Sorry, sorry, sorry and it's every time somebody crosses this line you get a paid a dollar, okay, and Wait And go time I Got I counted ten times There's ten euro five euro and five dollars How did that? How did how did that feel? How did that feel to discover a loophole in my game? Right you see what happens when they collaborated How cool is that? It's important for to collaborate and and and and be positive about it. There's a solution out there I didn't add it. It's not a competition So improvisation my top three rules are slightly different than what you hear at the conference slightly different The the first rule is always make positive choices People are attracted to positive people. They want to collaborate with you Enthusiastically when you're positive, right? Anybody work with a negative person you avoid them like the plague Next is to be in the moment. That's you know that you you're in the moment because you can't physically be in the past You can't physically be in the future. You can only physically be in this moment right here right now so that Being said it eliminates distraction and you focus on what needs to be taken care of but all rules can be broken All rules we broken With this third rule make the other person look great What do they need to look great? So if I'm on stage with somebody and and and they're all all four of us are trying to make each other look great It's not about me. It's about you. What do you need to look great becomes internalized and we all succeed We all succeed So in the building industry, however It's the trades and Suppliers the electrician is the framers the plumbers etc versus the home builder and That's it's very and it is a lot of animosity between those two and Because the home builder is anxious about getting the job done and they want that done yesterday Right for a low price and they want the lowest price. So they're constantly rebidding And and the trades go on to the job site and it's not ready with a crew of people and it's not ready for them and they got the wrong material delivered and and it's just So much stress I think Brent, you know talked about yesterday. There's so much stress and rain damage that there's a lot of suicide That's an important relationship 95% of the people that build the houses are the trades Suppliers they're not Directly on the home builders payroll. So that's an important relationship. Wouldn't you say and and So I said to my friend Scott, I said, you know, I'd love to bring improvisation into home building and Scott said, oh No, no, no, no these the Homebuilders don't want their folks improvising when they're building houses. They want them to follow robust systems and processes to get a house built And I said what system of process, you know, it's got the pilot. I said, what's this? there's a lot of structure and and Process when you take off from an airport landed an airport I said, what system of process was sully sullenberger following when he landed that plane on Hudson River and And and saved 136 souls. He was improvising. He was improvising So it there's no faster way to eliminate the fear create trust and And and create community like we have here than improvisation And it doesn't have to certainly make things up as you go along. It's just the cold concept Let me get my water Thanks So So I work with the Created team from the builder side when I do process improvement with home builders all over the world And I create a team on the builder side, which they they look for They they they know that they're gonna hear from their trades because those are the folks that Are their experts, they know where the processes are broken or missing and they're They're they have to listen to the trades without getting angry and The trades actually come into the interviews Who you know full of fear they don't want to bite the hand it feeds them Literally put food on their table And so they're full of fear and they're gonna have to tell the builder that their baby is ugly and And because this is if it's a missing process or it's a broken process it creates a lot of stress out in the field so Then they're surprised and Say sit through the hour interview About how they feel When they find out that everybody in the room is rooting for him Everybody in the room is there to make them look great and They're able to speak freely Remove the fear create trust and now they're part of our community and everybody's working together collaborating To make it easier or better or faster to get the house built Without with less stress it's it's it's construction after all it's complicated, but Every every thing that you do to make it easier will make today better than yesterday, sorry Okay, so my Angelo said I've learned that people will forget what you said people will forget what you did But people will never forget how you made them feel Listen to mr. Arn And and also an improvisation Your way all those fear that you have in the beginning I think today Feel no more You don't even know Fear no more How do you think mr. Ong felt after his day of improvisation? Thank you all


So Uncle Drew has been around for a number of years now and to be quite honest he's been quite entertaining and now Pepsi has decided to take said character and make a full length feature film about him. But how was it? Let's find out. My name is Brandon Keith Avery and this is just my opinion. Hey what's going on guys thank you so much for tuning in to my opinion slash review. For Uncle Drew I really do appreciate it. I remember when I first saw the trailer for Uncle Drew it was around the time that Black Panther was about to be released in theaters or right when it was in theaters. I said to myself oh I remember that character from YouTube the Pepsi commercials he's funny you know I'm entertained I like the cast I like Little Red Howie from Get Out you know I'm on board this seems like it's going to be a good time. But when I actually got into the theaters and actually on my way to the theaters and when the lights was turning down I honestly said to myself like I really have no idea where they're going with this film what the tone is going to be I had no idea what to expect. Now this movie is being directed by Charles Stone III whether you're familiar with him or not I am personally he directed Drumline with Nick Cannon also Paid in full which is another favorite of mine a cult classic especially in the Black community and Mr. 3000 starring the late Bernie Mac rest in peace my brother and what the film is about is you have Little Red Howie he has a girlfriend being played by Tiffany Haddish you know he's more into her than she's into him you know we've all heard that story before but he takes his life savings and he puts it up because he wants to enter in this Harlem Street ball basketball tournament it called Rutgers and it's just legendary I mean this is the 50th year anniversary he feels that hey man if I win this tournament I'm gonna get the bragging rights I'm gonna get the cash money and me and Tiffany Haddish character I forgot her name but we're gonna get married and we're gonna start a family you know but unfortunate events happening he loses his team and all of a sudden Uncle Drew just comes out of nowhere this legend from way back in the day that was just crossing and breaking everybody's ankles on the court disappears but Uncle Drew just pops back up and that's where the film picks up you know these two teams up and you know he doesn't have a new team anymore he has Uncle Drew and Uncle Drew is like hey I don't mind getting down with your brother has to be my rules it has to be my team and it has to be my way and you know that is where the film progresses now I did like the intro of this film it set the tone for me initially but actually when I was starting to get to know the characters especially Tiffany Haddish and Little Red Howie I just wasn't feeling them that much and I started to get down because I just did not know what to expect or like where they was going with this movie I mean I don't know if this was a film that I was supposed to be taking seriously if this was supposed to be a comedy a serious comedy I just did not know but lo and behold things did pick up and everything start did start to come together actually in the very beginning I kind of got the mindset of like you know is this kind of like a black version of an Adam Sandler movie the old-school Adam Sandler not the new school you know cuz right now in my opinion all he's doing is just making crap and just doing cash grabs I mean he's having fun that's what you want to do but I just really don't feel like he's putting effort into his work and that's kind of how I started to feel about Uncle Drew now one of the reasons I was not a big fan of Little Red Howie's character at first his name in the film was Dax was because he just wasn't anyone to stand up for himself he seemed like a pushover and he just seemed like a people pleaser and you know if that's the type of life you live you're just never gonna be happy and I just really couldn't get on board with him at that point so eventually I did get on board with Dax's character he was funny and I like to laugh and you know he's a comedian in my opinion he's the way he would just interact him with the people around him I was kind of saying to myself you know if I was in this situation I will react the same way too when it comes to Uncle Drew played by Kari Irving who is a real life NBA basketball star or legend who is playing right now I did not like the intro to Uncle Drew I mean you know it's coming you know that there's gonna be a basketball game on the court and people are gonna be playing not up to his standards and he's gonna be to the side talking trash like oh I can do better and somebody calls him out and he goes out there and you know just kind of don't doesn't mean in front of everybody that's cool and all that good stuff but I kind of felt like that sequence of sequence of events and this film was rushed I don't know why they had to hurry I just kind of wanted them to slow down I mean it was just kind of too on the nose for me but it was still entertaining and I liked it and I think Kari Irving did a great job I should think all the characters did a great job in this movie other than one gentleman by the name of Nick Crowe he was the villain in the film or maybe I guess you can say the antagonist and he would just a little bit over the top for me I know that this film is a comedy and a lot of people just say okay brain and you don't have to take it that serious and no I like silly things but at the same time silly things has to match everything else around you you know I mean a film needs to set the rules of the universe and stick to it and the film did that early on but his character was just too over the top I mean just like I understand that the film has to set up an antagonist for you not to like him for the rooted for the rudeness the audience the film has to give the audience somebody to root for and somebody to root against and of course we are rooting against Nick Crowe's character but like I said it just it just didn't fit with everything else I mean he would just come through like yeah you know I'm the guy that you're not supposed to like I'm not smack I mean that's just kind of where he came across and I just not I just wasn't feeling him but every other every other character in the film I adored I love especially a little real how I loved him more and more and more as the film went on just as a character on screen I love everything about his backstory even though it was simple it was funny and it had a level level of depth to it I said Uncle Drew did a great job being played by Kari Irvin Lisa Leslie is in this she did a great job to Shaquille O'Neal is in this I mean this guy is just a big kid I was watching this movie and I was just saying to myself man I would love to be a fly on the wall on set while they was filming this because I know in between takes that was having such a great time of course you also have Nate Robinson Reggie Miller and Chris Weber in the film as well and they all did a great job too especially Reggie Miller and Chris Weber Nate Robinson's character he did not have that many lines but the time when the film was focused on him it did pop it did shine he did do the film justice but Reggie Miller I was not expecting him to have such a great comedic time and he did a great job and Chris Weber too by priests I mean there's a he's a he's name is priests and he's a preacher he's married to Lisa Leslie's character whose name is Betty Lou and I like the relationship that they had between each other it was little corny at times but corny is not a bad thing I like good corny good corny can be a great thing and just you know me as a black man and growing up in the black church and seeing the church scene that they had into in this movie they having to do with baptism and all that it was hilarious I was laughing my ass off and this was one of the scenes here to where Dax's character really elevated the film for me because like I said earlier he was really reacting a way I would like man what are you doing you can't do that that's crazy if you do that you know this is what's gonna happen and I don't want to be too specific right now because I don't want to ruin the film for you and you probably know what I'm talking about just from the trailers but just in case you haven't I'll laugh my butt off in the church scene and just to talk about Chris Webb's character just a little bit more a priest I really did feel like you know it was a real character and beneath it all like I mean yes he's in makeup in the makeup was a good job and you know this Chris River under there but you just the way you know when he wasn't acting silly and just kind of calming down settling and just having dialogue with the other characters in the film about his wife about his life about things back in the day about why the group fell apart I was like man this really feels like a real character you know everybody else did not feel like a real character but I'm not saying that they're bad I mean they were just you know comedic people on screen but I really did feel something from Kaui Irving's character or Uncle Drew and priests being played by Chris Weber but science that the film is funny as hell I was laughing my butt off from beginning to end in this entire movie I wasn't just screaming at the top of my lungs but there was a good number of times the while was chuckling and hard and everybody else in the theater was laughing too I mean it was a good experience for everybody and please if you go see this go see this with as many people in the movie theater as you possibly can some people may not like to do that and like to stretch out but I don't know for some reason this is just a movie that you just want to see with family and friends I think it enhances the experience and it I mean I went by myself but I was laughing and looking to my left for my right and it was doing that too just like man can you believe they doing this crazy stuff on screen right now this is great I'm loving this so I mean it's funny as hell I was loving the characters pretty much a great film all around also what's surprising is for a film that you know a lot of people may not take seriously and that's perfectly fine there was a lot of heart to this film too a lot of sentiment of value you know I'm saying like you really got to understand what was important to people in this film why they love basketball so much what persons they love what persons they like and didn't like and things like that what motivated them and they had a lot of a lot of that and I loved every bit of that now on the flip side a thing that I did not like about the film and this is just really my only gripe is that well first of all my great was the Nick Crowe character I did not like him at all but my next gripe is why you had all these great sentimental value with all these scenes with a lot of sentimental value love and heart I felt like that was kind of rushed through just a little bit you know I mean like I don't know it's kind of just like they was worried that you know people just wasn't gonna be feeling that and they wanted to get to the last so they just kind of like cut it kind of quick and I'm like no just stay right here in the film just a little bit like I want to see more of this like you don't have to rush through I mean every time a problem would arise in the film it was resolved just like this and I just kind of wish they would have fleshed that out a little bit more and you know that in America we have a three-act structure and majority of our films and right at the end of the second act in the beginning of the third there's always a character fallout like well if you man and if you were just something happens and this character goes this way and then the character that they have some beef with they come in at the last minute and you know makeup at the very end and so when they had that portion of the film yes the the fallout was real but it would just rush through a little bit and I kind of wish they just would have stuck there a little bit longer as far as all the basketball the concern that's great that a lot of people got the ankles broken this all the basketball games fell real the ending championship and the Rutgers tournament I had actually had no idea if the team that we're rooting for is gonna win or lose I really just did not know I had no clue and that's just a accolade or testimony how great I want to say the film is because you know you don't want things to be predictable and it wasn't here I really did not know and said that last shot dropped or I don't know if it dropped or if they made it I'm teasing you right now I'm not gonna tell you who won you're gonna have to see the film for yourself but you know I really did like it the film started out a bit slow but it got better and better and better other than the villain and them kind of rushing through the sentimental moments there was nothing for me to complain about I talked about the church scene how that was funny the dialogue was great there was a little scene at a club which was very funny I mean this is a movie that I know for effect that I'm gonna be buying on Blu-ray I'm not gonna buy them 4k cuz there's just no point of doing that but I will be buying this on Blu-ray this is a movie to where if you know a year from now if I'm flipping through channels and I see that they have Uncle Drew playing I can just stop what I'm doing and watch the remainder of the film no matter what point is it I mean I can see my friends coming over and we have this plan oh it's Uncle Drew yeah turn it up bro you know I mean it was just a great film I really did enjoy and I think you will too if I had to rate Uncle Drew out of a 1 out of 10 I'm gonna give it an 8 out of 10 yes and 8 out of 10 but guys that is just my opinion have you seen Uncle Drew have I turned you on have I turned you off do you agree with me or do you disagree with me let me know down in the comment section below let's get this conversation going to keep it flowing if you like this video go ahead and give me the thumbs up if you don't that's fine but you can still subscribe to my channel you can also look me up on social media Facebook Instagram and Twitter are that good stuff it's right there at the bottom of your screen and I made it very easy by providing a link to all that good stuff there in the description box below but guys I just want to thank you again for tuning in to my pn slash review for Uncle Drew and before you go don't forget that my name is brandy Thavery and that's just my pain peace


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