I am Jonathan King. I lead cloud strategy for Ericsson. And I am joined by an esteemed panel today. We'll talk for about 30 to 40 minutes, and then adjourn. Maybe I can just have each of the panelists introduce themselves starting with their hesh there at the end. Hi there, Radesh Balakrishan, general manager for OpenStack at Red Hat. I'm Das Kamhout, senior principal engineer at Intel, working on software-defined infrastructure. I'm Roz Roseboro, senior analyst at Heavy Reading, covering the TACO data center. And Susan James heading up the product line for energy infrastructure at Ericsson. So this is an open panel to talk about current market trends, challenges, and opportunities.  And I'm curious where to start with you, get your perspective on the announcement and how it fits in with trends that you're seeing in the marketplace today. So the core thinking behind the partnership centers around the fact that in the telco carrier space, there's a burning platform moment. There is a need to make sure that NFV or network function virtualization as a focus area needs to be made real and into production with truly upstream contribution. So the partnership centers around three areas within that context. One is making sure that there is a 100% open source based NFEI solution that's built on Red Hat OpenStack platform made available by Ericsson. So this is an extension of the Ericsson strategy in this place to become a multi-wim solution. I'm sure Susan can add more context on that one. The second pillar of that is around SDN solution, given the fact that both Ericsson and Red Hat are partnering around Open Daylight as a way to drive networking innovation. Ericsson are bringing to market a solution that's certified around Red Hat OpenStack platform. And last but not least, the HDS8000, which is a hyperscale solution which is available in the market, will certify Red Hat Enterprise Linux as well as Red Hat OpenStack platform. So all in all, an end-to-end comprehensive alignment of portfolio across Red Hat and Ericsson to make sure that we are fueling the communication revolution that's going on. And maybe Susan, building on that, you can similarly add. Yes, I think for us it's very much about providing operators choice. We don't want to prescribe to them how they should take their journey. We want to be able to support them in that journey. And as Ridesh said, that's why we have said that we want to take a multi-vim strategy. I think one of the things we see happening in the operators is that there will be pockets of different parts of the operator taking the journey to cloud and to NFV. And they will make different choices. And we want to be able to then provide a partner that can harmonize those choices in the longer term. And of course, we also see that the opportunity of partnering with Red Hat beyond just the NFVI space, as Ridesh said, we're doing certification on our hardware platforms. And I think also it's about being able to support onboarding of other applications, not just Ericsson applications. So particularly seeing, you know, RAL has such a great market penetration when it comes to applications, not just in the NFV space, but in the IT space, that it becomes critical for us to be a good infrastructure provider and we need to have support for RAL going forward. So I think, you know, it's about being open and giving choices. And does Intel sits in a unique position where you partner with a lot of people and you're looking at the roadmap of the industry out there once coming. So maybe your perspective on this partnership and what you're seeing in the industry. Yeah, well, I mean, fundamentally NFV and everything is happening in the calm space is where we've been supporting for quite some time ever since the start of even Etsy. Red Hat, we've been partners since, you know, Linux, right, so it's been a little while. And we've also been massive supporters together of OpenStack and into the Kubernetes space. So naturally from a software perspective, focusing on a market that's growing heavily towards Intel architecture is pretty interesting for us. And obviously with Ericsson, you guys were one of the first adopters or the first adopter of our rack-skill design. So being able to bring all these parties together is pretty awesome to go faster. We're always interested in things that make the industry move. Excellent. Roz, how do you see this announcement? Do you think of this as big news? Well, I think it's big primarily because it's bringing two industry leaders together. Obviously Red Hat has a history of being a leader in open source and cloud and IT technologies and Ericsson clearly has the history of supporting the telcos. So I think combining those two assets together I think makes for a really powerful combination. Awesome. Well, I mean, Susan, building on this, how does this fit within Ericsson's existing strategy? Do you see this as a change of Ericsson's strategy and evolution? I mean, I see it very much as an evolution of our strategy. I think when we started this journey some four, five years ago, we saw the market playing out in a different way than it actually has. So of course, as we take steps further, we evolve our strategy. And I think, as I said before, operators need to have solutions for rail-based workloads. And we also see these different islands coming forward. So we do see that most operators will have more than one-in-vim infrastructure. And we want to shift our focus then on how to then manage this multi-vim environment and how to make, you know, opens that easy to use and consume in a multi-vim context. And that comes from both the management and orchestration perspective and how you onboard VNFs and different applications, but also from a hardware infrastructure. And I think that that fits really very nicely with our RHS-8000 product where we have the capability of creating virtual pods where we can then allocate dynamically the amount of resources required for running those different VIMs if you like. Maybe, Redhash, if you look at the landscape beyond NFV, we look at SDN, we look at, you know, beyond their business models that are coming. How does Redhash see the operator space beyond NFV? And what are things that you're thinking about in that space? So if you pull back and look at what's happening in the carrier landscape, clearly on the IT side, there's more maturing of adoption of virtualization that's been ongoing for a while. And then now with NFV, introducing the same sets of technologies with different workload focus, I think we are marching towards a unified fabric that's gonna be there for both the IT side and the network side and the carrier from a carrier perspective, right? While the journeys might have started at different points in time. Given that our focus has been making sure that we're not creating a forked solution when it comes to the carrier side, but have make open stack carrier grade rather than have a carrier grade open stack, for example. So I think that fits in with the philosophy or the approach that Susan outlined as well, which is the market dynamics have changed. There was at one point in time, a felt need to have certain capabilities which are required for telco specifically. But now the community has come around to realize and innovate to make sure that those capabilities are in open stack itself, right? So that's kind of the long way of saying that we believe 100% upstream first innovation is going to be the model that's gonna prove itself out. And we're pretty excited about, you know, being in the position to drive that in partnership with Ericsson. That's great.  And, you know, what would you see as, and we've been talking about NFE for a number of years now, what would you see as the state today? Well, funny that you mentioned the research. I just completed the survey for Red Hat. And we found for the first time, we asked this question quite a bit, as you can imagine. And this was the first time where over half of the operators that we surveyed said they were currently executing on their NFE strategy, which I think is quite noteworthy. And similarly, we found that nobody said they didn't need an NFE strategy. And that has happened before. So I think that the question of, should we do NFE, that's pretty well decided. I think where we're moving to is now how do we make this all happen? And so I think that's, you know, from an industry standpoint, the more people we have kind of getting their hands dirty, they're starting to expose some of the issues. And of course, the sooner we can expose them, the sooner we can get them fixed. So like I said, I was quite encouraged to see that. And of course, you know, people that are trying to take advantage of this trend, that's also very exciting. That's great. And as I know, you said earlier, we've been partnering with Red Hat and Erickson for a long time and really see a big opportunity with carriers around NFE. Maybe just some more perspective from Intel on what you're seeing in the market in that space, in Intel's perspective. Yeah, so fortunately, you know, it all is moving forward. So that's fundamentally what we want to see. And also, as Redesh noted, we're really interested in having one code base that can work across multiple types of workloads. And if you fundamentally actually look at NFV versus some other, even a big data analytics workload, they're all processes that are doing computing of some sort with different characteristics, but they can all actually run on the same type of fabric. If I go back a couple years, I think I sat in room with Redesh and we went over rolling upgrades, all these key elements that enterprise needed. And actually, if you look at comms in telcos, it's the same things. So I think all this work that's been going in for a few years now, and by the way, I was building OpenStack Clouds and Diablo Days. So a lot of all that work, I think is really starting to pay off. And so now that the adoption's happening, I think enough of a groundwork's been there that it's not, you need some special OpenStack. It's, you have something that's actually good enough, it's working, and it's just gonna get better as we get more laser focused on NFE workloads plus additional workloads that have very similar characteristics. If I could add something. Thanks for getting yourself. Yeah. Absolutely awesome. I was gonna add one thing. You know, you're mentioning, Redesh was talking about carrier greatness and part of that same survey, we asked people what was important as they're looking at an NFEI platform and for the first time ever, something besides security was number one and it was reliability. But what's interesting was that we also asked them how confident are you in the existing NFEI platforms to provide all those characteristics? And I'm sorry to say, they're not particularly confident that the existing platforms can do it. And so that's another reason I think it's important. I think it's interesting that Erickson and Right Hairy coming together because the telcos want to make sure that the people developing platforms to them really understand what it means to run a network. And I think Erickson clearly has that kind of heritage so I think that's gonna be important. I think that's gonna make some, a lot of them feel much better because you've walked in their shoes and you know what their issues are. Absolutely. And I think that sets us up for a good transition and looking at, we have a sense on the state of the industry and why this partnership has come together. And I told the panelists beforehand I was gonna make a terrible pun but I couldn't contain myself. We have to talk about containers. And that seems to be like that is the next frontier. And we had Mirantis in the meeting before next door making some news with directions it's going and taking. And I'm curious to get just an open discussion across the panel. I don't know, maybe Rahesh if you wanna go first because we're looking to do more in the community space around containers. We both are highly interested and see it relevant but I think there's interesting things for the panel to share and just an open perspective on where do we think the intersection between NFE and containers is and where is it headed? Containers? Never heard of them. No I'm just kidding. So from Red Hat perspective we are all in on containers. So if you look at Docker as a Docker format next to Docker the company Red Hat is the largest contributor. If you look at Kubernetes next to Google Red Hat is the largest contributor. And we also have a design from ground up fully functional container platform in the form of OpenShift container platform that customers such as PrettyBond earlier today they were up on stage talking about their big data implementation. PrettyBond is one of the largest deployers of our containers on top of OpenStack as well. So we believe that being in the cockpit so to say of driving innovation across OpenStack, KVM, Linux, Kubernetes and Docker gives us an amazing opportunity to present choice in terms of you can run physical, you can run virtual, you can run containers. Our job is to make sure that the experience is seamless. So that's the opportunity that's uniquely in front of Red Hat and that's our product strategies evolving as well. Now when it comes to probably the carrier space we see a little bit of maybe a lag in terms of readiness to embrace containers per se more to do with the applications or the NFEs themselves not being ready to get there. That's a fundamental re-architecting decision. Lots of matters of work ahead and our opportunity ahead if you will. But at the same time from an infrastructure and platform perspective we are working to make sure that when that ISV momentum does happen the intersection of OpenStack and containers is ready to operationalize and have a life cycle, supported life cycle around a product. That's great, Susan. I gotta give you the mic. Yes, I've got something to say. I think two weeks ago we were in the SDN OpenFlow World Congress in The Hague and I think we had a really good demo there that we showed where we had a rabbit in the queue server running in OpenStack and then spinning up the client in containers. And I think there will be more and more of these sorts of examples where you'll actually want to use a combination of both OpenStack and containers. And the great thing about that is of course when you're using a container that the start-up time of the container is much shorter than it is for OpenStack. So, you know, being able to provide networking via SDN and automating that network becomes really crucially I would say going forward and how we then use containers to be able to complement I would say existing applications and existing BNFs certainly become something that we see going forward. As Riddish said, you know, if you look at the bulk of the applications in the NFV space then very few of them have any containers included at all. But certainly we see that as something that's coming forward. And then when we're building the infrastructure around both OpenStack and working with SDN we're making sure that we can manage workloads again from a native perspective, a virtualized and also a container based perspective because applications will tend to dictate what they want to use rather than operators making a choice or vendors making a choice on this is how we should go forward. So for us to be able to support a myriad of infrastructure becomes really key going forward. Very good. And as we've talked about containers beyond and other meetings and other settings it's been something that Intel's been actively involved in helping really stand up CNCF and contribute early on. So I know you have a lot to say on this topic and curious to get your perspective maybe not just on the BNF side but the industry adoption rate of containers. Sure, yeah totally. So I mean containers have hopefully all been around for a really long time. Heavily in Linux in 2006 and Docker made it easy. So basically we've been sharing at least a vision that we'd like to see all data centers, the core of them being containers which are basically performance isolated processes. And in order to, and the benefit of that is high levels of resource utilization, performance optimizations that you can't do natively in a traditional hypervisor based environment. If you look at something like Google's Borg it's built with this concept and if you have an application that actually has the give me entire server construct you run it in a VM. But that hypervisor runs in a container. So it's just a constant container world that it's nice to see. We actually thought it would take longer for the industry from a technology perspective to get to where we are right now but it's super encouraging to see the advances in Kubernetes, how much movement is going on to it. We love red hats all over it and it's allowing us to do some things that haven't been done before. Now on the application side though, obviously there's 100 different types of apps. NFE is an interesting space because when they took their initial appliances and moved them to NFE they actually didn't really re-architect them very much. So the reason that they want this high reliability is they didn't take cloud native concepts which is resilience, how to design your app in a fashion that allows for failure. Now when they see the ability to re-architect containers it brings a whole new interesting space because when you see what the Kubernetes API can do it's pretty powerful when you think about how you run software. Resilience is built into the constructs of the container orchestrator. So we're happy to see the pay sets moving. I think there's gonna be a widespread of applications but I think with what both Red Hat and Ericsson are delivering together you have that full breadth of bare metal. Give me a VM, give me a container orchestrated and then I'll go up to you with OpenShift and run across clouds. It's a nice space we're in right now. Yeah, absolutely and you know, Roz, you've done a study on NFE, maybe a study in the future on containers. What are your thoughts? We actually did run a survey earlier this year and we asked the question to the telcos about containers and essentially I don't think any of them said they'd actually deployed containers and when I spoke with them it was more an issue of we're aware of containers, we know they're gonna be a big deal, we're not sure when, we're not sure why so we're kind of keeping up with it because we know we have to be prepared for it eventually. I think they recognize that it really is gonna be the VNF owners having to do that re-architecture and they will be more the consumers of the containers as opposed to creating them so we just have to know how to manage them but it's certainly very top of mind for everybody. Susan's tapping my elbow, I have more to say here. I was actually gonna turn it around and ask you the question. Whoa. It was like the rent that would do this, so. She's called my pun. So I think a couple of things to say I guess and then re-put my hat back on on the panel piece. I think containers is this next frontier and actually a lot of what Dawes had said in terms of just the fundamental computer science benefits that come with it but also mindful of the application challenges that you talk about. I think this is an inevitable future but how we get there has to be really well thought out and staged and I think that comes with, from an Ericsson standpoint, we feel like we've already made investments and have started this journey in certain parts of our business. What we're very interested to do is have partnerships that can help inform where we go when we go and it's really one of the things that has drawn us to Intel and to Red Hat is that we can partner across multiple areas of our portfolio and then we can better inform and make decisions on where we take investments and we view that as part of our job for our customers is that yes, we want them to work with Ericsson they wanna work with Ericsson but part of what they expect when they work with Ericsson is that they're gonna get this perspective on where things are and where they're going and increasingly in the interconnected world we are in. Part of that means that we have to form relationships like this so that we can start to work together on the lab work, the coding, the development and actually my next topic which is how do we upstream this in the right way? We have so many different open source projects out there and sometimes there's even contention amongst some of them so and then there's also the risk downstream of things happening in Forks and how do we work upstream? So hopefully that answers your question Susan but I think we've talked about the Alliance we've talked about NFE, we've talked about containers maybe talking more broadly about just open source organizations and upstream activity and you're very active in the OP NFE, open daylight and you've mentioned it's Red Hat so you're very active in Intel's active maybe shift the topic to open source and what is Ericsson doing and driving right now and what are some of the priority communities that we're focused on? So at least from my perspective because Ericsson as you know is driving lots of different things so from my perspective of course I have a high focus on OP NFE obviously open stack, open daylight, open V switch and we're also getting more heavily involved in FDIO we also have then the open compute platform and ODCCP Yeah, so I haven't been so focused on the hardware ones being more of a software girl myself but really we have very much embraced the open source community as a development model I would say that over the last few years we have very much learned what that means in transforming to be an open source development model and certainly what we've learned along the way with open stack we have then transferred directly into our open daylight engagements where we do take a upstream only approach so very much similar to Red Hat I would say we're in the process of getting there from an open stack perspective as I said, we've been doing this for a long time and an open stack was definitely not ready from a characteristics perspective when we started this journey so we still have a legacy of capabilities that we've added to open stack and we're driving the upstream of that content through OP NFE as well as directly into open stack with partners working with both Intel and Red Hat to really make sure that capabilities are upstream because I want to move away from doing any work post-distribution. That has also been our experience around OVS where we took OVS and did improvements we're now moving away from that model so that we just work directly in the upstream so I think we've been doing some very good work with Intel around OVS in the last month or so where really made significant improvements in performance around OVS so that's the direction that we will go then using OP NFE as a way of how to glue these different initiatives together and really make some of those choices it becomes quite confusing and I think the whole mano space right now is a good example of that where there is a proliferation of projects ongoing and we need to see that really come together I don't think it's in anyone's interest to see too many projects going on and I think that you will see some more harmonization going in across the networking space as well going forward. And excellent, I have to talk with this. Excellent, and does Intel has made substantial investments in open source in carrier space and beyond? I mean it's a core strategic imperative that looks like maybe you can share your perspective on Intel open source. Yeah, so pretty much all those projects we're heavily involved with even one of my peers, Adrian Hogan covers a lot of the mano work from the technical perspective. Our goal constantly is drive as much upstream as possible as quickly as possible because it floats all boats, right? So how to make sure whether it's a cloud service provider that chooses to do everything themselves whether it's somebody that's working closely with Red Hat we wanna make sure that everybody that is using this technology can move as quickly as possible. We're actually in a weird state at Intel where sometimes the software actually isn't keeping up with the hardware advances which is not something that we think is beneficial for the world. We see some of the top players able to utilize those hardware benefits much faster than the rest of the world and if our goal is democratizing how computing happens in the software space and really if only a couple can benefit from this tech because they have deep deep Linux experience and have their own patches it's not, we don't see it as necessarily fair for the rest of the world that's trying to push the envelope too. So as fast as we can go upstream as many core projects as possible is pretty beneficial. Especially now that we have new tech coming like 3D cross point which is gonna be a game changer for how people deal with memory and storage and then what's happening with Silicon Photonics. We wanna see core projects move as quickly as possible get organized around something. Right now there's probably too many container orchestrators out there. We'd like to see maybe people latch on to one, maybe two but really drive those forward as quickly as possible. There's probably too much strife in the container runtime or formats today so that's why we care about things like OCI and driving some standards there. So the more that we can lock into a piece of code base drive it upstream quickly and keep up with hardware that'd be a fantastic situation. Yeah, we talk so much about software is eating the world but you with 3D cross point with all the technologies coming at the hardware level it really is a point where software does need to catch up. And you have to go to an advanced level because everyone knows it's Red Hat, it's open source. So how do you get the benefits of this upstream first mentality but still maintain the velocity of development to try and catch up to what Daz is talking about? Right, so first of all plus one to whatever Susan said and Daz said, right? From a philosophy as well as engagement perspective to your question about pace of innovation versus sort of the stability that's what we kind of pride ourselves in being able to parse on a day to day basis. For us upstream communities all are about how do we move the needle on the pace of technology innovation? But at the same time we quickly turn around and then say we know intimately what does it take to run in production a workload or an infrastructure and to live with it for n number of years and if you're from Japan that years might be in two digits if you will, right? So that is the product part of it. So by making sure that we're innovating fast and in an upstream aligned fashion we can make sure that the pitfall that Daz was talking about can be awarded. In other words, no snowflakes. Everybody gets the benefits of democratized innovation that we're driving at a very fast pace. At the same time from a product perspective we make sure that we spend an ordinary amount of energy driving quality engineering and having a support life cycle to make sure that customers can't live with that, right? So that's the duality that we kind of pride ourselves in being able to do that for the last two decades and we'll continue to do that. That's great. Well, we've had a far ranging number of topics. We're approaching our end here. I wanted to see if there were any burning questions from the audience. I know there's probably hunger pains because we're in the lunch hour. And I have a very important question for Roz about if there aren't any questions for the audience. I don't see any questions. We'll be up here afterwards and sort of joining you all in the movement towards lunch. My question for Roz is, like, what hat am I wearing? For those who don't know, our Cubs are going to the World Series starting tonight. Yeah, so this is like actually one of the first times I think I've ever worn a baseball hat at an event. I mean, I've done t-shirts all the time so this is the Chicago Cubs baseball hat. So it's the United States thing, baseball, the World Series. And the Cubs have not been to the World Series in 70 years. My mom pointed out that she was three months old the last time they went. Mine too. And I haven't worn the World Series in 108 years which is by some reckoning the longest stretch of any sport in modern history. So hence I'm missing the opening game tonight to be here with you. This hat keeps me comforted. So with that, we are a wrap. I want to thank you for joining us in the lunch hour and please if you have questions or anything come up at the end and give our panel a round of applause. Thank you.


In order to conceptualize the age we're in right now, or even this window of change that encompasses last year and the next few ones moving forward, we should imagine life like a grid of 100 blocks. Pre-pandemic, about 90 of those blocks, those aspects of life and society, were stable. And maybe 10 or less of them were moving around at any given point. But thanks to the pandemic, all of those 90 stable blocks, now they're the ones that are moving and there's less and less stable aspects of life to hold on to. 2020 was hard on so many of us. It uprooted everything and set us on a new course. Yet looking back, it almost seems like it was an important thing that happened because our old way of life was unsustainable. We were like a herd of buffalo heading towards a cliff and while collectively uncomfortable, the pandemic seems to have served as a collective intervention, forcing us to assess our forward momentum as a species. It's brought so much up for us to deal with from social systems to racism. And it's also brought up the subject of health. If you've been healthy, then the pandemic probably hasn't brought you so much stress so far as the virus has mostly affected those with weaker immune systems. But the pressure may not let up so quickly. As you might know, a more deadly strain of the coronavirus has begun to emerge, affecting people with better immune systems than just the sick and elderly. From this awareness alone, the subject of health is even more critical as we move through this time we're in. And not just physical health, but mental health too. As so many retreat indoors and away from those around them, feelings of depression, loneliness, and anxiety end up skyrocketing. It is often said that distance makes the heart grow fonder. Generally speaking, if you've been distant from something for a long time, then it usually makes you feel like you appreciate it more. One example of this could be like growing up in a hometown that you didn't like very much as a kid, but after some time away, coming back you might realize that your home wasn't as bad as you once thought. Truthfully, this is the same thing for us today with the pandemic. It is pushing us apart, especially physically, so that we spend less and less time with each other and we grow more distant than we once were. But this may very well end up being a catalyst for our collective growth though, making us have more appreciation for our connections to one another, not taking our friends and family for granted. To that end, the pandemic may have even collectively taught us lessons of personal hygiene, like washing our hands and keeping our space clean. For those on a more spiritual path, this may be even taken deeper as you clean up your own energetic field, cleaning up not just your physical body, but your mental body, your emotional body and your energy body. As the virus gets deadlier, we are going to continue to be pushed in this direction and those who don't have the potential to become more at risk of deadlier strains of the virus. Despite all of this, wouldn't it be amazing if we as a species could ride this wave of global changes into a more harmonious future together? But that's not necessarily something that's just going to be handed to us. In fact, the odds are stacked against us to really do that effectively. You know, there's an old saying that anytime there's a massive change in the world, someone gets rich, and what this is actually speaking to on a deeper level is that big changes means big opportunities. But usually, the people who are taking advantage of the opportunities are not the average people like you or me. It always ends up as those super rich people who've been preparing for the pandemic and other major economic shifts for years in advance. But personally, I'm very motivated to help create positive lasting change. And I believe that this starts with changing our thinking because nearly all of the mystic writings from ancient times and then even some of our greatest scientists in recent years have expressed this idea that you create your reality when it starts from within. Einstein said we have to change our thinking to solve our problems. Nikola Tesla encouraged us to think of reality in terms of frequency and vibration. And if we can change our own frequency, our own vibration, our thinking, then we can become masters of our reality. And where before the pandemic, it was harder to move the blocks of life around, right now, all the blocks are moving and we can be the ones to make them move. Are we going to let the super elite of the world decide what the future is going to look like? Are we not going to participate at all? With this pandemic, millions of people around the world have used it as an opportunity to make shifts personally. People use their time in quarantine to learn instruments or take up new creative hobbies, like that one guy who made a squirrel obstacle course, which was by far one of the best videos I think I've ever seen. Look at how creative we can be when we're emotionally and mentally balanced and centered. When we give ourselves the space to play with life instead of let it throw us around. At the end of the day, this comes down to our relationship with life because not everyone was so fortunate to make big changes when the pandemic hit. Many people spiraled into chaos. But you know what? It actually doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you're riding the wave of change or floundering underneath it, because all circumstances can change because all the blocks are moving. The wave that you're riding joyfully could toss you against some rocks and the undertow that dragged you under could gently let you up on a beach where you meet the love of your life. Change is a constant. And for us, on a deeper level, it's about learning to flow with change gracefully. This is ultimately the purpose of today's video. This is a call to action for you to seize the day. Carpe diem. I want to invite you to ride the wave of transformation as it's happening because you will never get this opportunity again. We all know it. The pandemic is not over yet, and it may not end for some time. It's most likely that our new normal is going to start to feel a little bit more rooted and established between 2023 and 2024. And this new version of normal will be nothing like how it used to be pre-pandemic, especially as we slowly emerge into a world of self-driving cars and everything being so automated. There's going to be less and less jobs for people in the world, which means there's more and more room for us to step into roles as creators. In fact, we're going to have to ask yourself, where are you going to be in that future? Think two years from now, are you going to be happier and healthier than ever before? Are you going to be more connected to yourself, more creative, more empowered, more free, or empty, scared, alone?  And listen, I'm sorry to say, a lot of people have already made that decision. Even right now, not everyone is working towards self-empowerment. Many people are giving up their power and living at a level of consciousness where they get whatever is given to them and don't insist that the quality of their lives look any particular way. If you consider for a moment that you are a creator, then a swirl of opportunities all begins with a very simple question to yourself. Who do you want to be? Where do you want to go? What do you want to have? Take a moment to think about this, let it sink in, and realize that very few people in the world truly let themselves be real with their heart's truth. It's often assumed that it's impossible to live the life of one's dreams and thus so many people give up. It's like we've all forgotten that living the dream begins with dreaming the dream and then believing in it. I know for a fact that it's possible for you to get there. Sometimes all we really need is a pep talk, just like this one. And other times, we need some extra tools or some one-on-one support and that's okay too. In fact, it's more than okay. It shows that you're willing to be open to receive support and wisdom. But straight up, you're one of the few. I can guarantee you that at this point in this video so far, there's probably less than half of the people who clicked on it who are still watching. That just comes with the territory of online videos and where people's attention spans are these days. This means that if you're still here, then you're in the minority who are still interested in this message and the possibility of something greater. And that's pretty amazing because it puts you in the group of those mold breakers who are not afraid to set the new status quo by moving our species forward into the embodiment of higher consciousness. So tell me, are you interested and willing to step into something new? Right, I'm ready in the live chat if you're willing to commit to yourself and your own personal evolution right now. Look at all that commitment right there. You are so awesome. Thank you, I love you. As I mentioned, sometimes a pep talk is really all you need, but other times, you need some tools. And so I wanna give you a free gift, a tool called the EEM formula. And it can be seen as a framework, a structure or a practice that you can use in order to help yourself fulfill your highest potential. It's something that you can use to shift your experience into a stable, emotionally balanced one and one that is aligned with your heart's calling. EEM stands for Esoteric Emotional Mastery and today I wanna give you a free download of a complete blueprint that will help you move forward right now. Wouldn't it be so powerful for you in your life if any time a problem arose, you were able to handle it with clarity and wisdom and not get thrown about into an emotional loop or a mental struggle that drives you insane for hours, days or even weeks? This gift that I'm giving you will teach you just that. It is a tool that you can use to master your own vibrational field from an emotional level, a heart level and a mental level. It really is a map to your energy bodies from your physical body through your emotional body, your mental body and your spiritual energy body. This map will teach you how to master your fears because you'll see where they come from and how to overcome challenges that block your path. Many years ago, we actually animated this in a parable. The Buddha once met a man who said that he had all of these problems, 83 of them specifically and needed help with each and every one. But the Buddha responded that he can only help with the 84th problem, which is the problem of having 83 problems. It is the foundation from which all other problems arise. And if we solve that, life falls into place and we rise to a new version of ourselves. For us, the way that we do this is through the EEM formula, mastering our bodies of consciousness. So you can find the link for this down in the description below. And I highly encourage you take advantage of this because it could very well set you on a path of transcendent change over these next few years. This new year is yours for the creating. But right now, things are so transient, nothing is stable anymore. Businesses, relationships, homes, everything is subject to change. And when things start to solidify again in a new place, will you be where you want to be? That's up to you. But if you need some help, use the link in the description to get the EEM formula along with a free exclusive video on how it works. And if you need even more personal one-on-one support, let us know. See you on the other side. Patchman out.


Appalachian Wireless proudly brings you unlimited data. Unlimited data is only $80 a month for a single line. Four lines as low as $200. Better service? Bigger savings. That's today's Appalachian Wireless. An East Kentucky network company. Get a speed slow to 25 gigabytes per line to 512 kilobits for phones and tablets. And 15 gigabytes for motors. See store for more details. The Martin County Water District has repeatedly faced challenge after challenge. But things may be taking a turn for the better. In April of 2016, the Kentucky Public Service Commission opened an investigation into the water district, which business manager Joe Hammond says is still ongoing. P.S.C., we're under investigation for that. It's simply a water loss problem. A water loss problem of more than 60 percent at times. Hammond says old service lines and meters are to blame for a lot of that loss. But the Martin County Water District has had no money to replace them. But that is about to change with the announcement of an ARC grant that has been awarded to the company. $1.2 million to replace service lines. And they leak whether they realize it or not before it goes through the meter. Some of these meters have been in there 40 years. Hammond says he hopes the new lines and meters will help stop the loss. And with potential rate increase on the horizon, the Martin County Water District hopes that better days are ahead. In Ainez, I'm Shannon Deskins, EKB News.


الحمد لله رب العالمين ثم صراته والسلام على أشرف الأنبياء محمد وآله طيبين الطاهرين اللهم صل على محمد وآله محمد أسلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته once again it's an honor to be amongst you discussing the holy verses of the Qur'an and the narrations of أهل البيت عليهم السلام if you have followed our lecture we have got to the point discussing the Surah سورة الحمد and we have reached the verse إهدنا الصراط المستقيم there was one hadith that we left off and we were not able to cover it within the previous episode under the verse إجاك نعبد وإجاك نستعين that we go back to Allah سبحانه وتعالى him alone we worship and him alone we turn back to help and to get aid and assistance there was one hadith that we were not able to cover it فالمصر الله محمد صلى الله عليه وعاله which will give us a very very good and important action plan that I thought it is very important and essential to our discussion to bring it to attention على النبي صلى الله عليه وعالى قال إن الله في عون العبد مادام العبد في عون أخي when we seek aid and when we ask Allah سبحانه وتعالى for aid الله سبحانه وتعالى has placed a condition if you want my assistance if you want my aid make sure you are in the aiding in the process of assisting and giving hand to your brother إن الله that indeed Allah سبحانه وتعالى في عون العبد he will aid his servant he will give him a hand he will be helping him مادامة until مادامة العبد في عون أخي so the more we are at the service of our brothers and sisters at the service of our community members trying to help them try to give them a hand try to aid them and assist them as much as we can the more we aid them the more we help them the more we will get help and aid from Allah سبحانه وتعالى so that becomes a very good action plan when we want something from Allah سبحانه وتعالى when we need help when we say every day 10 times we say اهدنا الصراطة المستقيم إياك نعبد وإياك نستعين اهدنا الصراطة المستقيم و الله guide us to the right path و الله unto you we come back for help and we need his aid and his assistance and help in every second of our lives well let us keep in mind that the more we want from Allah سبحانه وتعالى the more that we have to do for other people it's a very beautiful beautiful hadith an amazing hadith how it builds relationship between the community members and any discussion that we have any action plan that we have it has to start from our homes first within our own family wife helping husband husband helping wife brothers and sisters helping one another parents helping the children children helping the parents relatives community members us helping one another we have to bring this helping concept helping personality into our lives of looking around to see who needs help who needs assistance who is seeking aid for us to seek for us to grant their needs and help them and guide them do whatever it is in our hands to be there for them and the more for example I'm going to make it very very very tangible in that one hour that we are aiding someone we're giving hand to someone in that one hour الله سبحانه وتعالى will help us will grant our need will aid us will resolve our issues will help us in our difficulties and challenges so the more we want from الله سبحانه وتعالى the more we have to do for our fellow community members for our relatives friends and so on and so forth beautiful hadith and a beautiful action plan that we have to we turn back to you for aid and assistance and help well that requires an action we believe that by us helping other people we're getting aid and assistance from الله سبحانه وتعالى so this was under the verse عبود وعيك نستعين شاء الله we will continue اهدنا الصراطة المستقيم and Allah guide us onto the right path one of the best aids that Allah سبحانه وتعالى can do for us and can give us as to guide us to the right path right path in everything right path is mean to make the right decision picking the truth in every decision making that we are about to make we are about to get married well what is the right thing to do who is the right person for me I have received as a girl I have received a proposal different people who is the right person for me who is it the one what are the criterion what are the conditions that I should look in my future spouse well that needs help from Allah سبحانه وتعالى to show us the right path to Him in our عقيدة in our belief well there is صراطة مستقيم in our حقام and jurisprudence صراطة مستقيم in our moralities and characteristics and demeanors اخلاق صراطة مستقيم we are in need of Allah's assistant and help in guiding us to the right and onto the straight path اهدنا it is a command it is a command verb however it is with request humble and humiliating ourselves in front of Allah سبحانه وتعالى oh Allah we are seeking oh Allah we are begging oh Allah we are requesting oh Allah we are in need of your aid in guiding us to the right path so we are not commanding Allah سبحانه وتعالى we are not ordering Allah سبحانه وتعالى rather it's a request rather it's begging oh Allah every day every day 10 times oh Allah guide me to the right path here there is a misconception that we have to clarify and unfortunately throughout my journey in different states and different communities I see unfortunately some figures within the communities and every community that I have been to and some of them might be scholars of the community they have this misconception that has been unfortunately being spread within our communities and some of the books that we read we see it and some of the lectures that we see I was listening to a lecture from a scholar who was the religious leader and the religious Imam of an ex-community he said that this is a hadith which was completely fabricated hadith and he attributed that hadith to Amir al-Mu'mineen the commander of the faithful Ali ibn Abi-Tarab عليه السلام if he was fasting and if it was during the month of Ramadan and during the day while he was fasting and he would attribute this narration which is completely fabricated and it doesn't exist there is no source for it if he would have said this narration his fasting would have been invalidated so it is very very important to please pay attention to me keep your mind let me have your undivided attention because we are trying to clarify a very very unfortunately important concept that has been taking over our communities and that is we hear that سراط مستقيم the path to Allah سبحانه وتعالى as they say path to Allah سبحانه وتعالى is the amount of the people on earth basically they are relativizing the truth in other word everybody has a portion of the truth Muslim has a portion of the truth Shi'a has a portion of the truth non-Shi'as have a portion of the truth Jews have the portion of the truth Christians have a portion of the truth Buddhists Hindus agnostics atheists everybody has a portion of the truth and they are on the right path portionally well this is wrong when we read this verse اهدنا السراط the right path and it is singler it's not plural it's not many it's one one path to Allah سبحانه وتعالى and they aren't know any other path to Allah سبحانه وتعالى what is it will come insha'Allah at the end of this episode or the next two episodes or three episodes we will talk about it what is that سراط وستقيم we will talk about it but right now we are discussing it are there many paths to Allah سبحانه وتعالى or is it one according to the verses of the Holy Quran every time that سراط has been mentioned it is one and when it's talking about it سبيل سبول there are many other path that they will not end up to Allah سبحانه وتعالى there are falsehood there is one right one true path to Allah سبحانه وتعالى again what is that path we will discuss it but first let us come to conclusion that is one path chapter 6 so this is one verse اهدنا السراط المستقيم guide me on to the right the right path one sraat another verse chapter 6 verse 153 وانهذا سراطي مستقيما فتبعوه this indeed is my straight path so follow it one path انهذا one سراطي one path to Allah سبحانه وتعالى مستقيم it's just straight path to me فتبعوه follow it and then continues again chapter 6 one sraat another verse again chapter 6 verse 153 this is the way that we should read the verses verses of the holy Quran when we read them we have to ponder or have listened to a lecture there was a scholar he was wearing a turban with all the respect to all of the scholars may Allah prolong their lives may Allah guide me and them and all of us on the right path may Allah enlighten our hearts with the light of the Quran but we can make mistakes we are not infallible we are fallible so I listened to a scholar he's discussing that there are many paths to Allah سبحانه وتعالى and I'm reading chapter 6 verse 153 throughout one of the action plans that we gave in the previous episode that we read 50 verses a day and we read the translation of those verses and then we take one verse and we ponder so throughout our journey of reading the verse of the holy Quran I reach to this verse so I'm reading وانهذا سراطي فتبعوه while Allah is talking and saying this is indeed my straight path there is one straight path to me follow it and then he continues ولا تتبع السبولة فتفرق بكم عن سبيله and do not follow other ways other paths for they will separate you from his way so there is one straight path to Allah سبحانه وتعالى one straight while Allah is ordering us فتبعوه follow follow this one straight path from A to B we will make more example and Allah says ولا تتبع السبولة there are many other ways and Allah says فتفرق بكم عن سبيله that Allah says and do not follow other ways for they will separate you from his way so there is one way to Allah سبحانه وتعالى and there are other ways exist but those other ways will not get you close to Allah سبحانه وتعالى ذالكم وصاكم به this is what he enjoins upon you so that you may be God wary very important point very important for us to keep reminding ourselves our community members we have to learn the knowledge of Quran and educate other people when we hear this discussion as being spread within our communities within our fellow citizens we have to remind the world one سراط احدنا السراط the path وأن هذا سراطي مستقيم and it is logical it is rational when two people when they have a dispute and they go to the courts in front of a judge either one or other one is right and the other one is false they have a dispute they go in front of a judge this person says this belongs to me the other person will say this belongs to me so one of them is right one of them is wrong they can't be both right they can't both claim that this phone for example is this it's one and it's not the others how can they both possess this somebody purchased this and the other one didn't and has a wrong claim so that's one scenario or they both are wrong maybe one stole it and he's saying it's my and the other one also wants to claim that it's his can't be that they both are rights one is saying this and one is saying the other it's can't because they are contradicting one other one say I am right and the other person says I am right which they both arguing against one another for example possessing something or many other arguments so it is logical سرات it's very important to keep reminding ourselves there is one path to Allah but we see within the holy verse of the Quran also Allah has brought سبيل or سبول to bring it closer to our mind سرات is like a highway is like a highway that has many lanes there is one path straight path but in it there are many lanes if you are driving slower you go on the right side if you are driving faster you go to the left side but this highway it's all toward one direction and not other way when we see this this path as the path of the question comes if there is only one path to Allah why do we see different divine religion Christianity Judaism at least these other two in addition to Islam then how comes that they preach different things and they all claim that they will end up to a God but they are different very good question الله سبحانه وتعالى if we see and read the lives of the whole all the prophets starting from prophet Adam على نبينا وعليسلام all the way to our current prophet they all had the same mission and they all preach the same thing the first and foremost obey and worship Allah سبحانه وتعالى and not associate any partner with him be aware of the day of judgment do good to one another this was the basic fundamental so worshipping and obeying الله سبحانه وتعالى is that highway one until the second year after hijra fasting was not wajib people accepting Islam before hijra for many many years they were not fasting because it was not wajib the path is one but sharia differed from time of prophet موت على نبينا وعليسلام to time of prophet على نبينا وعليسلام some things became halal because of reasoning something became haram because of reasoning but when prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه وعليه came we believe that anything that he said is halal it will stay halal until the day of judgment حلاله محمد حلاله الى يوم القيامة وحرامه محمد حرامه الى يوم القيامة it won't change but the previous religions previous prophets their faith and belief it was all one thing but sharia differed a little bit so we don't see any major shift from one to other they used to say for example although and worship this God and the other God no no there were all one path but there were different there are different lane and there is more to this discussion but I want you to be very careful number one the first action plan let us not forget the more we need from Allah سبحانه وتعالى the more we have to do for other people help them help them and also there is only one to Allah سبحانه وتعالى there is more to this discussion in sha Allah we will leave it for the next episode we will conclude our lecture and our presentation by praying to Allah سبحانه وتعالى with the most important dua of our life and that is for Allah to hasten the repairs of our beloved Imam محمد لله فرج الشريف بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم اللهم كل وديك الحجة ابن الحسان صلواتك عليه وعلى آبائه في هذا الساعة وفي كل ساعة وليا نحافظ وقائدا وناصرة ودليلا وعينة حتى تسكن وارضك طوع وتمتعه فيها طويلة برحمتك يا أرحم الرحمين