Hey everybody, my name is Jared Watts and I'm a founding engineer here at UpBound and a co-creator and maintainer on the cross-plane project and we're going to talk about how you can build your own platform as a service from all the components in the cloud native landscape. So speaking of the landscape, it's pretty big. There are a lot of entries and a lot of projects in it. People have found some humor in this and in recent months somebody actually made a thousand piece puzzle out of the landscape and it's sold out. That Etsy link will show you where it was but it's no longer for sale because it's sold out. It's pretty popular. There's a lot of stuff going on in this landscape right. We see what happened to old Charlie here when he tried to make sense of the landscape. So let's do a little bit better than Charlie did. Let's start making some sense of all of the sprawl in this landscape. So the CNCF itself says that complexity is the number one user-reported issue in the ecosystem. It's been that way for a number of years. So that's a recurring theme. So one way that we can help out here is that we can start composing these entries in the landscape together into higher level solutions, right? Turn these ingredients into recipes. And so what we're going to do today is just that. We're going to build our own cloud native platform as a service and it's going to empower our developers to run their applications with a rich platform underneath them of all these great projects from the landscape. So we're going to make some sense of all of that into a nice platform. We're going to put some best practices, some operational wisdom into it and then we're going to be able to share it and collaborate on it as well too. What we're building here today is a starting point and it's just one opinionated platform, right? Out of that landscape you could build a number of them, I'm pretty sure. So we're just going to start with one today and then we can use that as a starting point to collaborate in the ecosystem and keep building. So let's do a quick refresher on how you can build your own custom platform using crossplane. So basically we can assemble together low level granular resources from multiple vendors, clouds, environments, and then we can expose those as a higher level of abstraction to our application teams that serves as an API for them to be able to self-service and get the infrastructure they need. So to make a more tangible example, we can compose together, you know, GKE, node pool, network subnetwork, a bunch of GCP resources, and then also some Helm charts as well too for our platform services and projects and compose those all into a single cluster object that is basically an abstraction of what it means to be a cluster and that cluster object is going to have a small set of config for our developers so that they can tweak what they need to and then all the complexity and the details and policy and all that sort of stuff is actually going to be hidden away from them. That's going to be underneath this simple API line that we're building for them. All this is going to be done with Kubernetes API so it's going to be compatible with anything that talks Kubernetes basically and we're not going to have to write any code to do this either. This is all going to be declarative. A little visualization for this here is that our application developers, all they'll see is the cluster object, this API that we've surfaced for them with some simple configuration and then behind that API line, we can have multiple compositions to fulfill what it means to be a cluster. So in this example here, we've got one for AWS, we've got one for GCP with all the specific cloud resources that make up a cluster within those particular environments but it doesn't have to be multiple clouds for our compositions. It could be all within one cloud and it could be something like fast or slow, expensive or cheap, gold or silver, doesn't matter. We can have multiple compositions that serve as the runtime definition for what a cluster means for our application developers. So let's talk about what are we going to put into this platform as a service we're building from the cloud native landscape. Well, we're definitely going to start with Kubernetes because we're going to need a container orchestrator cluster to run our apps and our workloads. And so building on that, we're going to also put Prometheus in there. So we can do monitoring and collecting metrics from all of our microservices and then alerting when things go wrong as well too. Yeager is going to be useful for distributed tracing. It will give us insight into all of the complicated interactions between the microservices in our distributed system here and find out when things are going wrong as well too. Fluid D will be helpful for our logging, consolidating all of our logging that's being output from our services. Rook we're going to be putting in there as well too for storage. So Rook provides persistent block file and object storage. So if an application needs a volume to write to or a file system that it can get it for Rook. And then lastly, we're going to put flux in there as well too. So we can connect our Git repos with our cluster there and do continuous deployment of our applications from the Git repo using GitOps into our cluster here to keep our applications up to date as developers are making changes. Here's a architectural system diagram that kind of puts us all together. So remember we were looking at our cluster object that our developer will be able to configure and have a simple API with. And then when that cluster object is created, Crossplain is going to take a look at it. It's going to render out all the compositions that we've defined. And then the providers in Crossplain will actually be talking to external APIs and making this system happen out in the real world. So provider GCP will be talking to Google Cloud and it will be creating the network, the node pool, subnetwork, the GKE cluster itself. And then provider Helm will also be taking a look at all of the composed resources that came out from our high level cluster abstraction. And it's going to be deploying all these Helm charts for Prometheus and Yeager, et cetera, into a namespace inside the GKE cluster, the operators namespace. And then lastly, flux and running inside the operators namespace there too is going to be connected up to GitHub to be looking for changes in GitHub and the using continuous delivery to take the application from GitHub and put it into some namespaces inside of our clusters as well too, so that we'll have pause, employment center, running that make up our workloads. Let's start designing the shape of this cluster object, this platform API that we're putting together for our developers. What sort of config knobs do we want to give to them to allow them to be able to tweak and configure to their liking. So some things that might be interesting is some characteristics of the workload cluster itself, you know how many nodes it has, what type of machines are going to be making up this cluster. We're probably going to also care about what versions of the platform services they might depend on. And also we're definitely going to care about what is the Git repository that we want to run continuous deployment from. And so we can start thinking of an API here that exposes these knobs for the developers to set and tweak. And so we see here we can specify the count of nodes and then the size of the nodes that we want. Note this isn't a specific machine type because this is going to be a universal API for multiple vendors. So we're kind of extracting it into a small, medium, large type of format. We've got the versions for the services in the cluster and then what GitHub URL to be syncing from. And note too that we're probably going to want some policy here underneath the API line because you don't want to just let your developers specify willy-nilly how many nodes in the cluster. We want to put some upper bound on it too. So we're going to need some policy underneath our API line as well too. So here's another kind of diagram of the composition hierarchy really. So starting at the top there, you know the developer all they interact with is a simple cluster object. They're making a claim on a cluster and then beneath the API line, here's this whole hierarchy of composite resources and compositions that compose them. So we can see here that underneath of the API line there's a cluster, composite resource, and then there's two different compositions that we can be looking at here. One for GCP that is made up of yet more composite resources, a GKE one, and the services composite resource and underneath those there's more compositions of lower level resources. So the GCP resources we'll see there, the Helm charts for the various landscape projects we'll see there as well too. So we can see this hierarchy of the composite resources and compositions underneath them that put all together make up the entire platform that we're building. We see that all that complexity is yet again underneath the API line and then the developer doesn't have to worry about that. So let's also talk about how are we going to get configuration from the developer from this simple cluster object down into this composition hierarchy so that the leaf resources, the granular low level resources can get the composition or sorry the configuration that they need as well too. So we see here that we expose you know the size and node count for the cluster to the developer in our cluster object and so we can take that from the developer's object we'll take the size and we will patch that down on into the particular GKE managed resource, a low level resource and note here now that small, medium, large doesn't mean anything to GKE so we were making a transformation of developer's configuration into something more specific for GKE. We do something similar for AWS as well too with their different specific AWS specific machine types but basically we're taking small, medium, large, we're mapping that to a specific set of machine types in GKE and basically getting our developer's intent down into our compositions and into the real world as well too. Similar thing can be done for the node count where we will set that on the number of nodes in the cluster and the auto scaling properties as well too and this is exactly where we want to apply more policy something like open policy agent to specify hey developers you can't set a higher node count than 10 or something like that so they can't go too high with the node count so policy being configured into these patches in these compositions is very important too. One more patch to look at is how do we get our continuous deployments, platform services, configuration down into those home charts as well too in our compositional hierarchy so we can see a very similar pattern here we've got some defaults defined for let's say the flux home chart but then we're going to patch in everything that comes from our developer's cluster object as well too the versions and the git repository URL they set we're going to take those from their developer cluster object and patch those down through to the underlying home charts in our compositions so that those get reflected into the real world instance that we're bringing up for them as well too. So a quick reminder as well that we're looking in deeper into some of the complexity here but that's all beneath the API line right this is something for the platform team or the infrastructure owners to worry about and the developers still focus on the high level simple object simple API that we're exposing to them with a small set of config knobs for them to turn into tweak and that's all that they have to deal with that compositional hierarchy and patching and all those things are only something that the infrastructure team and the platform team is going to have to worry about the developers get to have a simple focus still all right so let's hop into the demo now and see all this running together on a you know live practical system okay so let's get this kicked off by starting on the upbound cloud registry because that we have made this cloud native reference platform and it's available in the upbound cloud registry and so we're going to start from here to get it running so I'm going to go ahead and just run this in upbound cloud so that's you know I don't have a cross plane instance running right now so I can just create one on-demand here to run this demonstration with a cross plane instance that's in upbound cloud so that's going to get kicked off and created a cross plane instance for me okay now that my cross plane instance is ready in upbound cloud the cloud native reference platform was installed into it automatically along with all of its dependencies as well too so we're ready to get started with this thing so in my cloud native reference platform here I'm going to go ahead and connect to the command line and start showing some things there as well too all right so on the command prompt here let's start examining what is in our platform that we brought up so let's take a quick look at the packages that are installed just make sure everything's on there we installed our cloud native reference platform there and they brought in dependencies of provider gcp and provider helm so those are all there ready to go and then also included in that that platform that we installed here it would be the xrds is well to our composite resource definitions so you can see here now that we have a cluster object and one for gke and services as well too so those are all look to be ready to go and ready to consume so let's take a quick look then at what we're going to actually create here so I'm going to create now I'm the developer my infrastructure platform team is installed everything for me and everything's ready to go and as a developer I want to get a cluster now so here is a cluster claim that I'm going to go ahead and create as the developer and we're we've seen this in the slides before where we're going to create one node it's going to be a small one and these are all the versions of the platform services that I want and then note I'm pointing specifically at my get repository to do the continuous deployment from so that's what we're going to apply now so let's go ahead and apply the same file there so that gets kicked off and then underneath now cross planes going to see that we have requested a cluster and all that machinery for the compositions and the composite resource definitions that our platform team defined that's kicking into gear now so we can see here that we've got a cluster composite resource created now and it's not going to be ready right away because underneath it there's going to be a lot of infrastructure that is getting brought up in Google Cloud now so I'm getting all the managed resources which means all the basically all the services in Google Cloud so in response to requesting a cluster a cloud native platform cluster I'm now getting in GKE I'm getting node pool subnetwork network etc so all that stuff is kicking off now and installing and then the helm charts for all of our platform services our Yeager our Fluent D flux all that stuff is now actively being reconciled and the actual state is being driven to match the desired state that I've requested and all this is happening right now all right let's check in on our deployment and see how things are going now it looks like all the gcp infrastructure is up see they are all ready true so all of our cluster and network and everything is looks like it's ready to go and happy let's also take a look at the platform services that we deployed as well too so yes our Yeager our Prometheus Fluent D all that stuff it looks like they are ready also and deployed out to the workload cluster in GKE that we brought up so it looks like everything should be about done here one other thing to look at is that I have a separate kube config to connect to that remote workload cluster we brought up I just got the kube config from the connection secret that crossplane saved for me from after it completed provisioning the cluster so if we look at the operators namespace in that workload cluster that we brought up in GKE we can see that all the operators for Yeager and Fluent D and everybody and Rook down here they all look to be running and this one's a job so that we completed okay I think and so everybody's ready and running so I think the platform is ready to go so we can now start putting our application into this workload cluster that we brought up from our platform in GKE in order to start getting our applications deployed to that workload cluster using flux let's jump over here to my my repo that has a couple of different applications in it that I forked from fluxes example upstream so we can see here that we've got a ghost blog and Mongo and Redis you know database and caching as well too so these are the components that we would expect through fluxes continuous deployment to be syncing from this github repo into that workload cluster that we showed you so one thing I need to do to make that finally connected here is that I need to add my deploy key to the to the repo here so that the identity that flux uses will be accepted by github to let it access this repo and to start deploying the applications the Redis the Mongo the ghost blog from this repo into the workload cluster so we've added the deployment key now and let's go check on the workloads inside the cluster all right so back to the command prompts here we're going to run a kube control command to connect to the workload cluster that's in GKE and then we're going to get the the helm releases from flux the ones that it's syncing from the github repository down into this cluster here and we're going to see that excellent looks like ghost MongoDB and Redis were successfully grabbed from the github repository using continuous deployment to get them into this workload cluster so it looks like everything is pretty much completed now where we've deployed our cloud data platform we have gotten the infrastructure provisioned through a simple cluster object that i's developer was able to tweak a couple config settings on we've got all this complicated machinery and you know full cloud native platform brought up for us and on demand and then we were able to start using continuous deployment and allowing these operator platform services inside of our workload cluster to start getting our applications up and running and be able to use some of those services as well too that our platform team provided for us okay let's wrap this up with some conclusions now uh basically not everyone's going to be an expert on the cloud native landscape so let's take this expertise and knowledge and consolidate it to our platform team you know they can go through the efforts of you know making sense of the sprawling landscape and they'll define a platform for our developers and all of our app teams will get to benefit down the road from their efforts um you know they'll be able to write their apps to focus on their business logic and they'll get all that great functionality right out of the box from this platform we've designed so basically we can now with crossplane that we can make a opinionated platform of our own we can design APIs for our developers to get their needs serviced and today we made one that was a cloud native environment with all the fixings in it right and so we can also share this with the ecosystem um we've done that here today uh there's a link to the github repo that has this cloud native reference platform in it and so you can use it directly or you can use it as a starting point to start tweaking and building your own cloud native platform um or platforms in general because there's a lot of good content in there to help you get started on that journey um you know building your own platform APIs with crossplane so thank you so much for attending and I think we're going to get into some questions now


Hey guys! I have another challenge for you. I know, right? You're all groaning and groaning at this point.  I shouldn't say plain, inexpensive piece of paper. In this case, this one has some paint smudges and smears on it.  Now, this isn't a ballpoint, which was my original idea, and I'm going to title the video that. This is a big pen, but it's not technically a ballpoint. This is a big reaction pen. I don't have a ballpoint. How is that even possible? Nothing but just a plain office supply pen and a piece of paper. What can you do? We're going to tear this off and we're going to see in real time. Yes, okay. First thing I'm going to do is orient the page. I think I want it to go this way. Just my pen and my paper and playing. Yes, I'm not doing it in pencil first, you notice. I'm going straight for it and I'm going right in. I'm going right in there. What's the worst that could happen? I make a mistake. That's all right. We need Bob Ross called. Happy accidents, right?  I want you to see what you can do if you challenge yourself to just use that one kind of material. Limit your supplies. Limit what you're using and see what kind of fun stuff you can do, because I bet you can do some fun stuff. I have all confidence in you. Just something quick and easy. You don't have to make it any more detailed than you want it to be, but how cute is she? I'm going to zoom in for you. Now, you could, of course, you know, take something else that's quick and easy. You know me. You knew I was going to grab these, right? I love these things. You could take these gel highlighters, Bible gel highlighters, and she's not perfect.  I mean, so whether you choose to do it with nothing but a ballpoint or to highlight it with something also simple like the highlighters, look at what you can do, right? So go out there, do some simple art. Limit your materials. Oops, wrong way. Limit your materials and supplies and see what you can do with a narfed up piece of paper and just your ballpoint and see what you can come up with. And if you can do it a timed art piece, that might even be more interesting. But just a plain piece of paper and your ballpoint, you can, of course, highlight it with gel pens like I did afterwards, but I want to see what you could do with that. Just pen and a piece of paper. All right, that's it for right now. Don't forget to like, share, and subscribe. And if you would like to join one of my Facebook groups or support my channel by shopping in the Etsy shop or send me happy mail or anything like that, the links are all in the description. And the most important thing, go out and have a great day. Do something nice for yourself because you deserve it. Do some art. Nothing but paper and a ballpoint. All right, that's it. See you later, guys.


This 2022 Ram 2500 Crew Cab Short Box is stock number 22 T14. We are here at Summit Automotive in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. You're new and used Ram and heavy-duty truck headquarters. This 2022 Ram 2500 is a tradesman level two group. It has the 6.7 liter Cummins diesel, the 68 RFE automatic transmission. Black clear coat is the color. We're going to go all the way around inside, check out the radio, start it up, check out under the hood in this video. And we shoot all of our videos in 1080p, 60 frames per second. If you have HD capabilities on your computer, tablet, smartphone or television, I highly recommend turning them on right now because it is your best way to check out the look, styling and options of the vehicle before seeing it in person. And if you like the video on how we do things here at Summit Auto in the upper right hand part of the screen is a subscribe button. Click that and then click the bell notifications and you'll get updates every time we do videos like this one of our new and used inventory here at Summit Auto. First thing, I'm just going to show you the original window sticker set. You can see all the options and pricing on this one. This is a 22 Ram 2500 tradesman. It has the 6.7 liter Cummins diesel, the 68 RFE transmission, 373 gears standard. Everything on your left side there is standard equipment. This one is diamond black crystal pearl. So it does have a little bit of metal flake in it. We'll check that out in a second. That's 100 bucks. This one has the customer preferred package to HA protection group with the skid plates. 95 bucks are the transfer skid plate. Has a convenience group with the dual climate control, 3.5 color display, fifth wheel and goose neck Choyne prep group, which is nice if you got a camper or trailer. And it has the chrome appearance group, which is $1095. Gives you the chrome bumpers, chrome grille surround and the chrome clad wheels. Has the tradesman level two equipment group, which is 1145. Gives you the cloth, 4020, 40 split bench seating, carpet floor covering and front and rear floor mats. It also has the power sliding rear window. Has the electronic shift on the fly transfer case, that's a push button. Has anti-spin rear axle, which is $495. Cummins diesel is a $9400 option. You get the trailer tow mirrors, which are 195 bucks. 115 volt auxiliary front power outlet, which is 210. And then you get the exterior 115 volt, 400 watt inverter and back. Instrument panel mounted auxiliary switches are $145 clearance lights. Our 95 rear wheelhouse liners are 195 engine block heaters, 95. And then the automatic leveling air suspension is $1,705. We'll check that out in just a second. You can also get the Uconnect 5 NAV system with the 8.4-inch touchscreen display, which is a $1,590 option. And that's a really cool radio. We're going to check that out in just a second as well. Get the RAM connected services, selectable tire fill alert, off-road pages, Google Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, which are now wireless. 4G LT Wi-Fi hotspot with trial included and Sirius XM 360 with 6-month subscription. Also has the trailer brake controller, which is $295. Total MSRP is $63,450. If you want to get your summit price in the upper right-hand part of the screen, there's a link to our website with all the pricing and incentives on this truck. Things are obviously still crazy with the chip shortages and everything going on, but we should have a price up there that's very competitive. A three-year 36 bumper-to-bumper and five-year 100,000 powertrain. Greenhouse gas range C plus and small range B plus. And this one does have the five-star government crash test ratings and very safe vehicle. Four and five stars, pretty much up and down the board except rollovers three, but very safe truck. We'll hop onto the back here. I did want to show you this diamond black. I mean, like right now it kind of looks just, you know, like a gloss black, but you get the light on it and you can see just how reflective and how much metal flake is actually in that paint. It's really a cool color.  This is just a little bit different than on the 3500s. You can see those airbags up there. There's one right there. There's one right there. And you can see the lever, which is right there. So when the bed gets full, that goes down, the lever pushes up and it'll automatically fill those rear airbags to get your back end nice and level with the front end. So really a cool system. You have your goose neck and fifth wheel prep group back here. There's your seven pin and four pin wiring. You'll sub that 115 volt 400 watt plug-in back here. And let's see that. Four pins right there. And your seven pin. Get the side box tie downs. And that goose neck fifth wheel prep group is always nice to have. You get the Chrome 4x4 and RAM logos, as well as that Chrome rear bumper. The receiver hitch, four pin, seven pin wiring back here as well. You can always tell if these RAMs have the air suspension, they'll have a sticker unless somebody takes it off, of course. As the heated fold-up tow mirrors, these are really nice to have. I've pulled my camper with a RAM. And these mirrors were awesome to have pulling the camper. Directional signals are heated. And then they also fold in like so. Inside the Tradesmen level two group gives you the dark charcoal and black cloth interior. The 40-20-40 split bench seating right there. You get three cup holders in that center console.  Which is great if you drink coffee like I do. Get the factory floor mats, auto headlamps, power windows, power locks, and power mirrors. We'll hop inside and check out the instrument cluster, the radio, and everything that this truck has to offer on the interior. So you get the 3.5-inch colored instrument cluster right there. Digital speedometer. You get the Bluetooth and information center controls on the steering wheel. Cruise controls and gear selector on the right. There's your six-speed automatic transmission, 68 RFE. And then it has the push button four-wheel drive, push button start. And then the Uconnect 5C radio with the 8.4 display. This radio is supposed to be five times faster than the 4C was. And you can tell just, you know, when you're pressing buttons, stuff is a lot quicker, more responsive. I can turn the ignition on here. I can show you the dual climate controls right there. So that's a really nice system. And of course, you get the factory navigation system. You have your bed lowering mode, your review camera, which is now HD, super crystal clear. You can zoom in right over the receiver hitch to get hooked up to your bolt camper trailer the first time. Then it has the auto dimming mirror. And then all your different apps here as well, including Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. And like I said, you can project those to the screen wirelessly now. So that's a really neat system. You have all your different apps here, including Bluetooth, Device Manager, driver profiles. You can set up different profiles for this truck. It has the off-road pages, which are pretty cool. And they load up right away now. They used to take like 10 seconds, 15 seconds to load up. Now it's instantaneous. You get your latitude, longitude, altitude right there. Your accessory gauges, pitch and roll. And then you have your steering angle on there as well. So really cool stuff that you can do with this radio. And I've said this before, but we could spend pretty much an hour just going through this radio. But anyways, down here are your climate controls, your more tactile ones with the buttons and knobs. You got dual climate controls, your factory brake controller. That's for an alternate trailer height. So you can set up different trailers with that auto-leveling air suspension to a hall mode factory exhaust brake. And then you get six up-fitter switches. If you want to put extra lights on the truck or anything that requires power, these act just like light switches when you press them. So cool stuff there. Two USBs, two USB C's and an aux jack. You could do the keyless entry, the push button start on there.  Up here you get that auto dimming mirror, SOS and assist buttons, power side rear window button and map lights. We'll take a quick look at the back seats and then we'll take a look under the hood, start it up. Because I'm always amazed at how nice and quiet these 6-7 Cummins are. As the latch child safety system for any child car seats you may have, that power side rear window with the built-in rear defrost. We get the factory floor map back here. This one does not have the in-floor storage. I think they might have taken that away as an option for the tradesman group. Maybe it's an option that you can add on, but it used to come with the tradesman level too. Storage underneath the back seats. And then you get the side curtain airbags right there. Child safety locks on the back doors. And we'll start it up, take a look under the hood. I would personally like to thank you for checking out the video today. And hopefully from this HD video you will have been able to verify the quality and condition of this truck inside and out. Under the hood we have the 6.7 liter Cummins diesel engine. Always amazed at how quiet they are. There's a sweet truck. There's your emissions sticker.  That's just about everything you need there, those clearance lights up top. And to see more pictures of this truck or one of our other 450 new and used cars, trucks, SCVs, minivans, Wranglers, half-tons, three-quarter-tons, one-tons. You name it, we've got to go to that website right there. www.summitauto.com, full pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle from two locations. All at www.summitauto.com. If you'd like to check out more HD videos you can go to www.youtube.com. So I have Summit Auto. Remember to like, subscribe, and share on this video and all the videos that you see there. Click the bell notifications. You'll get updates every time we do a video here at Summit Auto. In fact in a second you'll see a link to subscribe to our YouTube channel in the upper left. A link to more Ram 2500 truck videos like this one in the upper right. A link to this vehicle on our website in the lower left. And a link to one of our latest YouTube videos in the lower right. Click those, check us out. I'm super excited to be offering the 2022 Ram 2500 Tradesman Level 2 in Diamond Black Crystal Pearl. Thanks again for checking out the video. Remember to like, subscribe, and share.


So on that note, I am so incredibly excited to introduce our first speaker for today, Allie Easton. Allie is an actor, director and disability consultant from Russ Agilis. Allie received her degree in theater arts and psychology from the Rousseau Pacific University, then moved to Italy where she studied deaf theater as a Fulbright scholar. Upon returning to the U.S., Allie worked with the Niles Wooden Theatre Company, the Chance Theatre, Ilhan Valley Laboratory Company, and more. And it is a company member with a few major joint productions. She adapted, produced, and directed an awareness workshop of women and Juliet, an illiterate love story, for the Hollywood French Festival in 2014, and a full version for a few of her joint productions in 2018. Allie now moved to Chicago to pursue her ever-filling acting at a theater school at DePaul University and graduated in June 2022. Here, she was worked as an actor and disability consultant with a theater school, the Gift Theatre, and Chicago Shakespeare Theatre Company. She's an adjunct theater at Roosevelt University, focusing on theater and social justice. As an honest advocate, her mission is to cultivate community, facilitate education, and promote accessibility and inclusivity. Ilhan was one of the first speakers I reached out to and finalized for ITF this year. Her passion for theater and access is so clear in her work and the way she speaks about it. I'd like to welcome Allie Easton. Thanks. So can you all hear me okay? Excellent. Hi, everybody. Good morning. Thank you so much for being here. It is my pleasure to be here with you today. I have my notes here for my own access needs. So maybe I contact maybe on my phone, but I'm not on my phone. My name is Ashna and the entire CESA team for including me in this year's festival. My name is Allie Easton. My pronouns are she, her, hers. I am a white woman with shoulder length, light brown curly hair.  I am a disability consultant, actor, director, realtor, adjunct professor, and all around artist entrepreneur originally from Los Angeles now based here in Chicago. I am disabled and I've been doing disability advocacy unofficially for about 20 years and disability consulting more officially for about the last eight years. Just to set some expectations, I'll be sharing information with you all for about the next 30 minutes or so, and then we'll have some time for Q&A at the end. You are welcome to engage at your comfort level both in person and online. A little bit more about me. I was a theatrical child growing up. My siblings, God bless you. My siblings were often a subject to my playwriting character breakback stories and directing when we played Barbies, complete with me giving them line ratings. When I got older and technology developed, I commandeered the family video camera and created elaborate setups for family videos, hoping to be on America's funniest home videos. In elementary and middle school, I formally found my way into the informal art of improv. And then in high school, I was in my very first show, my first scripted show, bye bye birdie, if you can believe that. I did a little drama class that I first started to experiment with ways to make theater more accessible and more inclusive, adding American sign language into monologues and ideating on stories focused on disabled characters. This interest in experimentation continued into my undergrad studies where I did an internship with Deaf West, the premier deaf theater in Los Angeles. At school for my senior thesis, I directed and acted in A Night of Deaf Theater, a series of scenes with hearing and deaf actors using English and American sign language on stage together. So no interpreter in the corner that you have to look back and forth and inevitably miss something. It was all happening together on stage. In 2014 I moved to Italy as a Fulbright scholar to do research on deaf and inclusive theater, which led to the workshop version of Romeo and Juliet with the Hollywood Fringe Festival in 2014, and the full production again in 2018. I hold a master's degree in leadership development, recently received my MFA in acting from the theater school at DePaul where I also did work in disability advocacy and consulting. Now that you know a little bit about me, I'd like to go around the room and have everyone share a story. I'm just kidding. But I do look forward to connecting more over this weekend. I have to say when Ashna first reached out to me about participating in this year's festival, number one, I was thrilled. I love that something like this exists and I can't wait to see what happens this weekend and every weekend coming. And I knew immediately what my presentation topic was going to be, talking about disability consulting and theater. The recent push to make theater more inclusive and more accessible is extremely exciting, but the path forward is not always clear. It takes more than simply hiring an ASL interpreter having a ramp or something else to make theater truly accessible to and enjoyable for disabled artists, performers and audiences. Coordinating access needs, providing cultural support, translating scripts to ASL and more, disability consultants are the best assets for a theater trying to be more inclusive and accessible. But what is a disability consultant? What does that job fully entail? When should we bring in a disability consultant and why is that even important? Let's get into it, shall we? So when it comes to theater, we have a lot of people in various different roles that make sure things run smoothly, safely, and most effectively to tell the story at hand. Yes, we have directors and designers and actors and stage managers and all the people that you normally think of most popularly when you think about theater productions. But there's so much more. We have fight choreographers who make sure that the actors are protected by giving them safe choreography, even if it doesn't look safe to the audience. We have voice and dialect coaches who are there to support the vocal health and authenticity of the way the actors speak and sound in their expected accents. We have intimacy coordinators to advocate for informed consent and safety for simulated sexual choreography. And what I'm here to talk about today is that we can have disability consultants and or access and accessibility coordinators to navigate the same levels of respect, safety and consideration when it comes to disabled stories and disabled artists. While not all disabled people should be disability consultants, it is best practice that all disability consultants should be disabled. Just like other roles in production process, disability consultants or accessibility coordinators are experienced in their field and bring an intentional focus on disability support and advocacy. In trying to define what kind of work these consultants or coordinators do, there are many different tasks that can fall under the same umbrella. These tasks may have different job titles, depending on the theater company. Some places call them disability consultants. Some places call them access or accessibility coordinators. Depending on the specifics of the production, the title and responsibilities might even be more specific, like autistic creative consultant or director of American Sign Language. Whatever the particular job title is, I find that these tasks fall mostly into three categories. Number one, work that is educational focused. Number two, work that is accommodation focused. And three, work that is access or accessibility focused. The education work is probably the simplest to define, so we'll start with that. This is typically consulting not tied to a particular production for a theater or more just a general consultation related to disability. A disability consultant could work with theater leadership in reimagining internal policies and practices to make it the institution and its production more inclusive and accessible. This may include workshops or presentations to the board or staff on anything from disability history and basic awareness to specific disability related microaggressions and how to be more inclusive. An education focused disability consultant might work with a production team to offer talk backs or behind the scenes conversations and events for audiences who want to learn more about disability topics from a presentation. An example of that would be something for a theater producing the show called Tribes by Nina Rain. If you're unfamiliar with the show, quick summary. It centers on a young man who's deaf, who's grown up in a home where lip reading and speech are prioritized and assimilation is expected. When he meets a young woman who signs, he begins exploring his own deaf identity and his life changes. An example of how a disability consultant could include educational programming for this production would be to host perhaps a post show discussion with members of the deaf community who can share personal experiences about their own explorations of the deaf community, their deaf identity, language use and preference and how deafness can be celebrated instead of expected to assimilate. Next, as we move into talking about the other two categories of work, I'd like to make a distinction between accommodations and access and specify the difference between the two. Accommodation is reactive. It strives to remove barriers caused by inaccessible design or planning. Access and accessibility on the other hand then are proactive and strive to remove barriers during the design and planning stage of an event program or service. Most theaters in my experience have historically been focused on creating accommodations and less focused on access despite having accessibility and inclusion statements. These accommodations are reactive and most often geared toward audience experience. I want to take a quick side quest here just to say the reason many theaters have focused more on accommodating audiences in my experience is because our theater culture is still learning to think of casting and creative hiring in a more open and inclusive way to open our imaginations in that way. Nowhere in Romeo and Juliet does it say that Juliet is hearing. So why couldn't she be deaf? Why can't eponine have down syndrome? A production does not have to be disability focused for a theater to hire a scenic designer who uses a wheelchair. I'll touch on this more as we discuss work that is accessibility focused, but I thought it was an important side quest to take here too. Jumping back to our discussion on disability consulting work that is accommodation focused. This type of work may include coordinating sensory-friendly performances, ASL interpreted performances, captioned performances, touch tours, large font programs, Braille programs, audio description services, accessible seating, and so much more. Because the audience experience was not designed as accessible from the outset, a disability consultant's work there is in regard to provide and support accommodation. For theaters who do provide this service, these tasks have often fallen to audience relations coordinators, house managers, ushers, certain members of the design team who already have full job descriptions of their own. While these people still may be involved in the implementation of accommodations and services, the work to coordinate these experiences can be greatly benefited by having a dedicated disability consultant as well. Next, when it comes to work that is truly access and accessibility focused, this work tends to be more production specific. And the tasks of a disability consultant or access coordinator here can vary widely. This is where a bulk of my work has been over the years. Most recently I worked with Chicago Shakespeare theater and their production of measure for measure. Robert Schleifer is an incredible deaf actor here in Chicago and I got to work with him. He was cast as the provost in that show. Because of my experience with ASL and Shakespeare, I was brought in to work with Robert on translations to provide cultural support for the team and as an additional resource. If there's a deaf actor in a production, it's highly likely that you're going to want to hire a dazzle or a director of ASL. Since ASL translation is a separate job from acting. That hadn't happened from our production so Robert and I did that together. It is imperative to hire ASL interpreters no matter what, which we did have. I have also been a hybrid educational consultant and access coordinator on a production of She Kills Monsters that script has some fairly problematic disability tropes that cannot be altered or fully remedied. My work there was to educate the cast, crew and team on why the tropes are harmful, how to be better disability allies in the future, and how to advocate for better disability representation in the future while also advising on how to reduce harm in the performance. Additional work that a disability consultant or access coordinator may do could include coming alongside a theater in their season selection process to advise on authentic representation in the scripts being considered. I will take a moment here to clearly state disabled characters should always be played by a disabled actor, ideally as close to the character specific disabilities as possible. A disability consultant can help craft authentic and appropriate casting notices to specify what is needed for a particular character, and moreover they can contribute by networking to find talent that matches the authentic representation needs of a production. As a side note on this, I don't expect every theater to have an awareness of or a connection to individual performers with very specific identities. Perhaps someday, but in the meantime, a disability consultant is often more plugged into the disability community than a particular theater may be, and so they can better leverage their network to find someone who is the right fit. A great example of this is the show The Who's Tommy that script has a character who is deaf and blind. There are disabled actors who are closer match to that character's identity than a sighted hearing and otherwise able to actor, and a disability consultant could be a great asset to a theater and finding someone to authentically cast in that role. Yes, there are deaf blind actors. There are deaf blind actors who do musicals. Just going to say that. And then that disability consultant can then advise on how to create an accessible process for that actor. Access coordinators can advise designers on accessibility and their respective designs before production gets to rehearsal stage. They will likely walk through performance spaces to check accessible routes and appropriate queue lightings ahead of tech. Probably the biggest and perhaps the least obvious job that I have as an accessibility coordinator related to access on a specific production experience is to be a buffer and a problem solver so that the artist or actor who has been hired to do a job can focus solely on the job that they were hired to do and not have to worry about the additional accessibility and advocacy that goes along with simply being disabled in an ableist world. For example, an actor with a mobility disability lets me know that the stairs that are part of the onstage set are inaccessible for them to manage. Instead of using their acting time to go to the stage manager, receive the looks of frustration from the technical director at having to make a change, feeling like a problem or a cause for disruption. I can advocate for the necessary changes that need to happen and take that work off their plate. I can be the bad guy or the problem. They can focus on their job of acting and I can focus on getting their support needs met. Another example. If I had a nickel for every time someone in the world has said, but you don't look disabled, or you're too smart to be disabled, or any other ableist thing based on their own bias and assumptions about what disabled people look like, I would have so many nickels. I would have so many nickels. All these microaggressions innocently intended as though they may be happen in a rehearsal room as well. Again, well intentioned other actors may have questions or things that they're learning or what they want to process. Without speaking for or over someone else who has a different experience than I do. I can be a resource for other cast members designers technicians and anyone else involved in the process to come and ask questions, particular to from to the measure for measure situation with Robert. I answered a lot of questions about how do I tell him something, or how do I sign this word or what's the deal with lip reading. One of these questions I can point back to Robert and support him and speaking for himself, but some of the things I can take on the emotional labor and time to answer so that he just gets to focus on acting. The actor's job is to act to play to learn lines to figure out their character to fulfill their role. My job is to remove distractions from that job. So, when should you bring in a disability consultant. It's never too soon. It is never too soon to bring in a disability consultant want to make your organization more accessible talk to a disability consultant for theaters who are thinking about season selection talk to a disability consultant. If you've hired a disabled director. Please talk to a disability consultant. It's never too soon to make your organization more inclusive more accessible or to unpack bias and unlearn ableism. I hope that it's obvious why a theater would want to bring in a disability consultant, but just in case it's not. We make the process smoother more positive more inclusive safer and more accessible for everyone involved. Our community is vibrant and robust and our theaters should reflect that, especially since accessibility can be easy if it's thought of as included, instead of as an afterthought. So, at this point, I would love to open up the floor to q&a. Does anyone have burning questions, not burning questions just a regular question about disability consulting or about that process. Yes. Yeah, so I have definitely been an actor in a production where we could have really used a disability consultant. I was in a production of Our Lady of 121st Street, which has a character that is referred to with the R slur. It's the only openly disabled person in that rehearsal room. It often fell to me to do the work of educating why that word is not okay, why those attitudes are incorrect. It's interesting to participate in those situations because scripts are stories and characters and stories don't always behave the way we want them to. They are not the best version of ourselves. They are a product of their time, their place, their environment. And there are certainly still people in the world today that use the R word and don't know that they shouldn't, but how we as artists care for those stories matters. And so the emotional labor of that particular production fell to me a lot to talk about hey this isn't okay this is why I think in that scenario it would have been really beneficial. I love my cast from that show and my director and everyone was really wonderful. So this is not a knock on them at all. But I think we could have benefited from having someone other than me to say hey, hey, just raising a little red flag about this thing that answer your question. Yes. Absolutely. So it's a combination, I would say. Clearly, the process would be disability consultant is hired gets to help with the casting process not in choosing the actor but perhaps in language for the casting notice etc etc. In the case with Robert. He actually picked me. He got to be on the interview committee for the access coordinator and so he picked me. So bulk of my work was with him initially to figure out what his needs were and how I could best support those because it's never as a disability consultant or access coordinator it's never about me. It's you are the actor with the job so how can I help you do the best job that you want to do. Primarily with Robert, but then in my time in rehearsals, if other actors or other cast members had questions, I was additionally there to answer their questions as well. I think in an ideal world. We would have a disability consultant presentation as part of design presentations, much like a dramaturg. And then come in and say so in the world of this play. Here's how disability shows up. Here's how this character's disability shows up measure for measure was set in Cuba. So, what does it look like to be a deaf person in Cuba, and to be able to talk about that as well. The experience is a little bit different based on what the theater is looking for and how versed they are in what this should look like, and how much time they a lot. Sometimes we're at the mercy of what they've given me. I think it would be in an ideal world. It's primarily working to support that particular person, but also works to support everyone becoming better allies and less ableist. Yeah. Break breaks. Break breaks. Breaks flexibility. There's a couple different things and some of this depends on what kind of disabilities we're talking about to supportive resources for people who are neurodiverse might be a very specific rehearsal schedule. If we're going to be rehearsing scenes one, two and three, even if we're get out, you know, we're done at 930 rehearsals till 10, we're not going on to scene for because we said we were doing one, two and three tonight and that's what we're doing. So setting expectations and following those is excellent. Breaks. Emphasize enough breaks. Allowing for fidgets and other accessibility tools in the space, allowing folks to get up and move around as they see fit as they need for their bodily needs. Yeah, there's kind of the big ones that I can think of off the top of my head right now. Happy to provide a longer list if you have questions later. Yes. Hi. Thank you so much for your presentation. Yeah. I'm a big fan girl. Have we. Yeah, and I've been in the background. Oh, I'm so excited. Yeah. And you mentioned breaks. Yes. So we're also looking also mentioned. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, again, we're operating in a world that is not built for us. So sometimes in order to be the most accessible version of ourselves, we have to be a little subversive to the rules. I'm, I'm obviously not like I don't have the union book memorized by any means. I don't think there's a rule against more breaks. I think the rule is you have to have this many breaks, and most places take the fewest amount of breaks because they want the most amount of working time. There's no reason you couldn't do more breaks. I think a lot of my work is around. How do we proactively make things accessible from the start. Instead of adjusting to accommodations later, how can we make something the most accessible to the most amount of people from the beginning and breaks is a great way of doing that. Thank you. Yes. Yeah. I think there's probably a couple of different ways I would go about that and it depends sort of on some of the specifics of what the situation is. If the person has not disclosed the disability previously and this is a surprise to everyone, except perhaps them, then everyone's going to be in a reactionary mode no matter what. I think the biggest thing is getting that person the support that they need to be able to move forward whether that's having an understudy step in whether that's allowing them a different choreography to sit on stage more often. If that's adjusting their rehearsal schedule so that they are in the room less often. There's a lot of different ways that you could go about that I think then it becomes more about that person having to advocate for themselves per usual. So really being in conversation with the director and the stage manager and whatever other production folks need to be involved to say okay so we've had this flare up or we've had this situation happen. How do we prevent that from happening again in the future and what can we do to support the needs to make this accessible that answer that question. Yeah. Cool. Please. Great. Thank you. I probably could have repeated them apologies online people organization makes a decision to bring you in. Oh, yeah. Measure for measure with the director was it that makes that artistic decision. Yeah. So it varies depending on the organization measure for measure I went to grad school with someone who works on staff there now. And she knew about my experience with Romeo and Juliet and ASL inclusive theater so when they hired Robert she was like I know exactly who to call. And goodness I am grateful for the people that speak my name into rooms that I'm not in yet. I'm not a person who has done that for me so that's kind of how that situation arose. And general open conversations talking I mean in situations like this where I've now met all of you and whatever rooms you further wander into being able to say oh I learned about disability consulting. You know even, even an assistant director in a room as you're talking about the production or production meeting pre production meeting, an assistant director could say oh, I think we could benefit from an accessibility coordinator for this or even if it's only to bring me in for a five minute conversation as part of a pre production meeting, even that is helpful. It doesn't always have to be hiring from the full span of rehearsal just depends on the show's needs but yeah I mean it could be anybody that speaks that into a room but usually hiring is done by leadership, executive leadership director might advocate for that. So if you bring in a an intimacy coordinator, or a fight choreographer, or a dialect coach, they can know to bring in a disability consultant. Do you budget for a disability coordinator similarly to one of those other types of coordinators you talked about. Yeah, absolutely. Cool. Very cool. So following those lines, what do you recommend to the smaller theaters that can't necessarily afford or don't have the resources resources for a disability coordinator but obviously still need one. Yeah, I operate on a sliding scale. So depending on what the budget of the theater company is that determines my rate in conjunction with how much time do you expect to have me on site. Obviously being on site for measure for measure I was there every rehearsal. In part to just be a resource for Robert and in part because we only had interpreters there some of the time. We don't have to talk about that. Yeah. So it's in conjunction with sliding scale based on their budget and how much time I'm expected to be on site. I've done other companies that I've done things for, I've done captioning for folks and so I do that on an hourly basis sliding scale. Yeah, so it definitely varies based on budget of the theater company and hours expected on site. Ashna, do I get what's my time check. How we do. I have some time. So my question is a lot of us in the room are student theater makers and we often don't have the resources or the budget to be able to like bring in a professional disability consultant. So what can we do to kind of account for that in our rehearsal rooms without being able to bring in someone as experienced as you. I'll do it. I'll do it. I mean, I do mean that though like if, if you need me call me because it's important work and particularly for students I think that that's something that I really value. So call me secondary to that is read, get involved, talk to disabled people I love love love love love the book disability visibility. That's a great collection of stories. Get involved, talk to people figure out, learn about access needs, learn about accommodations, learn about accessibility as much as you're able to and ask questions don't be afraid to screw it up because inevitably you're going to screw it up sometimes I have certainly screwed up sometimes and you learn and you do it better next time. But I think the more that you can learn the more that you can read the more that you can be in conversation with disabled people and then call and I'll do it. Yes. Hello, I guess I just wanted to ask like in the situations where like someone does like make a mistake in the process like how do you best remedy that. Oh yeah. Okay, so, um, at least for me in my rehearsal processes I try to introduce community agreements. And one of the community agreements that I often will utilize is the ouch oops policy, which basically means if someone says or does something that hurts someone else. The other party can say ouch. And then the offending party can immediately should immediately say oops, and it is an acknowledgement that harm has been done. I have been harmed. I didn't mean to harm you. Then if we need to have further discussion on what the harm was how to remedy the harm make a fuller apology and so on and so forth we can do that. But the ouch oops is a very non threatening way, usually to acknowledge and start the resolution process when harm has been done. I wanted to just refer back to the previous question. We're sitting at a university that has an incredible amount of resources communication studies. I would offer that I'm not trying to take no please from you but that as you as students begin to configure their productions think about the network that you actually have here. Because then you are growing colleagues that can help our speaker in her work. She can't be in 20,000 theater productions. So part of the struggle I think and the challenge is to grow these positions. And if you're doing it on such a basic level and embryonic level. I think that the learning is interstitial it's intersectional, and you also bring in tech, right.  These students will then have internships that are on par with the internships that are at NASA. Yes, the National Science Foundation. Yes. And then I would support what our speakers saying we have to kind of think around, because it's such a huge challenge. Yeah. So the innovation, I think, is what people with disabilities always bring to the table because we have to change everything. Yeah, in order to come into the room. Thank you. Yeah, plus one chuchu to that. Absolutely. Yeah, enough cannot be said for the power of community and network. I, you know, my, I don't have every disability in the book. So if I'm advising on a production that has something where it's not my disability. I don't want to defer to someone who is an expert in that someone with lived experience. So, so building that network and that community is there. I just cannot say enough. My students I, I adjunct teach a class in social justice and theater at Roosevelt University, and the running. They tease me a lot because the answer to my question would always be community. How do we resolve this community? So what do we do community more community so community community for sure. Any final questions. Yes. So obviously, like, I know for fight and intimacy coordination, there's often like certification and courses that people can pursue. And obviously, like, course set Roosevelt, like, obviously those are great first steps, but are there any. Let's say like a student at Northwestern University wants to pursue this and get involved. How do you suggest sort of concrete steps that they can take in addition to like building community and reaching out to folks. Are there any, like, obviously not courses but like and certification isn't everything but are there any resources that they can use. I wish there were a better answer to that. And there's not really. I mean, shadow, someone reach out to a disability consultant figure. I mean, some of this too is figure out what your niche is your particular specialty. Like I started really in deaf theater. I had some deaf friends when I was in elementary school, and my work began to make it inclusive for them.  Then it became okay well how do I expand this to more folks. So I think start with what you have and learn more shadow people be in as many rooms as you can figure out what needs exist and how you can meet them. It's really shadowing that we probably is the best software for now. Yeah, because there's no, there's no manual there's no course there's no certification for that. Anything else. Do we have any questions online. I can check that so quickly. Okay, don't want to leave out online friends. They also are I believe like 30 seconds behind. Cool. So no worries for the next 30 seconds then. If you do wish to connect with me and I hope that you do. I am on all social media, my, my brand, if you will, I'm always Ali Easton. I've been signing my emails that way since I was in high school and I just decided that's what we're going to do from here on out so I'm always at least and please, please, please feel free to reach out. I'm happy to connect with any questions and as a support resource anytime, or to point you in the direction of other resources. Thank you again to Ashna and to the seesaw team and it's been a pleasure and a joy to be here with you all today. I look forward to connecting more. Thank you so much Ali for that informative and wonderful presentation and thank you everyone for your brilliant questions I learned so much is from what you guys asked. I'm assuming we don't have any online questions yet. So, I was information is available in the welcome packet that all of you got all her social media is on there. So please check it out the welcome packet is linked in that QR code over there on the door. I can see why a lot of QR codes in this room because a lot of cool resources and organizations for you guys to connect with. So, to emphasize Ali's punctually well we're going to take a break. Next, let's say. 18 minutes. It's 1112. Let's meet back at 1130 for Sahai's presentation. In my hometown, there was bagels and coffee. I'm not sure how the cool resources around the room and of course I'm assuming Ali would love to connect with any of you if you'd like to speak with her. Thank you so much and I'll see you here at 1130.