fantastic sponsors. So here we are, our closing keynotes of the day. I really appreciate everybody being here and I would like you all to please put your hands together and give a very very warm welcome to Dawn Foster, Dr. Dawn Foster, who will be the first of our two closing keynotes for today. Please welcome Dorth. Okay, thank you all for for saying. I know that Cheryl and I are between you and drinks so I'll just keep this moving. My talk today has three sections. So I'll start by talking about the dynamics of collaboration within open-source projects between individuals, companies, and communities before moving on to talk about contribution strategies and plans. And then in the last section we'll have some tips for sustaining your contributions over the long term. And then we'll wrap it up with links to resources and then a few final thoughts. I'll start by telling you just a little bit about me. I've been in the technology industry for well over 20 years working mostly on open-source projects from within companies like Intel, Puppet, and now at VMware I'm responsible for our open-source community strategy within the open-source program office. I'm a board member of Open UK. I'm a governing board member and maintainer for the Linux Foundation's chaos metrics project. I'm co-chair of the CNCF contributor strategy technical advisory group and I have a PhD where I researched how people work together within the Linux kernel. Now, before we dive into talking about leadership and the importance of having a solid strategy, let's talk a little bit about how collaboration works within open source projects and the complex interactions between individuals, companies, and communities. While there are some exceptions, contributions to most open-source projects are centered around the individual. Contributions come from individuals, not companies. When someone submits a pull request to fix a bug, add a feature, maybe update some documentation in an open-source project, those changes come from an individual. Commits include a name and an email address, but in a lot of cases, unless the person uses their corporate email address, you really can't even tell where that person works. To make this even more complicated for companies, in most open-source projects, the leadership positions stay with the individual if that person changes jobs. So this means that an employee will take their leadership position with them if they change jobs. So since the employee can take their leadership position in a project, right with them to the next job, companies are well-served to make sure that we are happy and well-compensated as open-source contributors. Now, in most projects, there is no direct way for companies to participate, other than dedicating time from individual employees who contribute on behalf of the company, which is pretty common, right? At VMware, we have loads of people working full-time on open-source projects like Spring, RabbitMQ, Kubernetes. And if you aren't sure how to contribute as a company, you might be able to hire an existing contributor or possibly even a maintainer to... Sorry, this isn't my computer and things aren't working quite as expected. That's right. So open-source projects need funding and all kinds of things, like in-kind sponsorships and things like legal representation. And they also appreciate lots of other support from companies. Open-source communities include a wide variety of individuals who are working together within open-source projects. And this includes developers, release teams, localization and translation, marketing, community managers, tech writers, users and lots of other people who contribute to these projects. And some of these people contribute as part of their day job on behalf of an employer. Others contribute in their free time. And they're all important. And all of these people are working together as one community to accomplish a common goal, right? To deliver on an open-source project. And it's important to remember that the community or project needs have to come first. And your strategies have to take this into account. So an approach that maybe dictates a specific solution might not be accepted by a project. So your strategies really need to include flexible ways of approaching resolving issues or creating new features so that you can find ways to work jointly with the community to find solutions that work for everybody. Now part of the role of an open-source program office, if you happen to have one, can be to help everyone navigate balancing these individual company and community needs. The various groups within your organization really need to understand that individuals need to be able to collaborate and build consensus within the community to come up with innovative solutions for anything that your company needs. Trying to force something into an open-source project can impact employee satisfaction and retention for the individuals who are contributing. Since the employee, if you put that situation where an employee can't meet the needs of the community without jeopardizing their employment, this just isn't a good situation for anyone to be in.  But by taking this dynamic into account when building your open-source strategies and best practices, you can help managers and leaders within your organization understand this dynamic so that your employees can meet your organization's objectives while also being good corporate citizens within the community. Now that we have a better idea about how collaboration works for open-source projects and communities, next up, let's talk about how to build a contribution strategy and plans for participating in open-source projects. Having a solid open-source strategy and plans are important because successful participation in open-source communities requires a long-term commitment. The individuals and companies that we just talked about, they spend months and years building trust and reputations within specific open-source communities. And all of that hard work is for nothing if those people keep getting pulled off of the open-source projects to work on other things. So in this section, I'll talk about how to build strategies and plans that support your business goals so that you can justify continuing to work on this over the long term. The most important part of putting together strategies and plans for your open-source contributions is aligning them with the overall business goals for your company. If your open-source engagements don't support the overall strategies of your organization, you'll drastically reduce the chance of being successful. By taking some time and effort to make sure that you support the overall corporate strategy, then it'll be much easier to justify continuing these efforts during the next planning cycle for your organization or the next economic downturn, for example. But on the other hand, when your goals are not clearly aligned with the overall strategy, people will look at that open-source participation as something that can be cut entirely or just starved of resources until it goes away on its own. And this will also help you make the case to senior management and company executives who aren't involved in any of the low level details. Explaining how your open-source contributions support the goals of the company can help the executive team understand the strategic importance of this work. Now, most of our organizations use so many open-source projects that it's really easy to get distracted and not know where to focus. It can help to think about which open-source projects are strategic in some way for your company. Maybe there are some projects that your operations team uses to run some of your critical business infrastructure. Or maybe there are some development and deployment tools that impact your ability to release the products that generate revenue for your organization. Maybe there's other software that's important for your ability to deliver those customer-facing products and services. And all of these can help you think about where to focus your open-source efforts. And these strategic projects should get more attention than other maybe less important projects. And these strategic projects should be a big part of building your open-source strategies by showcasing how you use certain open-source projects and the products and services you deliver to customers and how it relies on those projects. You can use these strategic projects to help frame some of your strategies in a way that leadership will understand how important it is to continue this work over the long term. A obligatory XKCD comic. It's important to think about risk as part of your company and product strategies. Evaluating risk is important because your business could be disrupted in ways that impact your employees, your customers, even the broader ecosystem. It's also important to think about risk as being on a continuum. So like with most things in life, there are no sure bets, right? There's no project or technology that's completely without risk. There are only projects with more or less risk across a variety of categories. And whether you accept that risk is a business decision and a strategic decision that should also take how you're using the project into account. We don't want to build a key product on top of some really risky open-source technology, right? So it's important to think about what elements of an open-source project might introduce risk for us and how we can watch out for warning signs and mitigate potential risks. But this is bigger than just thinking about individual projects, right? It's absolutely critical for all of us to be thinking about security and risk holistically across our entire software supply chain, including every little package that goes into our products, our infrastructure. A potential vulnerability or malicious attack can be in any link in the chain where it can go unnoticed if you don't actually have processes and tools in place to detect it as early as possible. And your company's open-source strategy should incorporate some thinking about how you can detect potential issues and mitigate the risks associated with them. Most of us have some combination of projects that we've open-sourced within our company and other open-source projects that we contribute to. Now, this is also a decision that benefits from a strategic approach. In some cases, it can totally make sense to release a brand new open-source project. And other times, the best solution would be to contribute to an existing open-source project in ways that would help it meet some of your needs over the long term. And there's no right or wrong answer to making this decision, but I encourage you to look hard at your company's strategies and plans for the future to make sure that whatever decision you make is aligned with what your organization's likely to need over the next few years rather than just thinking about the easiest thing to do right now. As part of your open-source strategies and plans, you need to figure out how to find people who can make the contributions that you need on behalf of your company. Now, as I mentioned earlier, companies contribute to open-source projects by having employees participate and then collaborate within those projects. So you need to figure out how many people you need, what skills are required. In some cases, you might actually have the employees with the skills you need who have already contributed to some of these projects, which is a great starting point. But it's really important to keep in mind that contributing to open-source projects requires different skills than participating in internal projects. These people need to be comfortable in really ambiguous environments where they're going to receive feedback, likely at some point difficult or negative feedback, and they're going to be expected to respond to that feedback in the public in a professional manner. And keep in mind that not every engineer wants their work to be in the public spotlight, so, which, I mean, let's be honest, can feel like being under a microscope sometimes. But if you don't have the skills internally, you might be able to find existing contributors that you can hire. This is a pretty common path, but you need to be a little bit careful about that option, too, because you don't want to get a reputation within an open-source project for aggressively poaching employees from other companies. So it requires a bit of nuance to make it known that you're interested in hiring people to work on an open-source project without actually aggressively poaching them away from other employers. If you make it easy for your employees to contribute, your employees are more likely to reduce technical debt by contributing patches, bug fixes, and new features back into the upstream projects where they actually belong. And you should think about whether your guidelines or processes help people engage in open-source projects in ways that work well for your organization. Well, you do need to provide guidance about things like licensing, disclosing confidential information, and any internal processes. This can be done in an educational way. So my caution about the guidelines and processes is that they can be written in ways that discourage contributions back into the upstream project, especially when they make heavy use of really scary legal jargon where you talk about how you're going to punish people when something goes wrong. So instead, you're better off writing those in ways that help engineers understand what you need them to do and why and language that they can easily understand. Now, as with any good strategies and plans, the outcome and results should be measurable so that you can tell whether your results were successful or not. Now, I love data and this sounds kind of weird, but measuring open-source project success is kind of a hobby of mine. And it's something I'm pretty passionate about. So I do get a lot of questions and usually the questions kind of start out with, you know, what do I measure? And it's, I think that's kind of the wrong approach because it depends. What you measure depends on what you're trying to achieve, which is why this slide is in the strategy and planning section. Ultimately, you need to look at your strategies and plans and come up with criteria that will help you measure whether or not you're successful. So for example, if you want to improve the performance of a particular piece of open-source software, you'll want to have success criteria and measurement based on that specific type of performance.  So, you know, on the other hand, if you want to gain influence within an open-source project, maybe you measure increases in contributions or the number of employees moving into positions of influence. And once you figure out the criteria, you need to make sure that you can get the data required to measure it and start measuring it now to get a good baseline. And there are loads of tools available to gather contribution data about open-source projects. Some of the commonly used tools can be found in the Linux Foundation's Chaos Metrics project. And many big projects already have dashboards using these tools and others to display contribution data for the project. I also recommend maybe overmeasuring a bit so that you have a little more data so that is your strategy shifts. You're more likely to have some good data to start out with. And this can help you investigate maybe other areas that you might want to improve in your projects. Now, in this next section, we'll talk about a few tips to help you sustain those contributions over the long term. Upstreaming your patches is one of the most important things you can do as you work toward... Can you still hear me? Did the microphone cut out? No? I'm still good. Okay. So, upstreaming your patches is one of obviously the most important things you can do as you work toward taking a long-term strategic approach to your open-source contributions. Maintaining open-source patches internally is easier in the short term, right? Because you just make that patch and then you move on to do some other work. But it creates technical debt and more work for your project over the long term. And this can create security vulnerabilities for your company and your customers. If your employees put off this difficult work of reapplying or possibly rewriting some of your patches every time the open source project releases fixes or other updates. When you have patches that can be submitted back upstream, it gives your employees a solid starting point for contributing to an open-source project. Especially in cases where you have small patches to fix bugs that would benefit the entire community. The project's likely to welcome those types of changes. And it gives you something you can use to engage in the community. And these early interactions can help you build and grow those into long-term strategic participation in those projects and build relationships that allow you to contribute in more significant ways over time. You want to make sure that you spend time discussing your proposed changes in the community before you start making them. By talking about contributions really early in the process, you can get feedback on ways to architect those changes so that they'll be consistent with the expectations of the project. You can also learn about anyone else who might be working in similar areas to hopefully avoid conflicting changes that won't work together when they're merged into the project. And these discussions also avoid surprising people, especially for something new or big changes. It can also help to break those changes and do smaller, easier to digest contributions. It is way easier for maintainers to find the time to provide feedback on smaller contributions, and it gives you time to make corrections or changes if something you're doing isn't quite right. By participating in open-source projects over the long term, your employees can build trust within a community and build the relationships needed to eventually move into leadership positions and increasing responsibility. By moving into leadership positions, people gain additional insights into the future of the project and have increased influence into the direction of the project. These people are more likely to know how to approach new features and other changes in ways they're already aligned with the direction of the project and can be easily merged into the upstream project. And you can rely on these open-source leaders to help you refine your strategies since they will likely have ideas for what can be done within a project and how to best approach your work within that project. And these leaders can also help mentor and provide guidance for other employees when you decide maybe that you need more contributors within a project, which can help you build more open-source skills within your company. A lot of the work that we do in open-source projects is based on the relationships we have with other people. So my PhD research was based on collaboration in Linux kernel. And as part of that research, I interviewed a bunch of kernel developers and in all of the interviews they talked about the importance of their relationships with other people. Almost all of them talked about how those existing relationships made it easier to collaborate with others. All of the people I interviewed mentioned in person collaboration at conferences and other meetings is something that was really important. People talked about how it was sometimes easier to work through really difficult big issues at conferences. It's easier to communicate with someone online if you've met them before, maybe you shared a meal or a drink or just had a nice conversation with them at an event. And knowing the human being on the other side of the keyboard can really make a bigger difference than what you might realize. And if your employees are working on open-source projects, you should see if there are any conferences, like this one, like QCD Amsterdam, where large numbers of the community members attend. By having some key employees attend these conferences, they can build deeper lasting relationships with others that will benefit your company and your employees. I've spent a lot of time at open-source conferences over the years and I've deep and lasting connections with the people that I've met at those events. And now when I need to do something new or have a question, I usually know someone who can point me in the right direction from the community. And I often make introductions for other employees to people outside of the company who can help us learn something new or maybe solve some tricky issue. You also need to take maintenance expectations into account when building your open-source strategies, putting large chunks of code into an open-source project, disappearing and expecting someone else to maintain it for you reflects poorly on your organization. So you need to think about how you're planning to maintain those contributions that you're making. Now if you fix a small bug or make some small change, someone else is probably responsible for maintaining it. So you're off the hook there but where you really need to think about this is when you're making large contributions, like a new feature or in the case of the kernel a new driver. And you need to make sure that you have a plan for how your employees are going to maintain that code over the long term before you contribute it into the open-source project. Now if you want to open-source a project because it has no users, it's old, it's crusty and you don't want to maintain it anymore, please just don't do that.  So make sure you're open-sourcing a project for the right reasons. For example, wanting to collaborate and innovate with other people. That's a good reason to open-source it. If you're working on a project that's going to need to integrate with a bunch of other technologies, open-sourcing it can make it easier for other people to help you integrate it with technologies that maybe you're less familiar with. But again, your company needs to be prepared to maintain that project over the longer term, just as you would with something you put under a proprietary license. It takes time and resources. You should take that into account when building your strategies. Before I wrap up this talk, let me leave you with a few resources you might find useful. The to-do group has loads of guides that have great info about all aspects of how companies work in open-source projects. The CNCF contributor strategy tag has governance working group and a contributor growth working group. And we provide templates and guidance about contributor experience, contributor sustainability, governance and other things to help people develop strategies for maintaining healthy projects. The open-source way guidebook has loads of details about building and maintaining open-source projects. And the chaos project has loads of metrics to help you measure open-source project health and whether you're successfully achieving your strategies. And these are all great starting places for understanding best practices for open-source projects. In open-source projects, relationships and trust facilitate collaboration and allow your employees to more easily contribute to the projects that are important for your organization. And then move into leadership positions within those important projects. These relationships and trust networks are built over time and require a long-term commitment. Thinking strategically about which projects are most important for your organization and then allocating people to work on those projects over the long-term lets you maximize the impact that your open-source work will have for your organization. With that, thank you so much for coming to my talk and I don't know, do we have time for questions? Or should I let Cheryl set up? Of course we do. Do we have any questions for our friend on? Yes? We do have one question? Good, I'm losing my voice. Oh, Sal, hello. So on this, so just like with my maintainer hat on, right? And when you get these feature requests from companies that would take you 11 months to deliver and they don't want to pay you for it. Little irritated with that. So we've got the process of here if you're a new contributor, go and find like great first contributions. Something that I'd like to see more roadmaps offering is like suggested corporate sponsored features because those are the features that require longevity, right? Yeah. It's not the bus problem, it's the vacation problem. Like do you have enough maintainers in a project that you can go on vacation and it still works? You need a corporate sponsorship for those. Is there anything like that? Not that I've seen. I mean, I think probably the best way to address it is what you kind of mentioned, which is with roadmaps and having some roadmaps and being clear about what the existing maintainers actually have time and space to do. But the things that you actually really want that no one really has time for and try to get some people to pick those up. And then in some cases those come from the other direction as well. Like there are things that companies need. One of the things that VMware worked a lot on was cluster API, for example, because it was something that we needed and so we put a whole bunch of people on it and helped out as much as we could with kind of building out some of that infrastructure. So it's kind of both ways, but I would love to see more projects have detailed roadmaps for things that they want but don't have time to work on and then, you know, try to recruit corporates, corporatites to work on those. But it's a hard problem, right? Like finding enough contributors and sustaining that over time when maintainers are already burnt out and tired is a big problem right now. It's something we talk about a lot in the CNCF. Any other questions? Down front. I was at FOSDM two weeks ago and there were presentations by the Free Software Foundation in Europe. And they were like not very friendly towards the CNCF and their big company, Megacorps, they were really and I don't understand where this negativity comes from. Maybe you can help me. I am not stepping into that landmine. The CNCF and the Free Software Foundation in Europe are very different types of organizations and I think they serve different purposes. Like I don't like to think of those as like one being better than the other. I tend to think of them as both being good for sort of different things. Like CNCF is good for getting a whole bunch of companies together to do some stuff. You know Free Software Foundation in Europe I think is really good at getting individual people together to do some stuff and I think that those are both really valuable parts of the open source community. So I'm not going to pick one over the other. So done. Well my very first contribution to open source was with a project that probably nobody knows is open mosaics, high performance computing and I did a mess of it. The whole contribution was took three months to get into the patch, the kernel patch. I wish I had this before. I wish I know how I had to handle the whole thing before. Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks.


There's no substitute for writing down your thoughts and getting them into a journal. There's a lot of different online apps that you can use but I personally love to use pen and paper. Today we're going to talk about four journals that I love and why I use them. Keep watching. Today it's Kyla Denigno. So today we're going to talk about four journals that I absolutely love and why I use them. Okay so journaling is something that's really important to me and even before I started calling it journaling I just loved writing. I love words. I had a professor who said to me that words are the currency of a lawyer and I felt that right. It hit me right in the heart. I was like man that is me. Words are the currency of a lawyer. I'll never forget when he said that to us and that's so relevant to me because for one words are everything right. You're listening to me speaking words right now. When you read a book you're reading words. As you're listening you're hearing words. Go into your words or everything. Words in different languages. Words that are written. Spoken words. Audio words through podcasts. Words are everything. I'm a big nerd. I love words. And I have a number of different online apps which allow me to journal which allow me to write. I remember way back in the day I had an account called Bolt.com and it was an online journal where you can write down your thoughts and write down kinds of stuff and way before even my space right. Proving how old I am but I love journals. I love writing. So these are four journals that I've used throughout my life and the different reasons I use them and why. So we're gonna start with one of the first journals that I've used to one of the journals I'm using right now okay. So first up it's wrapped in canvas. Huge huge book. There's an entry here from 2007. So I've been using this for a really long time and one thing that I love about journaling is that it doesn't have to be fancy. It doesn't have to be flashy. This is wrapped in black canvas. There's nothing on the spine but it just looks like any other book without a dust cover on it. It's just here but it contains beautiful words I've written it because even as life moves on and I forget things your journal still has it right. And that's one of my favorite things about journals. One of the reasons why I steal journal to this day okay. So first one I'm a journal that I was writing in back in 2007. This is relevant because 2007 long time ago what was I even thinking about. I didn't go to law school until 2012. So this was five years before then. So it's a lot of a lot of good stuff that's in here. I wouldn't have been taking the LSAT yet. I probably wasn't thinking about which law school I wanted to go to so this owns a lot of good stuff. The next one is one line a day. This is a cute journal. It's a little tiny baby journal. It's actually called a memory book which is a type of journaling but the beauty of this is that there is literally enough space for you to write a little snippet of whatever was happening on that day. And the beautiful thing is is the years are blank so you can write down. I started this journal in 2019 right. So I can see here March 8th 2019 what was happening a school a law firm that I no longer work at. 2020 what was happening 2021 what was happening and then 2022 I can fill this in for today. So pretty cool that journaling does not have to be long it doesn't have to be drawn out. You just need to write down your thoughts get them on paper and it's nice to revisit them. You know if I'm coming in here to write down an entry and I happen to see what happened in the prior year a lot of times that'll be exciting to just take a look at but really I'm just trying to write down my thoughts, write down what's happening at the time and I'm not necessarily preserving it for any reason just preserving it because it feels good to get those thoughts out at the moment. So you know how you can have something happen in life and you gotta tell somebody you call your best friend she's not answering your text people they're not answering and then for me I'm like Kyla that's because this needs to be in your journal it probably is not meant for consumption with everyone. A lot of times when that happens I'll even go to Twitter and I'm trying to write it and I'm like this is four-year journal it's not for anybody else it's four-year journal right so beauty of the journal okay so then the next journal that I loved this one here and again nothing on the spine I guess it's yellow with little clouds on it little fuzzy polka dots this is a pregnancy journal I couldn't believe that there were pregnancy journals but there are so there aren't any dates but there are sections where you can write what month you're in what trimester you're in and then like the size of your baby if that's interesting to you but like here's a page where it says my cravings where it wants you to write down what you were craving at the time here's another page where it says I'm getting ready for you buy and then the section is blank for you to fill that in and I have a little girl she'll be two this summer and when I think about this journal every woman that I know they tell me they're pregnant I buy them this journal even if we've never discussed journaling because you have no idea what's happening when you're pregnant your body is doing all this stuff and growing you see your doctor but you still you don't know and there's so many things you think about there's so many women that have a lot of dreams when they're pregnant you have food aversions things you don't want to eat when you're pregnant you have things you can't sleep and you may just be up at night and you can write all that stuff down in your journal right and when I was pregnant I actually took on a whole new venture being pregnant made me really creative and really daring made me kind of fearless I started recording for my podcast when I was pregnant I put out the first episode when I was pregnant and Baby Girl got to hear my voice all the time when I was interviewing guests because I recorded seven episodes before I even got started with the podcast because seven was the scary number for podcasts and a lot of people quit before then so I wanted to be prepared so Baby Girl got to hear me talking all the time when I was interviewing guests and I know some of that is probably in here so pregnancy journal there are journals for specific things that you're going through and when I was pregnant in 2020 this this journal was relevant for me so now we're gonna talk about my current journal well two journals because I'm still writing in the one line a day journal but then this journal is called Becoming this journal complements the becoming book by Michelle Obama I read this book last year obsessed with it I'll make sure I do an episode about books written by lawyers which are incredible this one will definitely be on there Michelle Obama another person that I created my podcast for is someone who did not pass the bar exam the first time they took it they kept working at it eventually passed the bar exam became an incredible attorney also married an attorney great life right but she created a journal that is comp the compliments a lot of the themes that were mentioned in the book becoming so one of the prompts here describe your home today what do you love most about it when's the last time you wrote about your home how cool is that but maybe it'll be really relevant to you for you to write that down here's another one what do you want list 10 things that you want for yourself next to each of them list a simple step to make it happen how great is that I love this journal because I think that it's really thoughtful and it brings up a lot of things that I'm not thinking about throughout the day a lot of things that I wouldn't necessarily mention in my other journals so a prompted journal is another really good thing to use if you're new to journaling if you think it's silly to write down your thoughts if you're afraid someone will find it and oh my gosh I see all your words start with a prompted journal one that will ask you things like what was the best tv you saw as a kid what are you watching now when what right now I'm obsessed with inventing Anna and when I was a kid I remember watching The Fresh Prince but I would never I would never think to put those things together in a journal and who knows when I start writing about it what it will spark what it'll make me think of right already right now I'm thinking about when The Fresh Prince will come out and me and my best friend will be on the phone and we didn't talk at all when the show was on but then we would talk about the show during the commercials so we're sitting there watching it we're basically talking about it live as it's happening just sit on the phone watching it together probably hearing it through the phone from her tv and then on commercials oh my god did you see that you see what actually had on oh my goodness right so but I would never think to write about those things together and when I do fill out that entry it'll probably be a little bit different so there you have it four journals that I'm using right now and the importance of them a completely blank journal where you can just write down your words a little small snippet journal something like a memory book where you can write about what's happening right now something that's relevant to you it's really good for beginners because it just has a couple of lines a subject specific journal such as the pregnancy journal that I used and then a prompted journal where there are actual prompts where they try to guide you to what you're going to talk about for the day so if you never considered journaling you should consider journaling so just go out and grab a notebook right it's really good to get your thoughts out if you're using online app it's wonderful if you have the time and you enjoy putting pen to paper you should consider getting a physical journal that you can write in as well okay so I hope you enjoyed this I hope I inspired you to go journal and I will talk to you later Kyla de Nagao bye


In this presentation, we will run a report that will show expenses both by nature and by function. Let's get into it with Intuitz. QuickBooks Online. Here we are in our not-for-profit company or not-for-profit organization dashboard. We're going to first start off in our Excel worksheet to see what our objective will be. In prior presentations, we have generated the statement of financial position, basically the balance sheet, and then taking a look now at the statement of activities. We took a look at that last time. We're looking at basically a component of the statement of activities. You'll recall within the statement of activities, similar to an income statement, we're going to have the revenue kind of accounts and the expense type of accounts broken out by restricted and not restricted in this report. Our goal is to have all the components necessary for reporting purposes as well as give it to people in such a way that they're not kind of overwhelmed with it. What we need then is we need the revenue, we need the expenses, we need the expenses broken out both by function, what they're used for and by nature, which is basically the normal kind of way that we expect to see them, rent, salaries, utilities, and so on and so forth. Last time, we gave a report such as this that's not too overwhelming, doesn't have both of those things in one report. And then this time now we need to add the supplemental information so that we have all the activity we need, which is basically to break out the expenses both by nature and then by function, what they're used for, which we're going to use the class feature in order to do. That means by program, which includes at our example problem, education and the community service, and then the admin or general and management in general, and then the fundraising. So now we're going to have this kind of supplemental type of report to add to that. Alright, so let's go back on over to QuickBooks and see how we would do that. Let's go on over to QuickBooks. We're going to be going down to our reports. Let's go on down to our reports. And we are then going to be opening up in the standard reports. Let's open up that old profit and loss again. We're going to open up the profit and loss report, the income statement type of report. Scrolling back up top, let's change the dates. We're going to be going for the month of January, January 1st to 013120. That's the 31st, the end of January. Running that report, closing up the old hamburger, holding down controls, scrolling up just a bit, bringing us back up to that 125. That's too far. That's 150. That's too much. So we want to be here and then I'm going to go down to the expense area. We want this broken out. We want the expenses to be broken out by what they're used for. So I'm going to go back up top and we want to say I'm going to go from totals and we're going to go to classes. So we're going to do your class tracking item again. We're going to run that report. So we'll run that report. And now we have this information broken out in that format. So now what we're really looking for generally is going to be the unrestricted items over here because you'll note that within the restricted items, we broke this out, but we really only have the income items for the restricted stuff going on up here here. And then down below, there's no expenses related to the restricted items. Why? Because really what's happening here is when something is expensed, it must first have been unrestricted and then expensed. So you'll see up top that we have this unrestricted process happening up here. So when we're tracking these basic restricted items, we're kind of looking at the income, the revenue accounts that are leading to the restrictions. And then when we expense something, we're not going to have any expenses typically that are going to be designated to these areas because what happened is we unrestricted it. When we have something that's going to be unrestricted, we have it unrestricted designated by these accounts and then the actual expenses then being recorded at some component of the unrestricted items over here. So all the expenses are over here somewhere in the unrestricted area. So therefore this report that we're concentrating in on the expenses, I'm looking at the expenses and trying to allocate those expenses out, then we don't really need the top line item of the income line items and we can condense this report down to just basically the unrestricted items because we're concentrating on the expenses. So for this report, we can use our filtering option up top. So I'm going to go to the filtering option up top. I'm going to be customizing this report. Let's going to be customized this. We're going to go down to our filters. Let's filter this thing and then we're going to go down to the classes. Let's filter by class. I'm going to select the dropdown and then I want what we want is just the unrestricted stuff. So you could select just this one. I usually select all of them that have an unrestricted in there because these are subclasses. So they should all fall into in there anyways, but I'll check them all off. So there we have that and then I'm going to run that report. And so there we have it. So now we're looking at the unrestricted items and we're concentrating down here on the expense items. Now then up top, what we have is the name of the report, which is called a profit and loss is what we opened it up to be what we really wanted the expense allocations here. So it's really an expense allocation report. So we might name it something like expenses or expense allocation. So I'm going to go back over here, we could rename it in here or we could go up top and say customize report. And then we want to go to the header and footer. So let's go to the header and footer and then say we want then the report name not to be profit and loss but expense allocation. Okay, I had to pause and use the spell check there, but I think I got it now. So I'm going to run the report. So I'm going to run the report and so there we have it. And so now we have the expense allocation here. Now it still has the income lines. We don't really need the income lines for what we want right now. We're really focusing in on the expenses. So now we can basically export this to Excel and we can do that last cleaning up, which is just basically cleaning up the income lines and then the net income is not really what we're looking for. We're looking to tie out these expense lines so that we can have as minimal data as possible. Again, you could give this report to somebody and it would be fine because it has all the information we need on it, but we're trying to trim this thing down as minimal as possible so we can give this to someone in basically chunks that won't be too overwhelming and we'll give the information in a progressive process so that decision-making can happen as easily as possible. So let's do our standard process. We're going to print this report now. I'm going to say let's print this report and then we'll export it to Excel. So I'm going to print it as we have in the past. I'm going to print it using the Qt PDF printer. So it's going to be printed as a PDF. This is one way that we can generate this report. So I'm going to say print and it's going to ask us where do we want to put it then.  So expense allocation and then I'm going to save that. So let's save that here. I'm going to close this out. Now we may also want to memorize this report. So it's already in kind of that format. When I open it up for month to month, I don't have to do the reformatting of it. So I may want to save and customize and put that in there. It's going to be in our expense allocation format. So let's go ahead and save that. I won't open it back up again, but it's in that saved file within our report settings as well now. So now let's export it to Excel and add it to our Excel worksheet. So it'll be something that we can then format a little further and something that we can print out and collate all at one time if we were to print multiple copies and so that we can create one PDF file that we can give to someone with. So now we're going to go back up top and I'm going to say, all right, let's export to Excel and say we're going to export to Excel. I'm in Chrome. So it's going to be opening up over here. I'm going to open up this window. So here we have it. Here we have it. Now we have the same objective. I'm going to put this on our other report over here. We're going to be putting it on this report. I want to add another tab and put it into this report in our financial statement report.  I'm going to copy this whole thing in the same format. I'm going to put my cursor on this little triangle so I copy the entire sheet. Then I'm going to right-click on the selected area and copy it. Then I'm going to go back to the other worksheet that we have, our financial statements where we have three tabs, balance sheets, statement of activities. Then I'm going to be in A1. You must be in A1 or you must select the entire sheet and then right-click and paste. So I'm going to right-click in here and paste the first one, just a normal paste. So there we have it. I'm going to rename the cell down here, the sheet name, which is going to be expense allocation. And there we have that. Then I usually check the layout. So I'm going to go to the page layout, see if it fits on a page. It doesn't, right? So I'm going to go back to the normal view and it doesn't fit on a page. Now we can adjust this. First thing you typically do to adjust it is change the layout. So I'm going to go back up top and say page layout. And then I'll typically make this orientation in the page setup and make it landscape. That could mess up the things that when you, you know, you staple things together, you're going to have to figure out a landscape page in the middle of it. But if you have to do that, or you could try to shrink this down to as small as you need it to be, to fit on a portrait type of form. So there we have that. Again, we could, we can then do some formatting. I'm going to go up top and remove alignment, the merged cells, remove the merged cell there. I'm going to remove the merged cell there, remove the merged cell here. And then what we really want to do is, is I don't need the income lines basically. I don't need the income side of the report. I just want the expense allocation. That's the name of our report. So I'm going to say all the income stuff don't need. I'm going to highlight from six down to 10, right click and just say I don't really want that. And then I'm going to go down to the net income. Don't need that. I'm going to right click and delete that. And, and there we have it. Now, notice we have the unrestricted as another category name that we don't really need because that's a subcategory. So I'm going to take column B. I'm going to delete column B. So I'm going to right click and just delete column B altogether. And then the total unrestricted, that's going to be the admin, the fundraising, and then the program items here. So I could say, okay, that's going to be the total unrestricted is going to be the admin, the fundraising, and then the total of the two programs because this column is totaling up these two. So I could say that and then I could copy this down. I'm going to, I'm going to auto fill this all the way down. And so I'm just going to auto fill that down. There we have that. And then this you can see in the same format here. Or I could sum up vertically equals the sum of these items. And there we have that. Now this total over here, we don't need this as a duplicate total because we're looking for the total, you know, unrestricted. So I'm going to highlight this column, right click on the selected cell. We don't really need that column. That looks good. Now, now also note that these two are the programs. So I have a subcategory of the programs and then programs here. So if I wanted to, you know, I could say this is all programs. So what I'll do is I'll go, you don't have to do this, by the way, it's just suggestions that you could do. I could say programs here. And then I'd like to format this across these cells. So I could do that by merging the cells, but I don't like to use merge cells if I don't have to. And I don't really, I can highlight those cells and right click and then format the cells. And then I want to go to the alignment tab. And then we want to say, I want to align it horizontally and then across the selection. So horizontal across the selection. And then I can say, okay. And that kind of lines it up that way. And that way I don't need this, this column altogether. So I could say, I don't need this column now. So I'm going to delete that, delete that column. And then this should be kind of bolded, it looks like, so that it's part of the title. All right. And then notice again, the totals are not pulling up here. The total program then is going to be the sum of these two. And if I was going to auto fill down there and then drag that down. So there we have that. And then I'm going to sum this back up equals the sum of these items. So we'll sum that back up. And so we have that. And we might want like a pox around this program. So I might say, maybe I, maybe to make that a little more explanatory. I could put a, I put a box around it and say those, those are all the programs, right? And then the total unrestricted here. So that's some formatting we can do. Now, if we wanted to highlight this back across the cells, I can go, okay, let's highlight these. I'm not going to merge the cell again because I don't like doing that really. I'm going to right click on it and say I'm going to format the cells. And then we'll say I want a horizontal formatting across the selection. So okay. All right. Now I've got it centered again. And that won't, that will not mess us up when we're trying to format other things as much, at least as the, the merging messes things up sometimes. It could be a little annoying. So we're going to do the same thing here. We're going to, we're going to center across the selection. We'll do it here as well. So I'm going to right click and center, center across the selection. So I'm going to format the cells. That I got to do that first. And then we can center across the selection like that. So the one down right there. Well, let me get on that one. Center across the selection. There we have it. And then if you want a little bit of space, we added this up here. We might need another row. I might select this row, right click on it and insert maybe another row so that it's not right up next to the title, something like that. So that's a little bit of formatting we can do there. Now also note that you might be able to get this on, on, on a, not have it landscape at this point. So if I go to the page layout and go to the orientation and say we want it portrait again, it's pretty close. You know, if I make this a little bit smaller, make that a little bit smaller. We're almost there. If I made some of these columns a little bit smaller, like for example, this, you know, I might want them all uniform. But if I made these columns just a little bit smaller, that made them longer. You know, there we have it fits on a page. So that now it's on portrait. All right. So now we can print this whole thing out if we, if we wanted to in this format, we can print it out one by one. We can collate it. So it's all on one thing again. So let's just check that out. If I go to the file and I say print now. So now I want to make sure to print the entire worksheet. So if I print the entire workbook, then we've got the statement of net positions. We've got the, the statement of activities. And now our expense allocation. And now I'm going to print it. Now you could print this out collated in that format already, or I'm going to print it out to the PDF printer. So I'm going to say print. And then it's going to go to the, to the PDF printer. And so it's going to ask us, where do we want it? I'm going to put it in the same folder. I'm going to overwrite what we had before. And then I'll close this back out, say save. And then I can close this out. And then I'm going to minimize this. And there's our financial statement. So there it is. And now here is our PDF file, which now has the three reports on it. So you can imagine giving this to somebody and say, here's the statement of financial position that we can give for, you know, the balance sheet on it. And then so I opened up the wrong one. Now I've reopened up the financial statement. That's the one we want, which gives the statement of financial position. And then we can have the, the statement of activities. And then the more detailed and say, okay, someone's going to ask your, we're expecting the question to be, well, how much did you spend on, you know, each of the activities, the programs versus the admin. And we're going to go, all right, here's the expense allocation, right? So that now you have the expense allocation. Here's the program information. And then here's the admin and the fundraising and the total expense allocation and the total expenses. Obviously at that 321 to 60, which should tie out to the 321 to 60 on basically the income statement or the statement of activities. So that's going to be it for now. Let's get out of here.


winter outfits for 2021 with a sprinkle of French style chic. If you're wondering how to add a sprinkle of Parisian vibe into your outfit ideas this winter, 2021, then this video should help. I'll be sharing my tips and tricks and lots of outfit ideas to achieve a little French style chic in your looks this winter. Also, a portion of this video has very kindly been sponsored by my favorite luxury watch brand Nordgreen. I shall be integrating this beautiful watch into my outfit ideas today and telling you a little bit more about the brand a bit later in this video, but first, outfit number one. Obviously, throughout this video I am having to generalize, but I think it's fair to say that French women do have that effortless style down to a tee. And while that essence is often mysterious, it's not altogether unattainable. I've been a big fan of French style for as long as I can remember and I've managed to glean out what it is that makes French women look so chic. And the first tip I would say is to take a really good look at your color palette. One thing I noticed time and time again is that Parisian women rarely wear bright tones. Everything is pretty muted, neutral and elegant. Think about utilizing the browns, grays and beiges you might have in your own wardrobe and you'll be on the right track. Though I do see a sprinkle of red from time to time and as you can see I am sporting a little bit of that today. Once you've got the hang of the look you can start experimenting and adding pops of color into the mix. But to begin with I would play it safe and just get that coral rail beautiful neutral tones in place and you'll find it will make creating your outfit ideas so much easier. I once went to a beautiful Italian wedding in the hills of northern Italy. I wore a pretty skirt and matching top and had all these lovely gentle frills with little lace detailing. Flat sandals on my feet and I think I may have even completed this look with my hair in pigtails. It was a very pretty and cute outfit and as I realized upon my arrival I was completely underdressed. Italian women it seemed really loved to get dressed up.  But while the Italians embrace a little bit of extravagance and look incredible doing it, the French seem to go the opposite way. They prefer to tone everything down and focus on the simplicity. Beautiful fabrics, a cut that's just so, neutral tones that blend together perfectly. It's that understated elegance shining through. They don't look like they've tried too hard and inevitably that oozes effortless chic. So if you're wanting to style a Parisian vibe into your outfit ideas this winter one of the main tips would always be to focus on those simple things. What's the item been made from? Will it last? Does the cut of the item feel chic and elegant? How does it drape? Can you walk easily in it? How does it feel against your skin? And focusing on those minute details will no doubt help you start to look at clothes in a really different way. Probably buying less but buying much better. Thinking about the beauty in the simplicity that brings me to Nordgreen, a luxury minimalist Scandinavian watch brand I have the great pleasure of working with again. Their whole aesthetic is about focusing on those core elements that really makes their watches stand out from the rest. I have quite a few of their watches now and I have to say the quality is impeccable. Whether you go for leather, gold, interchangeable straps and a gift box I always know that they'll be understated, elegant and complement all of my outfit ideas. For this video I decided to go for the Philosopher's watch in gold. In the largest 40mm size with a brown leather strap just a quick peek at the colour palette in my own wardrobe and I knew these tones would intergo beautifully. Celebrate Black Friday, Nordgreen are also offering some amazing discounts at the moment. And if you use my discount code Jess35 at checkout, you will receive 35% off whatever you choose. I actually bought one for David last Christmas as a gift and he wears it daily. On top of all that beautiful quality we've come to expect from Nordgreen, their commitment to sustainability and being ethical as a company is always really impressive from their packaging, carbon neutral shipping and giving back program providing thousands of pounds to NGOs around the world. Having a beautiful timepiece can often be the perfect finishing touch to an outfit and combined with a company that actually takes action to be better makes it a brand that I'm always happy to support. So at the end of this video do follow the link in the description box below and view the collection for yourself. Not forgetting that discount code if you do decide to spoil yourself or someone else. When I think about how to add a bit of French style chic into my outfits this winter there's a few pieces that immediately spring to mind. Items I know I can reach for quickly that are often my go-to when I'm creating this look. So I thought you might find it helpful if I made a bit of a capsule wardrobe of all my Parisian Vibe essentials. French women would probably say the Humboldt Blazer is one of their wardrobe staples. They're often boxy in shape and in winter wool in fabric. Thankfully you don't need a trip to Paris to pick one up. There are lots of beautiful options across the high street. Like we mentioned earlier I would stick with a pretty timeless and neutral palette and keep an eye out for the best quality that's within budget. I reach for layers when it's cold and a simple tea underneath if it's mild and it always makes me feel stylish and polished. I tend to choose oversized options that will cover my bum and with a side note it'll give me a sprinkle of Parisian style while I do it. No-brainer with this one and of course being particularly on trend this season there are about 20 different ones I would recommend available to buy right now. Obviously you could go traditional cream and navy which is what I seem to have the most of or mix it up a little bit with a sprinkle of deep bread like the one I'm wearing or camel stripes even. I love the quaint buttons on my more fitted Bretton top. It adds a little vintage touch and when I'm craving the feel of cotton against my skin I'll always opt for this version. When it's particularly cold I do a bit of layering with mine and even when I'm particularly covered up in a big wool coat just seeing that touch of stripe peeping through gives a nod to the Parisian look. When I think about the knitwear that I mostly spot on French women it would either be a roll-knit jumper or a snugly cardigan. So in the interest of lots of outfit ideas I've added both into my French style capsule wardrobe. No one wants to look like the marshmallow man in their winter wardrobe and there's definitely an art to getting it right and keeping warm. With cardigans you've got a few different options let it fall off your shoulder for an understated sexiness. Tuck it in or do a bit of a half tuck to accentuate your waistband and a trick I learned from the French where your cardigan backwards to maximize outfit ideas. It shows a little skin but in a really subtle way. Now a great roll-knit jumper not only adds a bit of a Parisian style to your outfit ideas but it's also hugely practical at the same time. Keeping it sleek and refined and opt for one that's fairly tight fitting I mostly style mine with jeans and a blazer for low-key chic or as an extra layer underneath a cardigan too. Are you even Parisian if you don't have at least one beautiful winter coat in your wardrobe? I'm not Parisian at all actually but I am trying to keep up in the lovely coat department. Said with a wink of course but if there's one thing that always stands out mild with French women it would be their effortlessly chic selection of wool coat. Play it safe with all the neutral shades and you'll find that those pieces will transcend the trends and forever work in your capsule wardrobe. The longer the shelf life the less your cost per wear. In this footage you'll see some of my own favorites I plan on wearing through the streets of Paris in a couple of weeks time and I'll link some new in favourites in the description box too. Whether you decide to go flowing and draped or structured and polished the choice is yours. Just keep your eye out for those interesting cuts that will stand the test of time. For this department I've kept things minimal with just three essential pairs. One pair of ankle boots high enough to give me a little height but not so high that I couldn't walk in them all day long. While I do love a pointed toe shoe I see round toe options on the streets of Paris the most paired with crop jeans, blouses and maybe a cardigan layered over the top. Now there's nothing chic or effortless hobbling about on heels that are very obviously killing your feet and French women know this all too well only opting for high heels that they know they can actually walk in. So if they're just not your thing and you struggle to walk like a sane human being in them I would advise giving them a miss. If however you have trained your feet well to cope with the pain without grimacing then great go for it. I love this look and while I wouldn't say I'm exactly comfortable in them I'm happy to suffer in silence for the height. With an internal sigh of relief for this final pair of shoes I'd add in to my French style capsule wardrobe a lovely pair of flats. Like with ankle boots the French generally love a rounded toe ballet flat but I'm personally really loving my pointed toe versions at the minute so I'm going to freestyle with those instead. Next on my French style rail would be a great fitting pair of jeans. The French do love a pair of Leigh Wight 501s and if you're hunting for some I would highly recommend the secondhand store in Parfait Paris who have an amazing selection. If like me you don't already have a pair of 501s I would say stick with something straight and possibly crop too. The idea with jeans is to feel a teeny bit sexy but not overtly so. You need to feel comfortable to look it and the more worn in and vintage the jeans the better. Forget about what's on trend in jeans and go with the shape and style the suits you best. Then when you add the rest of the combo with your run top and your winter coat for example the overall effect will hit the mark. Whatever look you're trying to achieve I would always recommend having a great pair of tailored trousers in your wardrobe. These are my favorite that I've been wearing on repeat a lot recently. One because I love that deep charcoal tone and two I just love the fit. Loose but not too loose, tailored but not trying too hard. They really give off that French chic vibe that I'm often aiming for. And finally on this essentials rail I've added a mini skirt. It's something I've seen in street style Paris looks a lot and while I wouldn't say it's personally a favorite of mine I would say it looks particularly French. And as a bonus it is hugely on trend this season too. Style with a chunky knit or a cardigan, tights and ankle boots to give it more of a relaxed vibe and you get extra points for choosing one in Tweet. I found quite a few I loved recently across the high street so I'll make sure I link those in the description box too. I'm imagining lots of you already know a lot of the French fashion rules already and one of my favorites is to forget what's on trend or not and just focus on what suits you. What makes you feel really comfortable and what is the most flattering on your shape and in turn that then makes your winter outfit options really vast. I love and feel nice in a pair of flares so I might style that with a simple blouse on my top half give myself a little bit of height with my ankle boots and throw on a blazer and a scarf for added warmth. And ultimately what I've created is a really simple outfit but one that is very much my own personal style. I wouldn't say I look particularly on trend but it doesn't look old fashioned either. I know it's tempting but try not to overthink it. If you're tottering around in your heels or feeling conscious of how tight your trousers are you've probably not got the outfit combination right. Does it flatter you? Do you feel nice? Can you walk easily and are you warm enough? Start there and the rest should fall into place. Which ties in nicely to my next point making sure you've got the balance right. We all want to look chic not just French women but you have to level that with practicality. Certainly in winter. Finding the right combination that makes you feel stylish and chic while still keeping warm can feel daunting but once you've got the hang of it you'll be able to do it without even thinking about it. Take this out for idea for example. Say this is what I want to wear to go out to meet some friends for lunch but we're shopping and it's cold outside. How can I make it work? I could switch out those flats and wear my ankle boots instead. The style is very similar and I don't think anyone would even notice the difference. I could add in a bit of layering to give me some more warmth or opt for one of my wall coats over the top or with a combination of layers. And don't forget your accessories too. A simple scarf can actually elevate a look even further and obviously give you extra warmth if needed. Now my outfit still has the same Parisian vibe as before. It still feels like me but I'm dressing much more appropriately for the weather and to be honest it's far easier to look put together and polished when your teeth aren't jattering because it's so cold. French women have mastered the art of high-low dressing to perfection. Hatchily slinging a beautiful Chanel bag over their shoulder to complete a really laid-back look. But the trick to getting this style right is to look like you haven't thought about it too much. There's a chic disheveled look about French style that I love so much. The hair looks like they rolled out of bed like that. The makeup a little smudged could easily have been from last night but don't be fooled that high-low combination will have been well thought through. They've just mastered the art of making it look natural.  The golden rule however is one part high to two parts low. That's a simple tip to follow until you get the hang of it then you can start playing with the idea even more. That was a lot of outfit ideas and a lot of information but hopefully it's given you a really good insight into what I think makes French women look so chic. And of course the pieces I reach for when I'm trying to emulate the look. Don't forget I have linked all the outfit ideas in the description box below you just press tap more to open it. And there you will also find a link to Nord Green's website and that discount code as well. Lots of great offers on there. Have a wonderful week everyone and hopefully you will join me next week for lots more outfit ideas and inspiration. See you then.


Ukrainian Army lost a substantial number of Western-supplied armored vehicles. Kiev has lost a substantial number of Western-supplied armored vehicles in attempts to breach well-fortified Russian defenses in the southern section of the front, the Washington Post reported, citing a military officer on the ground. In an interview with the newspaper, an unnamed Ukrainian Air Assault Unit commander claimed that Kiev had gained some ground in Zaporose region near the settlement of Robotino and Vubovoy, scenes of fierce fighting in recent weeks, although he admitted that the advance was modest. He added that the progress came at a high cost in military vehicles, including German Marder and US Stryker infantry fighting vehicles. A lot of equipment was lost there, he said, without providing exact numbers. The commander also pointed out that Ukrainian troops have encountered serious defenses along their way. You just have to understand that there is a saturation of anti-tank mines and a saturation of enemy forces. It's just colossal, he said. Ukrainian officials have also acknowledged that their military is suffering huge losses, blaming the lackluster progress on delays in Western arms shipments, on extensive Russian minefields, and on a lack of air power. Against this backdrop, The New York Times reported that some officials in Washington, Kiev's main donor of military assistance, believes that Ukraine's counter-offensive would likely fall short of its strategic goals, including that of cutting Russia's land bridge to Crimea. Officials in The New York Times report also suggested that within a few weeks, the Ukrainian army will need time to rebuild their stockpile of equipment and to rest forces exhausted by the summer fighting.


Energy, it plays a huge role in pushing us forward and making our lives easier. However, while energy does help us out a lot, it does come with a few catches, the two most prominent being abundance and safety, which have raised quite a few number of questions making us ask, is there an alternative? Imagine if I told you there was an energy source out there, which was not only available in large quantities, but safely produced energy. You'd think that I was joking, but in reality I just give you a perfect description of Helium-3. But what really is this Helium-3 and how does it work? Helium-3 is an isotope, or simply put, one of the many versions of the element Helium. It is also non-toxic and non-radioactive, which is what makes it safer to work with than nuclear energy. Now let's see how nature manufactures Helium-3. One of the primary ways Helium-3 is created is through radioactive decay. For example, let's take a look at Tritium. Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, which is formed from events like cosmic rays colliding with isotopes like Nitrogen-14 or Hydrogen-2 to create Tritium and Carbon-12. While the Carbon-12 nucleus is stable and satisfied, the Tritium nucleus isn't, so it fixes this by undergoing further decay and releases one electron and one anti-neutrino, leaving behind a stable Helium-3 nucleus. But how do we even utilize the energy Helium-3 has to offer us? Well, one common way is to make Helium-3 undergo nuclear fusion with the help of Deuterium, a stable isotope of hydrogen. When we fuse these two together, we get Helium-4, along with the proton ejected from the fusion reaction. Also, we get a lot of energy. How much exactly? Well, 1 kg of Helium-3 gives us about 19 megawatt years of energy. By the way, for those of you who don't know, a watt ear is, and I quote, the measure of energy by 1 watt in one year. But more astounding than that is the amount of energy required to burn Helium-3, which ranges from 10 kV to 200 kV. Now let's take a look at the other wonderful aspect of this gift from nature, supply. When it comes to supply, Helium-3 can be found on Earth, however not in amounts we would consider adequate. You see, our tremendous amount of Helium-3 is not found down in the ground, but rather up in the sky. Yep, our moon is a cornucopia of Helium-3. But how is this? The simple answer is, Solar winds containing Helium-3. For those of you who don't know what Solar winds are, I covered them in my Mars video. Anyways, Solar winds containing concentrations of Helium-3 have bathed the moon in the substance. However, the Helium-3 wasn't scattered across the moon evenly, with some regions containing more than others, especially with Lunar Maria containing more than half the Helium-3 on the moon. Moreover, meteorite collisions have resulted in the Helium-3 being buried a couple of meters deep in the lunar soil, leaving us with the question of how do we extract it. Now this is one of the obstacles which stands in the way of us obtaining Helium-3. However we have devised one solution, which includes heating up the lunar soil to about 600 degrees Celsius or 1112 degrees Fahrenheit, which NASA plans to do with their project Lunar Miner Mark II, a sophisticated mining robot which can excavate lunar soil containing Helium-3 and use the power of solar energy to heat it up and extract the mineral. We haven't completed Mark yet, but when we do, we can marvel at the fact that the Helium-3 on the moon could meet our energy needs for the next, say, 10,000 to 100,000 years. So at the end of the day, the answer is still unclear. We still have many obstacles which we have to overcome, so be sure to stay tuned for part 2, in which we continue our journey to a Helium-3 powered future. I hope you enjoyed this. If you did, then be sure to leave a like and subscribe for more science videos. Also happy holidays!


From Bahrain, it's theCUBE. Covering AWS Public Sector Bahrain. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. Hello Ryan, welcome to theCUBE coverage here for AWS Summit in Bahrain in the Middle East. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We're here, it's our second year covering the evolution of cloud computing in the region, changing the landscape of entrepreneurship, government, society, obviously data is the new oil, so we're excited to have our next guest, Abdul-Elmo Iqil, who's the co-founder and partner at RAIN, hot startup with some seed funding, I think has cracked the code on the crypto money-making aspect of cryptocurrency. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, thank you for having me. So let's get started.  Interesting strategy on crypto, everyone went ICO, kind of a fraudulent market, it's international, we all come to watch in the ICO, US cramping down on it. A lot of entrepreneurs love this market, a lot of innovation. You guys had a different approach and doing something very innovative. Take a minute to explain what RAIN is doing, because you've cracked the code on crypto to fiat, which has been the legit use case for making this all this way. Absolutely, so all of the founders, the four founders, Yahya Badawi, AJ Nelson, Joseph DeLago and I, we've been in this industry for quite a while. We've been here five, six years and we've seen all the hype cycles come and go about sometimes about blockchain technology itself and sometimes about the ICO craze. And we've really just came down to what is the viable business model. We're all entrepreneurs and we had looking for a new opportunity, as with a lot of people coming into this industry, with as with any innovation, lots of opportunities arise. And we've looked at the world and the world had many exchanges that were the most successful businesses in this industry. The exchanges facilitating the trade, that was the most interest, that was the highest demand. And that was the real use case. And we found that there were exchanges popping up from around the world, but they weren't here any in the Middle East yet. And perhaps it was due to regulatory uncertainty or other difficulties of coming into this market, but Bahrain really opened up for us and we met with the central bank of Bahrain about three or four years ago and things really got started from there. And being a marketplace, you got to have a lot of governance, it's all a lot of regulatory pressures from the folks that have started. People who watch theCUBE know that we've been very bullish on crypto. We love blockchain as an underlying technology. Yeah, there's some sustainability issues around Bitcoin and others, we recognize that. But in general, this is a wave that cannot be denied. Money's flowing, right? So money's flowing in crypto, she got crypto to crypto, you guys have the fiat piece of it. So this brings on the first kind of liquidity opportunity in crypto to real money. Yeah, absolutely. So that's our main goal is we're serving both retail and institutions. And we believe there's going to be a lot of traffic from the traditional finance world, from institutions and individual investors into the crypto world and the opposite as well. A lot of people had challenges with taking the profits out of exchanges and withdraw them to their bank in a regulatory, compliant way. And that's really what we're solving here for the lowest fees in the region. Bahrain wants to be a modern society. They're going all in on cloud computing. They want to be a cloud country. They're open to new ideas. What attracted you to these guys? What made them different as it was that their vision was that their posture on oversight. What were some of the things that makes it work here? Well, at first it was the reception. The Bahrain central bank had a fintech unit already in 2000, I think early 2017. So that was great. I think other central banks around the region and the world were just starting then. There was the Bahrain fintech bay dedicated working space for fintech companies here. So the ecosystem and the reception was really what attracted us at the beginning other than knowing that Bahrain was a good financial hub for quite some time for the region. So we joined the Bahrain central bank's regulatory sandbox, which allowed us to experiment and test whether we can do this in a safe and secure way. And about a year and a half later, central bank drafted the regulations for crypto asset exchanges, brokerages. So now that that regulation got drafted and published, we graduated from the sandbox, thankfully, and we were allowed to apply for the license. Shortly after we applied, we earned the license, thankfully. So what's next? What's goes on now? You get a lot of work, probably a lot of coding, gotta make sure the fintech compliance and a lot of hurdles there, I can understand that. What's now next? Got the regulation in place, you can expand. What's the plan? Well, we announced the license and at the same time, we also announced closing our seed round. So with that, we were able to grow our team the past month from eight to nine people to 15 to 17 people now and just more and more joining on board every day. And really, our focus is growth. Now, we are out of the sandbox. We don't have the limitations of the sandbox we had before. And we have banking relationships already made with different banks. So now we're just trying to reach out for the market. So we have grown our customer support team, grown our engineering team, hiring and compliance officer, and other growth aspects just moving forward. Standing up the basics of the business. That's right. What's your target audience gonna be, the institutions at first, retail? What's the target audience? It's really both. It depends on what the market is providing. We see institutional demand that has always relied on, when we spoke with institutions, they always relied on getting the license first because they don't want to operate with anyone on license, which makes it really interesting because that means they haven't been able to get into the digital asset, the crypto asset world the past few years while it's going up and down. So we see a 50-50 divide, most likely, and it's going to be a similar ratio than the rest of the world, but right now it's a lot of retail customers. Abdul, great to get your perspective here. Obviously you've been in this space for a while. We saw the fire hype cycle go up and then the wet blanket, crypto winter hit. In the United States, certainly it put a clamp down on most ICOs. The SEC is looking at a bunch of startups and behavior. Pretty wild west as they call it, but internationally it's still been pretty active.  Now it's been a block of ice if you want, this crypto winter. What's your take on it? What's the vibe internationally? Obviously money's still flowing. Bitcoin's over 10,000 I think this morning, but still a lot of activity. Some tokens have fallen away, some are staying around. What's your assessment? So we've seen a lot of cycles. If you've been in this industry for five, six, seven years, you'll see that we've had multiple of these winters, some of them lasting longer than others. And this late last one didn't last as long as the one before. So every time we see a boom, we have a lot of media and a lot of people coming in, brand new, trying to educate themselves about what is this. So we see just an everlasting cycle of just expansion. And the price right now is not at the all-time high, but it's still considered pretty significant. The beginning of the year was only about three or $4,000. Right now it's about $10,100 for a Bitcoin. As with the ICOs, there have been a lot of concerns rightfully so because anyone can whip out a token and start selling it almost as a security. But the central bank of Bahrain has a list of acceptable crypto assets that they will allow us to list. So right now we only have four cryptocurrencies or assets, Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, and XRP, but nothing more than that at the time and we hope to add more in the future. Yeah, Ripple's been taking some hits lately in the US. What about EOS and some of these other ones around the coin that gets out of the corner? You get some growth, you're seeing some new things. How are you guys going to be evaluating some of these other new currencies? Is there a formula? You keep an eye on them. Is it a consensus? Right, so we are agnostic to choosing the crypto asset that our customers want to invest in. If the central bank of Bahrain accepts this as secure, liquid enough, and essentially time-tested as well if it's been around for, let's say, three to five years with no network issues, then maybe retail customers can invest in it, but if it just came up and it's brand new, it might come up, it's not time-tested security-wise. It hasn't gone through some certain pressures that are necessary for a network, for payments or storing of value. So the central bank makes the decision on what they're going to accept, what they list as viable. That's right, but we take customer input all the time. We started with just three, and then we had a lot of demand for XRP here in the region, and we listed it after getting it approved. So we can't get Kubecoin up there yet, can we? It depends on how high is it up in the... It doesn't exist yet, it's coming. They're coming for two years. Everyone knows it's been coming. What's your final thoughts to entrepreneurs out there because there's a lot of activity. This is one of those things where persistence really matters. Know your space, stay humble, deal with these cycles because they are happening. There is a high velocity of cycles, seasons, if you will, winter and summer. Well, I really think people should be more calculated, to think long-term with this technology. A lot of people are trying to make a quick buck or just make something thinking that it's just a quick way to make money, but I really think people should educate themselves, both the entrepreneurs and the retail investors that, you know, about the market, about the technology, so they can really see where the use cases might be of most need to the market. Talk about your expansion plans. You have two co-founders in the US, you're the co-founders in Egypt. Is there going to be a remote team? Is it going to be in Bahrain? What's the hiring look like? Where are people going to be located? So most of our, if not all of our customer support, our client service agents are here in Bahrain. We have the co-founders now, Joseph and AJ from the Bay Area. They're in Bahrain as well here for the majority of the year. They're in the office now. The engineering team, however, is a little scattered. Sometimes we find security is a really high priority for us. It's the number one priority for us, as any cryptocurrency exchange would be. So we really scout talent from the US, from Canada, from other places around the world. So our engineering team is based in the Bay Area and other places in the US. Aside from Joseph, who leads it, who's the co-founder here in Bahrain, and the rest of the business and customer team is here in Bahrain. So really the gating factor on hiring is making sure it's securities number one. So it's not so much get people filled in an office on the engineering front. No, it's definitely, we look for high quality candidates. So that's our priority. We may be a small team, but they're all superstars, to be honest. What's been the biggest challenge that you guys had to overcome in this process? Because it's tough to get the license. Was it just being patient? Was it the diligence? What were some of the things that you overcame that were challenges? Well, it definitely was a challenge to talk to a lot of regulators in the region in general. Bahrain was by far the most cooperative. So right now, the challenge is perhaps talking to other regulators. When you talk expansion plans, we are serving the whole Middle East here from Bahrain. But we'd ideally want to also set up banking in Kuwait or UAE or Saudi just so we can have better, quicker on and off ramps for the customers there. One of the big stories is obviously Amazon Web Services has a region here. Pretty important, pretty big deal. What's your take on what you think this is going to do for the region, having an Amazon region, multiple availability zones. What's that going to do for the entrepreneurship equation? I mean, it's fantastic. We see a lot of excitement here from entrepreneurs in the region. And especially with regulation about having customer data stored here in the region, it's really going to help a lot of entrepreneurs also mitigate any downtime from hosting it in other places. New generation of entrepreneurship hitting the scene here, isn't it? Yeah, it's really exciting. And lots of funding going around, lots of ideas. Pretty really, really exciting for all entrepreneurs. Fail fast, as we always say, no one likes failure, but it takes guts to start a company. Of course, of course. Jill, thanks for coming on. I appreciate you. So congratulations on your success. Thank you very much. It's theCUBE coverage here. We are in Bahrain for AWS Summit. We'll be back with more after the short break.