Hi everyone, I'm Joe for Jaspie's CaseRakes.com, here on a Wednesday with 2022 Panini Flawless Collegiate Football, second half of the case, pick your team, 10, there it is, we marked that right there, big thanks to the people who bought their team straight up, appreciate that, I think that picked up the Steelers last before we pulled the remaining teams for that random number block. So here's one of the randomizers we did earlier today, here's the other one, wait a second, I feel like I switched, did I switch, no I didn't, I got that, I was losing my mind for a second. All right, does that mean two short stops, so if that news is true, what are your sources Jose, but if that's true, not two short stops, I think they move to tease off short, try to move to the outfield, more DH work maybe, he's an aggressive defender but maybe sometimes a little too aggressive, a lot of the shoulder issues just come from his aggressive style of play, they can get him away from doing that, put him in the outfield a little bit, preserve that shoulder and you're also going to lose him for a good chunk of the season because of the PED thing, suspension, so they're going to need a shorts out for a little while. That's an autograph in the middle, I'm trying not to look at the cards, try to slow play this as much as possible, is that two autographs, then a gem on the left side, we'll find out for real these, or maybe they move, maybe they move Xander to second base, confirm multiple source, okay, wow that's crazy then, Padre's getting Xander Bogarts, remember Manny Machado can opt out too, next year after 2023, and I think Soto's a free agent after 2023, so they might need to put, maybe to tease in the outfield or put Xander at third, to tease at short or something, they need that sort of flexibility. Alright, so let's see what we got in here, now we're going by our, there's no group break checklist yet for this, so as you read in the description, we're going by group break checklist, and how they sort, no then they have not done a checklist for NFL teams yet, so we're going to go by our no checklist rules, which mean, which you saw in the item description, if they're an active player they'll go to the team they're currently on, and if they're not active they'll go to the team they played for the longest. I think a good recent example would be, so like most of the old school guys will go to their main team, right, but like Odell Beckham Jr., not active, he's not signed with the team, so he's going to go to the Giants, he played for the Giants longest. For Por Ejemplo, alright, 4 out of 10, Jordan Davis leads us off, nice little laundry tag right here, I need to post it notes because I want to tag all of these, these hits because that'll make it easier for the shipping team to sort this and ship this, and he is a defensive tackle for the Eagles, for the Fly Eagles Fly, there's Chris Olave, 14 out of 25, for the Saints, Saints are a number block team, so we go by that digit right there, New Orleans 4, and that will go to Chris, Chris M gets Chris O, 1 out of 10, campus legends Ray Lewis, what time is it, game time, that goes to Aaron and the Ravens, a lot of long-term deals, Bogart's getting 11 years, well he's only the second player that got 11 years, it's only Trey and Xander right, two long-term deals, I guess judges 9 is kind of long, but that seems like 11's an interesting number though, but that seems to be the medic number to lock down those free agents, we've got 7 out of 25, Rookie Otto Dez Fitzpatrick, well I believe it's a Titan right, just want to make sure, yeah Tennessee, that will be for that San Francisco number block group, well 9 seems reasonable, look at what, 9 is long, but that sounds like 9 or 10 seems like a much more common number, 11 is kind of a weird number though, all right so Tennessee 7, Garrett with Tennessee 7, gets the Dez Fitzpatrick autograph, we got Kennedy Brooks 3 out of 10, but yeah Jason said maybe that's going to be the growing trend, 11 year deals, maybe in a few years we'll see 12 year deals, and Kennedy Brooks is a free agent, but he played for the Eagles longest, he was a practice squad guy with the Fly Eagles Fly, so that's going to go to Matt Smith, so you got that Jordan Davis dual relic mat, and you'll get Kennedy Brooks as well, couple more here, Star Swatch signature is AJ Brown, 15 out of 15, that's for Tennessee, and that's for Tennessee 5, Tennessee 5, Matt Smith with Tennessee 5, that trade might have gotten the, it might have gotten the, no AJ Brown would be Titans, or Eagle sorry, I'm losing my mind, because I was going to say that AJ Brown, the AJ Brown deal by the Titans to the Eagles may have gotten the Titans GM fired, got fired right after that Philadelphia game, thanks Justin, that goes to Matt Smith and the Eagles, and then we got Kenneth Walker III, 23 out of 25, three color patch and autograph, starting to light things up for Seattle, another bird team, and that's going to go to the Saints, Seattle, Buccaneers, etc, etc, etc, number block, so that goes to number three, Seattle III is going to be for Garrett, there you go Garrett, the Crystal Lave Saints, this little small princess, all the gems here are naturally mine, not lab grown, all right first one, what is this, what have we got here, we have Diamond Derek Henry, one of one, that's nice, I think the one of one diamonds, a little bit larger too, that's pretty awesome, Tennessee is a number block team, Tennessee one, Jeffrey Myers, Jeff, all aboard the Big Hit Express, strong hit, right side, quarterback, it's Sam Howell, eight out of 15, Sapphire and autograph, little color match with the North Carolina colors there, the last team, I don't know if he's with the commanders anymore, but I think that was the last team, no he's still with the commanders, on their active roster, all right so that'll go to Patrick in Washington, maybe I'm thinking of Matt Corral who's another quarterback but not on that roster, all right there you go Patrick and the final one here right in the middle is gonna be another auto of, there's Matt Corral, I was just talking about him, 16 out of 20, Ruby and autograph, I don't think he was picked up by another team, oh he's still with Caroline but he's on IR, thanks Justin, on IR, so I don't know, maybe we'll see him next year, now that Caroline is still looking for quarterbacks, I'm not sure if Sam Darnold is gonna be the answer, so maybe they'll give him a shot, yeah James is like starting next year probably, so hold on to this one, who has Carolina, Matt Smith, hold on to this one, this might be your Carolina Panthers starting quarterback by next year, all right there you go gang, thanks for watching, thanks for breaking with us, the case is closed on Flaws Collegiate Football One Box Picker Team 10, I'm Joe for jaspyscasewrakes.com, I'll see you next time for the next one, bye-bye.


In this lesson, we will learn about the alkaline earth metals in group 2 of the periodic table. We will focus on magnesium and calcium and learn about how they react with oxygen and water and the products formed from these reactions. The alkaline earth metals are beryllium, magnesium, calcium, strontium, barium, and radium, located in group 2 of the periodic table. These metals all have two electrons in their valence shell and with the exception of beryllium can lose these valence electrons to form an ion with a plus 2 charge. Like the alkaline metals, these metals, except for magnesium, are stored in oil. Similar properties and reactivity trends are also observed. Counting down the group, their density and reactivity increases. Melting points and boiling points decrease and the metals become softer. We will now learn about the reactions of magnesium and calcium with oxygen and water. Magnesium is shiny and silver, but you will see that your magnesium strip may be dull. This is due to the formation of an oxide layer from exposure to air. We clean it with steel wool, so to remove as much of the oxide layer as possible. Using a pair of tongs, take the magnesium strip and hold it to a roaring Bunsen burner flame. The combustion of magnesium proceeds with a bright white flash. Take care not to look at this flash. Calcium reacts with oxygen to produce magnesium oxide, which is a white solid. Here is a challenge. Do you expect calcium to be softer or harder than magnesium? Please pause the lesson to think about this and resume when you are ready. Calcium is softer than magnesium. Moving down the group, the metals become softer. For all though, these metals are harder than the alkali metals. Calcium is also shiny and silver.  Remove excess oil using paper towels. Using tongs, place in a roaring Bunsen burner flame. You will observe that it burns with a red flame. Calcium reacts with oxygen to produce calcium oxide, which is a white solid. So magnesium and calcium react with oxygen to form their respective oxides. Let the formed calcium oxide cool. It's important that you allow it to cool sufficiently because the next step is exothermic. Place the cooled calcium oxide in cold water. Calcium oxide reacts with water to produce a solution of calcium hydroxide, also known as lime water. You will see a white precipitate at the bottom of the beaker once everything settles. This is solid calcium hydroxide as it is only slightly soluble in water. Magnesium will only react with steam, not cold water. The reaction from steam forms magnesium oxide and hydrogen gas. In this practical, it is imperative that the magnesium strip is heated, not the mineral wool soaked in water. Hydrogen gas can be collected over water and tested to confirm its presence. How do you think the reaction of calcium with water compares to the reaction of magnesium with water? Please pause the lesson to think about this and resume when you are done. The reaction of calcium with water is expected to be more vigorous as the reactivity of these metals increases moving down the group. Calcium reacts with cold water to form calcium hydroxide and hydrogen gas. Note that calcium sinks to the bottom in this reaction. The effervescence shows that a gas is being produced. In summary, the alkaline earth metals are the group 2 metals. They exhibit similar properties and reactivity trends to the alkaline metals. Magnesium and calcium react with oxygen to form their respective oxides. Magnesium reacts with steam to produce magnesium oxide and hydrogen gas. Calcium reacts with cold water to produce calcium hydroxide and hydrogen gas.


Hello, this is In The Studio, and I'm your host today, Martha Teeter. Our topic is Paul's Place at 1111 H Street, and we have some other media that is available to learn about this program that you can see. One is a DCTV show, the Timely Topics program, and the other is a KDRT Davisville show. Both of them can be seen by searching for Paul's Place at davismedia.org. And today my guest is Bill Pride. Hi, Martha. Hi, Bill. And Bill is the executive director of Davis Community Meals and Housing. Yes. Thank you for coming in. You're welcome. Davis is very fortunate as a community to have a lot of volunteers who have cared for those less fortunate, and a number of years ago, 2025, that resulted in the formation of a nonprofit called Davis Community Meals, and they began serving meals at St. Martin. Yes, we started off as an all-volunteer organization back in 1991, where we first served our first meal over at St. Martin's in February of 1991. Wow. And we've evolved from then. We still have a lot of volunteers we get from the community, from different faith groups, from the university, from high school groups, the old scouts, boy scouts, service organizations. We use probably about 1,500-2,000 volunteers a year come to us to help out. And we've evolved from just doing a meal program to having multiple meals during the week and also a whole range of other programs serving low-income and homeless folks. Great. And then I guess that, in a couple of years after the start, resulted in a facility on H Street? Yes. About three years after we first opened our meals program, we worked with the city of Davis to acquire our 1111 H Street property, which we've used as a day shelter resource center and also the transitional housing program for the last 20-something years. Wow. Yeah. And that was purchased then by the non-profit? Yes. With some help? Yeah. The city helped us with financing from some, I think, of housing trust funds. And we used some other funding we had from some other sources to take what was originally two single-family residents on the site and join them and turn it into somewhat what it is today, like I said, the day shelter resource center and transitional housing program. And I guess that would always be used then to serve those who are experiencing homelessness. Yes. That was part of our agreement with the city, which was that they're going to give us the money in return that we're obligated to operate the facility and use the facility to help homeless and low-income folks. Excellent. Good. And that the facility is showing a little wear and is a little under capacity. Well, the facility, like I said, they were actually like single-family residences. Yeah. Yeah, I think we have a picture of that. You know, we took those single-family residents and made it into what it is today. So we house right now up to 12 folks during the day when our resource center is open. We have another 40, 50, 60, sometimes 70 folks come in to see us. Wow. We have a lot of services about people who go take a shower, do laundry, pretty much all different types of services and needs that people may have. But for a two single-family residence, it gets a whole heck of a lot of use from, you know, it's not used to having that many folks come in and use the facility. And we've done a couple of renovations over the years, one in 2001 and one in 2009. But even with those two renovations, it's showing a lot of wear and tear and some of the, it's, it's, there's not enough bathrooms, not enough showers for folks. Yeah, just like one bathroom. We have one bathroom, one shower for the folks coming into the day shelter and when we're only open to the public from 8 to 12 when you have 30, 40, 50, 60 people coming in, it doesn't give a lot of time and a lot of people aren't able to take showers and use the facilities the way they might otherwise. Yeah. Yeah. And I understand you have four to a room for your transitional program. Yes. And the house, like I said, small residential home, the bedrooms are 8 by 10, maybe a little bit larger. But we have four adults living in each room and we have 12 men up to four women and there's two bunk beds in each room and so it's very crowded. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's difficult. Yeah. So, recently another nonprofit that I've been involved with Davis Opportunity Village has been looking at ways to get micro-housing to help house homeless individuals and we've had a lot of difficulty finding land. So the city has connected our two nonprofits and we have an architect on our board, Maria Gridsiak, who sat down with a lot of the people involved in serving those experiencing homelessness with yourself, with the police, with the public housing authority, Yolo County Housing and she has designed a facility that is what we see on the next slide, Paul's Place at 1111 H Street. Yes. It was a very exciting venture. It is very exciting. I mean, I think it combines what we're currently doing on the site, which is the Resource Center Transition Housing Program and marries it with two floors of micro-housing, 18 units of permanent supportive housing for homeless and low-income folks. Wow. And I think it's a great, great project. I mean, it will give us an expanded Resource Center facility so we have more room for folks to use, more bathrooms, more showers, more laundry so it'll be more efficient in serving folks. The second floor with the transitional housing will go from four people to a room to individual bedrooms for 10 and then we will have the two uppers floors with these micro-housing units of approximately 300 square feet apiece and it'll be 18 total units spread out over those two floors. Yeah. Yeah, actually, I think we have a picture of the micro units too, micro-homes. And Maria was saying it's kind of designed like a little urban tiny house village with a common meeting area in the middle and the homes actually about the same dimensions as they would be on a flatbed truck moved around. Yes. Yeah, but there's plenty of room for people with disabilities. It'll be safe and stable housing for those folks who are the most vulnerable in the streets. Yeah. Those folks who are either chronically homeless or some kind of disability. And so I think it's a wonderful project to help get a number of folks off the streets of Davis. Excellent. Excellent. And I think that in developing the program, one of the people on Yolo County Housing pointed out that it's a kind of model having the multifunctional housing, the permanent supportive transitional and it will also have I guess some an emergency housing too. The emergency shelter beds in the first floor that we're going to work with the different agencies to have access to folks who need that emergency shelter throughout the year. So combining that with a resource center is something that many communities might be interested in replicating. Not many communities have resource centers. Not yet. Unfortunately because not yet, but I mean that's been I think a lot of resource centers have not survived the economic downturn and cutbacks in funding from several places. So you know we're one of the last standing I think doing that type of service frankly. But I think it's an ideal way to kind of marry different programs into one building and you know provide kind of more services for the folks in Davis who are living with our housing. Wow. Excellent. Well it sounds very exciting. I guess the people who are the most vulnerable are the ones that are the intended people to go in the permanent supportive housing. So there won't be barriers, it will be housing first type of model. It's a model that's going to allow folks with serious mental health issues, some abuse issues and those physical disabilities is a combination thereof to give them a safe and stable home. That's great. That's great. And this is something I think that you've been involved with in the community of different kind of housing. What tell me about that? We've had we've operated premise for housing for the last ten years over at Cesar Chavez Plaza on Olive Drive. Okay. And we've been doing that successfully for the last ten years. I mean we have staff on site and you know the prime function to me is when people move in is to make sure they stay. So that means doing a whole lots of different things for lots of different folks depending upon their needs and their ability to kind of stay housed. But I mean we just, our function I think is the primary function is just keeping people housed. And we also have another you know, permanent supportive housing program that we're going to be developing over the next year or two Creekside Courts which hopefully will be it's already received city council approval. Hopefully we'll have a groundbreaking this year and hopefully open sometime towards the end of 2019. That's great. And so this project, paulsplacedavis.org is where it's oriented and you can see on the map some of those different places that serve homeless individuals that's not concentrated in one place the housing is spread around Davis. Yeah I think you know we have programs pretty much all over Davis at this point in time from South Davis to Olive Drive to, there's other programs run by the Empower Yield, the Delegates of Violence Shelter in Davis. So services are spread pretty much throughout the Davis community and I know the map doesn't show up but there's also lots of different affordable housing options for folks whether it's for seniors or for a general population and pretty much anywhere in Davis from east to west north to south as those projects are located. Yeah that's great so yeah completely spread all over Davis. And the site where 1111 H Street is, that's by the railroad tracks is it? It's by the railroad tracks on H Street which runs parallel to the railroad tracks up towards the little link field, the back of the little link fields. And as I remember it's screened from the neighborhood where the. Lots of trees are on a property and also on neighborhood properties. There's also to the north an apartment complex, a two-story apartment complex and also to the west another apartment complex about in the back of the property and at the corner next to us is a duplex. So it fits right in with the apartments and the neighborhood in that regard yeah. It's not going to really change I use there all that much frankly because I don't really expect that we're going to see. It's going to be a bigger facility I just don't think it's going to you know we have a street and homeless population Davis it's been you know rather static for a number of years it's increased a little bit the last couple but I don't necessarily think it's going to have many more folks here than currently go there now. Yeah so it's you've you've the model redesigns the and improves in a sense the resource centers. It improves it makes improvements to what we're able to do now. But I don't necessarily think it's it's not anywhere that's going to you know it's not ready for a hundred people either right you know it's pretty much it's pretty much made this year of the population currently serve in a more efficient manner. That's excellent that's really great yeah to make that better yeah I think this is a real community asset I think this is something a lot of people will get excited about because it can really improve our community. I think I've seen they can't they that property values actually can increase in the neighborhood of a good housing project like this not go down as many think they do and also that the cost to the community of public services emergency services decreases by fifty percent at least. I think folks who are actually moving into housing they're getting the needs and medical needs or those needs met differently than they're being out in the streets. So it certainly results in them being a less costly or Twitter that are being on the streets where they don't really have access to any services. Right right right and it improves the whole neighborhood in fact the whole community that way yeah yeah well I think we can find out more about this at the Pulse Place davis.org website or you can email directly bill pride that information is up on your screen and I want to thank you so much for joining us today this is a really exciting a fascinating program I think it's going to be a real boon to Davis and put Davis on the map let's say about addressing homelessness. So I want to thank you so much for joining us today and in the studio thank you.


Hi everybody, thanks for coming today. It's really a thrill to be part of Lit Quick. And when I was thinking about what to read today, I do have a cookbook, but it's not very heavy on the text. It's about quick recipes with more of a California focus that we have here in the Bay Area. But I wanted to go back. I do a lot of feature stories in the Chronicle, and I wanted to go back to an older story I wrote about the Mission Burrito. When I researched his story, I was pretty excited to find out that there is actually something special about the Mission Burrito compared to burritos elsewhere. And I think most of us probably have a great affinity and a love for the Mission Burrito. I know during college I definitely would survive on the burrito by getting one at lunch and eating half and then eating the rest for dinner. So things are a little better now, but I think the burrito serves an important role in the Bay Area. So the story is called, this is an excerpt. It's called The Silver Torpedo. The weighty one-of-a-kind Mission Burrito has reached cult status among its wide variety of fans. If it weren't for the Mission Burrito, Brad Vazquez might not be living in San Francisco. He might not even be alive, because for the Mission District poet, the burrito is not just an occasional meal. It is a way of life. I eat so many burritos that I have to make an effort not to, said Vazquez, whose email address includes the words all past store in honor of his favorite burrito meat. If I didn't try to make the effort to think of other things, I would eat one every night. Vazquez is part of a generation of artists, writers, and college graduates who came to the Mission in the late 80s and early 90s, writing out the recession in the then-cheap apartments. That was shelter. For food, they discovered the enormous burritos offered in neighborhood taquerias. They were so filling and so inexpensive that they could live off them alone. What fueled them was an invention unique to San Francisco. Today, mission-style burritos can be found across the country. Part of what makes them distinct is their vast array of ingredients. Whereas burritos in Southern California, the Southwest, and northern Mexico may contain perhaps just two or three items, the Mission Burrito puts an entire plate of food, meat, beans, rice, vegetables, salsa, cheese, sour cream, lettuce, inside a tortilla. These elements help the Mission Burrito reach an imposing weight of up to two pounds. More than an exercise in excess, the Mission Burrito is a symbol of Bay Area individuality. Nowhere but here is it standard to allow customers to choose each element of the burrito from the type of bean to the salsa. Despite its size, the burrito is also popular for its compactness. It can be taken anywhere and requires no fork. It's been called the cylindrical god, the silver torpedo, the urban food log. Books and websites are devoted to it, and the world's largest Mission Burrito at almost 4,500 pounds was rolled not far from the source, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, in Mountain View in 1998. Not everyone who first fell in love with the Mission Burrito in the early 90s can still eat one every day, and many no longer have to. But eating one brings them back to the pre-gentrification days, to the time before the Mission had restaurants with white tablecloths. The Mission Burrito, as we know it, got its start when La Cumbre, originally a Valencia street meat market, started making them in the 1960s. The date we sold our first burrito was September 29, 1969. I know that because it was my wife's birthday, said Raul Duran, owner and founder of Taqueria La Cumbre. It wasn't that the burrito was a new thing. It was the style of service that was revolutionary. Duran and his wife, Mikayla, who died several years ago, started out serving tacos and other foods to go. In 1972, they remodeled and changed their business to a taqueria. Taquerias were new. No one had anything like that, said Duran. Mexican restaurants have been around for, I don't know how long ever since before California joined the union. But this type of fast food, there was no such thing, he said. The burrito originally came from northern Mexico, a wheat producing area where flour tortillas are common. It was created as a portable meal for ranchers and miners. The burrito is named after the burros, which were known to be able to carry everything, said David Thompson, co-author of Burritos Hot on the Trail of the Little Burro. These were like the little burros because they carried all these ingredients, he said. The history is a little fuzzy, but it seems that the burrito is created in the early to mid 19th century by miners in what is now the American Southwest and Northern Mexico, said Thompson, who's a Palo Alto native and San Francisco resident. This was a cross pollination. The American border was pushing south in the 1840s, said Thompson. That's another reason burritos are ambiguous in their nationality because right when they were becoming a food, the nationality was changing. The original burrito consisted of a hunk of spice meat wrapped in a tortilla, and though larger, burritos in today's southwest aren't too different. The Texan, for example, tends to just have meat or beans and cheese. The New Mexican is similar, but smothered in green chili sauce. The Southern Californian and Northern Mexican usually just have meat and salsa, maybe beans. The mission burrito shows no such restraint. Burrito eaters in mission taquerias are forced to make some weighty decisions. Pinto beans are black, cheese are no cheese, hot salsa are mild, white tortilla are green. The end result becomes a pure expression of the burrito lover's taste. A skillful burrito maker adds just the right portion of beans and rice and can do wonder with a piece of tinfoil. When done properly, the burrito is a tidy, tightly wrapped cylinder that can stand upright. With a combined carbohydrate power of a 12th flour, tortilla and rice, not to mention the volatile force of beans and spice meat. Eating an entire mission burrito in one sitting can be cause for regret. The mission burrito's virtual indigestibility is part of what makes it so endearing to its fans. But that doesn't make key people from eating the whole thing. I heard a guy at the taquerias say the other day there's nothing illegal about having two burritos a day, said Vasquez. Thank you. Thank you.


Our government has a vision. It's a vision of making BC the most progressive place for people with disabilities to live in and all of Canada. This vision can only be achieved by respecting and reflecting the needs and wants of people living with disabilities in our province. From December 3rd of this year until March 11th of next, we'll be engaging British Columbians in a province-wide conversation. Conversation and issues facing people with disabilities in the province. The ideas and solutions brought forward will be used to develop a white paper, a document that reflects the voice of British Columbians. It's about how we can increase accessibility and decrease barriers for people living with disabilities in British Columbia. While government clearly has a central role to play, addressing these issues is a shared responsibility. That's why we're working together with leaders in the business and disability communities. This approach is modeled after a pledge from the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to ensure that any discussion of disability issues is done with the disability community. Nothing about us without us. The Ministers' Council on Employment and Accessibility is a group of individuals from around the province who advise government on issues related to disability. Amongst our group are individuals with disabilities, parents of children with disabilities, representatives from not-profit, from the business sector and from government. And we come together and look at issues and try and address barriers to employment, barriers to full participation in society by persons with a disability. The President's Group is a network of influential business leaders, champions of employment and accessibility for persons with disabilities. They will engage with businesses and employers in British Columbia throughout the consultation. The reason why I decided to accept the invitation to be co-chair is diversity and disability issues are very, very important to us as a business, to me as a CEO and I think to our economy and our society. I think it's really important to get the perspective of people with disabilities because they live this daily. And all disabilities, not just some disabilities, but we want to hear from everyone who has something to contribute because we really think that this will enrich the discussion and enrich the outcome. This is an opportunity for all of us to share our thoughts, ideas and solutions for how we as a society can better support people with disabilities to live independent, full lives. The White Paper will become the foundation for a summit in June of next year. This is where we will bring together a diverse group of leaders to develop actions for addressing the issues facing people with disabilities in British Columbia. You know, thinking about diversity and inclusion and how to broaden the perspective that we have as businesses in terms of the communities we serve and in terms of our workplace and our employee base is today what the green economy and sustainability and environmental values were 10 years ago. It's very important for, well first of all for everyone in British Columbia to be engaged because everyone in BC is touched, is a part of the solution and has someone with a disability in their immediate circle. I encourage you to visit the website and find out more about how you can participate. You can share your thoughts and ideas online until March 11th and in January and February we'll be hosting community consultations in over 15 communities across the province. We all play a role, family, friends, communities, employers, nonprofits and the government in supporting people with disabilities to fully participate in our communities.


Poor and vulnerable groups in underserved communities and households in Karno state are set to benefit from the second batch of palliative distribution in the state. Governor Abba Kabyr made this known at the commencement of distribution across the 44 local government areas of the state. A compliance committee has been set up to ensure that the palliatives reach the targeted vulnerable groups. The governor warned that all political appointees and members of the compliance committee should not be among the beneficiaries of this distribution. In his remarks, Chairman of the compliance committee, Baffa Beachy stated that Karno state augmented the palliatives from the federal government in order to give to indigent groups in the state. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


Welcome back, welcome back. This is still why in the morning and your own time for the first interview of the day for just doing us now we have come from a banter with Grace and now we have moved to sports on tech and today we're discussing something that might seem serious but it's not that serious. We're going to break it down in a very simple way so that you can understand. We're talking about cloud computing and for that we have been joined by Padi Adela who's a cloud architect to help us with the conversation. Can we stand up Padi? Thank you very much. Glad to have you with us. Lovely to be here. It was nice. Okay tell us for someone who's just hearing a cloud architect for the first time what does a cloud architect do? Happily. So I work as a cloud architect at Dimension Data and my role as a cloud architect is I listen to customers concerns or customer needs in regard to their need to move to the cloud. So what happens is I look at how their infrastructure or their services are currently set up. We draw up solutions for them, discuss this with their clients and finally migrate them to the cloud. So I'm a superhero for making sure clients are happy as they run their infrastructure and services in the cloud. Okay so it's more IT related? Yes it's an IT related role. Okay awesome. So now tell us now what is a cloud for those that also don't know about? Sure so the cloud I think is a name that people came up with because of the icon looks fancy and shows that you are somewhere that's not where on the ground but ideally cloud computing is the adoption of IT services that you consume that are not within your reach. However when you look at the type of cloud services we have then you realize that we have private cloud which is services that you run on premises that is in your data center. For example Y254 would have a data center somewhere to process your computing needs and then we have public cloud and this is the one people commonly refer to as the cloud which is services that you consume from cloud vendors AWS, Azure, Oracle and Google. You also have a hybrid cloud where you work or you rather you consume on-prem services together with cloud services and you have a community cloud finally which is what institutions like universities would have where you share resources from a common point we'd call that a community cloud. Okay so we have four types of clouds you've mentioned private, public, hybrid and community so we went to understand you at least you've given an example of the public cloud that AWS, Azure, Google cloud part of it now the private cloud. What is an example of a private cloud that we use here we can use here you know in Y254. So in Y254 I'm sure there's a room you call your server room right and in this server room you have computers or other end machines which handle the processing of the signals you generate how you propagate it and how your broadcasters view your services so that's ideally Y254's private cloud. Okay and the hybrid is a mix of both? Yes a hybrid now is because you have streaming services on the internet and the streaming services get the content from their on-premises devices then you have a hybrid model where you're using the internet services together with the services that you have on-premises. Okay and the communities where there's shared resources? Shared resources between organizations say the government the government's cloud is a is a community cloud because it's shared services between different agencies of the government. Okay so what type of cloud would a personal need to share a personal data in? Why would you want to share personal data? To save your personal data? To save personal data. So ideally you save your personal data in the public cloud and one of the services that people have largely consumed over a long time is storage services that's for Google storage services for Android users and iCloud for iPhone users. So those are public cloud services that we as individuals consume on a daily basis one for storage two for email services and three for communication services as well. Okay what's the difference between Google Drive and Google Cloud? What's the difference between Google Drive and Google Cloud? So Google Drive is a storage service. It's a drive where you store your photos, you store your files, so on and so forth and Google Drive has been there for a long time as a personalized service. However when you look at Google Cloud now as a cloud service it encapsulates much more than storage. The aspect of computing comes in where you can now run your computing services inside Google Cloud. It encapsulates data analytics where you can take advantage of data science tools within Google Cloud. So Google Drive is primarily a storage service but Google Cloud now comes with much more than just storage. You have computing, you have storage and you have data analytics to go with as well. Okay and there's this you've mentioned the different types of clouds. What's the comparison between an on-premise and cloud computing? Sure so let's start with how you get the infrastructure. When you want to set up an on-premises cloud service then first you have to scope for equipment. You have to know what computing needs does our organization have. This influences the type of devices or the power of the devices that you will buy. This will power requirements in terms of powering the equipment coming, cooling requirements coming, resources to manage these in terms of the IT guy, the storage guy and the power guy coming. So you see as you're setting up your on-premises computing services then you have a lot of gears moving individually to come together and make up the on premises cloud computing services. However or on the other hand when you look at public cloud services if we need computing services today for a public cloud all you have to do is create an account and allocate resources, spin up the instances that you'd like to consume and start moving. So that's one of the comparison points that you have when you look at on-prem versus cloud. There's a cost on-prem, an initial cost of procuring the devices that you will use. Whereas on cloud because it largely appears you go model and simply create your account and you start using it. Okay. Two for on-prem is you need to take care of your security.   In the cloud model it is the cloud vendor who is responsible for patching of the software or the services that they offer you at a high level. When you go on-prem and you need to upgrade or say Y254 is the services or other the computing resources that you have are no longer enough for your requirements, you would need again to procure new devices and this comes with the lead time for shipping from the vendors. However in the cloud we have elasticity. So elasticity means that when you observe that it is not enough say on your phone you observe that it is slow you would need to buy a new phone right? Yeah. But in the cloud when you observe that it's not enough for you, you simply increase the capacity of what you've provisioned and you're good to go. So there you enjoy the benefit of elasticity. Okay so I'm getting there comparing the two sides for business to probably advise them to do the cloud model. So usually you need to look at your goal as a business first as you explore which computing services would be ideal for you. Because again this is the cost versus risk. So is it easier to set up a data center for you than move to the cloud? But that means that you lose out on elasticity compared to those who sit in the cloud. Is it more secure for you to run in the data center than run in the cloud? See in the cloud your services are away from you but within your data center if you do not need to access the internet then you'd happily run a secure system on premises. So you really need to consider your business drivers for adopting some of these services before you make a decision on them. Okay speaking about cost which one is more cost effective or does it also depend on the needs that you have? I'll give you an example of a startup right? You and I come up with a startup and we need computing services. For us to procure a server, a proper server, we'd need to project how much computing would we need over a period of time. We'd need to order it, have it shipped, install it and then bring up our services. Whereas in the cloud we'd need to simply create an account, provision our services and get moving. So in that case then it's easier for us to quickly adopt public cloud services so that you can start production. Okay. So cost again is influenced by your business needs. Okay. However in the cloud it appears you go model so you can always adjust your cost, you can always optimize your usage so that you can have better running costs in the public. Alright being that it appears you go model what happens if let's say that we're having some trouble in the company and I can't pay for like the next two months what what happens to my data? So we mentioned that it appears you go therefore you build at the end of the month right and depending on the cloud service provider they have different service agreements with those who consume their resources. So there's always a grace period that you're given and you're constantly rather continuously reminded about your pending bills. In the event that that grace period lapses the cloud service provider notifies you that your account is due for closure and your data will be lost. Because again it's a business. Okay. Alright. Explain the Lord. Now to the cloud deployment method models rather what are some of those? So deployment depends again it goes back to our public you can either deploy as a public cloud you can deploy as a private cloud that is on-prem can deploy a hybrid model and you can use a community. Oh so it's basically that. Yes. Alright I thought it was something different. Now I know also there's this thing that you you said you mentioned in the previous conversation that you are in about data security it being one of the concerns that there is with the technology you said data security is a shared responsibility between the provider and the user. Tell us a little bit about that. So I'd like to start off with an with an aviado for example when you buy a house you buy a house with locks and a security system however it is your responsibility to lock the house at night. Right. Yeah. The same applies to the cloud. So in the cloud security is a shared responsibility adventure between the cloud service provider and you as the user. The responsibility of the cloud service provider is to secure the infrastructure that they give you that is the hardware wherever it is set up and the network requirements ensuring that security patches are continuously applied to them. You as the user comes in with your data therefore it's your responsibility to ensure that access to data in the cloud is secure that is who can access your data the users within your organizations. How do they access this data is it using secure protocols to access it and are you logging how they access the data and what they do with this data so that in case of an incident you can always track and remediate. So again security in the cloud is a shared responsibility model where the service provider takes care of security of the cloud and that is the infrastructure and the underlying services whereas you is the user takes care of security in the cloud that is access to your data and how it is used. Okay. Makes a lot of sense. So you take care of access then they take care of the infrastructure. All right. It makes sense. What about data recovery? What happens? Do they lose data also and what happens if they do? Good question. Data recovery depends on how you set it up. So we usually have different data recovery models again for the cloud and this is initiated by you as the user because again when you decide that this data is not important after generation then you can as well let it go. However, if this data is important to you then you need to come up with proper backup and recovery methods for your data. So one is you could simply backup and restore whenever you need it. Two is you could always run your resources actively so that if one of your nodes fail then the other one is always up to recover. Okay. So depending on your needs for recovering your data or securing your data after use then you choose how your data is ideally backed up and how it is restored when you need it. All right. What about data privacy because I know we have a data privacy law in Kenya but does it also apply to international companies now that we're dealing with Amazon or dealing with Google? Does it apply in case of data breach? It does. One, as I mentioned earlier, security is a shared responsibility, right? Yeah. So whenever there's a breach from the cloud service provider it is their responsibility to remediate. Whenever there's a breach because you as the user neglected something you need to remediate. When it comes to data policy and data residence that's where a law comes in and the requirement from the office of the data protection office is as much as you're consuming public cloud services you need to have a copy of that data locally within the country. So as long as you meet the condition that you have a copy of the data you're running or processing in the cloud within the country then you're good to go and free to use cloud resources. And as an addition to that a lot of the services you consume locally especially in the FinTech industry is processed in the cloud. Many of them are using AWS. Many of them are using Azure because as long as they have met the requirement of the office of the data protection policy where they have local copies of the data they process in the cloud within the country then they're free to go and use next-gen technologies not limited by lead times and physical service. All right. I'm getting you there's no bad side to it from what you're saying what are some of the challenges that come with cloud computing? What are some of the challenges that come with cloud computing? So there's usually a joke about people setting up a system administrator who set up cloud services and an exorbitant bill comes in at the end of the month. What this means is you need to be proactive to control your billing and resource usage. And the cloud has come with solutions to this.  So in the cloud you can always control your billing. You can set up alerts and budgets. If you'd like to consume 500 dollars you'd put an alert at 400. And when that threshold is met you'd receive an email or a text to go and check into your resources. There's always the risk of because you're running in the internet you as a user doesn't properly secure your environment. Therefore you need to bring in security consultants to ensure that your ship is watertight and you don't have a hole because again lose, leaps, sink ships. Okay. All right. But is there also an aspect of lack of control to an extent because when you take in the cloud services your sort of relinquency the English relinquish some of the services to them such as the IT management. So is there an aspect of lack of control too? As a business if I can relinquish. Got it. IT services to focus on my core mission I would be happy because this means that if I'm a vendor and I can focus on my customers rather than the backend of my IT requirements it means that more time goes into my core business and I become more productive. I mentioned it is important though to make sure that all the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed in terms of control because if you absolve control then catastrophe looms. So as much as your relinquishing control I love how you've done it. Or by your IT services it means that if it's set up properly and you're not really giving up control it's just the mundane services that boggle your IT team every day such as updates patches provisioning of new resources and a lot of time spent in tasks that have been automated reinventing the wheel then you can now enjoy automation and the ease of service delivery focusing on your mission as a business. What about as we come to a close on the conversation where's the incorporation of AI, IoT and everything in cloud technology? There's a lot of it actually and I think for a lot of people who are pursuing rather a lot of people looking to consume AI services then the cloud is a really good place for you to start. For one there's a lot of community around AI who operate in the cloud because for us to set up AI in here we'd have to buy capable servers we'd have to bring in experts to set the baseline for our infrastructure and then start building services on it. However in the cloud AI is consumed as a service. Remember earlier on before they show you were talking about infrastructure as a service software as a service and platform as a service. So the cloud offers you a platform as a service where the baseline of the infrastructure has already been set up for you therefore you as a business say if I was a financial industry who would like to do analytics on who are our customers and the demographies around it or simply bring in the data, quickly set it up and generate insights from it. Therefore you can do a lot with analytics and data science in the cloud because the platform has already been built for you with analytics in mind. So it is bespoke for analytics rather than wanting to set up or inventing your way within your offices for it. Okay interesting. Finally now for businesses that are still operating in the manual methods, old methods of storing data of doing their services, how important is adoption of this technology? Adoption of cloud technology is a wave already and it's a tsunami that's sweeping across the lay of the land, carrying everyone around it. Therefore for businesses who would like to consume cloud services it is important not to jump the gun. You need to take into consideration your business needs first of all why, there's always, I've heard a lot of people talk about asking the question why. Why are we in need of consuming cloud services? The next thing is how then are we going to consume them and this is where Padi is a cloud architect who comes in to analyze how are you currently set up? What services are you running and what are the interdependencies between the applications. Once this happens then we model for you how this will sit in the cloud. Therefore we come up with architectural designs and we have continuous workshops with you so that we chart the way forward. This is now in preparation for moving. Then we start moving to the next workloads first so that you can get the gist of it and you can observe maybe you put in two workloads there and help breaks those and you have to take a step back to rethink it. But again as you test and it is a good practice to test in cloud, in software development, in the legs then you get the gist and you get to control the variables around it and finally once you are happy with that then now you can deploy applications in the cloud and consume cloud services giving your customers a happy experience. Important to note that if forgot is as much as we have a shared responsibility model, the weakest link is always you as the user. The weakest link is you who writes down your password. The weakest link is you who doesn't set up budgets therefore a lot of the breaches that we have observed is always a user who forgot to do something. So it is important again to sensitize all your users and all your resources within your organization about the importance of security and the importance of following protocols and policies that are set up for them. What are some of the companies that have adopted this technology? I know I said we are closing but you are still closing. What are some of the companies that have adopted this technologies? I am not at liberty to disclose whom have moved to their cloud because of NDS with them. However our government is a large user of cloud services and a citizen runs somewhere and is close but again you access it over the web therefore regardless of whether it is a public or private cloud then you are consuming cloud services. So as an end user you get to consume cloud services regardless of public or private but you are consuming cloud services. If you would like to know or if organizations would like to know the companies that they could emulate to move to the cloud then this information is readily available from the cloud service provider's websites. You can see a list of all the companies that are consuming and even during sporting events you get to see all these cloud service providers ads on and you see AWS all over the place. You see Oracle all over the place on the vehicles. So this shows you that a lot of huge companies are already consuming these services. Netflix is a huge user because you can see the deployment models around it. Therefore people are moving but again be careful about where you are moving and understand so that you can move properly. So you have knowledge even as you plan on migrating. This being your career, your position, it's not something people are used to hearing a cloud architect. What does it take to become one? Does it take to become a cloud architect? My background lies in telecommunications engineering. Therefore as a telecommunication engineer then you learn about internet protocols. So as a cloud architect one you need to understand cloud computing services, public cloud computing services. So you need to know what happens in AWS, what happens in Google and what happens in Azure. And the baseline model for all of these are all the same. It's just the services that they offer that are given different names. You need to understand networking so that if you're setting up Y254 in a hybrid model then how are we connecting the two? You need some Linux skills because a lot of the machines in the cloud run on Linux and there's a common saying that the cloud is a Linux playground. So what else do you need to understand? You need to understand communication skills. You need to be able to interact with your customers. You're not the legacy computer guru with a hoodie in the basement. You need to be able to articulate your ideas listen to what the client requires and draw up solutions for them. And I think all in all with the proper interest and a passion to understand the technology then you would become a proper cloud architect. I know cloud architects who have backgrounds in medicine so So it's possible for anyone? Yeah and the coolest thing about it is you don't have to go to hospital when you work with them. Ask them this idea. Therefore you just need to have a passion to understand the technologies. That is the core cloud technologies. You need to understand security. You need to understand how Linux systems work. You need to understand how networking works and you need to be able to articulate these ideas properly so that you can talk with your clients and draw up solutions for them. All right. Awesome. That's where we close it. Thank you very much. Great. It's lovely to be here and all is a pleasure talking about cloud technologies. I would highly encourage people who are thinking about abducting the cloud or becoming cloud architects to take it up. It's a fun field. It's an enjoyable field. There are sleepless nights when you drop solutions. And it's not for NADs only. But it is highly rewarding and it's not for NADs only. Okay. Thank you very much. You want to give you a social handle? Yeah. No. So I am not there anymore. I left. Okay. All right. So no problem. Thank you very much. That has been a conversation around cloud computing. I hope you've understood one thing or the other and if you're in this space well now you know what if you want to get into this space you know some of the things that are required of you. That's why we bring it to a close on Spot on Tech. But more is coming in entertainment with Gracia. My English will stick with us.


We've reformulated the trigonometric functions in terms of angles in a unit circle. Let's see what else we can do with this change of viewpoint. And this relates to the following geometric transformations. Given a point x, y, a reflection across the x-axis will take it to the point with coordinates x, negative y. Likewise, if we reflect it across the y-axis, we go to the point minus x, y. And a reflection across the origin will take us to the point with coordinates minus x, minus y. For example, suppose that the cosine of theta is three-fifths, and theta is an angle of the first quadrant. Can we find cosine of minus theta, cosine of 180 degrees minus theta, and tangent of 180 degrees plus theta? And the answer is? Well, I hope we can find it, because that's what the question is asking us to do. To begin with, remember that if theta is an angle in standard position, the terminal side of the angle passes through x, y on the unit circle, x squared plus y squared equals 1, where x is the cosine, and y is the sine. So since theta is in the first quadrant, we can draw it. Since the cosine is three-fifths, the terminal side of this angle passes through a point b on the unit circle with coordinates x, y, where x is three-fifths. And y can be found by solving x squared plus y squared equals 1. So p has coordinates three-fifths, y, where we can find y if we need to. Since minus theta indicates a rotation in the opposite direction, we can also draw an angle minus theta. The terminal side of this angle passes through a point b prime that is a reflection across the x-axis of the point b. So that tells us the coordinates of this point will be three-fifths, negative y. But our x value is the cosine. So since b prime represents an angle of minus theta, we can read this off, cosine of minus theta is three-fifths. Now this is an example of a very useful theorem. For any angle theta, cosine theta is cosine of minus theta. And here's an important point to remember. Don't memorize theorems. Understand concepts instead. In fact, you're better off letting this theorem fade from your memory. Instead, understand the process that gave us this result, that theta and minus theta indicate rotations in the opposite direction, that we have a reflection of our point across the x-axis, and that cosine is the x-coordinate. So for example, if we want to find the cosine of 180 degrees minus theta, we have to think about this angle 180 degrees minus theta. And the angle 180 minus theta can be found by a counterclockwise rotation of 180 degrees, that's halfway around, followed by a clockwise rotation back of theta, that's back theta. So if we look at this, the terminal side of the angle 180 degrees minus theta will pass through some point b' that is the reflection of b across the y-axis. So the coordinates of p' will be minus three-fifths y. And since the x-coordinate is the cosine, we can read this off, cosine of 180 minus theta is minus three-fifths. And this is an example of a theorem. But again, the theorem isn't worth memorizing. What's more important is understanding this concept of measuring the angle by a rotation, then locating the terminal side by a reflection, and remembering that the cosine is the x-coordinate. How about the tangent of 180 degrees plus theta? Well again, the angle of 180 plus theta can be found by rotating counterclockwise a half turn, and then rotating an additional amount theta. And we see that the terminal side of the angle 180 plus theta passes through a point p' that is the reflection of the point p across the origin. And so the coordinates of this point will be minus three-fifths minus y. Since tangent of theta is y over x, we need to find y. Since this is a point on the unit circle, we know that x squared plus y squared equals 1, and we know the value of x, so let's go ahead and solve for the value of y. Since x, y is in the first quadrant, we know that y has to have the positive value, and that means the reflection across the origin is going to have coordinates minus three-fifths minus four-fifths. And tangent is our y-coordinate divided by our x-coordinate. So tangent is going to be minus four-fifths over minus three-fifths, which will be four-thirds. And this is an example of a theorem, but who cares because you're not going to memorize the theorem? You're going to understand the concept of a rotation and a reflection. Of course, suppose we know that sine of theta is five-thirteenth, and theta is the first quadrant angle. Let's find cosine of 90 degrees minus theta. So a useful thing to remember is that success in mathematics and life is all about habits. By now, you should have developed a habit that any time you have a trigonometric problem, you should... Since theta is the first quadrant angle, we know that its terminal side passes through some point B in the first quadrant, and the sine gives us the y-coordinate. Putting this all together, since x, y is on the unit circle, and we know sine is five-thirteenths, then y is five-thirteenths, and x squared plus y squared equals one. Solving this equation, and as an equation, x has two possible values, plus or minus twelve-thirteenths, but because our point is in the first quadrant, we know that x has to be positive. So this tells us the terminal side of theta passes through the point, twelve-thirteenths, five-thirteenths, and if it's not written down, it didn't happen. Now the angle 90 degrees minus theta can be found by rotating a quarter-turn counterclockwise that's 90 degrees, and then rotating clockwise by theta, and the terminal side of 90 degrees minus theta will pass through the point B' on the unit circle. Again, another useful habit to get into when dealing with trigonometry, and really all mathematics after this point, is to look for the right triangle. One of the right triangles is this one, and that's the one that gave us sine theta equals five-thirteenths. This other angle actually gives us two right triangles. There's this one, which is the obvious one, but there's a second right triangle that'll be the important one, and it's here. Now because both of these angles are theta and both of these angles are right angles, and this length is one, these two right triangles are congruent, and that means these two lengths are equal, and these two lengths are equal. Well, this length is our x-coordinate of the point P, so that's twelve-thirteenths, which means that this length has to be twelve-thirteenths. But that's the y-coordinate of the point B' so we know that the y-coordinate must also be twelve-thirteenths. Likewise, this length is our y-coordinate, so it must be five-thirteenths, which means that this length is also five-thirteenths. But that's the x-coordinate of our point B' and so we see that the terminal side of the angle 90-theta passes through the point five-thirteenths, twelve-thirteenths. But the cosine is the x-coordinate, so the cosine of 90-theta must be five-thirteenths. And again, this is an example of a theorem that it's not worth memorizing because it's more important to understand the concept that produced this theorem.


So now here on stage you see the Dutch guy explaining you how to make money. So true Dutch fashion. It is exactly what we're Known about I see some people coming in. I'm very happy that you're joining me here today I know you've could have been doing other things like Printing a t-shirt with go daddy or expanding your collection of socks for example. I know I have So yeah, my name is Roger. I am indeed the CCO of WPCS and today We're going to be talking about MRR for WordPress agency. So I'm going to step outside of the light for just a second and by show of hands Who are the agency owners in the room, please? All right, that's great. Thanks. Thanks for being so honest. You can stay For the rest of the people I think it's pretty clear You can go it's it's fine now. I'm trying to be you know create a moment here with my peers Obviously not all of you are agency owners but I think Most of us are trying to predict our revenue I was just having a meeting with a very interesting other agents owner from Portugal and to be quite honest with you The reason I wanted to do it is because I wanted to be a digital nomad I just wanted to know how much money I would have in the next six months So that I could go to Thailand or Bali and enjoy my life building websites And so I want to start this slide by addressing the elephant in the room I'm obviously not talking about Vika's by the way. He is not an elephant He is why he's like an elephant and he eat predominantly leaves But I'm obviously talking about Shopify. So Shopify. I notice is something that we are not allowed to mention You know and obviously I'm not here to promote Shopify or sell you WordPress But I do think that there's a lot to learn from Shopify and we can only do better than Shopify if we can first learn what they do really well and So as far as I'm concerned in the way I look at it Shopify is what I see as the ultimate website as a service They give you a website and they pretty much sell you the whole solution and they provide value upfront Which I think is very valuable and something that is sometimes missing in WordPress it takes a it takes a while even if you are an Experienced work as developer to put something in the site and then sew it to your customer and then they are like wow this is awesome and I think the work is community can actually do better by adopting a product-based mindset So like I said you deliver value upfront you wow them and then you go from there and the way that I've Personally experienced how you can do that is by creating a website as a service So website as a service is quite simple I know sometimes it's a little bit confusing as per the definition, but it really is you Give people the total solution in a often standardized, but very niche specific way in a way that they can onboard themselves and then You skill that up and that is something that I've experienced personally as being the best recurring revenue model for agencies but that Didn't go easy or as planned really and so to give you a bit of context as to where I come from this is what Amsterdam looks like during the pandemic and We had been an agency for quite some time We transitioned from a marketing agency to also include selling websites and at the same time. We were building a startup for hotels And also our agency was serving mostly gyms and restaurants Yeah, and on The 23rd 23rd of March, we were supposed to launch our app Which is my birthday and on the March 17 The whole country went into lockdown So within the course of a week our entire business the app that we were supposed to launch and the agency that we were successfully running collapsed and You can imagine that to be a shock We weren't even panicked because we were just basically way too shocked So we had to let go staff we had to leave behind The app somebody asked us today if we did something else with it We did we transitioned the app to help people Get things nearby and it really didn't work But at least we tried What we noticed looking back is that we were mostly serving or building projects, right? And I love projects I love the fact that you can really focus on a project for a customer look at it from all angles and then just absorb all the work right and then build the hours, but now we had a much smaller team and morale was pretty low and we had to find a way to pivot out of a crisis and Trying to find a way to do so Some guy trying to give good advice said it sounds like you're giving away free nachos to sell more drinks and it was a bit of a weird statement, but he said it in the context of You're often selling websites for a very low price so that you can then upsell services on the back end And that is exactly what we were doing We were very often just giving away websites for free and then upselling marketing services content or whatnot on the back end So now we were back at square one We needed to find a new way to scale up our agency Obviously, I still wanted to go to Bali or Thailand even though it was completely forbidden at the time and we started looking at MRR generating revenue models and I'm sure you recognize most of them So let's talk about the first one right development retainer model Great model if you are a big agency already if you have the staff on hand that can immediately service the customer And then build those hours going months forward build some pipeline You know, that's great. If you can also target larger agencies. I love that I actually see somebody in the room right here is doing that Jimmy Yeah, that's a great. It's a great model didn't really work for us with a small team But it was it was it was pretty good when we were doing it at the time Maintenance is something that I cut my teeth in and also cut myself with It's really fun if you're selling people plug-in updates and then something goes horribly wrong I think we've all seen this year a Fair amount of vulnerabilities with plugins and then you have to spend significant time fixing those So the small retainer model that you that you charge on a monthly basis We doesn't cover all the extra effort that you then suddenly have to put in let alone the The weekend spent because you auto set your plug-in updates on Friday Which is always a lot of fun I love it when hosting companies say you can automate your updates with us and just set it on Friday And then you can spend your entire Saturday afternoon not with your friends Reporting one of the less scalable models that we thought was a really great idea at the time Sebron who's my co-founder in the back here. He loves creating dashboards and he built a really really great dashboard Metrics are his thing not so much for our customers though They often couldn't really understand what the metrics meant and so you spend most of your time Explaining a standardized dashboard, you know, that's perfectly and beautifully draws in all their metrics into Reporting and then you have to explain what conversions mean or what top of funnel and bottom of funnel really is time spent on site how that actually leads to more conversions and You actually only can Really skilled that model if you have a sophisticated customer. It seems to me and then my my favorite For sure the least Scalable model at the time. Obviously. We now are all using AI to generate content even though we are hesitant to admit it But yeah, I'm a content maker by trade. I wanted to standardize the content I thought it was a good idea to just charge a monthly fee and then generate blogs and photos and videos and Then you have scope creep because they want another video or they want more photos or they want different angles Or they want a blog updated every month It's it all works right it all kind of works And you can charge a few thousand here and a few hundred there But at the end of the day, it's really hard to predict whether or not they're going to stay because you spend most of your time on the phone Discussing or arguing with angry customers about what the reporting means or whether or not the Hours in your development container really are amounting up to what you promised So we needed to shift we needed to shift that project-based focused to a product-based model And on the photo right here. You see another one of my co-founders in the crowds by nonce and I Challenging you to pronounce that name if you're not Dutch and he calls me up about two weeks into the pandemic and He says to me We're probably going to be selling more websites, right? And I say yeah I'm pretty much pretty sure we we have to because you know, we're all stuck at home And he says yeah, I think I'm going to build a platform that will allow me to spin up sites Automatically and then let customers or users rather onboard themselves And then we can charge a monthly recurring fee and then as they qualified themselves because they need more stuff We can upsell more marketing services and I was like that sounds really cool But it's never been built before and he says now I have no idea. I'm just going to build it And so the moment I slam down the phone I pick up the phone again and I call a friend of mine who has another agency and I say Hey, look, I my other co-founders just pitched me an idea for this platform I really no idea what it means But we can standardize sites and it sounds like that's what you're doing as well in a very unscalable way we want to partake and Before we knew it. We were supposed to launch a tool for ourselves and attorney to cloud platform pretty fast so Over the past few years, I've spoken to hundreds of agencies first because we didn't have self activating You couldn't activate your subscription yourself. So you had to literally go through me and After because we were interested in the agencies actually building a website as a service and what I know from experience and from the conversations that I've had here is that of The few agency owners that are actually in this crowd Pretty much all of them have considered the website as a service model at some point if only we could make it work so again, the last model is The complete opposite of what most agencies are doing these days And I want to take an analogy that I borrowed from a friend Vito from Atorim who is solving a similar problem in a different way they're standardizing the collaboration and communication with the customer and We are standardizing the building of the product and scalability itself But he likened agencies with Michelin star restaurants, right? I'm guilty of that. I tried to turn every project into a multi-course meal and A multi-course meal is great because it you know is more more expensive But it's also very unscalable. I don't know if Michelin star restaurants are your thing But they are pretty much always empty and that's not because they are unpopular It's because they have very few tables and that's really what it is, right? You have to spend so much time on the actual product itself And there's so much scope creep and your customers get so much more demanding because they're paying for it that it's a very unscalable way of doing it and most restaurant owners burn out I Personally to regret never being able to eat at Noma. I would love to On the opposite of that you have the product-based agency and I honestly just spoke to an agency owner who has a similar idea of doing it But he's approaching every project as a product Which means that he's looking at it from how can we create as much value to the user as soon as possible? And I'd like to slightly adapt that What if we could just build one product one time and then distribute that to as many users as possible and Then make it as low-touch as possible So then you can truly offer more salty nachos and sell more drinks on the back end, right? so We started looking at other successful business models Outside of WordPress and so we've returned again to Shopify again. We didn't want to do Shopify We wanted to be in WordPress But we did want to take the scalability of Shopify and then turn ourselves or rather our users into Shopify But using WordPress instead Pretty soon we found out that three guys building a cloud platform is a little understaffed So we were fortunate enough to get Dexter on board. He's wearing black in this photo It was also a very old friend of ours. I've known these guys for 20 years so I can truly say I have a company with my best friends and We started building it Now there may be some of you in the audience who are thinking hold on I know how this works I can also do this with a WordPress multi site, right? Because I can just build a product and then spin up new subsites and I can even automate that with some tools and that Yeah, sure that works for a while fair fair enough But at some point it is going to have some sort of scalability conflict, right? You if you're familiar with WordPress multi site, you know that all the subsites are in the same WordPress installation and Within the WordPress installation. They share the same database and the same file system. They're also on the same server So as your file system becomes more complicated and you're basically sharing all the user data and the same Database and your scalability is very difficult because you have one customer becomes really popular And it basically breaks the scalability of all the other subsites on the same server That results in security concerns and technical issues, which is not what we wanted and to be be clear I'm not a hater. I love multi-site Maybe not for the WAS model then So instead we did something else. We started looking at Kubernetes Which is the dominant and scalable cloud infrastructure of SaaS companies and with it We were able to build a containerized platform and this containerized platform introduced something called multi-tenancy And with that we were able to combine multi-tenancy with WordPress So now you've got the scalable infrastructure of SaaS companies, but you're using it to scale WordPress instead So how does that work? So we were able to identify three scaling challenges that WordPress has if you're using it for a website as a service First of all Operational scalability we want to be able to do exactly what SaaS companies are doing which means we want to unify the development Like I said earlier, we were building a single product and we're distributing that product And then we want to continuously update and upgrade that product as we go And for that we need individual WordPress installations that are still unified in development So the way we do that is we combine the code so the plugins the language files and the theme files But we keep the databases separate that means that after we spin up a site whatever the customer is doing in the site remains there But we have control over the code base. That's predictable That's something that we can organize and therefore we have security your scalability All right, cool. So we've tackled how we build and maintain our product So now we want to sell it. We want to sell it fast. How do we do it? We automate it So we build a storefront and the storefront connects to an API with the API you can sell your sites automatically Yeah, it's just a WooCommerce store. You're selling products These products, however, are websites. These websites are loaded with content with plugins with themes That you as an agency owner have configured because you know your audience You know exactly the type of service that you are giving that has been working for you in the past All you need now is a scalable way to build your agency So cool. We have an API. We can sell websites automatically. Maybe we use it also to update our CRM Everything works finally We do not Want to mess around with servers? Maybe you by not not me Also, I hardly know what they are And I'm pretty sure there are plenty of agents Jonas here Maybe except for Jimmy who also really have no idea how they work or how they skill So we're doing a containerized platform that results in serverless scaling so that I don't have to worry about that anymore cool so if you transition From an agency a project-based agency to a product-based agency and you're Dutch like me So you're focused on recurring revenue Then you suddenly find yourself in the startup space and you can actually go the VC route and I was talking to a lot of other agency owners and product companies in the beginning of this week and One of the things that we can all agree on is that we're pressed historically has not prioritized business models after all We're still selling yearly licenses and then a Company like nitro pack comes along and they start charging monthly and everybody gets upset But we are actually providing the value we are actually improving the product Why not be compensated for that and then we can thrive together? So then the question becomes are we wazzing or are we sourcing? Sorry. All right cool. So in our case We wanted to be Neutral in the beginning. We didn't want to Join with a particular investor that made it hard for us to partner up with other companies after so we went for Axel Springer, which is a very big media company in Germany and another company that you might have heard of and and after a while Emilia capital, which is by the founders of Yoast and we were able to And by the way, I'm not plugging Yoast even though they have a booth here at Emilia And you can actually pitch or start up there and they'll say yes on the spot So if you have a startup idea or you want to build a product within WordPress and you're looking for funding Please go over there and you might find yourself with a new investor But you can implement SAS methodology for WordPress and then start building products And you can SAS if I your wordpress portfolio or you can build an actual SAS With wordpress and that enables predictable recurring revenue and then we can all go to Thailand So one of the case studies that I'm personally very proud of and I also have a booth here at WordCamp Athens or Europe rather is Oliver So what Oliver has done is they filled a POS that is very much integrated with WooCommerce and based on that They've built what they call as commerce development kit So they've built a total solution with a curated library store of plugins that you can use and upsell to your customers and the WooCommerce store seamlessly integrates with WooCommerce or with rather with the POS and they've built out so many different products that are completely Sassified so they manage the infrastructure. They manage the products and all you have to do is build the perfect Site for your customers whether that is in retail or if you're doing it for restaurants or whatever whatever you need they got it for you and It just happens to be hosted on our platform. So What is the big takeaway here why do I think that WordPress agencies should adopt a product-based mindset? If we can offer a standardized and accessible product It doesn't mean that we should do away with projects like I said in the beginning. I love projects. I love looking at it from all angles But if you can sell Sites that are standardized and they're completely ready their solutions You can give that to your customers straight away and you don't have to onboard them They'll onboard themselves and then you can create sustainable MRR because they've got something that they can start using It's fair priced much lower than when you're selling a big project It's almost in the range of maintenance, but a little bit more and then as they Become more successful You'll upsell the services that they need based on the data that you're getting from how they're using the product From the interactions that you get with them, but you start with the value first Which is one of the big problems that weren't purpose currently has if you look at the churn that hosting companies have I mean we're looking at what 30 40 percent in the first month That's because it just takes too long before there's value in your workers installation And as I said earlier that counts for people still starting out, but also the experienced developer So then We find ourselves back in the WordPress community and this is where all of you get involved And by the way, it was just said that I was going to launch a live product And I don't know how many of you are here to see me crash and burn But I'm not allowed to so After this presentation, I'm going to go over to the inside of EP booth And if you want to see me crash and burn there Feel free to do so So okay, so what do I mean with a product-based mindset for the workers community? So what's so cool about WordPress? Obviously, and I'm not trying to sell you this because you are already here is that we have this Ecosystem of companies that are doing what they do best and then agency owners such as the few people in this room can actually Combine that can implement that for their customer that they have been serving for so long that they know how to build value for And then what you can you don't have to do all of it But you can take what you need and then turn it into a product And so it lends itself as a perfect vehicle for a thriving ecosystem If you can deliver the value upfront if you can stack it with whatever they need to solve the problem right now And they have less churn more activation and you have so much less work because you're just developing one product, right? And we all focus on what we do most or love most and do best and so therefore finally We the WordPress community can do better in their Shopify by focusing on our customer Which is a niche right on this one single audience that we have been serving for so long and that we love so much Instead of building this very big thing or doing this one single big project But doing this one big Product and serving a lot of people at the same time so in Light of that collaboration. I want to finish this Presentation with a bit of an overview of a way that you could do that So you I've mentioned because before our wise elephant in the room or maybe not in this room, hopefully and What they do is they launch short-lived websites, right? Which are which lend itself really well if you want to launch a demo Right now they're launching integration with our platform that allows you to turn Incitwp into a storefront so you build a site with incitwp. You save it as a template You create a storefront on their platform and you spin it up on a platform such as WPCS and then you can manage and maintain all your sites as one again, I'm not allowed to show you that live, but I think I've made my point and I hope that Recurring revenue could be something that is within our grasp if we take the right approach Which I hope you'll agree with me is product-based That's it. Thank you everyone and thank you Rooja now we have 15 minutes they're about to Rooja to answer your questions If you have any questions, can I see your hands, please? one Okay. Hi Really interesting project mandatory question. What about GDPR? Yeah, what about GDPR? Like for all different websites you have like different builds like usually or maybe it's soft for a three like your method but usually like with each project there's different requirements to put everything together data privacy imprint and all of that and Like what's your solution for that to cater to the different needs? Yeah. Yeah, thanks. What's your name by the way? Ollie or Oliver Right, cool. Oliver, Ollie All right So let me answer this question by talking about our platform as little as possible, right which is kind of the Beef that I have with multi sites because what you're saying is what if we accidentally or maybe a little bit on purpose shared user data, right? Which is definitely not what we want So let's just say you're building websites or you're building a product and you can automatically provision those So you you have the foundations of a website as a service Well, one of the things that we definitely need to get in order is that those sites need to be separate So well, fortunately, we have built what I wasn't gonna mention our platform But we've built a way to actually spin up individual sites. So they skill independently, but they're also shared We're actually rather they're not shared. They're individual. They're isolated But yeah, like you say you want to do that on in a data center in the region where you're serving it instead of in some shady Country where you don't know what they're doing with your are you from Germany by the way? Yeah Very great country for GDPR. You should all host your sites in Germany You're not allowed to do anything. Yeah, I know it's great And then and then second of all you need to have individual sites so that they don't interfere with each other But yeah, no, it's a great question. It's very important Thank you. Yeah, thanks Thank you very much. Okay person, please Yeah, thank you for sharing is really interesting So what you're saying is like as as they first come on they unbought themselves like Okay, so we're automating and we're standardizing that framework So what I'm saying in this particular model is you're using it as your most accessible product offering So you have a product that you can deliver to your customers straight away They onboard themselves and you're standardizing that so you're unifying the development and the maintenance and at some point That portfolio might have a few outliers So it could be that they are so popular that they're basically just they require so much effort from your site Or they just demand so many different resources and at some point they Develop themselves into a project So the idea is not to just forgo any form of project But to use it as a platform from which your customers turn into projects and then become more dedicated more of a spoke So yeah to basically summarize your question Yes, you would offer them a product that is easily onboarded to you know easy enough to get started with Sometimes by themselves sometimes with a little bit of hand-holding and then at some points They might turn into your you know more your bigger customer as it were. Yeah, that's great. Thanks. What's your name? By the way, Josh Thanks Thank you any more questions, please Okay, just the mic you can shout Yes To be able to Make this, you know sustainable as a business and where does Shopify fall down compared to the model that you're trying to incorporate And do you see it as you know lots of agency owners trying to do Asking me to compare workers with Shopify and now, you know, I'm I'm supposed to sell you WordPress at WordCamp So let me maybe phrase it a little differently or put it in a different angle I think what we can learn from Shopify is that it's an all-encompassing solution, right? So one of the few things that one of them one of the things that I really admire or rather Respect about Shopify is you get one bill so I was talking to Yoast from Yoast yesterday and They have a Shopify app and It shows it doesn't show up on your bill. You just get one bill from Shopify So you'll pay it for sure because otherwise your site goes down and it's a it's an e-commerce site So you're not going to not pay it So that's great, you know, it's it's a solution. It's it's all encompassing I'm not saying that there should well, I'm not also not saying but I'm not saying Just to make that a little bit more complicated That we should have an app store with some form of control or oversight from some form of entity That kind of just goes against the open-source nature and the distributed, you know way that we do things But what I am saying is that we can work together more by adopting that mindset and then this work can becomes more about Hey, how can we partner up and build a product for the end user and not so much about abiding by some form of rules? Thanks All right, please someone at the back, please Other either my name is Henning Really good presentation. Thank you so much One question that I didn't quite catch You have a product for onboarding a lot lots of new clients on a daily basis, I'm assuming How do you handle when those become projects? Are they still on the same platform or do you kind of move them to a new environment? We can do more customization and kind of adapt to their needs, right? Cool. Thanks Yeah, that's one of my favorite questions Because it's it's the it's the question about vendor lock-in, right? Yeah Not only but Kind of the flexibility that you need to add to the clients that have particular needs. Yeah So I don't think there's a company that can be the end-all be-all of anything And so the way that we've approached it is I hope in true WordPress manner By touching WordPress course less as possible. Actually, we don't touch WordPress core at all So in our case if you take out a site, it's just a site You can use it anywhere else. And so the way that we see it is we offer a way to productize WordPress But at some point in time if your customer is successful They'll leave our platform at least it always should remain your customer if you're doing a good job Okay, so your target audience is agencies primarily our kind of resellers Well, if our audience was primarily agencies then I some of these people in the room wouldn't have much use for me But fortunately now a lot of plug-in companies are using our platform to turn their business into a sauce So for example, if you have a plug-ins like an LMS or a WooCommerce store or you make Marketplaces, this is perfect because you can just satisfy it straight away. If that's you by the way Let's talk after I'm happy to show that. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks Right any more questions, please good because I'm Yeah, we still have some time so one quick question for you What are the typical like most common? Use cases you see for WordPress as a service. Yeah, I mean, it's maybe a bit obvious because I've mentioned Shopify so much But it's mostly WooCommerce optimized websites. So say for example, you want to build a Shopify alternative We have many customers who have started to lose Customers to Shopify and so what they do instead is they build a Shopify alternative But using WooCommerce instead or something else like North Commerce, for example I mean, it's it's important to have some form of balance in the ecosystem and they optimize it completely So that's just you know ready to go And that's something that they they offer. That's the number one use case I see the second one obviously portfolio sites because it's usually the most accessible thing that people need It's the first thing you think about But the thing I like them a lot lately is LMS so learning management tools Especially during the pandemic everybody suddenly became a coach and a mentor and a consultant So obviously we have a lot of wisdom to impart on our fellow neighbor So, yeah, no if you wanted to build a SaaS that you know makes it easy to sell that set wisdom That's something that you that we often see as well Great, so you would say that there are other niche that's Steak that are not explored yet that people can still you know build solutions for for sure We we so when we built the platform We knew for sure that there were going to be use cases that we hadn't even thought of before So for example a ready to go podcasting servers. I'd never expected that Many people were suddenly in the linking bio industry Or we have people building sites for what they call again dark kitchens You can say we have sites for municipalities that do something with ticketing. It's I don't know. I don't get into all of it But yeah, no, it's it's very wide. It's very very broad Anything you want to do or you can productize if you have a particular customer or a cousin that you know really well And you think I can build a site for him. I might as well build a site for all my cousins Then you can definitely productize that as well. Oh great. Thank you very much Thank you for We are grateful for having you here with us and there are a plot for him, please I want to hear a round of applause. Thank you very much