QuickBooks online software options get ready to start moving on up with QuickBooks online. Here we are on the Intuit website. Intuit being the owner of QuickBooks that's intuit.com. Intuit.com they've got the different softwares that they own up top. We of course are going to be going into the QuickBooks software. Now remember there's two major versions of QuickBooks the desktop version and the online version so when making a choice of software as we've discussed in a prior presentation first question what kind of software did you want? QuickBooks versus other types of software. QuickBooks is quite good for small to bit small to mid-sized types of businesses. Once choosing QuickBooks next question do you want the on


Morning traders, Patrick Manley here with another Tick-Nell Charter. I want to draw your attention today to a developing opportunity in the Sterling Aussie on the one hour timeframe. We had an extension higher yesterday and took out the weekly pivots. And we've had a three-way corrected pullback overnight into the quality objective at $81.35 and 38.2% retracement of yesterday's advance. And whilst we hold the swing low at $81.35, I looked to enter long positions through the pivot here at $182.27, looking for an extension through yesterday's highs through the $127 extension of yesterday's swing and up to the equality objective at $184.63 versus this swing here and the $161 extension of yesterday's advance. As always, traders, plan the trade, trade the plan, most importantly, manage your risk. Until next time, thanks very much.


Well let's run Varsity Track Triangular over at Brainer today. Let's start the boys 100 meter dash and it wasn't even close. Alexandria's Drew Olsen takes the heat and the event a time of 11.31 seconds. Where though would take at least these two events on the day coming down the stretch. The Warriors Emily Ruglowski and the girls 1600 meter run. She'll take home first and then down the stretch of the two by 100 boys relay team. The Warriors will win this event. They'll take first place at their own invites.


Ladies and gentlemen could we could we please stop the discussions over there? We want to continue with our sessions and everyone who has the need To individual discussion, please leave the room or stay which is the better alternative Excuse me again Ladies and gentlemen may I ask you to either leave or stay in the room? Thank you so much. Well, ladies and gentlemen Welcome to our sessions on critical raw materials Why do we have that? session because energy has told us in recent months After the war with Ukraine That you should not be too dependent on a single supplier And I'm as a German know what I'm talking about We need diversification and that is the more true when it comes to lithium to cobalt to copper to nickel to valadium to rare earths which we all need for the daily devices of our modern life and Therefore this subject has an enormous geopolitical meaning if we are not able to secure affordable reliable raw materials our industries cannot survive and Therefore we have decided with Kirei de Montréal and Songnim Kwon and others to put this on the agenda and we have great experts to here and to online with us


When the narcissist realises you don't want them, at some point you realise the relationship is pointless and useless.


Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Dell EMC World 2017, brought to you by Dell EMC. Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Dell EMC World. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Keith Townsend. We are joined by Kevin Roach. He is the president of Dell EMC Consulting Services. Thank you. Nice to be here, thank you. Well, it's great, you're a veteran, so we're happy to have you. So talk a little bit about what's new with the services consulting business, particularly since the merger. Yeah, so if you don't mind, I'll put some context around this, right? So, you know, as we brought Dell and EMC together, the services piece became a really critical part for our customer's journey. As you think about the transformation they're going through, the consumption of our technology. So we have right now today, Dell EMC Services is about 30,000 people globally today, and we're augmented with another 30,000 partners across the globe. We're able to deliver services directly in about 160 countries, and our ability to look at the entire portfolio from consulting to design to deployment of technology, and then the ongoing support of that, and then the managed services piece of that. You know, we feel we're in an interesting position to be able to help our customers through any parts of the transformation they're going through, and those conversations have been really relevant to them. I think they've really appreciated that. So the coming together of Dell EMC and the role services plays has really been fascinating. We're excited about that role, and you heard it earlier today with Michael and David Goulden at the keynotes. You know, they really emphasize the importance of services in bringing this technology and helping our customers through their transformation. So we're excited about playing that role and helping them through that process. So what's on your customer's mind as they begin to realize this digital transformation? What are you hearing from them? It's interesting. You know, I've been fortunate this morning they've had three customer meetings today. Last night we had a great customer appreciation event. You spend some time, but the one thing that I'm finding, you know, if we go out and say, here's the story, I don't think we're doing the right service. And I think what you really have to get to is that you have to first listen to customers because they're at various stages of that journey where they are in their digital transformation. Some more mature companies are further along. Others are just starting this journey. If we come out and say, here's the cloud story, you know, you could offend people who are further along in the journey or you could just be talking over people who haven't started. So I think the most important thing that we're finding is making sure that we're listening to our customers. It's the most important thing you can do within a services team. And so the big part of that is listening to where they are and what we're finding is we just did a study and we found that of the companies who identify themselves, less than 5% are identifying themselves as mature in that digital transformation, which means that they're still a long way through a process that they have to get to on their digital transformation. We're pretty excited about the role that we can play in helping them with that. So, you know, we feel right now what we're hearing from customers is the opportunity is there to help them. They're looking for answers. They're looking for best practices. They're looking for what are others in our industry doing so that I can help apply that to my executive team to convince them to take the journey to make the investment of the transformation we have to go through. It's really kind of fun to listen to them. It's exciting that they want this right now and you know that they have to do something and it's exciting that we can play a role in that. So, Kevin, let's talk a little bit about the transformation inside of Dell EMC. EMC was a very respected but very big professional services even before the merger with a lot of products, the cover and the storage, hybrid cloud, just a lot of services. Combine that with Dell. Now, the workforce has to be overwhelmed by the sheer depth of services offered by the new Dell EMC. How has that transformation occurred and how is it going inside? It's, I appreciate you asking because I think that's one of the things we've been able to share with our customers is the transformation we just went through from the combination of Dell and EMC coming together. And you're right, there is a little bit of history from both companies and one of the things that we've wanted to do is preserve the value that we've created to those customers in the different segments where Dell has been great on the server and client side of things. You can't lose that intimacy and the relationship that they had with those customers and it's really an important piece. And you certainly couldn't change the model that EMC has traditionally had at the large end customers, enterprise customers. We wanted to make sure that intimacy and that relationship with those customers are really important. So we've been blending the best of as we brought the teams together. And if you look at the leadership team and the people we've put in leadership roles and as we looked at bringing the portfolio together, it's been a bit of best of breed, if you will, as we've landed now the Dell EMC team. So our team members across the globe, there has been a little bit of gnashing of what does this mean and the complexity of this large transformation. But we've asked them to do one thing for us, focus on delivering services to our customers. The rest will fall into place. Just stay focused on our customers. And all of the indications seem like we're moving in the right direction and our team members across the globe have certainly done that. So I think that was a big guiding principle to ask our team members, stay focused, don't let the noise distract you from the execution and the service we have to have with our customers. So a lot of weapons, a lot of tools in the tool belt, be poor, pulse merger. What are the folks in the field, the consultants? What are they most excited about when they're talking about digital transformation? Well, there's a couple of things that we're really excited about part of this. The first starts with the market and we talked a little bit earlier. Customers and the market are asking for help in their transformation. It's no longer, hey, we think you should transform. Now it's customers in the market asking for help of some sort. And we're excited about that. So the first thing is, when the market drags you into things, you get excited about that as opposed to trying to push something into them. The second, most of our consulting team are pretty excited with now having the identity of being the place to go to help in the transformation. We think that that's a very important role that we're going to play. We're aligned very well with our core sales teams. So we're going in now with one campaign that's consistent across the whole company. IT transformation, digital transformation, workforce transformation, and security transformation. That not only talks about it from a product portfolio, but all the way through in the consulting side. And we know that there's a role that we can play to help our customers. So they were actually pretty excited about the alignment piece and the demand that's coming from the marketplace. Can you talk a little bit about the learning that you're discovering and you mentioned best practices. What has emerged and is there a template for this is how it happens in healthcare? This is how it goes in financial services? Yeah, it's interesting to bring that up actually. Some of the customers earlier today, one in healthcare, a couple in financial institutions, they were asking that question a little bit. And without sharing obviously the confidentiality of our customers, we are able to aggregate what's happening in those industries. Those two industries in particular, especially the more proven companies, their ability to move quickly through that transformation is probably going to take a little bit longer. They have to deal with confidentiality and financial and legal requirements in their industry that they have to make sure they preserve that value, that trust that they have with their customers. So for them to move too quickly through that transformation could jeopardize their value proposition in the marketplace. So I think you're seeing those industries and some of the traditional customers taking an appropriate pace and that pace and sharing of best practices could start with modernization of the infrastructure. It could start with, I want to change my operating model within how I operate IT. It could be my endpoints. I want to make them more trusted, more valuable, et cetera. And it could start the transformation from a workforce standpoint. So we're pretty excited about where that's going, where that's taking and the ability to share that with our customers. I think what we're seeing is not one template is perfect, but when you think about the transformation in three areas, IT infrastructure, the operating model of IT, and then what you want to do with your applications, I think those things become really critical as you think about the projects that are probably pretty consistent across every single industry today. You mentioned that most companies really get this and that they are on board, but there have to be some that are resisting. What's your advice for those? I mean, even at a workforce level that did just are either for being curmudgeonly or just resisting because it's new. It's a great question. We would be saying a successful project looks like this. First, you have to have executive level sponsorship. You need somebody at the executive level in the company, whether that's the CFO, CIO, somebody who takes sponsorship for this transformation that basically can shepherd through bouncy times for that. So one of the things that we would say for a company who might be a little bit reluctant, who is that sponsor? Who is that person who's going to help shepherd the transformational message at the executive level with that company? The second piece, allow participation of the business. It's not an IT project anymore. This is a project that's a shared project. It's the business and IT coming together and being able to share that experience and trade-offs of priorities of what's important or not. So build the project governance in place to allow you to be successful in these projects. We think those things, helping some of those customers who might be a little bit reluctant, those are the things you need to put in place. And then what we've been suggesting for some companies who might be a little bit reluctant, take a piece of this, find a pilot, find a proof point, give yourself a chance to validate some of your assumptions, some of your guiding principles to be able to demonstrate to your executive sponsor if we make these changes, this is the value that you can get. Those are called assessments or pilots or small sample areas have seemed to resonate really well with some of those customers who might be a little bit reluctant to begin that journey. So can we talk about the inverse, the customers that might be a little bit too excited? You know, we're going to devops the world. What's that conversation, that education conversation? What has that been like? Yeah, that's actually probably the harder one, right? Where they probably want to go at a pace that might be a little bit challenging and risky for them and how do we make sure that that risk has been balanced appropriate? You know, what we want to do is, again, share some of those best practices in those environments and say, here's what three other companies in your industry, here's how fast they went, here's what they've tackled. We never want to slow down a customer if they want to take the risk. Our job is to make sure we expose the risk and so that they can make the best decisions. This has to be a customer decision. And our job, I think, is advise and present the risk and the opportunity associated with the speed or the pace that they want to go. I think that's the most important thing that we can do. Thanks so much. This has been great. It's been fun. Thank you very much for the time. We really appreciate it. We're pretty excited about the role we can play within Dell EMC Services to help our customers through this transformation. Enjoy the rest of the week. Thanks, you too. Yeah, thank you. I'm Rebecca Knight for my host, Keith Townsend. We'll be back with more at Dell EMC World after this.


Okay, so this should be 18. And then she was also saying things like, if I can get her injured. Are we ready? I think we're ready. Okay, hello everyone. I'm not gonna shout into this microphone. Hello! All right, we're gonna go ahead and get started. This is a really, I know it looks very formal, but it's not. Feel free to get up and get more toast. Leave, do whatever you need to do. Laugh, cry, wail. My name is Madeline Oldham. I am the director of the Ground Floor here at Berkeley Rep, which is our center for the creation and development of new work. Thank you for being with us on this afternoon. I would like to say a huge thank you to people that I would like to actually read their names. The Ground Floor is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Artworks Time Warner Foundation, the Tarnassal Project, Bank of America, and individual supporters of Berkeley Rep's Create campaign. We wanna say a huge thank you to them for making this all possible. And thank you to literary managers and dramaturgs of the Americas for being here in this audience. Today, we are broadcasting live on HowlRound right now, so you are all being watched by Who Knows Who. Hello, HowlRound. And okay, so I'm gonna sit down, and I also will say to our lovely group of artists up here, we don't have enough microphones individually for everybody, so we're gonna do a little passing thing, but if you could, whoever's near one could grab one and then share amongst the people next to you. That would be great. So, we are here at the Ground Floor Summer Residency Lab, and this is a month-long program that happens every summer, usually in June, and we bring in artists from all over the country. We have a very robust application process, and these lovely people are the people who we have invited to come this summer and make work for us under this roof. There'll be a new crop of artists in two weeks, so these most people here are for two weeks. Jonathan, I think you're the only one-weeker up here. I think that's true. And then, so we kind of stagger and people come for varying lengths of time. So that gives you a little bit about who we are, why we're here, and I would love for everyone to just tell us who you are, perhaps a bit about where you come from and what project you are working on while you're here with us. When you say where we come from, do you mean like, artistically? You like to answer that question. Logistically. Hi, my name is Sylvan Oswald. Can you hear me okay? Okay, and I am here today from Los Angeles where I now live, but I more identify as an East Coast person. I grew up in Philadelphia and I live for many, many years in New York, so the kind of world of theater in New York, mostly downtown theater is sort of where I feel like my community is. Although there's a lot of exciting things happening in L.A. now and I'm excited to be sort of, I wanted to stay on the ground floor of that, but I just, just too cringy, sorry. But yeah, but yeah, so I feel like there's something starting up there that's really exciting. And I'm working here right now on a piece called Trainers, which is a theatrical essay about falling off a horse. And it's also sort of an adaptation of a Montaigne essay combined with some elements of his biography, in particular, his loss of his intellectual partner and how that spurred him to write like over 100 essays. And what else is it combined? Also weightlifting. Also pamphlets and calisthenics. So there's a lot of things in the mix. I'm working on it right now. I came with eight pages and today I have 12. So thank you, ground floor. Anyway, that's enough. Hi, hello everyone. My name is Christina Anderson. I'm here. Oh, thank you. I got a woo. Nice. Thank you. I'm working on a commission with Berkeley Rep. It's a, I don't know what it is right now. I'm interested in water politics and conflicts over water. I've written a play about environmental racism. So I'm also looking at like environmental injustice and oppression. So the past couple of days I got here Tuesday, I've just been consuming a lot of research and material. Just like reading about different international conflicts over water, the scarcity of it. Also being fully aware of what's happening here in California. I was just down in LA for a week and I realized that I did not see a single cloud while I was there last week.  And then it's all about water. So I've also been looking at Renee Magritte artwork because he does a lot of clouds in his artwork. So that's how I spent today. And I listened to an hour-long, very lovely lecture. I think it was based in London. I can't think of the woman's name, but if she's watching, hello. I don't know if she's watching. What she talks about, why Magritte matters in his artwork. So that's what I spent my morning doing. And I don't know what the subsequent days are gonna be, but I'm planning on starting pages on Monday. Good evening, everyone. I'm Jerome. I live in New York, but I'm originally from Virginia Beach. And I'm working with James and Sean on a project called Museum, which has two main parts, one of which is right now just called tour, which is a musically scored guided tour that you would take in an art museum. And that would be the idea is that we would tailor it to a certain gallery and a certain art museum. And then the second half is lecture, which is what we're mainly working on here, which is a musically scored art lecture and personal essay and musical composition on one. And I'm very happy to be here. I'm James Monaco, one half of James and Jerome. And I'm here working with Jerome on the same project with Sean. I'm from New York. I have nothing else to say. Oh, also from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Jerome and I grew up down the road from each other. Oh. Hi, I'm Sean. I'm working on Museum with James and Jerome. I'm working on the projections and media elements of it and kind of figuring out with them how to integrate that into the show and how it kind of affects pacing and how I think all three elements, music, text and the video go together in a cohesive and organic way. I think that's it. Oh, I'm from New York. Hi, I'm Jonathan Spector. I'm from the DC area originally, but now based here in the Bay Area. And I'm working on a play about decision-making heuristics and about sort of all of these concepts that I feel like you hear talked about more, especially in context of the election, like motivated reasoning and loss aversion and implicit bias. And they all sort of come out of the research of a couple psychologists. And a lot of this stuff sort of comes down to sort of what we tend to make cognitive errors about things based on kind of the thing that makes the easier story to tell, even though that story is often not true. And so that leads us to make a lot of mistakes about a lot of things. And then the other thing I'm thinking about right now is that we, so part of this is also that we're very bad at judging our own ability to predict things. And we live, we're kind of in this moment that's kind of like epistemic black hole right now where I feel like we, like our ability to know what's going to happen next in the world is even far worse than it normally is. And then I feel like that, I don't know, that is paralyzing in a way. So trying to, I had no pages when I show up and now I have 10, maybe of which five are, you know, I will show to anyone. What do I do? Sorry, Kate. Hi, I'm Lila Neugebauer. I'm a director. I'm from and live in New York. I'm here working with Sarah DeLapp and Max Posner on separate plays that each of them are writing, which I'll let them tell you about. They're both in very early stages of that writing if that feels accurate. So I'm here mostly in a dramaturgical capacity and in a sounding board capacity and a talking and listening and hanging out capacity. Hi, I'm Kate. I'm Kate Ryan. I live in the Bay Area. I've been here for about six years and before that I lived in New York for a long time doing a lot of new play work and mainly in the downtown kind of sphere. And I'm here working on a play that takes place in the Bay Area and is kind of about the political bubble that we live in here and what it would be like if we, particularly around focusing on a group of women in the Bay Area who might identify as progressive, what might happen if somebody comes into that group who has really different core beliefs about gender and politics, how that encounter might go and what's kind of possible in terms of political discussions today. And I'm working with Lisa Steindler and C-Space on this project as well. My name's Lisa Steindler. Working with Kate. A couple of things just kind of to tell a little bit about the processes that we've been meeting for the past couple of years with women, an eclectic group of women that we bring together for a couple of hours and have prompts and questions that we ask them and from that kind of culling out certain information that will probably frame Kate's process. And we had an incredibly wonderful meeting today with a group of women who are here as fellows and who work at Berkeley Rep. So it was a really inspiring conversation that we had. And that's kind of that and I'll hand it over. I'm Sarah Dallap and I'm from New York but I'm originally from Reno, Nevada. And I came here to work on a play that I've since abandoned on day three. And I'm now working on a new project that's a little too early in its stage of development to talk about publicly at such a forum as this one that I've found myself in. So I'll just leave it at that. I'm Max Posner and I'm working towards a play. It feels like working on a play. It's too slippery at this point to maybe know exactly what the play itself is. But it's about having a chronic illness in the process of diagnosis and also the sort of nonsensical symptoms that can come with that and also the nonsensical healthcare system that we find ourselves in. And I think it's sort of trying to look at that system in our sort of Western medicine but also reaching out into more Eastern medicine and the different ways that disease is really thought about just in that the Western medicine approaches to find the root of the thing, it's all about causation. And the Eastern approach is much more about sort of understanding a system and not worrying about what started it. And so I guess I'm sort of dealing with those concepts and in some ways trying to deal with those concepts formally in addition to the play literally being about that. So, yeah, but truly to be determined. I'm Martina Mayok. I am born in Poland, grew up in Jersey in Chicago and coming from New York. I'm working on a play called Queens that I came with 150 pages and learned that that's half the play. So in like a week and a half, I'll have the other 150, I hope, and it's a play about seven immigrant women in Queens from different places and it follows them from the year 2001 to present day. I think it is about the relationship that you have with your family back home and what surrogate families you tend to make here when you have to go through the process of immigration, a personal play, and they're all low income working class women, so. And it's funny, I swear. Five. My name's Ken Powers. I live in Los Angeles, I'm originally from New York but I've been in LA 15 years now, so that makes me an Angelina. And I'm here working on a play called The Two Reds. It's, I guess it's, I keep on trying to avoid history plays but I'm so drawn into history and it's kind of a prequel to another play that I wrote. I had a draft when I came in here that was about 90 pages and I think the first couple of days here I got rid of about 30 pages of that draft because there were things that weren't working in it. The play is set in 1943 in Harlem and it's about the friendship between Detroit and Chicago Red who would become Malcolm X and Red Fox. They were dishwashers together in Cotton Club Harlem. But it's kind of like seeing the prism of segregation, segregated clubs coming down pre-civil rights. So it's not as much about them as it is about this environment. History plays, there's something about the 1940s that the more I read about it I always kind of viewed it as almost like science fiction. This idea that you could work in an establishment that you couldn't visit because of your race and there were all these rules that people never really thought about because that's just the way it was and the civil rights era wasn't gonna be happening for a few decades. So I kind of wanted to explore what it was like for these guys to live in this environment. And it's been, like I said, I had a draft that really, really wasn't working and I couldn't figure out why. Again, I've only been here a couple of days but on day two I kind of cracked it open and figured out what was wrong with the piece. So at this point I'm just trying to type as fast as I can so that I can get to the end of the draft while I'm still here. I'm pretty slow, I'm like 38 words a minute and I kind of cramp up every 45 minutes or so. So I'm pretty much just sitting in an office with the door closed writing as much as I can. Awesome. This moment in our summer lab always makes me very happy listening to all of these brains next to each other. It is so delightful. And I wanna, oh, I wanna just take a moment and say hi to Mayin back there. Mayin Wong is Sylvan's director and co-collaborator in this adventure and was going to sit here but now I'm going to move back over so there's not an awkward empty chair. So I wanna ask everybody, some of you have sort of touched on this already but is what you, so everybody's been here, they arrived Monday, started working on Tuesday and it is now Friday. Is what you have been doing what you thought you would be doing? I say yes. Is it important that I elaborate on that? It is desired. Great, I can fulfill your desire. Yeah, so basically this project mainly came from, the lecture portion came from these videos that Jerome made while he was on a Fulbright scholarship in Brazil that they have no direct connection to Brazil. But there are these series of art lectures that Jerome made in video form kind of through a PowerPoint presentation. Jerome's a remarkable electronic and acoustic music composer. So with lots of layers of music and himself kind of making these art lectures that he sent to me. And this residency has kind of been about us pulling them apart with a media designer and with the musical equipment and Jerome performing just to figure out how all of these pieces that were originally made to be on a computer screen that I watched by myself and he watched by himself, how those exist in a room. And that's what we've been doing is I think just the three of us going through it real slowly tweaking knobs and adjusting timing and Jerome tackling language. And so yes, it is what I thought we would be doing and I'm so pleased that we are. It's not as much for me because I knew when I applied, I'm not used to residencies that are structured quite this way. You guys said that there's no real obligation for us to present anything coming in but I didn't really believe that. So I kind of had put this pressure on myself that like, all right, no matter what I'm doing I'm gonna have to stop and prepare to do a reading to share what I'm working on with people. But after, I think it was after kind of finding out that Christina was sitting in the office doing research and reading books, I was like, oh, I really don't have to do it. So because the time, I know what you are working. I am working. No, I know. I'm working. But as everyone already knows, to prepare for a reading can take days, a few days to a week. And so I realized that, again, I just needed to get this writing done. So I could spend that time. I could either spend like stop and my play has a cast of six people and try to figure out where we could find actors and then have the actors read it and go like, oh, this is wrong and go through all the stress of preparing a reading or I could just spend all that time working on the script and share it with the staff members here and just try to get some notes before the end. And that ended up being, I think so far, it's proving to be a much better use of my time because that pressure just like suddenly came off of me because I wasn't sleeping all the first couple of nights because I was thinking, when am I gonna do the reading? When am I gonna, when do I need to start the process? What pages? Is it gonna be a scene? Am I gonna let him do the whole play? Oh my God, how long is it play? Is there an intermission? Like that you just go through, you know? So I was kind of working myself into a little bit of a panic. So last night, I spoke to Madeline yesterday and last night I didn't take a Xanax. So obviously I'm a lot calmer. My work here is done. I'm just gonna echo that, the same exact thing also inspired by Christina when she came in, no, it was a good thing. It's a good thing. No, it was good because I also did not believe you when you said we wouldn't because we were like, yeah, but then some donors are gonna come and like you want us to do something, right? So, but yeah, it's so much of a better use of time to just actually work on the thing than have to worry about the presentation. And Christina, it's good you're a good inspiration. I'm gonna be getting so much more work. So thank you so much. Everything is the same except no Xanax. Why? Why exactly? I'm just gonna say right here that thank you for such lovely illustrations of why we do this this way. And I think there are a lot of programs who require some sort of sharing at the end for good reasons. And it was important to us that people didn't have to have that kind of pressure if their play wasn't ready for that kind of pressure. And plays at some point in their process have to become ready for that kind of pressure. And when it is, it's good pressure, audience comes, things are learned and it's awesome. And some of that will happen during this month, but not for everybody. And we wanted to make sure we were just meeting people where they are. So thank you for illustrating that so beautifully. Other people just, you know, is what you've ended up doing, what you expected to be doing. Well, actually, did you say the thing about how you don't need scripts for applications? Did you already say that? I feel like that's important. Right, because I mean, in some ways, I mean, Madeline was sort of one of your things about introducing the ground floor is that the ground floor accepts projects in an idea stage and they don't, they don't require there to be a script. So that's why you also get some of us being like five pages, you know, because we were able, we had the freedom. I think that's one of the beautiful things about this lab is that it's probably the only one I even know of where you can show up and be like, I have a seed, you know, and this question of the kind of the sausage machine that the play goes through over time and the whole business of this industry, you know, it's like strange island outside of that. So in fact, we are living on a peninsula over at the Marina, which is really cool actually, really love staying there because I feel distant, like from city life. But yeah, I came here expecting, I actually did have a task of, made myself the task of doing a presentation, partly because I did want to light that fire under myself, although I am permitted by myself to cancel it at any time. But I wanted to do it partly because actually, I was originally going to be working with a performer. So there was a shift in that and when my performer schedule became complicated and I made them unavailable, I decided that I would read it because I'm writing about Montaigne, I'm writing about this writer and said that it might be perhaps interesting, and I'm working with the essay form, that it might be interesting to make myself vulnerable in that way. So there's also a lot of physical culture aspects to my piece. So I actually thought I'd be, you know, may it would be making me do pushups all the time. Okay, when the designer comes, so I'm splitting it up, I have like this week of sort of like conversations and generating and then my designer is coming next week to join the conversation and we're going to make a little something. So in some ways it's what I expect to be doing and in other ways it's a little bit of an adaptation from the original idea. I was going to say to segue that as a designer, we rarely get to come to these residencies and even be involved this early in the creative process. So for me, this was when Jerome and James approached me initially about this show. I was very excited and you know, we met and we chatted and I think we were all kind of on the same wavelength about what we wanted to explore and how we wanted to approach this collaboration. So I would say that this has been a very rewarding experience so far and I feel like you know, if given the opportunity, it would be I think really beneficial to have more designers involved. I don't think in every project, but definitely having I think people that I think think about the show the same way you do but just a different facet of it can bring about interesting surprises and discoveries and I think would really help kind of give it more breadth. Yeah and on that same note, I think I was here a couple of years ago working on a project and in the room we had a sound designer actually. So what I think is amazing about this program is that they ask what are your needs and we're gonna do everything we can to fulfill them and having the ability to ask for those things when I think where many of us are used to working in a room of scarcity and to have that kind of abundant platter brought to us is just an incredible gift and also to be surrounded by other people who are so ignited in the moment of creation it just gets into your kind of skin cells and it's an incredible opportunity and it's an incredible program that you've created. Thanks Lisa. And I'll just say too that for me I kind of didn't have clear expectations because I felt like I wanted to look at something that I didn't have time or space to really even kind of approach in my day-to-day life and so I just kind of knew that there was this pocket of time that I would, and I just sort of kept throwing different thoughts in this sort of future thing and in a way I feel like I'm just kind of opening that up here because it seemed like something that I couldn't quite have the just time and kind of clarity to do that prior to this. So yes and no. And I feel very similarly where I had this note document for a really long time where I just throw tons of stuff for this project in there and I'm opening it up now and I'm like what do we have here and when do I have to start actually writing it? But it's been really great to know that was coming. I feel like it's mostly like what I expect that I went into was just saying to Sarah like I'm aware enough of my process that I know I need to kind of stew in a cocktail of boredom and shame long enough to start writing but you all sort of repress the actual memory of how painful it is and when you remember working on a first draft it feels much more straightforward. But I feel like I'm kind of like in a college dorm here, like I'm writing a term paper, like I go off into my room in the corner and then when I wander out into the hall and get coffee and have snacks and chat with people and then you sort of go back in for more. For me, I think like Max, I didn't have a lot of expectations before I came. I was not expecting to be surrounded by so much love and time and food and like intelligence and openness and that has really been very it set me at such ease and I feel just like I'm in like a bubble floating around thinking and like I can actually think and I haven't been on a subway in six days which also helps a lot. So I was simply not expecting there it just to be such a nurturing environment. Once again, you have all sort of touched on something that is so gratifying to hear because when we started the program, we asked people, okay, what do you want? What do you need? And the answer resoundingly was time and space and I'm seeing lots of nodding here and that is something that is not actually that hard to provide for people. And so we really just took that and ran with it and really wanted to make a space where people had time to let their imagination run in ways that, you know, when you're living your everyday life, you don't. So thank you again. You all are wonderful spokespeople. So I'm curious to know just a show of hands. It does anybody up here, has anyone had a moment so far this week where you've been stuck or felt stuck? All right. And can you talk to us a little bit about that moment and what you have done to unstick yourself or if you still feel stuck? I think I always feel stuck. But I think for me it's about, it feels very violent to make decisions and I feel like there's something about, I mean, obviously we all have to make decisions to write a play, but I've made decisions too early before and so there's something about trying to really pay attention to when the decision sort of presents itself and is there and trying to do work that is somehow bringing you closer to that space. But it's very frustrating, I think. And until you make a decision, you are stuck and then once you make one, you usually have to make another. And so for me at this point in a process, it's not unusual to feel kind of lost. So yes, I feel that. But it's really nice to have time to actually feel that because I feel like it's a really ugly bad feeling and when you're walking around in your life, you can kind of replace it with just like other things you have to do or seeing a friend or whatever and you actually don't have to kind of marinate in it for the amount of time that it takes to get to the other side. Martina, I saw you nodding. Thank you. Actually violence is the same word that I think about with making a decision, especially like halfway through the play because until a half of the play, when you give it to somebody to look at, they have already written the most perfect, beautiful, fantastic play in their brain and it's really, it sucks to change that when you actually write the rest of it so that there is a pressure and an anxiety about the violence of making a decision that it's about this when we're going in this direction and oh no, what if along the way, halfway through that, we realize it's the wrong one and we're gonna have to start all over again and will there be enough time because it's always, time is always limited, it's very aware of that. I think in New York, there's something about the pace of life or just your everyday life that sometimes when I'm writing a play, I'm like, okay, eight is the fastest route to just get to the end which, you know, it's not always the most poetic and truthful, you're just trying to get to the end of it and so this is what that sort of is. Something that happened with the play, it's, I thought it was two thirds done, I realized it's halfway done, more needs to be written and then because it's going from, it's going through 17 years of history and it's non-linear but yesterday, I think I realized that I'm doing it backwards and I flipped the time, times around and that for some reason flipping the time around cracked open more possibility for me for what the rest of the play could be and so I've been inside someone's office because this is my rehearsal room. This giant amazing one is where I saw a solitary writer who sits in this huge room that is asking me to make something great to fill it and have been moving forward, so it's been great. It is very interesting that people have resistance to talking about their stuckness because there were more hands than people have spoken. I've already talked about the boredom and shame but I also a big proponent of the program freedom that turns off the internet on your computer and so I will play with different increments of time that I will one day set it for four hours trying to have a whole morning or then today. I was just setting it for increments of 20 minutes and just say, so you can hold your breath for that long and just try and write before you can catch up with yourself for that amount of time and I feel like I keep changing it up.  Well, I came here thinking I would write one thing and have quickly realized that I wanted to write something else altogether so I have been feeling very stuck but I think there's also something about being here in the ground floor and the sort of radical degree of agency I feel as an artist inside of this program that is encouraging me to feel like that being stuck is necessary and a really important part of the process and something that I have this time to work through for the next two weeks until I find whatever it is or find the reason that I am stuck and perhaps I'm supposed to be stuck right now and hopefully we'll move past that.  I'm now writing about all these political resistance groups and I'm just like, now you really have to get into it and it's like you can walk around avoiding that.  I guess I gotta go to the library or something like that. Yeah, so I'm just hitting some places where I'm having a hard time proceeding. I can write the love story on and on and on but I can't root it in the world without more knowledge of these dynamics of these kinds of groups or I mean I'm making a sort of fictional Civil War, futuristic Second Civil War thing so I'm like, what is that? I don't have the background for that so I'm having to kind of hustle to scavenge right now. So I'm curious about, for those of you who are working with collaborators, it's really early in most of your processes if not all of them and how did you know you wanted to work with somebody instead of alone and conversely for those of you who are writing alone in an office, how did you know you needed just time by yourself and is this sort of the natural rhythm of how you work or is it project to project or? So the play that Kate and I are working on together is a commission from C-Space which is where I work, I don't know if this is on but and the way we framed it here when we said this is what we want is we're here this week and Kate's primarily writing and we just had our women's group conversation today and then we get two weeks off and then we get to come back for a week and so during that two weeks, Kate's gonna go write, we've got a lot of material we've gathered over the last couple of years and she's continuing to do research so we're taking that time and then we'll come back here with actors on the fourth week or our second week and start reading some of the work at that point. Just to be transparent, you're very lovely and generous to say that but in my initial conversation with Kate, that came out of a space issue so I wanna be totally upfront. Well it worked. Thank you. See what comes from mistakes. Well and what's great about it is we as a program try and be as flexible and nimble and responsive as we can possibly be but that works both ways and everybody up here has been really awesome and flexible about working with us in return and so when I talked with Kate, we were talking about a sort of schedule that would work and I couldn't find two weeks together and then Kate said well yeah, a week and then a break and then a week sounds great and I was like great, that worked out well so. Actually I have to say I like constraints and I think that having this kind of, so we have a huge space this week like almost as big as this, it's really beautiful and I am spending a couple days just writing in there and that's kind of amazing and framing the piece from in a different way than I would be if I were in a small office. Which you will be in in week four. Yeah I can like imagine and then we're having, yeah and then we're having some people come in for part of it too but I just, I wanna say I really do like that I was, we have a huge space the first week, I have two weeks off, we have actors a couple days a second week and that's a lot of constraints and I have to really work within that and it's super exciting to me and then if I had two weeks just to kinda work on this I would have a lot maybe more anxiety in some ways. So, thank you. What I think is interesting is I'm assuming this is the case for everyone who's a playwright but the first time you have a produced play it's usually something that no one asked you for. It's just an idea that you had that you were passionate about and if that play does well I didn't realize how long it could take before you actually have time to just work on an idea you have and that's something that is a commitment that someone has either commissioned you for or I mean in my case I live in Los Angeles and there might be some exceptions but pretty much every playwright I know is either teaching or writing for Hollywood and I don't know a single exception. So, it's a very, your responsibilities, I'm shocked by how much I just needed quiet and I mean like real quiet. Like no meetings, no generals, no agents calling. I'm a single dad, my 13 year old son is like gone and he became like a teenager like that. You know what I mean? And it's just the constant distractions and I realized a couple of days into it that the first two days I was in the office I left the door open because I never closed doors and it took like day three when I said, oh I can actually close this door and no one's gonna get pissed. So, I like closed the door and for the first time just like turned on my music and opened the window and it's a quiet moment that I had to work on my own thing that I haven't had for about four years.  It's this thing where it starts off with you just having passion about an idea and if anyone sees any promise in you the next thing you know you've got commitment after commitment after commitment and people tell you you have a year, you have two years to write this but it's amazing how much that piles up and how quickly you can find yourself unable to make any time to just like, oh I found out this interesting fact but I'd love to write a play about that and it's just never gonna happen. And then with the Hollywood element of it depending on how much you decide to work in that business that can make it so that you can never write another play again. I mean, I'm personally committed, like I love theater so much that I'm in a situation where I won't work on, I have to spend six months of the year just working on my theater stuff which means I have to do some pretty fantastic budgeting to make my year work since I'm only working on a show for six months at a time but there's constant responsibility and it's just been less than a week and I found myself just kind of starting my morning going, I don't have to call anyone back, I don't have to respond to anyone's emails and I'm not stuck because within 48 hours this thing that had been maddening and frustrating me for the past year just kind of broke right open. So the thing I want to say is I dig ground floor, I think it was the first year, yeah, for the food project and how many writers was it? It was like, it was like 17, 18 or something. It was 17 other playwrights and that whole week was a really brilliantly curated research event where we talked to all these different food people and went to an organic strawberry farm and went to an organic farm and we had like awesome food that was heavily curated for research so it was like a great experience. So that being said, we had a lot of awesome things happening and we come back to this very room and sit in a huge circle and talk about it. So the thing that's tricky with this time is that I'm reading a lot of heavy stuff that's making me very terrified and scared and angry and I have no one to talk to about it other than the poor soul that's sitting across from me at dinner every evening. So even in these few days I'm just on the phone with my partner like screaming about some documentary I saw and how scared and terrified I am. So that's the difference between, yeah, I guess like being alone in this process and also like if I were to have a collaborator here sort of having conversations about all that research. On my end, James and I have been working together as long as we've been friends. Since 2007. So in some ways it's like an obvious choice that I would work with him on this project and the project was conceived together. Our friend and one of the two co-directors on the project, our friend Rachel, in back in New York she came with us to an exhibit at the MoMA about Matisse and we were just like wandering it through her and just hanging out and she said, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna hang out and she said like we have, she was like this is a show right here just you two are so fun to walk through an art exhibit with and so when Rachel says something, we just follow. But then like two months later, I left for Brazil and I was there for nine months alone And so lecture was, it was born in solitude as James said, that I wouldn't make these videos in Brazil and send them to him. And so it was made in like intense solitude and the lecture is largely, it's largely about my stutter and the fact that in foreign languages, it's more intense. So in Brazil it was like really intense. And so lectures like a lot about that, but I knew that James and I had this seed planted, as Sylvan said, that we had this art museum product. So I was like making kind of a personal essay about stuttering and speech in general and simultaneously from the other end playing with art museum images and the Met in New York, the Art Museum is a key site in James and my friendship. We're there all the time. And so, and but there's no Met in Brazil. And so I was on the website a lot just like walking down like the same hallway as we would go down. So, sorry, sorry. But not like that. Not in like a sad way. In a happy way, in a happy way. But and so I would download images and like start to make these slideshows. But all I have to say is that the piece was born in solitude and the stutter is like is the most internal aspect of myself, but it's very, it's also the most external because I have to speak in order to move through the world. So the like the dialogue from the beginning between James and I across a wide, across many miles was important from the start. So and there's a tension at all times in there's a tension in the fact that for me was made in a very in one place and being alone and now we are together working on it. And then Sean, we early on working on the piece we realized that the music and the writing was so specific. But as James said I was just using like PowerPoint to make the visual side of it. And so we felt early on and Rachel once again said that we needed to get someone who could make the that side of the project as specific and fluent as a word. You said the other day as the music and the text and Sean has done that in an astounding way. Awesome. So I wanna just respect everyone's time and know that we're approaching the time we said we would end. We did start a little bit late and normally we open it up for questions. So I think we, you know, if you have to leave please feel free to do that. But does anyone have a burning question that they would like to ask this beautiful group of people? Yes. Partially process-based but sounds like when you apply. Yeah, I'm just gonna repeat the question for the how-round people. I will do my best to paraphrase. But the question was about finding your collaborators and do you apply with your collaborators already in mind and name them or does Ground Floor as a program help you find your collaborators? And if so, how does that work? I think that. Megan and I are working together for the first time on this project and I think when I had the thing where my actor couldn't make it, Madeline was like, I know this person. I know this person. I know this person. And I was like, yay. And then I was like, but I think I actually don't want to have a translation moment with a new person, totally like more than one new person. And so I felt like one new person was about all I could handle. And I think that if we had asked for some support around the building of the relationship, they would have provided it. But I think we're doing good. We're doing okay. We like each other. But also we had known each other for many, many years. So it's been sort of like, I've been curious about knowing you better, working with you for many years. So it sort of feels like it's sort of clicking in. Yeah, and I will say interestingly, I think most of the people here either applied with their collaborator or knew who they wanted to work with.  And so we would do a little conversation, matchmaking about what that person was looking for and reach out and make some phone calls. And it usually ends up being a sort of nice mind meld of who we know and like and who that person knows. I mean, it always starts with the artist. So if they have somebody in mind, great, that's easy. If they don't, then we help. Other questions, anyone? Yes, that's a great question. So the question is, and please tell me if I'm not getting this right, are there things, everybody has sort of their habits that they fall into. And are there things that you have picked up here or learned during your time here that you will take back with you that are a little bit different than the way you normally do things? I'd like to, but I don't think I'd be able to. Like I just, we're here from like 10 to six and then dinner is made, which is a big help. And the travel time, right? Not being on the train is really helpful, but it's, but I'm not answering my emails at all. So when I'm done, it's gonna be rough. Like I'm just gonna have to sit for like three days and answer the emails and have a relationship with my husband and things like that. So it's like, I'm realizing it could be easier to kind of make, do like a set up a nine to five or things like that where you went to a space, if you rented a space or if a theater would give you a space to do the same kind of work. But I think all these other things, going to the general meetings, doing all that sort of stuff, perhaps you have another project that's in a different state of development like in production or whatever, that it's hard to juggle. And so this is especially sacred, wonderful opportunity to get to just be away. I wish I could change to bring that, but I don't know if it's possible. I have something that I think I hope to bring back, which is simply, I think when I make work in my day-to-day life in New York, part of what here, being able to trust that I don't have to finish the project and make it perfect, but also having an enormous amount of time, which I feel it's usually either or. Either I have tons of time on working on it as I'm racing to the finish, or I have little bits of time because it's early. A little bit different than what a lot of people have said about having so much time to kind of be free and explore many things. It's given me time, or us time I think, to really just zoom in on like three minutes of the show and just make it precise as hell and not worry about the rest of the show, but do this like incredible detail work on certain moments that I normally would never do. And I'm realizing it's so much better that the whole, and I learned things about the whole. So what I hope to take back is a trust that it is often worth it to spend a week on three minutes or two weeks on a page sometimes, and that sometimes you can solve the whole play from that. Okay, we have time for one last question, and we will go right here, yes. Yeah, that's a great question. So the question is if we, is there a way to follow people after they leave here? What, you know, how do we know what happens to things beyond life at the ground floor? That is a thing that I, to be perfectly honest, wish we were better at. We, it's been, I mean, I feel like the ground floor is so just the spirit of openness and yes and hello, wonderful. That like process is not a thing that, like, I mean, you know, we're great with like shuttles and dinner, like that process is good. But once you sort of expand beyond that, it's a little sort of, and you know, it's, but it's very much, you know, I will tell you all again, because I'm telling you now, but when you leave here, the hope is that this is not the end of the relationship. You know, the hope is that we keep in communication, that we keep in contact, that we can be a resource for you in the future of your work and whether it's this particular project or something else. And so it's pretty porous in terms of what that looks like. We don't have any sort of official tracking of it or, you know, we've actually thought about, you know, can we do this on a website? Can we do this in a way that is something that people can access and see? And we've had people ask about it before and it's sort of on the wish list for the future. We would love to do something like that and we just haven't quite developed the capacity to do that yet. So that's a vague answer for you, but it is a real one. So I want to say, hold your applause till the end please, but I wanna say a huge thank you to these wonderful artists for giving your time to this moment here and talking with us. A big thank you to everybody who's here today and for LMDA people, if you are interested in a tour of kind of where we are and what we're doing, let's meet over, when you came in, there was sort of a couchy area over there and let's gather there in about five minutes and we can wander around the building for a little bit. Now we can applaud. Thank you everyone so much.


Aloha and welcome to Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We're a show that broadcasts every Thursday from 2 to 2.30, from downtown Halaululu in the Plaza building, Plaza Center in the ThinkTech studios. We focus on success stories of businesses in Hawaii and some of the organizations that support them and make them more successful. And today we're going to have one of those organizations that is a small business of its own but also supports and helps other small businesses throughout the state. Before we jump into the show today I just wanted to mention that I was just recently named a member of the board for the Small Business Regulatory Review Board for the state of Hawaii and the city and county of Halaululu. And we're tasked with reviewing all the laws, the rules, regulations that impact small businesses statewide and at the city and county level. It was a very exciting meeting, it was very eye-opening. We got to talk to a lot of different people about the oceans, about the harbors and also about the department taxation. There's a lot going on. These are public meetings, they're open to the public. So if you want to come down, they are published, the meeting dates and times, as well as the agenda. So anybody who wants to have input into the process, please let me know and you can reach me at reg at regbaker.com and we'll be sure to get you the information. And I think combined with what I do with the Small Business Administration sitting on the board for regulatory fairness, we get to cover both here at the state, we get to cover state issues as well as federal issues and we've had some real success stories. We've been able to fix some challenges that the liquor commissions were having in record time. And so there is immediate benefit to this and it's nice to be able to attack these issues and problems at both federal and state and local levels. So we're very fortunate that we do have representation at both levels in that regulatory environment. Now with that being said, I'd like to transition into an area that also has an awful lot of rules and regulations. It's a very tricky area and we've got the Hawaii Employment Company here today. It's part of the Hawaii group. We've got Sean Knox who's the president and CEO and then we have Vanessa Perez who's one of the professional recruiters out there. And we're going to talk a little bit about the employment situation here in Hawaii and maybe some options that we have to try to make it a little better for the employers out there that are looking for good staff. So Sean, Vanessa, welcome to the show. Thank you very much for having us and thank you for being such a strong advocate for the small businesses in Hawaii. We always need as much of a voice out there as we possibly can get. And just being in our corners is a tremendous asset. Well, I appreciate that. And it's something that I'm very passionate about and I try to do it through the Chamber of Commerce as well and there's different vehicles. So anything I can do if people just let me know where the challenges are and the issues are, we can maybe develop a plan to address them. Great. But thank you. Yeah. But you've got some challenges too. I mean, we've got a pretty tight market over here right now.  Sounds good. Aloha, everyone. So Sean Knox, I'm a kid. I was born and raised on the Big Island, moved away for a little while in England for a few years and moved back to Hawaii in 1999. Was very blessed to be able to start an agency with my wife, two mom and pop operation in 2005 called Point Employment. And then managed to make our way through the recession and partnered up with a great team of investors and business partners, Matt Delaney, Scott Mitre, who had already formed the Hawaii Group, brought us into their Ohana and we formally launched Hawaii Employment in 2010. And at that point, we were really just doing staffing for office and accounting professionals. And as we saw more demand in the business marketplace, we found the need to staff individuals in the agriculture sector in hospitality. We started bringing in recruiting talent that had that specific background. Now we have 25 staff throughout the state. Wow, that's grown pretty nice. It's grown quite a bit. We're on all of the major islands. We have a really great presence in the educational staffing community. We're at the convention center today with the schools of the futures conference. And one of the areas that we've been wanting to get into, and we've dabbled in a little bit, but we really haven't had the right person to carry the banner for Hawaii Employment is, is really targeting military and government contracts and finding those veterans that are transitioning out, those veterans that are under or unemployed, as well as military spouses and finding them and being that bridge between them and these great opportunities that are available in Hawaii. Well, and that's a great segue to introduce Vanessa. All right, Vanessa, this is an area that you've got some real experience with. A little bit rich. Great to be back on the show with you. And thank you so much because it was your wonderful connection that allowed me to meet Sean and, you know, now I'm part of the team. So very grateful. It's an amazing company and it's very exciting to join, you know, as a veteran and a military spouse, being able to join a company that's really, you know, committed to hiring veterans and military spouses and getting them connected to great employment is a dream job for me. So it's awesome to be part of the team and we're really starting to hit some really good runs. Now, you've been in Hawaii for a little while, right? About nine years now, Rich. Nine years. And before then, where were you? So I think people probably get from my accent. Not really from here, but I'm Australian. So I served 23 years with the Australian military, the Army, and my background's in rail management and a little bit of TV. And I came here in 09 when I married Bill Perez, retired Marine now. And really for most of that time, I've worked with the transitioning military community. So, you know, I'm really passionate about getting veterans great jobs and connecting them to great opportunities and be able to do that now on a larger scale. It's just exciting. And it's so rewarding or pleasing for me to hear this because I had to go through this back in the 70s and there wasn't a lot of support back then and it was a little different environment. It's nice to see the support that's out there to help the transition of some of our military folks and whether their career or not, everybody needs to go through that transition. Before we jump into that a little bit, what I'd like to ask is, we've got a very tight labor market here and we've had one that's been very tight for a while. It's one of the biggest challenges for any business is to find good qualified staff. Are we still in that tight market? Are we still struggling with that? Do you see any light at the end of the tunnel? What do you think, Sean? The light at the end of the tunnel, I'm sure it's there but right now the employers are scrambling. It is tight. It's tight whether you're talking to someone out in Lihue or all the way out in Kohala on the big island, you're throughout the state. It's tough. It's tough for an employer to find the talent they need in order to support their organization and meet their business goals and support their clients that they're working with. So if you're an employer out there right now and you're having a hard time finding people, it's, well, you can call us but you're not alone. It is a tight labor market. There's a big construction boom going on right now that's drawing in a lot of labor. The hotels are cranking at full throttle all over maximum. Well, they've been setting records now almost every month. Absolutely, and they're doing just a great job bringing in Aloha into the state and the tourism sector and they are great employers and so they retain, they hire and they retain a lot of great talent in the state and that drives business in for the restaurants and the retail that are now opening up but finding themselves challenged to meet that labor. Snowballs, you start filling up the hotel rooms, you get higher occupancy, now all of a sudden you need to start having the restaurants that's gonna be taking care of and feeding them and all the retail, it's a real, it's great economic boom, it's a great engine for the state but it creates a tight labor market. Absolutely. And plus I see a lot of the talent, the younger generation too sometimes when they graduate or when they're ready to move into the workforce. They're exploring options not only here locally but also on the mainland and some will end up leaving. Yeah, and that's challenging and we all know that Hawaii's not a cheap place to live and as a parent myself, I hope that my kids when they grow up and they go to college that there'll be an opportunity or there will be opportunities for them to move back and there'll be a cost of living that will sustain that their careers will be able to sustain. Well, I think at a lot of time it boils down to jobs. Sure, yeah. And right now there's opportunity but we don't have enough staff to fill the positions that we're looking for, at least qualified staff and that's where Vanessa, you have a possible solution maybe not for everything but you could put a dent into this a little bit, right? Yeah, look, we're really excited about being able to bridge that gap between talent that's looking for jobs or talent pools looking for jobs and companies that need the talent. And the military and the military spouse community is somewhat untapped and I know a lot of organizations that I talk to say, wow, we can hire veterans and military spouses like how can we get them? Many don't really know how to access that talent pool or understand the transition environment, you know? So it's hopefully one of the things that we're gonna be able to bridge the gap and tap into these great talent pools. You know, we have around about 40,000 military spouses on this island, I don't think a lot of people realize it and the majority of them are underemployed or unemployed. And they're looking for something to do, they want to be employed. You know, one of the myths I really want to dispel is that Hawaii really want to hire you, we have jobs. We want you to come work with us and get you connected to great opportunities. They're out there, so yeah. So now you can act as somewhat of a bridge between the employers that are looking for people and then the military commands that have the people and you know, sometimes they're not connecting and that's where you can come in and help with that process. All right, so explain to me how we're gonna do this. I mean, how do the employers come to you and tell you here's what we're looking for and are they doing that or can they be doing more? Sure, we have some great strategic partnerships with different employers and it ranges from low-skilled to very technical positions. And it really just depends on their need at the time, whether it's the banking institutions, insurance, or driving positions at the airport, it's a wide range. And so when they let us know what their needs are and they're projected to hiring goals are for the upcoming months, it could be tomorrow, it could be next month, it could be next year. We work with them to be that strategic partner to make sure that the labor force is in place so they can make sure the cars are turned around, the car lot, in the right amount of time, that the landfills are properly staffed, the tech positions that come through have the talent that they need in order to meet their goals. Well, and one of the challenges that we hear almost every single year and have for quite some time are teachers. You know, we're short of teachers. And I would imagine that there could be a solution in there somewhere. Definitely, and so we're really hoping to tap into that spouse market to fill a lot of the teacher positions that we work with at the private schools. Everything from pre-K to 12th grade and some work at Job Corps as well. So some past skilled positions and we're really looking forward to getting into that labor pool. Now we're gonna have to go on a break here in just a second, but part of what I wanna talk about, maybe in as much detail as we can in the second half, is how do we get this process, and it sounds like you've already got it started, but how do we make it bigger and better and create a higher level of awareness?  And maybe even the commands themselves can help with this process. So we'll get into that in a little bit of detail here right after the break, but this is business in Hawaii with Reg Baker, we're gonna go on a short break, we'll be back in about 60 seconds and we'll get more into the employment details here shortly. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. You can be the greatest, you can be the best, you can be the king, conveyin' all your chess, you can beat the world, you can talk to God, go bangin' I'm Ethan Allen, host of Likeable Science on Think Tech Hawaii. Every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m., I hope you'll join me for Likeable Science, where we'll dig into science, dig into the meat of science, dig into the joy and delight of science. We'll discover why science is indeed fun, why science is interesting, why people should care about science, and care about the research that's being done out there. It's all great, it's all entertaining, it's all educational, so I hope to join me for Likeable Science. Welcome back, this is business in Hawaii with Reg Baker, we broadcast live every Thursday from 2 to 2.30, and we focus on success stories in Hawaii about the small and mid-sized business market, and also some of the organizations that help support them. Today we have Hawaii Employment here, we're talking about a very tight labor market, but there are people available, and highly trained people, and they can get up and running very quickly, and so we're gonna talk a little bit about how we can find those people. Now, we've got the supply, we've got the people out there, and I think you told me during the break that there's a lot of them, and they're easy relatively to find. What we really need are the employers to come in and give us what the job requirements are, and then you can get more specific in filling them. I don't want to take all that out of you, say that for you, but that's basically, how do you find the employers, and how do you convince them to let you know what they need? Well, many of them are starting to find us now through the presence that we have at a lot of the job fairs, so there's always a lot of companies at military job fairs or at the job fairs looking for veterans as well. They don't always get all of the talent that they need, and so through those relationships that we have, we've got some really fantastic strategic partnerships with some great companies, but we have more talent than we have companies to connect them to. You know, I've worked with the transitioning military community for eight years now, so I'm pretty well known in that industry, and particularly across all of the veteran support services, you know, like Catholic Charities and US Vets and Pathways, all of the sorts of organisations that work with Vets now to get them connected to employment. So we have those relationships, and we get constant referrals. Now we're really looking at expanding those relationships with more companies to get veterans great jobs really fast. Well, I think that makes a lot of sense. I mean, sometimes these job fairs are maybe just once or twice or a few times a year, but this is an ongoing process, and people are moving in and out of the service and transitioning all the time. And so, you know, rather than waiting for a job fair, it's nice to be plugged into this and have the employers in place so that when you find a perfect candidate that's exactly what they're looking for, bang, it can happen quick. And we're doing it now, and it's really exciting. It's interesting, Reg, that you talk about transitioning because we, a lot of people, companies might not know this, but we, about 8,000 veterans will transition each year from Hawaii. We retain about 3% of them. And you know, the great work that Craig and Chase did with the Master Council really established those numbers. Like, people didn't know this, so we're losing this huge talent pool of great talent, you know, highly qualified. And what's sad is that's one of the lowest retention rates in the country. Most states will have a double-digit that had 10%, 15%, 20% retention. We're really low in those single digits. And you know, it's really, if the military community don't feel that they can get a job fast enough to keep them here and then sustain their living, then they're out of here. And you know, it'd be great to work with business here locally to keep more, retain more. And you know, maybe we could be around the 15% or 20% retention pretty quickly if veterans are connected to jobs quickly. And you know, there are a number of programs that the military have that are fantastic, that are, you know, working with the business community to kind of bridge that gap as well, where, you know, they can create internships and apprenticeships and bring veterans on to get experience in the company before they transition. And you may know more about this than I do, but I had heard that there was a program that actually will pay for some of the cost of a veteran moving into a public sector type of position that they'll pay them to go through the training. What's actually, yeah, there are a couple of programs under the Army. They've got CSP, which is Career Skills Program, and the wider projects comes under the banner of Skill Bridge, but it allows organizations to bring on a military service member in transition three to six months beforehand. Usually they do a course, so they'd get a certification, maybe an AMP or a CDL, and that actually allows them to move into employment with that company or another one very quickly after. But the DOD foot the bill for that. I mean, the service members being paid for the duration of that internship or that fellowship. And, you know, they're great programs that organizations can be part of. And how does a company find out more information on this and maybe start participating? They can come talk to us. We actually really want to partner a little bit more with some of the services to facilitate these sorts of programs. But they can, you know, they can contact me and I can get them in contact with the program coordinators as well if they want to liaise directly. And do you have a phone number or a website or an email? Or how do they get in touch with you? Great. Yeah, our direct line is 695-3974 and our website's hi-in-employment.com. Very good. And if they go to the website, there'll be a way to reach out and make contact and send an email. Go to the contact page and send us a note. And that could work for both the employers and prospective employees. Absolutely, absolutely.  Super, very good. Now, we've got the employer side of the equation and what we need is more positions because you've got more talent than you have positions. So if somebody needed somebody quickly, you've got an inventory of folks that you can introduce them to right away. Pretty much. But you always want to make sure you maintain that inventory of talent. So how do people in the military, and I would imagine also their spouses, you know, how would they reach out to you, I guess the same way? Well, Vanessa's been doing a great job at developing these strategic relationships on the basis and they've had some excellent events in the last few weeks. You can maybe refer the transition summit they had where they had, I think it was, yeah, about 1,000 people. Wow. 1,000 people there participating in the transition summit. That was on the base out there at school field? Yeah, it was a series of events over three days and if you're in transition and you're not plugged into the transition summits, they come every year. The Chamber of Commerce partners with hiring our heroes and they put on phenomenal events where companies come down from the mainland like Amazon and Microsoft and troops to transportation and talk about how to get hired. That's why we're not keeping the talent here. Yeah, yeah, that's it. And some of them have jobs here too and in fact, there's some exciting projects coming out of that summit with some really good things that are gonna ramp up here to really try and retain more talent on this island. But so that was huge. I mean, the career fair had 200 employers there and more than 1,000 people transitioning through and they had workshops. I presented at the military spouse symposium and there's 110 spouses in the room. It was great turnout. And more recently, the women in leadership symposium had 200 leaders and I went and spoke at it. And it's the spouse side of the equation that sometimes gets forgotten too because a lot of these military, particularly the career ones, they moved around from different duty stations during their career and generally speaking, their spouses are working somewhere. So they've got some good talent themselves and they're trained and they're ready to go as well. So we don't wanna forget about that side. Because I think the numbers you can be found, Vanessa, there's maybe 40,000 military spouses here on a long way and that's a huge leap forward. And I would imagine a number of them have talked before and they've been teachers and they've got that experience. Absolutely and medical backgrounds and administrative backgrounds, just phenomenal talent. And data shows that on average, 85% of military spouses have some kind of higher education level. They have phenomenal expertise and talent. And they just don't often get plugged into employment swiftly enough or it's hard for them. They give up and we wanna change that landscape and let them know there's work here and we would like to introduce them to companies that want them. One of the comments that I've received when I've talked about this in the past is that they say, well, the military spouses, they're only gonna be here for a few years and then they're gone. Well, my response is how many of your employees stick around for a few years anyways? Yeah, there's usually, include the teachers with that. What's the longevity for the average teacher at an entry level? Some of them don't even last six months. You know, the landscape now where you're lucky to have people for six months, three is loyalty, it's pure loyalty. I speak to a lot of companies who say, what, I could have them for two or three years? That's fantastic. So that's just part of dispelling that myth and changing the discussion and the, I don't know, there's some mindset. There's a lot of rumors go around that it's hard to get a job here and companies don't want you because they're only here for two years, but companies happy to have you for two years. Well, and some of the other myths that are out there, is that sometimes maybe some of the training doesn't exactly fit in because they know how to march, they know how to shoot, they know how to sleep in the jungle or whatever, but the military these days, a lot different than what it was 20 years ago, even 10 years ago. There's a lot of very sophisticated equipment, there's a lot of technology, there's a lot more going on than just pulling a trigger and marching around. I mean, some of these folks have some really leading edge skills. They really do, they really do and they're marketable and companies need that expertise in problem-solving and innovation and project management and financial management and leadership. And some of the great characteristics you're always going to get with military and even spouses is resiliency and being able to work together in a team environment. Adaptable, flexible, agile, resilience. If nothing else, they're constantly learning new skills. I mean, there's a lot of training that's involved in the military and they're constantly learning new things. And so that ability to learn and grasp and execute is something that they're very good at. One of the things that was coming out at the military spouse symposium is, spouses are really looking for flexible working conditions as well. Maybe they work part-time freelance from home and some big companies like Amazon have military spouse hiring initiative. So if you're an organization in Hawaii and you're looking for great talent to work flexibly, remotely from home, military spouses are a great solution and get in contact with us and we'll create some opportunities to meet. And a lot of times they have their own computers already. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, that's great. Well, we've got about a minute left and we're gonna have to wrap up here, believe it or not, we just fast-forwarded through this whole episode. But one more time for the people that are looking and the employers that may have positions. What is the phone number and a website that they can reach out and get more information? Yeah, please contact us. It's a statewide line,<PHONE_NUMBER>. Our website is hi-employment.com. We upload our job availability, the job postings daily. So it's refreshed. Should have a list of the different locations throughout the state and the different opportunities that we have, both on the direct hire side as well as the contract and temporary staff. That's great. And we're entering a busy time of the year right now. There's a lot of retailers out there that's looking for some seasonal help. So there's a lot of work available. We just need to find the people. Yeah, very good. Excellent. All right, thank you both for being on the show again today. Thanks for having us. This is Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We broadcast live every Thursday from 2 to 2.30. We focus on success stories of companies and individuals in Hawaii. I hope to see you again next week. Until then, aloha.