Hey everyone. Thanks for joining. I'm Jonathan and I lead sales ops here at iGenius today I'm going to show you a quick product demo I'm going to click through a few slides first if you're not interested in the slides Just go ahead and click here to see the product in action at iGenius We're on the mission of humanizing and democratizing access to data with crystal think chat GPT for numbers. Let's go ahead and dive in So if you look at this the past 40 years We've seen a whirlwind of technological advancement and investment in tooling for sales teams Really the rise of the modern CRM But if we jump back even earlier to what's on the screen, we could really say contact management began with the Rolodex I mean personal computing in the 1980s unlocked database marketing and that really set the framework for Siebel and the first true CRM systems in the 90s and now fast-forward 20 years later and modern platforms like Salesforce and HubSpot have become pillars in the market Automating tasks that have allowed sales orgs to make huge leaps in efficiency. That's obviously not a secret But over the past few years We've reached an interesting inflection point in this blue box here and embedded operational analytics on top of CRM solutions Has really become the shift and mindset for organizations Tableau as an example, but this has potentially come at the expense of efficiency for frontline sellers and Don't get me wrong. All of these tools are great, but we really need to ask ourselves Are teams spending more time on tools than they are selling? Well, let's take a look at how this has manifested itself So we often speak on how much we've enabled our sales teams and of course we have But to me enablement goes far beyond the purchase of a tool or a big implementation When I think of the way analytics are really used today, I think of a few things First off way too many dashboards primarily for executives and management the potential for biased reporting based on who's building their reports and Decisions made on screenshots funny enough of the dashboards that were supposed to be accessed in real time And I'll be the first to admit I'm also guilty of all of these things But the next logical question at least in my head is what do modern sales teams need? Well here at iGenius. We believe it boils down to a few things first off Modern sellers want high value content on demand data in this case tailored to different personas They want connected applications that foster the removal of data silos and ease of access in the ability to leverage data on the fly wherever someone is So I really love this graphic because it frames this whole situation in a really simple way I mean according to Gartner only 30% of any organization is leveraging data and analytics effectively in their day-to-day And I mean what tools are we using? Tab low click power bi your traditional bi solutions And don't get me wrong right these tools are operating exactly the way they were designed to and they've really changed the paradigm for Businesses globally and have set the foundation for the future specifically AI Look at how chat GPT is leveled to playing field with text anyone can immediately generate knowledgeable information to be used in their day-to-day I mean at the end of the day data-driven decisions require access to data and today that is limited to the few not the many But this begs the question What can enable businesses to truly make data-driven decisions across an organization end-to-end? Well, we set out on a mission to answer that question in 2016 when we first built crystal with the goal of humanizing data You could think of crystal as the AI brain for your business data allowing users to ask questions in their natural language Receive recommendations and collaborate all making data accessible with conversational AI To me analytics are only as good as the conversation they drive and with crystal that time is compressed to zero It's really clear that seller efficiency will be boosted with AI tools. It's not a matter of if but when companies like ThoughtSpot have done great with NLQ focusing on the technical user experience and We've all heard about the waves chat GPT is making in the market text generation based on public data So I want you to think of crystal as your private company brain giving you access to analytics by simply speaking I want to show you how easy this is. Let's start from the perspective of a seller on the way to a client meeting I want detailed customer data to help me prepare for the meeting and enable a higher value discussion I can go ahead and ask crystal Show me an account description for hero acoustics Sure, let's check out the account details for account hero acoustics And this is obviously a very simple view But imagine how much of a game changer this would be with leveraging other data points in real time like transactional or opportunity data But maybe I'm a sales manager and I want to snapshot of my team's highest performers heading into a forecast call I can go ahead and ask crystal Show me a list of the best agents by revenue Here it is. That's the ranking of the agent by sales And one of the most beautiful things about crystal is that it is synchronized in devices in real time So I can easily continue this analysis on my laptop. I Actually want to keep an eye on Jordan because his performance has been stellar this year Alert me when total sales for Jordan Morris exceed one million dollars Sure alert set. I'll notify you when the value goes above the threshold you set Or maybe I'm an executive that needs to see high-level trends across the business to help with regional planning for next year Let me ask crystal. Show me sales by category and region Oh wait, I actually just need this for 2022 only And you see crystal not only understands what I asked but now also what I mean with this additional context of for 2022 So normally when we give a demo people immediately ask How does crystal work and the short answer is we've spent a lot of time piecing together multiple AI components that provide a great Experience to our end users, but it really boils down to the creation of topics that are unique to your business By starting with topics and not the data we enable a human first experience Crystal is really the only platform that enables your entire sales organization to receive the information They need when they need it and how they want it a natural conversation just like this If you want to learn more or speak to one of our sales teams, I'll add a link below. Thank you for watching


I just wanna quickly say, before we get started, thank you guys so, so, so much for 250,000 subscribers. That is just insane. I've made a video on my 250,000 subscribers special on this channel, so if you wanna watch it, click the link in the description, go on my channel, watch the video, and then come back because you have a chance to win an NBA jersey. I'm giving three NBA jerseys away. Even if you don't want the jersey, what I'm gonna do is send you the money through PayPal, so you have the choice, either get a jersey or just use the money for something else.  And yeah, without further ado, let's go on to the video. With the 2019 NBA draft commencing tomorrow, I finally made my NBA mock draft of 2019, yesterday. Now, if you wanna watch that video, I'll put a link in the description, but today we're gonna be talking about five NBA trades that could happen during the NBA draft. Obviously, every year, there's a lot of surprises. There's a lot of players that get traded that we don't expect. A lot of teams find certain assets and kind of build their season around what they do on draft night. Obviously, there's been a few players' names that have been up in the air of where they could be playing next season. But recently, there's been more trade rumors and more players on the trade block. Obviously, Mike Conley is a player, but who else is there? We're gonna discuss five NBA trades in this video. If you enjoy these sorts of videos, be sure to leave a like and subscribe if you're new, and let's get into it. Number five, Mike Conley to the Utah Jazz. We know why the Utah Jazz will try and get Mike Conley. They're in need of a point guard, and clearly, they don't wanna have Ricky Rubio for the future. They've already said to Rubio that they won't bring him back next season. And I guess the defensive-minded point guard, such as Mike Conley, but he's also a great offensive point guard, can really contribute well with Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert. Now, whilst Rubio is probably a better facilitator and he has better court vision, Conley as a whole has an all-around better game. The Utah Jazz have long been going after Mike Conley, which is why they're really targeting this NBA draft. The thing is, they were so close to getting him back in February at the trade deadline that it just seems like they could get him at this point. Considering it's pretty obvious that the Memphis Grizzlies are going to target Ja Marant, this NBA draft, he's a point guard, a guy that can lead them into the future, and obviously, if they draft Ja Marant, then they won't really be needing a point guard like Mike Conley. Now, what would the trade look like? Well, in my opinion, I think the Utah Jazz get Mike Conley, obviously, and the Grizzlies would get probably a guy like Dante Exum. Dante was a top five pick. The thing is, every year he almost seems to get injured and he hasn't really been able to fit in with the Utah Jazz and in the NBA in general, because every time he starts to play well, he just goes down with another injury. He's a guy, if the Grizzlies can nurture, could be a really nice pairing with Ja Marant. Ja Marant at the one, Exum at the two, and then the other guy that they could go after is Grayson Allen. Obviously, he got picked last year from Duke, he is pick 21, a first round pick of last season, and he may be a guy that the Memphis Grizzlies can have off the bench. Without Horford not opting into his contract and the potential of Kyrie Irving leaving, the Boston Celtics may have to try and go young, and Clint Capella isn't super young, but he is young enough to be a good center to pair up with Jalen Brown, Jason Tatum, and whoever young pieces they can draft. Now obviously with Clint Capella, it's a weird one because the Celtics won't target Capella if they have Al Horford, but if they don't get Al Horford because Kyrie leaves, which creates a domino effect of Al Horford leaving, then you never know, Clint Capella may be a guy that they target. The thing is because the draft is before free agency, it's one of those things where the Celtics have to know that Al Horford is returning if they go after Clint Capella, because you wouldn't want Capella and Al Horford in the same team. But if you're the Celtics and you're trying to go young, and you know that you're gonna lose Kyrie and probably Al Horford, Capella is 25 years old, pairing here with Jason Tatum and Jalen Brown, and possibly another draft pick in this year's NBA draft, it could be an option. Obviously Al Horford, like I said, opted out of his contract of 30 million, but the thing is I think he may just be opting out to opt in for a longer contract and more security, which is why he opted out in the first place, but we don't know what happens because anything can happen in the NBA. Okay, now this one is one that I don't think many people were expecting, but I think Kevin Love has a chance to get traded this NBA draft. When you look at the Cleveland Cavaliers, they don't really have a fit for Kevin Love on this roster anymore. They're going to go young, they're gonna draft a top five pick, and they're gonna try and pair that with Colin Sexton. Obviously Kevin Love is not a guy in the Cleveland Cavaliers plans, but if you're the team like the Charlotte Hornets who wants to retain Kemba Walker, why not go after a guy like Kevin Love to entice Kemba Walker to stay back? This is my trade proposal. The Cavaliers get Malik Monk and the number 12 pick, and probably another guy to help the contract situation work out, so maybe a guy like Marvin Williams or Bismek-Biambo, and the Hornets receive Kevin Love and maybe a guy like Jordan Clarkson to come off the bench. That is actually not that bad. Hornets get a guy to pair up with Kemba Walker and make them an actual contender in the Eastern Conference considering the East may be weak with what happens with the Celtics, et cetera, so that benefits the Hornets to pair up a guy with Kemba Walker, an all-star caliber player if Kevin Love can play as he did before his injury last season. And then the Cavaliers get a guy to pair up with Colin Sexton in Malik Monk as the shooting guard, and Malik Monk was drafted pick 11. He is still a guy with a lot of potential, and obviously he hasn't played amazing, but he's a guy that can show a lot of potential in the league. Plus, they get the number 12 pick as well. They could have a young big man they could draft, such as a guy like Jackson Hayes. Like, if you're the Cavaliers and you can have a guy like Colin Sexton mixed with Malik Monk, and then you can draft a guy like Deondre Hunter, pair it up with a guy like Jackson Hayes or Nizia Little or Rui Hachimura, you have a decent core if you're the Cleveland Cavaliers all for trading one piece and that's Kevin Love. And if you're the Charlotte Hornets, you get an All-Star caliber player who obviously was not himself last season, but he's still a five-time All-Star who still averaged 17 points and 11 rebounds last season whilst being injured, plus a guy like Jordan Clarkson who is one of the best six men in the league. If you're the Hornets, you would take that in my opinion because you're in that weird position where you're just out of the playoffs, but you're not bad enough to get a good draft pick or good enough to do well on the East. But with Kemba Walker, Kevin Love, Jordan Clarkson and who knows what they can do in free agency, I reckon it's a good move. Lonzo Ball to the Phoenix Suns. Now, I know what you think. Lonzo Ball, he just got traded there, he hasn't even played a game for the Pelicans, but when you think about it, the Pelicans already have Drew Holiday. That means Lonzo will play the one and Drew Holiday will play the two. But let's say the Pelicans don't really like that idea and they may look to trade a guy like Lonzo Ball who in the past has said that he would love to play in Phoenix. Lavable has said he would be a great fit in Phoenix and the Phoenix Suns really want him when you think about Devon Booker, Deondre Aiden and Lonzo Ball as a young core, it may be really good. What the Suns have is the six overall pick and with the six overall pick, the Suns are looking to draft a point guard. But with that said, if you're the Phoenix Suns and you're looking to draft a point guard, but let's say Garland is picked at four, Kobe White is picked at five, you have the six pick and you would have to draft a point guard just way down in the NBA draft order. And not to mention the Pelicans would get an even better pick with that six overall pick to pair up with the fourth pick and the first pick and the other young piece of Brandon Ingram. Like that is not bad at all. But it really depends on what the Pelicans plan to do. If they plan to contend with Drew Holiday, then you'd probably keep Lonzo Ball. But if they plan to go young with Zion, Ingram, the fourth pick, the sixth pick, they would have one of the best young cores in the NBA even if they traded Lonzo Ball and got the six overall pick. The thing is if you're the Pelicans, you're not just trading Lonzo Ball for the six overall pick, you're acquiring another asset. This is more trade bait for the Pelicans who could select a player like Jared Calver or Deandre Hunter or Cam Reddish or you pair that fourth pick and that sixth pick together and you could get a really good all star to pair with Zion, Drew Holiday, Brandon Ingram such as a guy like Bradley Bill. Because if you're the Wizards, which is the next part of this trade, if you're the Wizards, you may trade Bradley Bill for the fourth overall pick and the sixth overall pick and both teams win. If you're the Pelicans, you would have a lineup of Drew Holiday, Bradley Bill, Brandon Ingram, Zion Williamson and you still have a chance to get a free agent center in this year's NBA free agency. And if you're the Wizards, you finally go young and have the potential chance to be a dynasty in the future with the fourth and the sixth overall pick which could be Jared Calver and Cam Reddish and a chance to reset and start young. And at number five, Chris Paul. Apparently he's disgruntled in Houston. So with Chris Paul, we don't know what happens here because obviously the Houston Rockets are shopping, Clint Capella and Chris Paul. They're actually trying to break up that team which to me, it's a little bit odd considering they did make the Western Conference finals. They weren't too far off the Golden State Warriors. I think it just comes to the relationship with Chris Paul and James Harden and I don't know how strong it is which is why they seem to break up. I know a lot of people are gonna hate on this one because I'm a heat fan. I'm not being biased and I'm not really being anything. I just think this is not a bad trade and it probably hurts both teams a little bit but the Houston Rockets would get Goran Dhrarchik who wasn't All-Star two years ago, James Johnson to get some better depth for the Houston Rockets and just a solid wing player. And the third guy would be a guy like Kelly Olinik or Deon Waders. Miami would get Chris Paul. Pat Riley is a guy that gambles. Pat Riley is a guy that wants to win now and he always has a win now mentality. And I think for the heat, if you add a guy like Chris Paul to the young core of Richardson, Winslow, Bam out of bio, I believe he'll make those guys better and who knows what can happen there. And so this is why I believe Miami would take Chris Paul's huge contract. If you add in Dragage, James Johnson and Kelly Olinik's contracts all together, that costs more than Chris Paul's one contract. Obviously Chris Paul has his contract for three more years and if you just had Goran Dhrarchik you could lose his contract but in the end, three contracts versus Chris Paul's one. If I'm the heat, I will probably just take the contract of Chris Paul. See what we can do in the Eastern Conference with Chris Paul, Josh Richardson, Justin Swinslow, Bam out of bio and Hassan White side with a 13th overall pick as well. I believe that the heat should do that and they can get rid of the other contracts of Goran Dhrarchik, James Johnson and Kelly Olinik, save a little bit of cap space, not a lot, but a little bit of cap space and still be a good contending team in the Eastern Conference when you're not gonna be bad enough to get a good pick anyway and you're not gonna be good enough to do well on the playoffs anyway. Why not take a gamble on Chris Paul and if it doesn't work, at least he's off the books in 2021-22 and you can still contend while he's there but at the same time, the Miami Heat may just not do that trade because it is a little bit risky but what team is gonna go after Chris Paul? I don't know. Let me know down below in the comment section because I don't believe any team would be willing to take on Chris Paul's huge contract apart from the Miami Heat who are already in contract difficulty anyway. With that said, if you guys enjoyed the video, let me know your trade predictions in the comment section below on Draft Night. It's been D'Borny Smith, be sure to leave a like, subscribe if you're new. Thank you for 250,000 subscribers. Be sure to follow me on Instagram and I'll see you guys in my next video. I am out, peace.


Okay. Good to go. Hey, all. I'm Erno Kuvea. I'm the PTL of the Glance Project. I'm just giving a quick update this morning what has been going on on Rocky, and what we will have been in a plans for first time in this cycle. So, first of all, big news. Images API version 1. Oh, we don't have a... There we go. So, Images API version 1 is gone finally. We actually got rid of the code, so it's not even possible to enable again. We have a couple of security related things going on in the last cycle. First of all, as a new feature, we got the implementation of multi-hash, which means that we don't need to rely anymore on MD5 checksums for hashing images, checking integrity. It's defaulting to shop 5TL at the moment, and it's configurable per deployment. Glance will automatically calculate the new checksums when you upload images. And as long as Glance client is up to date on the latest stable in the Nova nodes and Cinder nodes, it will automatically use also the new checksums on the verification. So, we are facing the MD5 sums out bit by bit. And they are still calculated. They are still populated when you create new images. So, we have backward compatibility there. The field is not gone yet. And let's see if it will ever be gone. So, the checksum field is there. But as long as the client is on the current level, and the SSL lib is configured so that the algorithms are present, we are actually not using the MD checksum anymore. And then our longest running favorite security issue, the OSSN 0075, which is basically if on really rare cases, one needs to run the database perch on Glance. It used to remove all the fields on deleted images to certain age. And that caused the possibility that a user could actually create an image with same image ID that had existed before. And because it doesn't have a database record before or the old database record has been deleted, it could contain totally different image and payload than the original image with that UUID. And say it had been public before, people have been using the image. If the user makes it available, for example by putting it as a community image, you could actually end up running an image with, for example, malicious payload in there. And the latest change what we did for that is that we will not anymore remove the image IDs from the database during the perch. So we clean everything else, and we leave those ID records there, which prevents anyone creating that same image ID with a different image load. Then next big thing what we got that has been on the wish list for quite a while has been the automatic image conversion. So if you're using the interoperable image import, it's possible for the deployer now to enable the image conversion plugin, and that allows the user basically upload any image that QM image can handle. And regardless, say you use Cephase backend, you would prefer that all your images are in raw format. When Glance is doing the import, it will automatically go and convert those images to raw before uploading them to the backend. And this is something which is totally transparent to the user apart from the fact that the container format will be changing, and the data won't have the same checksums what the user would obviously calculate from their own image. But it doesn't need any user input, it just you configure it on the deployment and it just works. We also got multiple backends. As a experimental API, we are stabilizing that API this cycle. So please give it a try, give us a feedback. This allows you to configure Glance with multiple same types of backends. So you could have two different Swift clusters, multiple different Ceph clusters, as a Glance backends with different type of disks or different locations. And you configure them with their ID, which is basically just admin configurable ID for the type of backend. You could call it Ceph, you can call it fast, slow, cheap, whatever you prefer so you don't need to expose your backend details to the user. And then when a user is creating the image, then they can either specify a specific backend what they want to use or they can just leave it out of the query and Glance will use the default backend to store damage. Then a couple of other things. So we still don't work under, let's say Apache under Uwisky so do not try to run Glance in those configurations. We have been making noise about it since Pike. We realized any of our asynchronous jobs within Glance don't work. So there is, Glance comes up nicely under Uwisky. Everything looks like it works and then you start realizing that some calls just never return or the call returns fine and for example image import and the import job never kicks off so the image never gets created. So just a note again, do run Glance as an independent service and you won't be ending up to having those issues. Another thing on Rocky, like we said when we were introducing the interoperable image import, it will be the default option and in Rocky Cycle it is enabled by default which means that for example the staging area which is a path to the disk on local disk on Glance API node where Glance stores damage data before uploading it to the backend for example during damage conversion or when web download is used that needs to be configured now as well. So that's a hard requirement. Another thing what we have been discussing for quite a long time and we have been asking feedback, no one has actually reported using this. So we finally deprecated the owner's tenant option and it will be just silently ignored and it will be removed in SteinCycle. Sure. Yeah, now it's all there. And then... Oh great, I'm losing the end bottom as well. So... SteinCycle, we are stabilizing the multiple backend API like I mentioned. We have some updates on the locations API. It's not suggested to use but currently it is for example the only option if you want to use HTTP backend and there is some use cases for that so we are bringing a little enhancement on that API that allows you to basically smuggle during that locations call on the JSON patch a checksum information for your image because if you create an image via the locations API the image data will not flow through the Glance API. Glance won't calculate the checksums so we are bringing a small improvement there and making it possible to actually provide those checksums so that the images can be verified even they are created through the locations API. We have also small improvement coming with all visibility filtering so when you are doing image listing you can specify visibility all and it will actually return list of all images that your project has access to instead of you needing to go through all the different visibility with the different requests and then combine those lists. We have a story info coming in the image client call so that the image list will be able to return which backend store on the multi store case the image is actually sitting currently you can only see it on the image show call and then we are working on having a little bit of cluster of awareness in Glance so that the Glance API nodes can actually start talking to each other this is quite a bit of working towards stage requirements so we can start doing features like pre-caching image data to certain locations on certain API nodes and that kind of work. We are currently very very small team which means that we won't be able to do a huge little lot during the cycle any help, especially any reviewing help would be greatly appreciated and that's basically our current state I hope I have just 6 minutes give or take so any questions? Go ahead. The question was about the multiple backend and how it's handled so there is a configuration file on the API config where you specify what backend driver you are using what is the path to that backend you give it the backend ID which is basically a string and you can give it a description and that's a preset list of backends so if you want to change that list or let's say add new backends you can do that live as well so you go you change that config file and then you just give a sick hope to Glance and it will populate the list again so you don't need to restart Glance to change it but it is a pre-configured list Anything else? Cool. Thank you very much. I'll be here around today still so if you have anything else just come and have a chat with me.


Welcome everyone to Sun and Fun 2008. My name is Kathleen O'Brien and we're here down in studio for forums on safety. When I was 10, my biggest safety risk was how to get to the highest part of the tree and not let my mother know. But as lives get more complicated, safety and risk can get more complicated. Today's speaker is Mike Halloran. He's a colleague, he's a friend, he's a fast team program manager. Mike has had personal experience with balancing risk and safety. He owns a motorcycle for instance, he has a teenage daughter, how bad can that be. And he also is a project manager for the safety management systems, an ongoing effort of the FAA to embed the new and most recent knowledge that we have about how to manage risk. Mike Halloran is a safety program manager and will talk to us today about how those principles that researchers, pilots, airmen and everyone else have learned about safety, how to bring that knowledge back into your own life and how to manage your risk. Mike. Well great. Thanks Kathleen. All right. Good deal. Thank you. Thank you. Well good morning everyone, Sun and Fun 2008. By a show of hands, how many people have been to Sun and Fun already? Great. Quite a bit. I'm going to tell you for me personally, this is my first experience, experiencing Fun and Sun and I know that this is day one and I know that it's going to get a lot bigger and better but already I'm impressed. I'm really happy to be just involved in aviation, still consider myself a general aviation guy, although I have been working with industry out there, working with airlines, purely my love of aviation comes from that one on one relationship. Really happy to be here to talk to you today about a program in its bigger sense and its bigger scheme. It is called Safety Management Systems and we've been talking to a lot of airlines, a lot of aviation service providers is what we've been terming them.  So let's see what we can do. I've learned a lot about what we're going to be talking about here in this presentation today. I'm not going to be talking about any particular genre. I'm not going to be picking on pilots, I'm not going to be picking on mechanics or anything like that, but I do want to just maybe transfer some knowledge, basic knowledge which you may have not thought about before and see if you can't pick up a little bit of those nuggets of truth. So we'll see how we do. Is it safe? Is what we do in aviation safe?  And what did you respond? You responded with, well, of course it is. I'm at the controls, I'm a pilot, of course it's safe. What can go wrong? A hundred percent safety is what I can guarantee. But I'd like to ask you that question right here, do you think that that's a true statement as much as we'd like to believe it? I don't think so, no. Aviation is not a hundred percent safe, even though we like to sell it, even though we like to profess it and we like to demonstrate it a lot, I don't think that that's really an attainable goal or we haven't attained it right there. So with that, what I'd like to do is kind of put safety into a proper context to just launch this presentation. What would you think if you went to an airline and you saw this poster right here, and I'll read it off the slide, welcome to Big Blue Airlines. When you fly with us, you have a 95 percent chance of surviving the flight. How would you like to see that on a poster? You think you'd get a lot of people? 95 percent is a good number, isn't it? It's really good. You only have a 5 percent chance of not meeting the flight, let's put it that way. However, I don't think that there's anybody here in this room that would really subscribe to that, just from that little chance of not really surviving the flight if you didn't make it. But if we can't guarantee 100 percent safety, and there are those margins of errors on out there, what sort of a percentage would you give it out there if I could ask that question? Are we 50 percent safe? Are we 75 percent safe? Anybody want to be brave enough to maybe throw out a number? Anybody like that? It's probably good that you don't do that, because really we haven't been able to quantify that in an exact percentage of a number. This is why it's important to put an appropriate definition to safety and put it into context is what I like to say. Is there anybody out there that would like to put an appropriate definition to safe as it relates to aviation? Anybody? Nobody have? Nobody that brave yet? Okay. I did. I looked up the dictionary term of safe and safety and Miriam Webster coined it as freedom from harm or risk. You think that's an appropriate definition of what we do here in aviation? I don't think we're totally 100 percent free of any harm or risk. I also pulled up there in some of the definitions and in the thesauruses, trustworthy and reliable. I thought that was a fairly good close definition, but not exact. I could think of maybe something that is trustworthy and reliable, but not very safe about a fixed-pitch propeller when it's rotating and spinning. That's trustworthy and that's reliable, but at the time it may not be very safe. Some of my colleagues there within the FAA would like to believe this here in compliance with regulations and standards. Or even you've been out there and you've probably flown and you've probably maybe heard it being mentioned, well, it's not against any regulations. It's got to be safe, right? So that probably doesn't fit either. What I'd like to offer, and I've boiled down the sentence quite a bit, is I'd like to offer known, predictable, and acceptable risk, all right? Let me just say that again and just camp on that for a little bit. Known, predictable, and acceptable risk, all right? Yeah. I'll tell you, it's not the people that study in laboratories and think tanks and everything. I think that this definition in this term has gone back quite a bit. As a matter of fact, Wilbur Wright, back in 1901, he coined it this way. He said, carelessness and overconfidence are more dangerous than deliberately accepted risk, all right? He had something going there. Deliberately accepted risk probably means something a little bit different in today's terminology. It's calculated risk. Risk that we've known, risk that we've accepted right there as we do the things that we do in aviation, all right? So now that we've kind of got an idea of where it is that we're going with this presentation, let's go ahead and dive in a little bit more on that word risk. Looking at risk here, once again, I dug into good old Merriam-Webster and looked at their dictionary term, and I saw that Merriam-Webster defined it as the possibility of loss or injury, but that was rather interesting. I was starting to get there, but then I looked, I actually found one of the better definitions by looking at the FAA system safety course. We have a course out there at the FAA Academy called System Safety, and if you key in on the golden words, you're doing really well. It states the probability and severity of an accident or loss from exposure to various hazards. Key word right there, including injury to people and loss of resources, all right? So let's go ahead and drill down just a little bit more if we will. Let's go ahead and flip on out to hazard. Let me go ahead and offer it to the audience here. Is there anybody that has got a pretty good handle or is brave enough to explain what a hazard might be? Anyone? Once again here, let me go ahead and throw it up there on the screen then. A hazard is any real or potential condition, all right, or state that can cause degradation, injury, illness, death, or damage to people or property, okay? So I've got a condition out there, a state, or something that is, all right, and that, if I'm exposed to it, can create that risk, all right? So you can't really talk about safety until you put it in the proper context of risk and hazard. They all kind of interrelate, don't they? One other thing that I would like to offer on out there is risk, objective, or subjective. I think Kathleen mentioned it when she interviewed me right here is that I do own a motorcycle and I do have teenagers and I'm here to publicly apologize for that, by the way. But one of the things that I do accept is a certain amount of risk in my life. One of them is to ride a motorcycle right there and some of you may not feel that way in the audience. So risk is not very objective. I would like to offer that risk is a very subjective thing on how much you want to accept and how much you don't. But it relies on two different or two basic principles is that you need the knowledge of the risk that you're exposed to, you must need to understand, and then also how much risk you're willing to accept. Those are the two things I hope that you'll take away from this part of the presentation. Coming out of the IKOs and that's the International Civil Aviation Organization out of their Safety Management Manual, they have this figure on up here and it divides acceptable risk basically into two categories but commonly divided up into three and this I'd like to offer to you. At either end of the spectrum, that is all the way at the bottom or all the way at the top, if your risk is very small or if it's very large, that's relatively easy to understand and to grasp. You can get a consensus by a lot of not only yourself but your colleagues out there that is too great of a risk to accept or the risk is just so small it's negligible, that's fine. But as we start to work towards the middle of that triangle if you will and as you start to see the risk grow, you actually, for those of you that are in the audience and in the back right there, you'll actually see that we get into a tolerable range, don't we? It's if you folks are pilots out there, how much will I tolerate? The weather is starting to close in. Well, that's okay. Well, if you're a mechanic, I don't really have the tools that I need to get this job done or I'm not into a hanger that's protected me from the elements. Well, that's okay too, I guess there's a certain amount that I can tolerate. So you start to leave that acceptable level to that tolerable level and then finally, and once again it's a subjective thing, you hit that unacceptable line. And sometimes here in the heat of the battle, and I know I can talk about that from my own experiences when I was out there personally flying and completing a flight, I too would get that get-home-itis or there would be that pressure to get that flight completed. And that line between acceptable and unacceptable and what I would tolerate was definitely bumped way on up there, higher and higher. I just want to offer that. You'll also see right there on that figure here the acronym ALARP. And that stands for as low as reasonably practicable. And that if you start to see something that is in the tolerable level before it actually gets to the intolerable level, maybe you as aviators and whatever you are doing will work to make something ALARP. Can I mitigate all of those risks that I'm being exposed to? Can I drive those down? Can I do something that will lessen my risk? That's what I'd like to just offer you is that acronym ALARP. I'm also a glider pilot and I've heard the term T-LAR. That looks about right, you know, when something doesn't or something does look about right, then you use that. That's the same type of acronym I hope that you and your personal flying will be able to identify and use. Have I ALARPed this situation as much as I can? Two critical components in determining acceptable risk, and that's what we're going to be getting to, is one, the knowledge on how to identify the hazards existing around you and next to objectively assess how bad and likely consequences can be. As you look there at that picture, I think you can kind of identify some of the hazards and maybe some of the risks that you might be exposing yourself if you choose to land there or actually to get to the airport. If you look very carefully at that slide, you'll actually see that the highway comes around the front of the runway right there. So you could be at the risk of having an airplane taxi right on over you or do the overrun and actually going across the highway, if you will. Anyway, the risk management or what I've coined for this presentation, the personal safety risk management process is simply six steps. I don't want to oversimplify it, but it has boiled down to six steps, which I hope will be helpful to you. And it starts just like a clock at the 12 o'clock position and goes all the way around. How many people by a show of hands have actually seen something like this, close to it, men exposed to it? Yeah, a few of you on out there, great. All right, these are the same terms that we are using in the program that I'm pioneering and our project office is pioneering in safety management systems. We're looking at safety risk management and it follows this process right here. So why don't we go through it real quick? The first step is to identify hazards, all right? That sounds easy enough, right? Identify your hazards that exist out there. But when I have worked with aviation service providers and some of those operators on out there that are in companies and such, I find that what's easily said and what's easily stated is not necessarily the case. And so what I like to offer those people that are starting to look into this program when they have trouble identifying their hazards and such is to identify the system. Now, this is what I mean by identifying the system, not only yourself and what you're trying to get done but to look at the bigger picture. The only thing I mean here by using the word system is think of interrelated processes or influences that come together to work to get something done. That's the only thing that identifying a system is. And maybe looking at the mission, exactly what is the goal? Am I trying to do an annual inspection and get that complete on this aircraft? Am I trying to fly from A to B? Am I, you know, what is the goal or what is the objective? All right, you can start stating that and just writing it down. Starting to look at some of the things around you, all right? Let's consider the machine.  You know, do I have the resources? Do I have that data to get things done?  Is it a day VFR flight, you know, and I don't need the eyebrow lights very much? Or is it night or into IFR? Some of those things to think about. You consider the machine. Consider the man or, you know, woman, right there. That's kind of a generic term, all right? Consider yourself and others around you. Will there be enough fuel at another place? And how experienced is that, are those line personnel people? You know, can jet A get in the same tank as the AFGAS? Are there other people around you in this process that's going to affect things? How about the medium or the environment? Do I have weather that's creeping up? Now, some of those types of things. And then finally, management. What's exactly in my control and that I can direct? Maybe I can get on a cell phone and check on something. And what's out of my control? So once you start to identify the situation you're in and start to look into that a little bit more, I'm sure that those hazards or shortcomings will start to pop up and start to pop out. And that's the first part of the process. Looking at the next step here, analyze the risk. Now, this doesn't mean that, you know, you have to break out charts, a compass, you know, and a protractor and really start to get, you know, involved in the process. You know, it just means that you consider all of the things that you've written down, consider all of those hazards and how much influence you think that they're going to be. And when I do work with the aviation industry world and the aviation service providers, you might, you know, I offer them a graph that looks like this, this type of matrix. Whoops, let me go back here real quick. I offer them this risk assessment matrix. And as you can see right there in the upper left-hand corner, it's broken down into, excuse me, I'm kind of getting ahead of myself right here. In order to come up with a risk, you need to identify its severity and you need to identify its likelihood or its also termed probability, all right? Once you've determined those two things, how severe is it or how bad could it or can it be or has it been in the past? And then also, what's the likelihood of that happening? You can start to under see or you can start to understand and see what a risk is all about. As you look there at that chart here, you can see in the upper left-hand side here, if something is very catastrophic and it will happen often, well, that is a very high risk. And then coincidentally here, if something is very improbable and also negligible in the severity, you know, you would paint that risk as being very low. But that's what you're wanting to do. You're wanting to identify the hazards or the shortcomings that's going to influence safety and then you attach a risk value to it. Ultimately, you're going to then make an informed decision in step three. And is the situation acceptable? You're going to come to a crossroads right here and it's what Wilbur Wright was talking about. Is it acceptable risk? If the risk is acceptable right here, as you'll see on the diagram, you can do what I call the happy loop. And if that is acceptable, you just go ahead and drop on down and go back on up to the top of the wheel and say, okay, let me go ahead and consider some of the other hazards that's out there.  Step four, plan for something better. What will drive the situation safer? You know, let's develop some risk controls. Are there some things that you have or haven't thought about before? Have I driven this down or what can I do to drive it down to ALARP or as low as reasonably practicable? Okay. What's also within your control? All right. There could be things that are in your control when you decide to take this flight on that the decision you can make right now that you can't take once you're up in the air, do I have control right now and I can make a decision or, you know, what do I have that is in control later on when I complete the flight? And what I'd like to throw on out there right now is, is what is the word practicable? I had a problem with that at first and I had to camp on that. Well, for those of you that are on out in the audience and for those of you that do know and such, practicable is what can I put in practice? What is practicable? What is appropriate at this time and at this juncture? And that's what practicable is. Once again, these decisions and then these controls that you put in could be complex or it could be a simple fix, all right? But that's all about developing controls to reduce your risk down to acceptable level. When I work with the service providers out there, usually at about this process or about this part of the wheel, things start to break down. People come up with great plans, also involves a lot of money, also involves a lot of training, a lot of shifting, and somehow those plans never seem to get off the paper to actually be put into practice. So this is a very important part of the process and that is to actually walk that talk or to implement those controls. What is practicable? And now let's go ahead and let's get off the dime and let's go ahead and let's put those into place, all right? Some of the people, some of the companies that I've been working with, they actually have substituted efficiency and they've actually done and or cost savings in this. And this really isn't the case. We want to make sure that it's actually using safety as the centerpiece and we're keeping that high on priority. This is not a financial management system, you know? This is not an efficiency management system. It's a safety risk management process and or system. So we need to keep that in mind and keep that focused. So anyway, working through the wheel right here, step six, meeting the intent. Are the controls working? And what I mean by that is did we hit the mark? You know, did we do what was actually intended? Or is this making the flight safer? Or is this actually working? Also, is there any residual risk and is that acceptable? You know, did we reduce it down to A, you know, A-LARP as much as possible and now is this truly acceptable? And once again, in your personal flying, only you yourself can actually make that determination. Please, as you're going through this process, if you do choose to use the process, I would offer that to be honest with yourself, you know, with this thing. I see a lot of people that actually adopt this in companies and they do it for a lot of fanfare, but really, it's not the FAA's program and the FAA is not going to be judging, you know, the aviation service provider nor you, okay? This is your process and this is your program and we're just offering it to you and hoping that you will be able to identify those hazards, exposure to risk and mitigate them. Did it cause any collateral hazards or risks to appear? Is what I'm doing now, did it make something else pop up?  That's kind of either the maddening thing or the good thing about this process is once you start, there really isn't an ending. It's an evolution. I think I went the wrong way with it. You know, it's interesting. I may have said before that, you know, we here in aviation were very goal-oriented and that's a great thing. I remember when I was first learning to fly, you know, I would be wanting that left seat in that 747, flying for that airline or I wanted to get my pilot, my private pilot's license at the time, you know, and I remember being very frustrated with the flight instructors that I had because I wasn't able to reach that goal in the amount of time that I thought I should be getting my pilot certificate or not. It's very important to understand that all of these goals that we're setting for ourselves are just a work in a work as individual steps. So everything that we do in aviation to reach a goal or an objective is links in a chain, if you will, and it's just a process. And if you think about it, flying a flight, it involves a pre-flight, it involves a takeoff, and a cruise, an in-range, and finally a landing phase, and what a lot of people don't do, which my old flight instructor always did, was a self-evaluation of the flight. How did that flight go? How could I do it better? He was a great flight instructor and he always kept notes to himself on a little spiral ring notebook and kept it in a shirt pocket. You know, and he would go back and try to fix those either errors or shortcomings or those hazards or exposures to risk. So what I'd like to offer here is what it says on the slide, because we operate in such an unforgiving environment, all right, shouldn't these processes be assessed for risk? You know, if you think about it, aviation, you know, we've worked really hard to make it very safe and we are in a very risk intolerant environment, aren't we? Yeah. So maybe we should actually assess these things for its safety or our exposure to risk. That's one thing, there's a part in the safety management systems briefing that I like to cover and that is a human error and a little bit about that. And it's kind of funny is as we learn in aviation and as we grow and choose to do things whether it's the same or different, once I got my private pilot certificate, I thought I knew how to fly. Well, that's until I went and tried to get my instrument rating and found out that I didn't know very much about aviation. So it's just a continuous evolution. Currently, back in my hometown airport, back in Scottsdale, Arizona, I like to humble myself and go up in a technologically advanced aircraft, a TAA aircraft and take a big bite of humble pie and have a 22, 23-year-old flight instructor show me how to safely fly this aircraft. It's a never-ending process and all that I'm here to say is that in that learning, it is its success and failure actually spring from the same psychological roots, don't they? And the errors mark the boundaries of the path to success. You're actually doing something but you're banging down this hallway until you finally learn and learn to do it right. But wow, isn't it important to take somebody with you or to reach out and get those resources because we're in such a critical environment here. So risk adverse that, you know, we really need that mentorship and that partnering. That's what that's all about. The bad news is that we're hardwired to make errors. We just are. That's the way we are. The good news is that errors aren't intrinsically bad. You know, if we're, you're sitting down right now, we're watching a presentation, something that might happen, an error that I might make, I might, you know, toggle the wrong way on this presenter right here. That's really not a big deal as far as safety goes. But if you actually put human error and you put it into a different condition or a different environment as the slide shows you right here, it could be a lot different, could it, you know? So what we need to do is actually increase awareness by addressing human error. And that's one of the things that the FAA is starting to do, looking into human factors, human performance, human error, and creating a positive safety culture and then also managing the unforgiving workplace. That's a little bit about what we talked about here as we, as we identified the hazards in the beginning part of that process. Hopefully we can, we can avoid a disaster. One of the things I'd like to do before I conclude is, it is a thing I call a takeaway and such. And one of the takeaways I'd like to offer you here is when I go on out and I present a lot of the presentations that I give, sometimes I throw out this question and I'm rather surprised at the results. I ask rather innocently, who's responsible for aviation safety? I should re-clarify that. Who's directly responsible for aviation safety? Matter of fact, I was up in a very large forum, a little over 400 people and I threw out that question. And wouldn't you be surprised if almost everybody in the audience turned and finger pointed to me saying the FAA was directly responsible for aviation safety? And I thought, wow, this is going to be a different presentation. This is going to be different. I would like to offer to you that on the takeaway, the people who produce aviation, or call it create aviation, whether it's take on a flight, produce anything, do an annual, actually produce a part, you have the direct control and therefore the primary responsibility for the safety actions, behaviors, and outcomes of what it is that you do. We in the FAA, we don't have that direct control and therefore not the direct responsibility.  That just isn't the point. So I would just like to make sure that that's maybe one of the takeaways here that you bring. Takeaway number two, and this is very important right here, is to have a plan. Now I'm not saying a flight plan necessarily, although if you want to do a flight plan, that's okay.  Just picking on the pilots right here, just for a little bit, it is if you have a plan, it will also reduce your stress and your stress level. What we've noticed here in the FAA is when you start to increase stress, two things happen. Your brain actually has the cognitive learning ability to where you can think and process numbers, do calculations, that heavy type of thinking.  And when your stress levels start to go up, what actually happens is you start to induce chemicals, natural body reaction, chemicals into your system. Well, what that does is that stress level and those chemicals into your system actually inhibit the cognitive thinking in your brain and reduce that ability to cognitively think but are unaffected by the amygdala and that fight or flight. Okay, so you're more controlled by your emotions and not your cognitive thinking.   Or he or she was late, they jumped into the cockpit and said, oh, we'll just figure it out once we get on up there. You know, it doesn't leave you with much of a plan, does it? Okay, and I'll admit it right there. I had been affected by that. I was a student, you know, that was subjected to that or to that. And I was also the flight instructor that was running late as I was putting a candy bar, you know, down my mouth, turning to the students saying, what are we doing today? It was a big disservice. So once again, to have a plan. The next part is to have a backup plan, what I would like to offer. What I mean by backup plan is that if you see some of the hazards and the risks that are out there, you may want to develop an alternative plan because plan A just may not work. What's your plan B to meet that objective? Maybe it's the amount of time. Give yourself that extra amount of time or that day. Maybe equipment isn't working on the airplane. The weather has started moving in. What's your alternative plan? All right, develop that. And then lastly right here is the slide shows have a bailout plan. When things go bad, tell yourself that it's okay. And just by developing a bailout plan gives yourself that exit stage left.  Where can I land? Or where can I button up this aircraft? Or where can I just stop and reevaluate? Having those three things, have the plan, have a backup plan and have a bailout plan are very important. And it's actually one of the things that I've learned about when I've looked at other extreme sports, such as Mount Nearing, all right. They taught a Mount Nearing follows a very close path of aviation. Climbing the mountain could be getting to the goal, could be getting to the top. However, they describe it in the books that I've been reading that talk about this. One of the books is called Deep Survival by Lawrence Gonzalez. Actually talks about reaching that goal is a process. And what he also talks about is how most of the accidents in Mount Nearing occur after the summit is reached. Because we've met the objective. We're now exhausted. Physiologically, we're probably starving for oxygen. And quite honestly, mechanically, if you think about it, our bodies are just designed the way we walk. If we go uphill, all of our balance is still on our rear foot as we put one step in front of the other. As we walk down the mountain, we have to commit to that step before we're sure of our footing. So it's just all of these mechanical things that just mount up that these experienced Mount Neers know. That these are the small things, the risk exposures and the gotchas that exist in Mount Nearing. And we have to allow for. And what I'd like to offer to you is the same thing. They come up with having a plan, having the backup plan and then also having the bailout plan. Well, with that, you know, that's my presentation formally. And what I would like to do right now is just open it up to the audience and take any questions that you might have. So, I think they're. Let's do it and repeat it. Tim, ask for the companies or public. I think the question was that that was a good question. When is safety management systems going to be regulatory or required within the aviation industry? And right now, we're working on policy and or ruling on safety management systems formally. Probably in 2010 to 2011, it is what that will look like. But for right now, we're starting to work with the large industry partners, if you will. What's known as the FAR 121 or the large airline folks. And then it'll start to be adopted and grafted all the way down into what's known as the general aviation community. So, that's a very good question. But I do want to add that even though there is a required component of this and that the FAA is looking to write policy, I think that the people that have taken this on voluntarily and seen what a safety management system can do in their organization is that they have seen that this is beneficial in their operation. So, what I'd like to offer is that required or not, this is actually good for the aviation industry. Safety risk management is one of the two chambered hearts that we talk about in the SMS process. And that was briefly what we went on over today. So, good question. If there's nothing else here, I thank you. And enjoy the show. Thank you, Catherine. Thank you.  And we're going to be going back upstairs for some more roof interviews. And earlier today, the CEO of Embry-Air was talking about when he began the process of creating an aircraft. The first thing he did or the company does is a study of MMI, man-machine interface. And this is what we're doing right now, Michael. And this is what you've talked about. How do we do it on a personal level? How does it go into our flying, into our living? And how do we make our aviation whole system work better? So, come on out here and let's talk to the people. Okay. Thank you. Bye.


The debate stems from the success of all palm development, especially in Southeast Asia. In just a few years, millions of hectares have been converted into all palm plantations. And this is where the controversy started between the sector, the pros, the industrial sector and the cons. These are the environmental groups. Well, the debate is very contentious between the pros and the cons and this is why there is a need for a more balanced view and this is where scientists come in and provide a real balanced view between the good sides and the bad sides of all palm development. We decided to go down to the arena when some extremist radical environmental groups decided to boycott all palm or try to boycott all palm which according to us is a very bad solution because it has more negative effects than positive because replacing all palm with other crops for instance would be disastrous to the forests. We were quite surprised because for during say the last ten years every time somebody tried to defend all palm as an interesting crop for small holders or for the environment also. We were thrown shoes at and quite surprisingly the time has come now because people don't believe anymore in everything which is said either by the pros and the cons and people were looking for this balanced view and we had very positive reactions and the book was sold out in one and a half month which is quite nice, we're not always that successful. Well, there are many, I say the first thing is that all palm originates from the countries bordering the Gulf of Guinea in Central, Western Central Africa so all palm grows spontaneously in the tropical forest and it's only later that thanks to its success that it became an industrial crop and people forget that in the start all palm was a non-timber forest product, that's one reason. The other probably one of the most interesting fact about all palm is that it's the highest yielding oil producing crop so far and number two is eight to ten times less productive so if you try to replace all palm with soybean for instance you need eight to ten times more land, you need to convert eight to ten times more forests. Well the answer is yes, yes and no. So first the development of all palm was done by large agro industries and preferentially on forest land so of course all palm can be considered as responsible for deforestation but all palm does not need to be planted on former forests just because it was the easiest way to do. You can plant all palm on savannas as in Colombia, you can plant all palm on degraded land so you have lots of ways to do. So all palm per se as a crop is not responsible for deforestation so it's our major take home message in the book is don't confuse the crop and the people who develop it. Again the answer is mixed and needs a balanced answer. In most places where all palm has been developed all the people who adopted all palm really were lifted out of poverty. The problem is in many forested areas once all palm has been developed before even the plantation started producing the people sold their land just for quick cash and a few years later they were left without plantation, without land, without money and then of course in that case they were not lifted out of poverty but they were forced into poverty. But it was as the company say it was their choice but all palm has this effect on economic differentiation. The ones who keep it get richer, the ones who don't get on the train are left behind. After you convert a primary forest into a crop, an agricultural crop or even a forestry plantation the result is the same it's an ecological disaster. You replace hundreds and thousands of diverse plants by one crop. So yes it is a disaster from the biodiversity point of view to convert forest into something else. And convert it into all palm, soybean or casium engine the problem is the same. So again all palm is not responsible as a crop. All palm is a forest plant so in the start it was just collected in the wild then it was progressively introduced in the agricultural sphere by the people and in different ways. You don't need to use monoculture, you can do it in an agroforestry kind of way. You can also mix it, mix all palm plantations in diverse landscape in a mosaic landscape and of course you can use it in an environmental friendly way. The idea is not to convert huge stretches of forest into one monocrop but do it in a more ecologically, more environmentally friendly way. We try to promote in Cameroon and hopefully in Central Africa we try to promote sustainable development of oil palm therefore we help the Ministry of Agriculture to draft a national strategy for sustainable development of oil palm that's one thing. In this we also try to push to introduce the smallholder agenda in a certain way not to oblige but to convince agro industries that they have advantages for them to organize equitable win-win agro schemes and so that's our present goal. The idea being that if you develop oil palm on already cleared land owned by communities or private planters it's that much of land which will not be taken from primary forest.


Not one bit. Fall back, Goodman, they'll repeat. The opening is ready to come down. As everyone sprints into the mine, the guard captain tosses you a heavy hammer and points at the timber. You deserve the honour, he says. You turn and look at the gray sky, the snow, the spindle and the dredge walking toward you. With a hefty swing, the timber snaps and rocks begin to fall. You drop the hammer and raise down the shaft toward the light of the torches. Good, that was cool. That was awesome. I head the path comes to the end against the smooth surface of a large flat rock. We should camp, Zephyr says. It may be the last decent sleep these people get for days. I'll need Nichols to assist me in opening the path beyond, but first you and I should talk. No, talk, talk, talk. That's my dear. Let's see, what do you have to say about yourself? A few small fires provide a sense of calm for the caravan, though the villages keep well away from the ravens. There is enough light to see you are no longer in a man-made mine but a natural cave of salt. What are we doing down here? Staying alive and keeping below from the dredge. I thought that was obvious. Man just mentioned that the dredge are known to make holes constantly, so staying alive in a mine not going to work out well for us in the long run. But we keep heading down like we're hunting wolves. There are wolves in this game. Awesome. The Valka gives you a ghost of a smell. Are we? Oh. Until today no one but a few in the council knew about these tunnels. Not even menders. We didn't create them, but we have used them a great deal over the years to travel far distances quickly. Zephyr becomes quiet awaiting a question. Where do they lead? Practically everywhere. Alberang, Vo, Grofheim or what is left of it. I'm not sure anyone knows the full extent of these underground paths that we're about to enter a corridor. One of the main tunnels. Zephyr becomes quiet awaiting a question. She does that a lot, doesn't she? So where are we headed? Where would you go knowing you possess the sleeping body of the immortals and the general? Dropping it in the blue river still sounds great. It was not a terrible plan by Valka or her junior for simplicity. But the closest I could get was to the middle of the Fladovala or Plains Fladovala Plains. I have to assume the Dredge Army is there in force. Madagara is the safest place to secure Bellower's body. Whatever drew the Dredge Army towards the Zinbindel, the council can find a way to stop it. And what about the Ravens? So far, helping Valka base less than a bloodshed coin. And that is why I'm talking to you alone now. The corridor will lead us to Manahar in a week's time. See us there safely, and I give you a genuine Valka thought. You will be rewarded well enough to never need work again.  We'll go to Manahar! We were headed there after the Blue River anyway. Let's see. Anything good? Here for another pity match! Both of your quartermaster asks what are you begging me to show you how to really carve up some foes? What can you show me?  Try to keep up.   I'll start with you and the shield maiden. You feel up to the challenge? Sure. Stars? Winging. Use Bolvex Frenzy to kill two enemies with one attack. Use champion to protect an ally from... attack. All right, let's see. Frenzy, Frenzy, Frenzy, Frenzy. Oh. So I guess I have to take their shields first. That's an acceptable strategy I suspect. Champion. Oh, I see. I need adjacency then. All right, all right, all right. I'm not an adjacent ally. Let's see. No allies are adjacent to focus, just your positioning. Yeah, yeah. All right. This is a bit more tricky than most of the other ones. Let's just make sure that... they try it next time. Next turn, I mean. All right. Oh. Ouch. Double ouch. I would really appreciate it if everyone stopped attacking Bolverk right about now.   Well, this is not what I had in mind. All right. Let's do this champion thing then. I must drop my first target with a single hit. Is that so? All right. I'm going to try it on the archers. I think if I can move that way. Ouch. This, I imagine, is making things harder. All right. I think we can do this. Oh, so close and yet so far away. Damn it. Okay, let's kill this guy because he is in the way. Another problem is that my health is going very low, very quickly. And that's bad. Oh, boy. I think I may have screwed this up very badly. Let's see. Fair enough. Okay. At least I got the promotion out of this thing. For both of my main characters. That will have to be good enough. Let's see. Promote. Yep. Yep. I think we're going to take these two. Yeah. Good job. Good job, everyone. Let's take a nice rest. So we... Oh, great. So we can move on now. This is a very interesting change in perspective. So far in the banner saga, we've always gone about the world from the crust. Now we're going underground. What's going on here? You hear a folk ask a group of ravens. They're standing around a whimpering man on his knees. He kept whining about being hungry. One of your fighters says, we found those little glowing bellies for him, but certainly he's not so hungry. There's the other's chuckle. Let the folker handle this.  She tells the man who complies. You three take some of the bellies. You three will be the testers. The ravens eyes go wide. You're kidding, right? One asks. His response is folker sweeping his leg with her spear. Eat. They put a few bellies in their mouths. As the fighters chew, their mouths glow with the berry juice. Folk and the man she hopes start laughing. The fighters look at each other and laugh. After a while, they show the raven. They don't taste half-bad either. Says one raven. Others start collecting the berries to eat and squeeze waving glowing hands in the dark. Mothers rub their smiling children in the juices in order to keep track of them.  You snort and move on. Did we all just cover each other with luminescent berries? Because that sounds about as insane as it should. Hello. Hi. The man's southern appearance makes you tense. I didn't mean to sneak up on you. It's something I do. I mean, something I've learned to do. Something that will get you killed if you do it to me again. Okay, yes. But it does have its uses. Just allow me to fight alongside you now. Well, a fight. You won't regret it. You scoff and turn away from the man with the goodman there at the approach. I see you, Madditch. Strange fellows who have an excellent fight. But he fights his way through enemy defences. The new fight next to him. People near me tend to get hurt. But his injuries won't be an accident. This voice is taking out a lot out of me. That was so grammatically incorrect. The man goes back to the cavern. There's a gold down here. Gold! You feel the surge of excitement like everyone else. The man looks left and right confused. Damn it. All turned around. Idiot, you're on New York's duty. The man frowns but says nothing. I just punch him in the arms and back, despised by the false hope. Yep, I expected that to happen. The torches highlight the crudgy black rocks and bubbles in the path of the food. They do little to keep everyone together. Sharp turns around boldest, quickly block lines of sight. We've lost a few families, everyone informs you. We need to stop and find them. You consider your options. This is the only time. This is the only time! I appreciate the help. She says and splits everyone into surge groups. As you surge, you realize it's just as hard to track time down here as it is above where the sun that never moves. Sometimes later you think you hear voices to the left. Search to the left. As you move away from the main path, you leave someone with a torch standing every sale often. This route proves useless as it seems you must have heard nothing but an echo. You follow the line of torches back to the path. Keep searching down the path. A bit further down you find the source of the sounds a mother is holding her children tucked away and she says of a rock formation. She whimpers as you approach and focus says better let me handle this. Moments later you'll head back to meet with Zephyr. Surprisingly all the missing clansmen were found. Huh, I'm actually happy this happened. It's so rare that taking things all the way will result in something good like finding a bunch of lost children and their mums. Water barrels are running low. Hopefully your quartermaster reports and I'll be damned if I start licking these slimy rocks for a drink that she had made and looked at you. If these people start getting desperate for water down here you get her off. I know! You say, send out some scouts we'll come here until they return. Some of your ravens and other members of the current group open grab torches rope and waterskins before heading off in different directions. Better catch some rest while you can. Nothing to do until they get back anyway. Laying down you focus on the sound of a small drip somewhere in the cave. It grows louder, like the beat of a drum. Like thousands of feet marching behind you. You turn and everyone stops. You see the glowing eyes of your army looking at you in admiration. A hundred members break formation to dig holes in the cavern floor and place stone barrels in the depressions. The barrels quickly fill with water and the first is offered to you. You just make your turds before seeing your red armoured reflection in the bowl. Whoa, was I dreaming that I'm a dredge? I must serve, right? You wake up before it's a shout and focus joins you. What was it this time? She asks.


Thank you everyone for joining. Today, we're going to talk about how to onboard a staking user in under five minutes. But first a quick introduction. My name is Adam and I grew up in New Haven, Connecticut. I currently live in Brooklyn. I got involved in live peer pretty early on building products and tools for the community and these days I'm doing product engineering and design with a real focus on the token holder experience. Hi, I'm Shwan. I was born in China. I grew up in Texas and now I'm in San Francisco and how I heard about the blockchain world was at the end of last year and I really got involved in live peer earlier this year and just never looked back. So now I'm working on live peer research and design under the community grant. Actually, next one's mine. So we got a couple of really exciting things on the agenda for you today. First, we're going to delve into what are some of the onboarding problems across the entire ecosystem because this is really non-isolated incident and then secondly, we're going to be really excited to share with you how live peer really imagined its own staking app redesign. Cool. So there's a pretty decent amount of you here. Quick show of hands. Who here runs a mining operation? Okay. And who here has recently staked token on a proof-of-stake network? Okay, so a lot more hands. I think I think this perfectly illustrates basically how much proof-of-stake has really lowered the barrier to entry to participate in these these open decentralized networks. So in the case of live peer that's a video infrastructure network, but there's lots of really exciting proof-of-stake networks being being built out today that we think will be really integral to our everyday lives as really citizens of the internet. So here's just a short list. This is really just the tip of the iceberg, but there's a public proof-of-stake network for smart contract platforms, for value exchange, for data query processing, for blockchain interoperability. So yeah, we think staking is here to stay and we believe strongly it's yeah, it's here to stay. We think it's pretty cool. And we're looking forward to seeing the first million users onboarded and participating in these networks. But there's a problem. Staking user interfaces, so the gateway to participate in securing these networks kind of sucked for the for the most part. And that makes onboarding really hard. So studies have shown that if it takes more than five minutes to onboard a user, they'll most likely drop off or give up. So we're gonna have a real hard time onboarding the first million staking users if it takes more than five minutes to stake. So why do staking apps suck? We surveyed this sort of burgeoning landscape of staking apps and we surfaced really four main problems that have really been impeding the onboarding process for users and nearly all of them. So problem number one is a really verbose and inconsistent language system being used. So staking, bonding, unbond, on-stake, baking, cycle, round, era, epoch, delegator, there's a lot of jargon and I think like these words are great, but they're pretty verbose and often redundant, like stake and bond really mean the same thing. And they're not being employed consistently and this is leaving users pretty confused. Number two, it's really hard to evaluate delegates. So in most proof-of-stake systems, a delegate is represented by their address. So this is just a randomly generated string. And so the absence of a social identity layer, for example, a name, a bio, or an avatar, or a URL, makes it really difficult for users to evaluate who to stake towards. And this is like, you know, in web 2.0, this is like a given, but in a lot of these apps we saw there, it's not available. Problem number three, it's really difficult to evaluate the benefits of staking. So staking apps are not effectively showing users what they stand to gain by staking. Staking represents an opportunity to own equity and voting influence in public networks that we think, we believe strongly, our society will run on one day. And it also represents an opportunity to do work and potentially even earn a living on these networks, whether that's validating, blockchain transactions, or in the case of live peer, transcoding and distributing video. So these are awesome opportunities, but staking apps are not doing a good job communicating them before users actually stake. And finally, we notice a really disconnected onboarding funnel. So most staking apps suffer from non-integrated, complex onboarding or onboarding at all. So there's a lot of steps connecting your wallet acquiring tokens. Staking apps really need to lead users through these steps in app, like a good salsa dancing partner. So this is an actual conversation I had with a friend of mine. He asked me how to stake on live peer. And I didn't feel really confident in the onboarding tutorial on the staking app. So I just sent him step by step instructions.  So my friend, he did give up and like, I don't blame him. It's like, come on, that's a lot of steps. So yeah, I think the stakes are too high. No pun intended. The stakes are too high for to allow users to drop off like this. So you know, how can we how can we design for these problems? How can we help onboard new staking users in under five minutes? Well, I'm so glad you asked Adam, because that's exactly what we set out to do in reimagining the life you're sticking up. Yes. And we're super excited to share with you also our results. So maybe before we get into that, what is live peer anyway? And for those of you who don't know, life here is peer to peer live video encoding. And what that means is we are a protocol and open source protocol that any video developer in the world can use to incorporate live video into their project or app. Okay. Now how does staking play a role in life here? So understand that let's just go through a scenario. Pretend you're watching a streaming version of the World Cup in 2020, we're traveling time, you know, traveling to the future. And between the camera and guitar, that's on the football field and streaming that live to you, your device, there's this multi billion dollar market in ensuring this quality video streaming experience for you. And now how that happens is there's a footage of the video football game playing out there, and it has to be reformatted in order for it to work on all these different devices. And that's called encoding. The current services that are centralized make this insanely expensive. Now what life here does is take unused infrastructure that's out there and make the computation so cheap that it's just a fraction of the cost what it is today. And we use a delegated proof of stake system. So when you stake live for your token, you ensure the quality of the service and you secure the network. Okay, so let's take a look at the current staking experience. This here is our previous Explorer. And what you do here is you stake token, you manage your rewards, et cetera, et cetera. And there are over 2,600 token holders currently participating in every day there are more people. But there are still a lot of problems with the staking Explorer. And as Adam mentioned, we don't really, we're not really exempt from all of the, you know, same the problems that are going on in the ecosystem. So currently more than 70% of the users don't make it past the first page. So we know this from our analytics. And more than 90% of the users who are staking had to rely on the community and some human input to even just get through the staking first experience. Probably something else is more shocking is that the first stake experience can take anywhere between 30 minutes to upwards of three days for some unfortunate users who are truly lost. So that's not acceptable. And that led us to formulate these two North stars for where we want to be. So the two key targets for us in our staking redesign would be we want all of the users or sorry, eight out of 10 users to be able to complete staking autonomously supported by the interface alone. And that means no human intervention. They just figured out. The second thing is that we want more than 50% of the users to be able to stick in under five minutes. And as we said, this is a really key thing for us. So how do we go about accomplishing this, right? These two goals. Well, as a good human centered designer, we asked the first question first, which is, for whom are we designing anyway? And we went to our community for that. We did generative research with 30 community members who are currently stakers and figured out that our audience really has this investor mindset. And we further sub segmented them and figured out who our early adopters are in the community. And another way to resegment this audience is to look at their experience with staking in general, because we want to design for multiple levels of experience. So we have new users and experience users, which we'll share with you how we factor that into the onboarding. Okay, a second category of information that we looked at is what are all of the other apps doing, right? Because we don't want to reinvent the wheel. We want to take what's good. Some of the apps that we looked at are Cosmos, Tezos, some of the bigger staking apps that we know, but we also looked at investment apps, which are relevant to what our users are already familiar with. We looked at the UI. We looked at the onboarding flow. We looked at the information architecture and also the staking interactions. And thirdly and most importantly, we really wanted to figure out what are the user pain points? And that's key to all of the designs, decisions that we made. So we went about constructing a user journey from beginning to end. And that means when they first got involved and engaged with live peer as a brand, all the way to the end when they state token. And some of the problems we surfaced are pretty similar to what's going on out there on all the other staking apps. People don't understand the ROI. Like what am I even getting out of the stake? And they don't understand how to evaluate who to stick towards anyway. They don't really, they can't finish the first staking experience, which is a huge problem. And lastly, the confusing terminology detracted greatly from the experience. Awesome. So based on these user pain points that Siwan just described, we identified really five areas that we felt we could really improve the onboarding experience for this new staking app. So I'll go through them. So number one, we introduced a more intuitive information architecture that really shepherds users to where they need to go. So there are over like 14 views, but if you really boil it down, there's like three high level views. So there's the orchestrator's list view, which orchestrators in the live peer protocol are the delegates. There's the orchestrator profile and the token holder profile. A key takeaway here is that you'll notice there's a call to action to stake or on stake on each one of these views. So whether you're evaluating transcoders or managing your existing stake, that core value proposition is always available and highly visible. So this was just an important design consideration in getting users staked in under five minutes. We established a language system. So this was, I mean, it's small, but important. So this was really just an exercise in reaching consensus with the team on vernacular. So removing certain words and renaming others. We introduced opt-in identity using a project called Threebox. So this accomplishes really two things. So number one, it helps users evaluate who to stake to, and then it gives orchestrators campaigns greater visibility into the app. So they don't have to go digging off app. We introduced what we're calling a staking widget. So this really accomplishes three things. Number one, it allows you to connect your wallet. Number two, it helps you understand what you're getting from staking before you actually stake. So in the case of live peer, that's projected rewards, projected earned fees, voting power. And then thirdly, it leads directly into the staking interaction. So this is kind of like a mini app in and of itself. And we really like it because it I think lends itself to embedding in other applications. So if you're an orchestrator running a note in live peer network, we can see you embedding this on your own site to campaign for token holders. Now that we've seen how the information architecture have been reorganized and how the UI elements have been really designed to support onboarding and understanding, let's see how all those elements kind of pull together into a cohesive onboarding experience. And what we did here was create an onboarding tutorial. And as Adam mentioned, we always have just one call to action. There's no distraction. But for the onboarding, we give people a place to start. And that is over there. So once you watch this tutorial, we kind of learned this key lesson, which is you can't have the same onboarding experience for everyone. So as we remember, we had two key audiences at experience levels that we wanted to sign for. And that is new users and experience users. New users really can't do without a lot of hand holding. But experience users are boggled down by all the explanations that they don't need. So here's how we solve for that problem. Once you launch the tutorial, which is for everyone, then you get a choose your own adventure. So for the experience users, they get a quick guide, a really, really quick out of glance, you know, for what the four steps are to onboarding. And then for the new users who really need a lot more support, they get a step by step walkthrough to help them complete sticking interaction for the first time. So let's take a look at how that works. So this is the first step, which is enter the amount that you want to stick in the sticking widget and also figure out what the ROI is for the experience user. It's a very simple suggestion and showing you where to, you know, input that information for the new user. We give a lot more in depth explanation. So this way they understand what they're doing. Okay, step two, we want to choose an orchestrator from the list. So we explain how to choose the orchestrator and that you can also click here to go into the detail view and further evaluate. Yes, further evaluate the orchestrator and all of their activities. You can see their campaigns there. You can see the identity.  So the third step is a really important step, which is we tell them explicitly to go ahead and stick to the orchestrator that they chose. And after this step is where all the fun happens. We get this huge yay, you have completed staking lots of confetti user delight. So people love this. And voila, we have now completed staking for a new user. And then lastly, but not least, we finished strong by helping people understand that the staking fun continues on. You still have a management app basically where you can see you're seeking activities, how do that change over time this anything change, what your rewards are over time, etc. So that concludes our onboarding tutorial. Thank you. So yeah, results really quickly. We did find in our early usability testing that eight out of 10 users were able to complete staking autonomously. So that means just really without asking any questions. And key result number two, 60% over 60% of users were able to complete staking in under five minutes. And this particular stake are actually completed in under one minute. So yeah, future challenges. You know, obviously onboarding is just one piece of the puzzle. How do you help retain users after they've staked and really encourage active participation? Staking is not a passive activity. You have to be really vigilant and, you know, make sure your delegate is performing up to par and playing by the rules. Otherwise, you like them risk losing some of your stake. Designing for governance interaction. So in life here and in most proof of stake protocols, your stake also represents your voting power. So, you know, for future governance proposals, how can we design to encourage this type of participation in the network? And finally, you know, in a world where there's hundreds of staking protocols, it's going to be increasingly important to make it as easy as possible for users to really jump from one staking app to another and still feel at home and feel, have a feel familiar. So this is going to require reaching consensus with other staking protocols and other projects and really coalesce around proven design patterns and a shared language. And we're really looking forward to, to working with you guys and other teams in the space and to make this a reality and help onboard, you know, the first million staking users. Without a huge thanks to the live peer team and community without whom this talk would not have been possible. And also a huge, huge thanks to you, the audience members. And as Adam mentioned, we really want to collaborate with you to make staking better for everyone. So if you want to take our challenge, we have this challenge out for everyone at DevCon to stake live peer token in under one minute. So if you're curious about that, come find us afterwards. Thank you so much. Come find us on Twitter and yes.