Welcome back Paul Gillan here with Rob Strashay. We're in the last, the final sessions, final hours of Red Hat Summit 2023 and Ansible Fest, which is part of Red Hat Summit this year. And it's been all about Ansible this afternoon. So our next guest will further that discussion. Rob, I understand you were a recent customer of our next guest. I am. I needed some shampoo and my son and I went in there and we're able to find it. It was, and it was a fantastic experience by the way. Outstanding. I mean, it's great, great to hear as we were talking about just a moment ago. I mean, smiling associates ready to help guests. That's, that's the name of the game. It's Ulta Beauty. Experience is the name of the game. And Jesse Amerson is the, Amerson or Amerson? Amerson, Amerson. Is IT director for performance automation and quality at Ulta Beauty. The nation's largest beauty retailer and one that's known for its focus on customer, on a great customer experience. And you're all about automation, I understand. Correct. Yeah, it's a long title, right? Performance automation and quality. Automation is at the center of that very deliberately. When we talk about automation with an Ulta, we're talking about giving back labor hours, giving back productivity hours to our technology professionals who can be working on the harder problems that are facing our business, facing our guests. We want to automate what is the, I would call it necessary. It's oil that does not have to be done manually. That's the goal. Interesting, there's a case study on the red hat side about your story and it has the phrase, the retailer's using automation as a catalyst for innovation and cultural change. I don't think of those two things as being related, but obviously you've figured it out. Right, right, automation. People think automation, okay, well, that's great, but it's kind of like, duh, sure you should be automating. So just go automate it and it'll be good. And again, coming back to this notion that everyone is tapped for resources and hours. Everybody's asked to do too much, not enough people, not enough time. And so when we talk about taking the toil out of the work, the workday of our technology professionals, we're talking about giving back hours for innovation. We're talking about giving back capacity to go out and figure out a better way of doing whatever it is that we need to do. It might be working on a new business model. It might be making improvements to our digital footprint, whether it's our digital store, whether it's our digital technology that our guests do see. We're giving back hours so that we can give those back to the company and our guests to figure out how to serve them better. How has this helped you not only retain employees, but incent them? I mean, it's been a tight labor market, irrespective of the recession and everything else that's going on. How does this help you when you're trying to go and get people and bring them in? Sure, I think there's a much bigger story around that that's still playing out, right? And I think it's all about, is am I going to work for a company who is doing things the old fashioned way? Am I going to work for a company that's doing things manually that's going to make it hard for me? We spoke about experience. Paul Wright, you introduced her right in the top of the segment. We were talking about it before. It's experience for our associates as well. It's our customer experience. It's our associate experience. And people who are talented have options. They can go work for companies that are automated. They can go work for companies that are working on leading technology. And what we want to be doing at Ulta is showing that we're ahead of the curve too. We're leading edge. We're adopting a tool stack that is going to make your job more enjoyable that your peers are talking about in their jobs, technology like Ansible, like Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform that brings people to these conferences like Summit because they're excited about the technology. That's why we're here. So what are some of the more notable use cases of Ansible at Ulta Beauty? Certainly. So we are on a very significant transformation with SAP. We are migrating from ECC to SAP S4 HANA. And there is a ton of automation opportunity in doing this. This is a once every 20 year typically exercise for large organizations that run ERP platforms. It's no different for Ulta. And so you don't go in and fundamentally rewire this part of the technology stack very often. This is a golden opportunity for us. Everything from the core infrastructure, the virtual machines, the environment that we're provisioning that SAP runs on top of all the way up through the configuration of SAP as an application, the ongoing maintenance of it, the ability to restart our SAP cluster following planned outages like patches, following unplanned events if they happen, such as incidents, things that will bring down our instance, that is super value to the organization on the order of weeks and months that have been reduced to a button press. And it's done the same way every time. So where are you from a cloud journey perspective as you're modernizing? It sounds like you're automating and modernizing at the same time. We are, and there's a very heavy overlap between cloud, where the workloads are being executed, and automation, right? There's not, they're not rigid. They don't have to go together. They often do, because when you're moving to the cloud, you're lifting the hood on a number of things. It's similar to that, that S4 journey. You're looking at an application. You're looking at how it's engineered. Is it engineered for the cloud? Is it, is it, is it cloud native? Is there a version of it that's cloud compatible? And when you're looking at that, you're also looking at how am I deploying that application? How am I deploying the infrastructure it runs on? How am I configuring it? And so yes, those two conversations happen frequently, and we're talking internally now about a cloud operating model that is inclusive of Ansible, and it talks more about the broader lifecycle than just the automation, and where's the automation in that journey? Now, one of the features of Ansible is that you can encapsulate your YAML automations into playbooks. You can share those, you can modify them. What are some of the best practices you've learned for how to share those expertise, that expertise that you've encapsulated in those playbooks across the organization? 100%. So we want to propagate design patterns. We want to propagate modules. We want to propagate YAML code that is efficient. It is written in a way that is maintainable, and we put governance around that so that when other consumers pick that up, oh, hey, well, I didn't realize, this whole playbook may not be what solves my problem, but here's a snippet from that playbook that gives me an idea, or it helps me understand. We're still in the early stages of the governance, so we don't have that completely figured out, but we do know that we need to keep very careful control over how playbooks are syndicated. We need to be looking at where partner YAML code is coming in, how we're qualifying that, and then how we're redeploying it for other use cases. We are still figuring that out, for sure. Yeah, it seems exciting with some of the announcements that made specifically around lightspeed this week, which would seem to play very well into that in the future of where you're going. Absolutely. Really excited you brought up Lightspeed Rob. I was hoping that you were, Paul, bring it up. Absolutely, so I've been following this for about the last six months as the word started to spread in the community about the project inside Red Hat, and heard the lightspeed name for the first time yesterday, yes, super stoked, and I'll tell you the number one thing that I'm really excited about, and I did not know about this until yesterday, and that is that when Lightspeed recommends a code snippet, or it recommends a next line, or a next part of the syntax in your YAML, it's also going to show you where that's coming from. It's going to cite itself. It's going to cite its source, and that is super, super helpful. So whatever product team thought about that feature, because it wouldn't have made the headlines. It's not the coolest thing on the planet. That is super cool because it allows us, that is a teaching aid within that application. That is super, super cool. Imagine going in, you're citing, oh, okay, I understand now why this was recommended. Yes, sometimes there's going to be a relevance conversation, but more often than not, there's probably going to be, oh, I just learned something else because I saw the source. And it moves away from that sort of black box, or around AI. Black box is a really big challenge right now. It's a challenge for AI. I personally believe it's a challenge for technology. I think that at the heart of, when I'm trying to influence our user community within Ulta, and I was talking about this earlier with some of our colleagues at Red Hat, I think there's a human agency challenge here. People want to understand that they're still in control. They want to understand that the technology is there to augment or further enable them. That it is not going to either get in their way, or sort of way out to the left to splice them, or be some kind of threat. More often than not, people don't understand. It's that black box that you're talking about. And demystifying that is what brings the human agency back into the picture, and it's what's going to drive adoption of products like Ansible. I firmly believe that. You have to be looking at uses of AI generative and otherwise within your own company, or your customer-facing applications. What use cases intrigue you? Yeah, so right now I think there are really, really strong opportunities internally with products like Lightspeed that are going to reduce toil. They're going to reduce barriers to introducing new technologies. I think that is going to be a huge theme in technology from a technologist's point of view over the next five to 10 years. When we think about it on the customer side, what we need to do is we need to be doing two things at once. We need to be really careful with that customer data, and we also need to be giving the customer a better experience. So there's a level of transparency that's going to have to come into that conversation as well. And I don't think we've figured that out yet, but there are all kinds of use cases. I mean certainly product recommendations is an example. Accessing large libraries of beauty tips would be another very basic example, but you need to do that in a way that's not only contextually relevant in adding value, but you want to creep people out. And I think we've been talking about that for about five years or so now, and there's a creep out factor with AI that we have got to make more transparent in a way that doesn't add complexity to the customer. How much do you want to know, but drive credibility? I think playing off of that a little bit in retail to your point, the creep out factor, I actually worked for an open source software company that did the first party data creep out factor and helped to build that AI and they recommend the next product and based on certain models. Right, right, right. How, I guess it has to be a delicate balance to how far you go with that. And is there that same kind of balance that when you're looking at Ansible and how far you go to automation, like you were talking about, you don't have the governance nailed at this point. I think there's a lot of people in that camp, so. Of course, right, of course. So how do you balance that out, I guess you could say?  I gave it at a round table a few hours ago, right? And it's maybe not the answer that everybody would like to hear, but it's the reality on the ground, which is, you claw and scrape and dig around and you look for ways of adding value, use case at a time, potential internal customer at a time, maybe talk with our network team, talk with our infrastructure team, find a team member who is passionate about learning and trying something new, and have an open conversation. We think this is an outstanding platform. There are going to be playbooks that our technology partners have written for your use case. Take a look, talk to us, talk about a problem you have, and let's figure it out together. Oh, by the way, we are a center for enablement. We're going to work with you on governance and support, but we also don't have it all figured out. We just want to start somewhere. And I think that's a big theme, is just starting somewhere. Now, you're entering, this is a multi-phase transformation you're on, you're entering your third phase right now. Correct. What will that look like? Right, right, so I define success in this third phase as automation is just how we do things around here, right? And in my view, it is where there is a large population within Ulta's technology department that is fluent in Ansible, right? They may not have mastered Ansible, that's okay, but they're executing Ansible playbooks every day, and in many cases, they're writing or extending the playbooks that they use. To me, that embodies automation being just how we operate, just how we do things around here, and that's what I'm looking for. The proof points will come, the metrics will come, the savings will come. It will be that community of practitioners that I will look to and go mission accomplished. I think this is an awesome thread because it actually came up and it was a question posed to Matt Hicks, the CEO. Sure. So you'll love this. It was, he was posed the question of how do you feel, especially with Lightspeed and Prompt Engineering as it's becoming? Prompt Engineering, yeah. How do you feel about the fact that the playbooks that you use, that you contribute back to the community? I think I know your answer on this one, but I want to hear it because I think it's one of these sensitive topics about do you see those playbooks as your intellectual property or are you glad to give them back to the community and have everybody learn from what you've done? Raging debate right now, right? It's a super huge debate because all of a sudden, AI has come into essentially everybody's living room with chat GPT, right? That is the moment we're all living in and I'm not going to forget where I was or what the context was when I first heard chat GPT and I went, what is that? It wasn't that long ago, right? It was a matter of months ago. And of course, all of a sudden, what we're looking at is the substance of, more or less our civilization being indexed and then serve back with massive compute to answer any question that you can pose, right? And so that's leveraging nearly infinite IP, right? It's nearly infinite intellectual property from our civilization. And so I absolutely think that that's something to wrestle with. My answer, I'm going to bring it down to the ground level a little bit with you is my answer is the reason that I'm here sharing this stage with the two of you, the reason that I was hosting a round table earlier today, I did another event yesterday is because we absolutely believe in open source. There is an intellectual property discussion and debate that is started but far from over. But in my world, I know that if we contribute, we're going to get more back from the community. And that's what it's about. So for me, it's about connecting up other customers. It's about learning from our Red Hat partners. It's about sharing what's working and what's not and it's going to go to the playbooks. I mean, we're not going to be shy about sharing. We had someone ask us for a snippet of a playbook in, I want to say that it was Ansible Fest late last year and we provided it, you know, and we will do that. In technology roles that I've been in, I have not been shy in the past about sharing code. I think that's important. There may be a boundary there with respect to how accessible it gets getting posted up on GitHub. But when you're talking about sharing informally within the community, that's a given. And you're going to get more out, you're going to get more in return than what you put in. I'm firmly convinced of that. You have a strong point of view and you're not afraid to share it. That's fantastic. I agree, I agree. A great story at Ultra Beauty with automation, with the culture based on automation and around customer service. How can you argue with that these days? Jesse Amerson, IT director for performance, automation and quality. Thanks so much for joining us and telling us the Ultra Beauty story today. Thank you, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me. We will be right back. We're in the closing stretch of Red Hat Summit and Ansible Fest in Boston. Paul Gillan with Rob Strashe. We'll be back in a few minutes.


Okay, it is 5.30. I'm going to call the meeting to order. I'll start out with roll call. Uh, call the person ahead of me. Hold him and I'm in here. I'll press the cells. Here. I'll press your mask. Present. I'll press for me. I'm here. I'll press the vectors here. We'll start out with the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Okay, I think we will do the introductions. We have quite a few guests here today. I'm Dean Decker, all the person from District 6, Chairperson of the committee. Alderman Heidemann, District 10, Southside. Amanda Salazar, District 3. Alder Ross, or Zach Ross, District 8, Vice-Chair. And I'm Angela Raimi. I'm District 5, Alder. Liz Majeris, Legal. I'm Isabel Miller. I'm with Glacier League's Conservancy. Paul Lambert, Pickleball Player. Tracy Burnett, Private Citizen. Joel Cole, State DPW. Lucas Burke, Private Citizen. Ryan Sosma, DPW. Heather Burke, Business Manager. David Bebel, Director of Public Works. Okay, we'll go to Number 5, Approval of Minutes from October 14, 2023. I moved to approve. Second. I just made the second. Any discussion on those minutes? All in favor? Aye. Chair votes aye. Those are approved. Okay, let's start out with Number 6, RO, Number 66, 23, 24. Submitting a request from Paul Romer for approval to allow us to hunt my wildlife within the City Lift Director. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Yes, the City recently, as you may recall, the Common Council annexed this property. It was formerly in the town of Wilson. It was formerly owned by the Romer family, purchased by the Burkey Company, and held by them for several years. They've allowed him to continue to farm and remain on the farm homestead on this parcel. He is asking basically to continue to allow hunting as he has for several years prior to this annexation. It is private property. There is hunting allowed within the City Corporate Limits provided that it meets certain setback requirements in the land of appropriate size, which this diagram is displayed this evening for your behalf. The larger area is for what can be considered bull hunting, and the inner area would be for any gun hunting such as shotguns or geese and ducks for migratory hunting in that area. As I said, it's been hunted for several years prior to this. Now that it's just in the City, they're just asking for clarification and permission, which they have provided that they're within the setback area. So, our current ordinance allows for this? Yes. So basically, he's just confirming this or? Well, they weren't under, they just wanted to, they weren't really sure if you could hunt in the city or not. We don't allow hunting on city property that is owned by the city, and it's a private property interest. So, I mean, it does just because it's a large enough area to be hunted, the private property owner could deny it if so if they desire. So it's, again, they have a relationship with the Berkeley company for years that they've been using it so. Thank you, Chairman. Is it posted in any way? Is it posted? Posted in any way. What does that mean? Well, no trespass can't hunt here. Must notify the owner when you go to the country. You can see where these signs were because I know by mouse properties is that way you got to context a family memory before you can go on it. It's private property right now. So it's, and it's not posted, it's not like public lands or anything like that where you can DNR or anything like that are under control. I didn't see anything in terms of proper or from where our area, for instance, there may be something along self-business drive where the, where the homestead is. Okay. I'm not sure, but I didn't see anything. Any other questions? This is the proper. Yeah. I don't think that this type of request needed to go to the committee. I think staff could can explain to Mr. Romer the regulations and point him in the direction of the ordinance. He need only get written permission from the property and abide by the setback requirements as David mentioned. So I would just offer that. Yeah. The committee to file this and somebody from DPW could just give him some clarification. I moved to file. Second. Most made in the second into file. Any other discussion on this? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Chair, what's aye. Okay. Number seven, 87. 23. Resolution 7. 23. 24. Resolution authorized for city officials to enter to a contract for the construction of the Kiwanis Park Pickleball Courts authorizing the budget amendment. Mr. Chairman, I'm going to defer to the city engineer, Mr. Brian Sassman. Okay. Yep. Several months ago, we the city department of who works designed some small courts and we have we do block grant money from the planning department to our staff designed the pickleball courts and we bid them out and everything came within budget. And we found the best spot to put these pickleball courts. Six of them is right in this area. Right, right here. Yeah. Six of them. Yeah, it's pretty standard size. Probably now, but we the way, I don't know the drawing up here, but the way we got them laid out, it'll be easy to expand to the east to add more onto it. Just take it up. But we get a huge, huge, huge request for pickleball courts. We got the three at Bullrath. I'd order some, some reds courts are more, but pickleball courts are better because the fences are nice and tight, you're not chasing a darn ball so much. So, so these are, these are, these are going to be a big hit. Like a nice scheme of pickleball, have a refreshment afterwards. Can't be, can't be beat. I know Joe, I know Joe Curlin did a lot of research with other, with other city in Hamilton, but what type to fit in this with the dollar month that we had. And that's kind of what they suggested is six courts with a, with a corridor in between. So people can rest and put some furniture in there. Like some canopy stuff, picking tables. That's right. Thank you. Yep. Okay. How does that ball diamond at all? Or that doesn't. Is there a ball right over there? Or that one doesn't get used to anything? It's, it's correct. It's really obsolete. It doesn't, they haven't played on it for several years. This is an old photo. In fact, if you, it's pretty much all grass now. It's got summer. Yeah. It's not much. And the way these pickleball courts are kind of set back a little bit here. So we can always put a parking lot up here. But we'll, we'll put, they can start building these things. Like in March, April will be used by June 1st. And this, I think next year people can just park on the street. There's a mill parking at 17th and co-op. But we do have a parking lot laid out. So we'll do that down the road if needed. It's a nice facility. Okay. So you're going to have six, six courts there. Okay. Now the city, we don't, we don't book courts through DPW who, where do you get, is first come, first serve? Exactly. There's no guarantee, like I said, because if you had facilities that had leagues that wanted to go down there, they'd want to make sure that they have it at a certain time, right? Correct. So is there anything in place that says, it's sort of like renting the baseball time? Right. So I mean, if, if and when, if there's official leagues in that, then there would have to be, you know, some type of agreement. We would work through our parks and our forestry office. Along with the business office to structure an agreement for a certain reserve, reserve of times and other. So it doesn't go into the rec, right? Well, we, we work with the rec department and if there, if it's a rec department sponsored program, we work with the rec department. But if it's a private organization or a club, they work directly with our office. Okay. And it would be like a record. Right. And we, we'd set up probably an agreement and free yourself, you know, Yeah. With that. Again, we, it's, it's great that, that there's those opportunities, but we don't want those opportunities to overtake just the public good and having opportunity for just the public to recreate and enjoy it at all. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Great. Well, Ra's is that way. Joe, first come, first serve. Okay. Yeah. You ever, no? Okay. That's a great question. That question was Joe's question. Okay. Oh, okay. Okay. I met with Dave and we went through an awful lot of fine tuning on the courts themselves. Some things that we particularly felt would be good for playing purposes, not interfering with another court, as well as safety purposes. And I'm just wondering if any of those were incorporated into the plan and what is the final plan? Will we be having totally enclosed courts or relieving some of them open? What kind of fencing are we going to have? There's going to be fencing between the courts for a link to the court. But if you want to go from court one, you don't need to walk outside to go around. So each court is not going to be fenced off tight. That make sense at all? It will not be. It will not be. So there will not be a gate in each specific court in order to enter that court. Right. You'll have to go into another gate and then go through the other courts to get to whichever one you're going to. Yes. I think the best thing to do is you want to stop in tomorrow. I'll be more than happy to show you the plan set and we can show you. Yeah, because we had changed. We had specifically, I had made the suggestion of maybe lowering the fencing if need be to cut down the cost, but also putting in individual gates at each court. Yeah. And we have four foot fences between each court, but it doesn't go from end to end. It doesn't go from one end to possibly. The other end of the court, the link to the court. The link to the court except for one end is going to be open. Just one end. No, both ends will be open. Why is that? Well, I see there's so many different ways to lay out these pickleball courts. Obviously the court sizes don't change, but there's different, like we're just talking right now, there's so many different ways. And I know like I said, we did a lot of research talking to other communities and that's where they kind of built these. But once you can stop in tomorrow, we can be more than happy. Yeah, I will. Where can I come? Come down here. Come down here. Yeah, I would like to see the final plan. Just pick a time. Well, before you leave, I'll give you my card. I'll make sure I'm here. We get to see you. I have a couple meetings tomorrow. Is it attached in the... No, I did not attach the drawings in your head. We had the contract in there. We didn't have the drawings. We weren't happy to email them to everybody. That's fine. Okay, well, you should see it. We weren't happy to email them. Yeah, yeah. Actually, it's a plan. It's yours? Is it yours? It's fine. Okay, well, then we'll both see you soon. It's a plan to the like 20, 25 sheets, but you're only interested in one or two. Yeah, we just want to see the layout. I am full in support of the courts if it's needed and there's use from our constituents. I do have weird feelings about adding a parking lot to green space. Yeah, we did. So if you could not do that and use the street parking and folks would just have to walk like they're doing a bullrath, that feels really great. I would hate to lose green space to a cement parking space. Right, right. No, I agree there's more enough room out there to put this. There is more than enough room. I actually feel like it's probably a lot safer than it is at bullrath. Because it can be quite zippy there. You're right. But we just gave room for it. Who knows down the road? We didn't want to put a kite against the road because we are kind of tied in and a little bit. I hear you. Yeah, we don't have a lot of green space. And there was just enough money for six courts to talk to? Yes, yes. We had a budget to go by here and that's exactly what we built. The same individuals that designed the bullrath did that several years ago. So we had some pretty tight numbers on what stuff it cost. We came within, I think, $8,000, our estimate out of $315,000. So it was a tight number. I think eight would be filled. Excuse me? Do you think eight would be used? Oh, definitely. There's a whole market for this, I didn't know. We could fill 12 courts. There are a minimum of 300 people that are playing in Sheboygan in this area. So folks are playing, they now have these six courts and how many are bullrath? Just three. Just three. So that brings you to nine. When I say just three, I'm talking about three dedicated pickleball courts. There are other pickleball courts in the area in Sheboygan County, but they're painted lines on tennis courts. So we share them with the tennis people. And so what we're looking for now is dedicated pickleball courts, give the tennis people back their courts, give us dedicated pickleball courts so that we can play there. And we have a club that plays six, seven days a week out. Yeah, we're playing all the time. You'll be having either of these down the road. Yeah, I mean, I gotta try this. It's a year or five years ahead of pickleball. Have you ever played it? Oh, well, I'm warning you. If you try it, it's addictive. Okay, well, I guess I need a hobby. Good news is it's not expensive. Yeah, it's a good sport. I can see why 300 people play this. Are there courts inside Uptown Social too? Yeah, they are going to put them in the gym. In the gym, right? Yeah, I was like, yeah. Right now indoors, we have both of the Y's, Sheboygan Y and Sheboygan Falls, and Berkshire and Sheboygan Falls. Oh, okay. Yes, and the Sheboygan Y. So that's where we're playing indoors now. And then there's some other areas around, in other parts of Sheboygan County where they're playing inside like in a church. Or other grammar schools or something like that. Yeah, we do put you around. Yeah, it's very dangerous. You don't know how to play, it's dangerous. Well, let's go one on one. I know! Money for the two other courts, would I? It's one of the biggest people when they know I can't play. That's the danger. There's where the danger is. I've never played. I've never played. You've only played in the IOLs. Just... Yeah, wow! Alrighty. Well, I move to a proof-threats-related strike. Okay. We'll make the second that any other discussion. Enough. All in favor. Aye. If you pose to the other side, that is a three. Call the board. I will do one. I'm rolling all day. Great. Okay, number eight. Resolution number 91-23-24. Resolution authorizing the appropriate city officials to enter into a contract was premier excavation LLC for the construction of the butch. This is the butch in property. I don't know if everyone's familiar with that at all. Okay. Was it three, four years ago? We built a bunch of soccer fields on here. Yeah, we created sites about 13 acres. Oh, there's 55 acres near to here. That is Woodson. We created, basically, the 13 acres and seeded it and are prepping for fields. They're coming along very nicely. In fact, I think the plan is to have some of the, what they call the Academy or the younger soccer players would play there in spring on the north section. And then on the top fields, they after spring summer grow again, they may start some of the more middle school and maybe high school level kids that play soccer to play in those upper fields. They will be ready by then. In order for them to use it though, they really can't park on the grass. So this project basically would be putting in the parking lot in the front of the complex here. We've already have a retention pond in. The homes have been raised. The only two structures that remain are the two, when I would say nicer, barns and they're used for storage and equipment and such. I think the other thing, Ryan, I think that besides the parking, it will also, we're stubbing in water and sewer for future restroom concession building. So that, we want to get that in as part of this project so we're not having to go through a parking lot, get it in prior to the parking lot. So it's like that. Took a couple of years to get some decent turf out there, but it's there now. So that's why it makes sense to build a parking lot. And this, like pickleball courts, there is a lack of soccer fields out there. And these are city-owned, so we have a control, I guess, will come. So that's great. And how many fields are there? Well, there's, with the 13 acres, there's up to four high school level soccer fields, three would be on the upper part. The lower part would also have youth fields within there. So when you have a full-size high school, you can go sideways and get two smaller fields on on that same high school field. So they'll rotate fields, but it's probably four large-scale high school level fields. And then within there, you can probably fit about eight, for sure, maybe 10, what I would say youth fields within that area too. Sorry, not a question. But how much parking are we looking at? This lot would be right around 250? Yeah, around 250. And again, all this was designed in-house by the DPW staff engineering staff. None of this, you need to know consultants, none of this kind of stuff. So how does this affect when I went over to a horseman? How does that alleviate horseman's congestion? Is it, are these people already designated to come to this field as opposed to doing- They'll use both. They'll use both, okay. And part of it is, is my understanding, is that it will give some relief to some of the fields. Because of natural grass, they get pounded and pounded, so they'll be able to rotate some of the play and practices so that they're not using the same field night after night after night. It doesn't recover and the grass doesn't have an opportunity to grow the turf. Okay, and this is all connected with Lakeshore Soccer? Right. Okay, and is the Rec Department have anything to do with that too? Yes, the Rec Department is, it's kind of, there's a partnership with the Youth Soccer Rec Program and Lakeshore United in terms of a collaboration and providing. They have the Rec Level Soccer, as well as a select more of a, more of a premier, love level. So, but they manage both of those programs. Gotcha. But our local high school, high school, won't be playing there. They could practice if they so desire, but they also, they play mainly their games at Horseman on the turf field. Yeah, yeah, okay. Any other questions? Discussion? Okay, I'm looking for a motion. I move to adopt resolution. Second. Motion to be seconded. Any other discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Sure, both sides. That is approved. All right. This is normal. He is the 2023. Thank you. Looking for a motion to adjourn. I move to adjourn. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. We are adjourned.


I feel great, you know, being here with my family, you know, a couple of my teammates, my coaches, my friends that have pushed me to get here to surreal feeling, knowing that you've worked so hard to get to this moment and, you know, there's a lot more work to be done, but surreal moment. No, I was just, you know, I'm a pretty calm guy, but my heart was beating pretty fast back there and, you know, just kind of really, you know, reminiscing on all the moments that, since I was a kid, you know, playing in the backyard, all types of stuff. So for me, it was a blessing to be here. You know, I think that's a testament to, you know, God blessed me with the abilities to play both games on a high level. My parents, my dad, teaching me the games. My uncle played baseball, you know, everybody in my family's played sports, so it's just a lot of hard work. Trying to do the right things on and off the field and, you know, I've had a lot of great people influence my life as far as coaches go and teammates, so. Yeah, man, I'm a great guy, you know, I try to do the right things on and off the field. I try to do right by everybody. And, you know, once they get to know me, I think that they'll see that. No, this is where I wanted to be. So, you know, I'm glad to be a Cardinal and I can't wait to go. Yeah, no, I knew they were very fond of me, you know, but I'm the type of guy, you know, I wasn't gonna believe anything until I got that phone call, but, you know, finally be able to play for Coach Kingsbury is something that, you know, we've been talking about for a long time and, you know, to be here now, I just can't wait to get in the building and get started.  So, knowing that he'll let me play and be me is probably the biggest thing. I don't like calling it the air range for me because it's just the offense, you know, that's just what we run, you know, other people have their certain type of offenses and that's just what it is, but I will say it's explosive and we like to score points. So, it's hard to stop, I'll say that. Got to talk to Cliff without that one. Yeah, yeah, it was, yeah, you know, it was my idea. My favorite movie is The Great Gatsby.  So, you can't see him now, but Nike hooked me up with a one-on-one, you know, draft their shoe, which is, you know, I signed with them. So, just blessed to be here and, you know, look good as well. You know, the lamp, it was like, yeah, across the lake, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Nah, it was a guy out there, actually, out there in the crowd. He was, you know, he was waving at me, telling me they don't want me and that they want Nick and we were talking about it. So, it's kind of funny, but nah, it is what it is. You know, it's, you can't make everybody happy, but at the same time, you know, I hope to make them happy with my play.  Never have, never have. I've watched them for years, but I've never talked to them. I'm a, I believe in playing multiple sports.  So, I just think, you know, there's no reason to limit yourself to one sport and as well as I think you can get burnt out by doing that, you know, playing one sport. But for me, you know, my parents had me playing all types of sports and it's just, you know, I love to compete, so it wasn't, it wasn't a big deal for me. Oh, it's just a real feeling. But for me, I'm more so glad that I'm, that I'm going to the Cardinals, honestly. You know, that's where I wanted to go play. And the fact that they had the number one pick, everything, you know, God works in mysterious ways. Everything happens for a reason. And I'm just ready to go, for sure. Okay, thanks everybody.


by Dale, this is Community Matters on Thick Tech Hawaii. We're talking about tech days of spring, tech days of spring at UH. And this is different than tech days of fall last year. So it looks like we have at least two tech days programs every year, a multitude of career fairs in Manoa. And it's the intersection of the university's offerings, training in technology and related fields with the business community. And I would say the business community is not just the local business community, it includes the military community and it includes the mainland business community, who knows what, with Alan Ito and he runs this fair. He's, what's your title Alan at university? Yeah, it's kind of a long cumbersome title. It's IT workforce development and regulated policy lead. Welcome to the show. Thank you, thanks Jay. You're the perfect guy to organize these fairs because you have a lifetime in industry and more than that, you have a lifetime in technology and industry. Can you talk about it? Sure, let's see. I'm a graduate of the university of Hawaii. I got both my undergrad degree. My undergrad is actually in math because when I went to school, there wasn't yet an ICS or information computer science degree that you could get. It wasn't a major. And then I have an MBA from the University of Hawaii also. I started off my career working at the UH doing research. So I used the computer to do some statistical analysis. Wanted to get into industry. So I spent a bit of time at Hawaiian Electric. I joined KPMG, which is an accounting consulting firm. I was with them for a while. I was at St. Francis healthcare system when St. Francis had the two hospitals. I was a chief information officer for them. I did a startup, spent about 10 years in a startup working with healthcare data. I worked with the Hawaii Health Information Exchange starting up their regional extension center. I was CIO for the state hospital system, I was CIO for Team Praxis. Then my last student in industry was information security officer for Hawaii Pacific Health, which is a very, very big organization, which of all healthcare organizations is heavily dependent on computers and computer processing and programming and so forth. So you're the perfect guy for this. You have a foot in every camp, it seems like. So tell us about the program. What is the tech days program about? Where is it? How does it work? What's your role in it? Sure. Yeah, so the tech days, and right now it's tech days of spring and you're right. It actually started in 2023 with tech days of spring 2023, then we have tech days of fall 2023 and now in tech days of spring 2024. And it came together as a way to try to put some focused attention on opportunities and technology for our local students and residents. And the way it started out was we were going to have a career fair over at UH and there was another group that was doing a talk story with tech pros. This was Thrive High. So we got together and we said, wow, we're doing it at about the same time. Wouldn't it make sense to try to come together and market it and do it together? One of the reasons was to again, put focused attention on technology as a good career for our next generation. But it was also to try to alleviate all these different asks going to industry. I'm not sure now, but I was involved with a group called the CIO Council of Hawaii, which is a group of IT leaders. And we always talked about, yeah, it's really hard because we get asked from this place and then we get asked from here and is it the same thing or is it two different organizations? So we thought if we could somehow coordinate our efforts, so industry could go to one place, get information about the different events, sign up in one place. It would also help make it easier for them. So that's how tech days started. And then it kind of grew organically as people had different events. And they say, yeah, sure, we'll put it under the tech days umbrella. So while the University of Hawaii system and the Chamber of Commerce, Hawaii are the primary sponsors, there's a number of different organizations involved in putting on tech days. Each organization kind of runs their own event, but we publicize it under the tech days umbrella. And we have a website where industry can go and all the information is at one website. All right, so yeah, I wanna talk about challenges that come to mind. Number one is the state has been up and down on developing a tech industry since John Burns, who originally had the idea to do that. And every governor since then to various degrees has tried to do that, but we still don't have a, what you would call a robust tech industry in town.  And so, I remember lots of programs at the legislature, which celebrated tech and tech companies in Hawaii, but not recently. And then I wonder where we are in terms of developing a tech industry that will attract attention, that will keep our students here after they graduate, and that will attract capital. What's the extent of that industry now? You've been looking at it from both sides of the coin. What are your thoughts? So, I think when we talk about a tech industry per se, the use of technology is ubiquitous now. Everyone uses technology. So it's difficult to say a tech industry where we have companies that are doing software development or companies that are hosting company, but if you look at any organization, they use technology. I'm gonna say some of our largest employers for people in technology are not tech company, or you wouldn't think of them as tech companies. An example would be my former employee, Hawaii Pacific Health. Healthcare makes wide use of technology in a lot of different areas, not just in the administrative areas, but also in providing patient care. It's allowed the process to be a lot more efficient, higher quality, and if you look at a bank, same thing, banks are a heavy user of technology. Hawaiian Airlines, as an example, the airlines, they use technology. So when we talk about a tech industry, I don't think we can necessarily see, well, we have this company, X, Y, Z, and they're a technology company because they do software development. And we do have companies like that. We have companies that specialize in working with software or networks or helping other companies, run things in the cloud. We have managed service providers that provide tech support to small and mid-sized businesses. So we do have those companies also, but I would say probably some of our largest employers in tech are not called technology companies. Yeah, you make me think of the Manoa Innovation Center a few years ago. It was on a strange kind of reservation interest by the university, and it had its own independent existence for 20 years or so, and then the university took it back. But in that building in Manoa, there were a lot of these smaller tech companies developing one product, one service, and trying to hit it big time. I don't know if that's still the case, and I think you're absolutely right. I mean, to wit the university itself, I'm sure you have a computer science department and all that, but at the end of the day, every department has its own technology people. You wanna have some data processing, so the faculty in that department with its graduate students and all, they developed data processing. They don't need to have a separate computer science department because they all do it in-house. Everybody uses technology. Everybody can go and learn and get the software and so forth. So I totally agree with you. And so the answer then is my second challenge. My second challenge is these companies, the big ones, they come to town, they attend various career exposition, speed dating arrangements and what have you, and they hire graduates of UH and other schools. And next thing you know is they're moving that graduate from their branch here in Hawaii to somewhere on the mainland. And so instead of having the benefit for our economy, we train the individual, put them through school or her, and then we wind up losing them to another branch of that same company on the mainland. Your thoughts? I'm sure that still happens, but one of the things that the pandemic really showed is that people could work remotely using technology. So I don't know to what degree, and you hear now people saying, well, we want our employees back in the office, but I know of many instances where people worked for a mainland company from Hawaii, but they were working remotely. And I think that's still the case. You know, I think it makes it more challenging for our local companies, because now when they're trying to hire people or try to keep people, they're not just competing with other local companies, they are oftentimes competing with mainland companies who are telling people, you know, live in Hawaii, but work for us remotely, maybe work West Coast time, I think they have to make some time adjustments, but otherwise, enjoy your life in Hawaii, and we'll pay you commensurate wages as what we're paying our mainland employees. So I think that that's probably more of the challenge that we'll be seeing. Although I have heard still, I know of somebody who was with a company for 20 years, you know, good career, moved to the mainland because he was offered, I think like 25% more, okay? Yeah, well, you know, what comes to my mind when you say that is the Akamai student and young employee of a tech company maybe gets his job through, you know, the tech days program, when they try to move him, he can say no, he can just say no, and he can look around for a job here, and I don't know the exact state of the law, but the covenant not to compete problem I think has been largely resolved here in Hawaii, and it's being resolved on the mainland too, there's some national movement to do away with confidence not to compete. So the tech company that tries to move him doesn't have that much leverage. If he's willing to take a Hawaii salary and move a fancy salary at Silicon Valley, he can just say no, and I think there's a lot of people graduate UH and otherwise who actually would do that because they're committed to paying it forward, they're committed to participating in the community and in the industry, your thoughts? Yeah, no, I totally agree with you. There are, there is, there's a group of young people in Hawaii who I think really want to try to help this next generation, you know, to stay and live in Hawaii, but yet, you know, do well financially, you know, have a decent wage, but still stay in Hawaii, and the other thing I think is important to mention is, you know, our local companies are doing some interesting work in technology, you know, and that's part of what we're trying to do with these tech days of spring or fall is trying to inform students and not just our university students, but also the younger students in K-12 of some of the interesting things being done in the state by, you know, our local companies. I, there's another program that I'm involved with called LeapStart and I had an employer tell me, you know, it's a travesty that these students don't know what we're doing in technology in Hawaii and it's a travesty that we don't necessarily understand how good the students here in Hawaii are. Let's talk about the students for a minute. What kind of offerings can you provide to recruiters who come around and try to recruit students from UH? And it comes to mind, the computer science department, also all the sciences, I suppose, the engineering department for sure, because they've been involved in this kind of speed-dating programs for a long time, I think. I think they still do that. Yeah, they do. They have a really good effective program. And then, of course, there's the Scheidler College of Business, which talks about entrepreneurs. I mean, if you wanted to make some money, you want to get into a fast-moving, you know, sector, like tech, that would be a good thing to study and it would be a good student to propose to a recruiter. But where are they coming from in the university? Yeah, I mean, from UH Mandela, you're right. It's ICS program. It's the engineering program. And then also Scheidler has an MIS Management Information Systems Program, which is computers, but more with a business bent to it. Those would be the three main areas. But to your point, there's also marketing students, for example, in Scheidler, that could double major marketing and MIS. Because marketing now, there's a lot of data being used, a lot of data analytics that drive marketing programs. A lot of the marketing is happening online now. So if you had a knowledge of computers and marketing, that's a pretty good skill. And we're seeing that I participate in some professional interaction nights and I went to the marketing pin night. And there are quite a few double majors, marketing and MIS. But we also have all of our community colleges that have IT programs in different areas. We have UH West O'ahu, that has a really good cybersecurity and assurance program in the security privacy area. So all of our campuses have different programs geared towards information technology, tech, cybersecurity. What about filmmaking? Filmmaking the Academy of Creative Media, I think out at UH West O'ahu, that's another area. And we actually have students in that LeapStart program I mentioned, that came from that program and we have some placed right now doing some internships. Well, in the beginning to get the idea, you know that the Tech Days program is overarching. It's the umbrella. And you're accepting enough, loose enough to bring all of these other possibilities under that umbrella. So that I don't have to go traipsing around from one career program to another. I can just take a look at Tech Days and find all kinds of possibilities for me there. Is that your direction?  So as a students have an awareness of what's out there and without having, like you said, to go to some very specific programs. The other one that I want to mention is intelligence. Our first fair coming up this Friday is careers in tech and intelligence. So in the intelligence field, it includes a social sciences, it includes language.  Yeah, I know one fellow who was interested in tech at UH and he always, from the time he was in swaddling clothes, he wanted to be in the CIA. And he studied what he thought was appropriate for that and he got into the CIA and he works for the CIA today. I'm not going to tell you his name if you don't mind. But, you know, there's some very exciting jobs in intelligence and for that matter, you know, state department diplomacy jobs and law enforcement at the federal level and also at the state level. So there's some pretty sexy jobs out there that require this kind of mindset. So, and what kind of mindset is it though, actually, Alan? You know, what should I be thinking about? What should I be studying? How should I direct my brain cells if I want to have an effective time and get an effective job at tech day? Yeah, you know, I'm glad you brought up the mindset, you know, because, you know, as we've been talking about technology is changing and morphing so rapidly, you know, what the specific technologies people are learning today in school will probably be different five years from now. But it's developing that mindset. You know, I think another term is like computational thinking, you know, where you look at a problem and you can break a big problem down into the component parts and then figure out, you know, how to solve the component parts and how things work, you know, in terms of a flow, say, of information, you know, that's the mindset you need and it's not so much technology, but it's a way of looking at a problem and how do you break down that problem into parts and solve it? You know, critical thinking is, you know, what, you know, what I know I'm personally trying to promote, you know, and that's something you can start teaching in K to 12 and again, it's not technology specific, but by doing, for example, like programming, we're doing something in technology.  So it helps develop that thinking. Now, isn't that true? I think you may be referring to Stanford's design thinking where he comes to you and says, I want to do this and you say to your client, no, you don't want to do this, you want to do that and you help him, you know, actually establish the mission. But speaking of missions, where does the military fit in all of this? I recall at one point the military was sending recruiters from the East Coast, some of the big bases on the East Coast of Hawaii, because they really needed to have people who worked for all the military units and facilities out here and they couldn't find them. So they sent the recruiters out from there to here in order to recruit them. What role does the military play in the program? You know, I think the military is a large employer.  And, you know, especially with the increased focus on the whole Indo-Pacific region, you know, there's not, and not just the military, but the contractors support the military, you know, are in Hawaii. And yeah, it's no secret that they're in Hawaii and they're looking for people with the right backgrounds. So I, we have, there's a group that's part of Tech Days of Spring. So one, the Hawaii Defense Alliance is one of the overall co-sponsors and with Hawaii Defense Alliance, there's a group called 3PI, a Pacific Intelligence Innovation Initiative. So they're, you know, part of this whole effort. I'd like to talk about the, one other aspect of this intersection that is business and I guess military is another leg in the stool and technology of various kinds and orientations in the university. You know, one of the things politically that has surfaced over the last couple of years, and for that matter, during the Trump administration, that we have an electorate that's not prepared. We have an electorate that doesn't understand the Constitution, doesn't understand the duties of the citizen to, you know, to appreciate, to analyze, to avoid disinformation and political misinformation. And, you know, I'm a little concerned that if you go through a pure technology science track at UH or elsewhere, maybe you're not skilled in your civic responsibilities. Where does that fit here? Because we want a generation that will do critical thinking, but not only in science, in social science. Where does that fit? You know, I think if you look at a four year, so let's say you go for a four year degree at the university or, you know, at any four year program, you are going to get, you know, because it's not just going to focus on the science aspects, right? You take other subjects as a core, you know? So I think that helps provide some of that, but it gets back again to the critical thinking. They need to apply that not just to their job, but to everything, right?  I had an employer tell me that they liked the four year program. So, you know, we're having discussions of, is it okay to just hire somebody or can somebody right out of high school get a certificate and get a job in tech?  One, it shows us that they have the wherewithal to complete the program, right? But then secondly, because they have a more well-rounded education and their thinking ability is developed more than someone who didn't go through those four years. And that's why they said, you know, when we look at hiring people, and this was about two years ago now, so they may have changed, but they said, when we look at hiring people, you know, we tend to look at the four year degree individuals. Sure, I mean, if I were at the recruiting end of that, that is the tech days process. And I looked at a resume, I looked at some writing samples, I looked at, you know, an interview. And I would make sure, just just me then, I would make sure that we included some evaluation of whether this individual was a well-rounded, educated person. And I think one of the problems is, you know, right now politics is so complex. But I would say to this person, tell me what you think about the future of the country. Tell me what you think about democracy. Tell me what you think about how the government works. Now, if he said, I'm sorry, I don't know that. I haven't studied that. I can't speak to that. I'm very shy. Then I would be a little concerned that this is not the person I'm seeking. Yeah, no, I would agree. I mean, that would be a good challenge question. One of the things that employers have told us is that they're not necessarily looking for the best technologies in an area, but they're looking for people who can't think, who can communicate well, who can work with other people.  So they're looking for more of those types of skills. I don't know what you call it, 21st century skills, professional skills, but, you know, so that's what employers are looking for. They're looking for people, I think, who can't think and who can communicate well. So... Yeah, and you talk about thinking and collaborating and being part of a team. Yes. You know, we know, don't we, that the development of sophisticated technology, whether you're dedicated to that or whether it's for your company, which has a larger purpose, you can be working with teams. Yes. Every technology company now, and some technology companies, those teams are global. You may talk to different continents at different times of the day in order to have the benefit of global thinking. So that would also be part of my interview. Wouldn't it be part of yours? Yes, yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, when I talk to people, I don't talk so much about the technology, but more about life skills and how they would approach things. You know, I think that's important, how they would approach something, a problem, if you're presented with that. So how does the market balance on this, Alan? Are there more applicants than we would like to see or that can be hired or less applicants? Are there more recruiting companies than we would like to see or less? How do you balance it? So everybody feels they're getting some real benefit out of this, you know, dating process, if you will. Yeah, you know, I think there's some, so what we're doing is we're working with an entry-level person, right? And I think in most organizations, that entry-level person will go into certain areas. And there's always exceptions, you know, where they might jump into not an entry level, but, you know, a higher-level position. But, you know, so when we look at the need overall, you know, there is a need for more tech people in general. I mean, everyone is saying that it's been published. You know, but I think when you look at the kinds of people, it may be that you have some entry-level, but we have to remember that companies need that mid-level manager or whatever to mentor the entry-level. If they don't have that mid-level, then, you know, it's going to be hard for them to bring in more entry-level because they have nobody to work with them.   Yeah, it's hard because you've got to work both ends. You've got to lift all boats, so to speak. I'm reminded of a program that we did in the Hawaii Venture Capital Association back in the, in the odd years, involving one fellow who had been in the military and then he went to work for a hospitality company here in Hawaii.  It's that hospitality is our strongest suit. And, you know, we have more experience. We have more boots on the ground with hospitality, running hotels and so forth than anything else. And of course, that's data. That's data processing. That's marketing data processing. That's also operational data processing. There's, you know, it's any problem you could think of could be better handled with data processing. I always say that. So what he said, and it sticks in my brain, was here we are sitting, you know, right next to Waikiki in the lap of the hospitality industry. We have to talk to those people and get them to understand that we can give them, you know, better technology, better programming, better results than anyone anywhere else because we live in this hospitality world. Are we doing that? What do we have to do to make the connection with hospitality? That's okay. So that's, I'm not familiar with the industry. So hard for me to say, but I do know that all of the hospitality companies, hotels have IT departments and they do things computerized. Can they be doing more? I'm not sure. I mean, I'm gonna guess, yeah, they can. But on the other end, taking people from hospitality and having them work in technology, when you come, it's that experience you have dealing with people, communicating with people, problem-solving with their guests, our skills that can be leveraged in the technology industry. So I know from that side, I've talked to companies and they said, yeah, we're interested in people from the hospitality industry because they have that skill set already and we don't have to teach it. And oftentimes that's something that's really hard to teach, you know, like, yeah. So, but I'm okay. Yeah. You know, one thing it strikes me is that we can talk to the hospitality and we can get closer to them and maybe even do something at the legislature to incentivize the connection. And I think it's probably also worth mentioning that, you know, my experience in the military was that if you were an aviator, you were special and you would have a chance of being an admiral, a better chance, okay? A ship driver was, you know, nearby, but not quite as, as perfect, as likely as an aviator, okay? The other thing is in these big companies, and I'm thinking of big companies, national companies that have their offices here in Hawaii. If you were a pencil pusher, if you were an accountant, if you knew how to make a spreadsheet, you had a better chance of becoming a senior officer or CEO, I could name names, we would all know. So I'm thinking in the future, as we evolve in the job market and in the way these corporations work, it seems to me that in a company which is heavily involved in data processing, the guy who understands the programming, who understands the connectivity between the various parts of the company through computers, through telecommunications and computers and the like, that person, if not now, then soon will have a better chance at becoming a senior officer. Not necessarily to do the scutwork of programming but to do the critical thinking at the senior level or CEO level, your thoughts? I would agree, I might be biased because of my background, but I agree that when you're, especially if you're like a director, a chief information officer in an organization, you have a whole view of the company because you need to understand the whole company and how it works for you to automate and computerize and put in systems in the company and to improve how the company can work with systems. And that gives you a really good broad view of the organization that could be leveraged to move up to like a CEO position. And David Lassner, I mean, David was the CIO of the UH system. Good example. Good example. So here we are and we wanna make this umbrella as wide and broad and effective as possible. It's a great place to be at the university and the university, a perfect venue for all of that, bring everyone in from both sides of the equation. And the question I put to you is, what can we, the community, including the government, do to help you make that umbrella bigger, more effective and make good careers for those graduates and build a, what do you wanna call it? Not, I'll change my way of putting this, not a tech industry, but a tech awareness, a tech element in our economy. We have to do that because our economy is better with more tech. I remember a bumper sticker back in the 90s which said, have you hugged your programmer today? Yeah. And I'm not advancing that idea, that's old news, but I'm wondering if you have any thoughts about what the community can do to help you in this project, in this day's project. Yeah, I would say engage with educators. And when I say educators, not just faculty at the university or universities, but also with your K-12 DOE educators, computer science, CTE educators, because the educators need to understand what technology is out there and how it's being used for them to be able to communicate to the students. And all of this is awareness, right? I mean, building awareness of the students, but to do that, if you communicate with the educators, it can help communicate that down. And then, I think for businesses to be open to doing internships, one of the things that we're, one of the feedback in one of the studies was that oftentimes the students who recently graduate have the technical knowledge, but they don't necessarily know how to apply that to solve problems in an organization. And the way you get that is by experience. So if more companies are open to doing internships, having students come in and working with them so they learn something, I think it will help them to eventually be good employees for companies in Hawaii. Well, Alan, we're here to help. And if you wanna present any of the people involved in these programs on any side of that coin, please let us know. Because I think part of this is to raise public awareness in general, that's what we do. And we care a lot about raising it in terms of technology. Alan Ito, University of Hawaii, organizing Tech Days of Spring at UH. Thank you so much for coming on and for helping us understand what is happening and what could happen. Thank you, Jay. And everyone, please attend the Tech Days of Spring events. Thank you. Thank you, Alan. Aloha. Bye.


Hey there guys, do you want to be a vlogger? Well, to be honest with you guys I really wanted to be a vlogger when I was young But I realized that my life is not as exciting as I wanted to be because I just play video games every day And then maybe the ending on the side but on this episode we will be talking on how you can become a vlogger But before we do guys, you know what to do like subscribe and go that Bell Hey there guys My name is Nolan welcome to freedom central the home of all freedom content on today's episode We will be talking about how you can become a vlogger and other tips on how you can become a better vlogger I know you guys are excited because I am as well. So without further ado guys freedom quick tips So what is vlogging guys well to put it simple vlogging is a style in common creation where you film yourself in your daily life It's one of those styles that lets you take your fans with you in everything that you do like popular vloggers like Casey Neistat Jeffrey star Markiplier and others they have a huge following and a steady fan base They give their viewers a chance to be with them in everyday lives which in turn we feel like we are connected to them So now that you know what vlogging is like, let's not get ahead of ourselves and start recording our everyday lives Let's discuss more about vlogging and its benefits number one benefit is vloggers gain loyal audiences and build a loyal community This is true to all vloggers It's easy to gain a community when you vlog because it's like every day you converse with them and with that you gain Trust from your audiences and hey every time you put on a video It feels like you're having a conversation with your fans number two is vloggers connect to people from around the world Well, you know it's a given you reach a higher spectrum of people when you put out your videos out there Number three is vlogging is not hard to produce. Okay, so vlogging is one of the easiest content to produce You can even capture yourself through your phone You will need to have at least your face and your audiences must hear your voice Usually vloggers talk about anything in their lives with that being said now that you know that piece of information You might be wondering what are the things that I can talk about in my vlogs? Well, we got you covered number one topics about your personal life Usually this is the conventional content on any vlogging channel. You talk about your everyday life You record what you see to bring your audiences with you wherever you go and whatever you do People love this kind of content as it lets them get a sneak peek into someone else's life Number two is topics about things in general So general topics are topics that are not personal in nature These topics are more like product reviews advice travel videos tutorials and anything that their audiences can be interested in Number three and my personal favorite is telling a story telling a story to your audience is actually a good idea You can talk about a hilarious joke you heard from your friends or maybe an embarrassing situation Where it's kind of funny or silly or if you're brave or brazen enough You can tell a story about your terrifying ghost encounters now that we have covered that Let's talk about on how you can appear as a vlogger in front of a camera Number one is deliver the point all content creators have ideas on their videos If you have an idea for a video stick to it be concise as it will help your audiences Appreciate you more for example your thumbnail says something about cars then the video is all about plants You should never mislead your audience because it will look bad on you Number two is pick a spot that is comfortable for you to shoot or record It will also add a little bit of personality to your videos It's interesting to your audiences to see where you picked your locations actually number three is fix yourself You need to always be presentable in front of a camera Yep, always make sure that your face or shirt doesn't have anything on it People can be savage when they see something peculiar with your person Number four is light up your set frame that camera and also get closer to the mic These are the basic stuff that you need to always set up make sure that there is enough light in your videos Make sure also to frame properly the video that it sees you clearly and your voice can be heard properly You wouldn't want to watch a video like this Number five is get comfortable remember the camera shyness video Yes, you can go back to that to get comfortable in front of the camera Try imagining you are in a play where people are looking at you wait that made it worse Imagine you are making a speech to soldiers where the final battle is underway and always left my spirits actually Number six is upload and get discovered don't let your awesomeness just collect dust in your virtual drivers Uploaded on the internet so that people can consume them until the end of time let yourselves be immortalized by Uploading it on YouTube you go get that fame that you deserve and that's the episode freedom What was the most relevant topic to you? Let us know down below Also, if you have tips on how to become a better vlogger Please leave them down below on the comments section if you have a friend who wants to be a vlogger But don't know where to start you can share this video to them so that you can help them out before you leave guys Please smash that like button subscribe and go on that bell My name is Noel guys bringing you tips on how to grow your channel always remember freedom quick tips I'll be seeing you guys on the next episode. Goodbye You


If no one knows you, no one will buy from you, so make it your number one priority every single day to get in contact with parents, get in front of parents and promote what you're doing. Promote, promote, promote.