Toy Story Land, but other things to Paula and Dean on your mission merchandise. Well, should I say new headwear? How about these cocoa inspired ears? Very fancy very nice 2499 also some new hats. Nah, just kidding. That's mine So merchandise wise that was one of the main things we wanted to come here and spot out but Refurbishment and construction wise there is definitely something happening happening at the Chinese theater And there it is the Chinese theater Old home of the great movie ride and it closed about exactly one year ago today and today They shut down the front area yep Mickey and Minnie's runaway railroad is coming along We're gonna be Sean from Negro Orlando's with us And that's what we're talking about when we say Mickey and Minnie's runaway railway Coming soon. So stay tuned Well, we're not only at Hollywood Studios just to check up on nifty new things We're actually here because we wanted to meet up with our friend Travis who came into town So we're gonna spend a little time with him explore the park and see what nifty new stuff that we can come about and find For now, we're gonna go into baseline because I hear they have some new Food on the menu not just beer, but food Like in baseline they added a coffee rubbed rib-eye steak with puff. No puff with olive salad Before they only had like the pretzel and the california cheese, but that's new look at that And like I said, we're with Sean. Look, did you see the new beers that they had in there? No, I seen the new steak though. Check this out. Wait a second. Did I miss something? Look it. There was a cherry beer, but they took it away Here is the cardboard though Sean wasn't playing he knew about the cherry beer Wow We'll have to come back unless it works and we found our friend Travis And his dad Papa And I think we're gonna go ride Star Tours look at Travis's hat look at that. We look like the three amigos I Feel like it's been a hot minute since we rode Star Tours actually I still think they need to add that as part of the queue up there And you get to walk around in the upper forts of the E walks. How cool would that be? This is a new kind of view for us here for Star Tours.  I am very charming to him. I love him James. I love you James. She loves you How's our friends doing in the back row there row three That's the row three It was the rebel spy and we found out that the cast member that actually lets you in to the ride is the one who Chooses the rebel spy so Veronica buttered umba a little bit and he chose her Well, we're gonna jump from Star Tours to the Hollywood Tower of Terror because we have a fast pass and Because it's a great ride. I think those two reasons basically say it all But look at these new Nemo and Dory hats. I don't think they got little fins. Oh Man, that's so awesome And look at that Mickey hats now. They just wanted to be on the video You guys are awesome. Thank you guys Bye, it's the new parade at Hollywood Studios Fantastic the new Hollywood Studios You know since Toy Story Land opened up. I really thought I wouldn't see Hollywood Tower of Terror at this long of a wait for a while because I figured everyone would be at Toy Story Land But look at how long the wait for standby is 95 minute wait Wow So we are in the gift shop of the Tower of Terror We didn't get to ride it because you know how I said the standby was 95 minute wait And then we were informed that the fast pass was 60 minute wait So we passed so if you can't ride the Tower of Terror, might as well check out the gift shop because they have new photos Here it is the new morphing photos. Let's see if we can catch it in action What look at that? Oh? Oh, wow, this is actually fun to do with the camera 1999 Well, no Tower of Terror might as well ride Rock and Roller coaster. That's like the next best thing Only this time I hope Steven Tyler like gives us like $10 a set of a backstage pass. Oh, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know what do you guys think you want the money Why are they playing Queen at Aerosmith's Rock and Roller Coaster? But I do love this song We'll take the money Yeah, we want the money Money Whenever we ride roller coasters, I don't know what's better facing out so you can see the ride We're facing in so you can see our faces ride the ride I remember specifically saying when we were at the character warehouse that they had Aerosmith Rock and Roller Coaster merchandise that means new Rock and Roller merchandise to be out and guess what it doesn't say Aerosmith anywhere on any of it Yep, even the women's stuff. Nothing. No word of Aerosmith Rock and Roller Coaster. What a fun time I am scared that they're gonna take Aerosmith away And I'm scared because I love the Aerosmith version of the Rock and Roller Coaster But you know Disney changes Rides change sometimes for the better sometimes for the worse So I guess you can only know until you see what it is once it's done Now we're gonna head over to Toy Story Land because something new is over there and it's not new Toy Story Land It's something in Star Wars land that you can see from Toy Story Land So let's go take a peek And there is a sea of bodies ahead lots of ducking and weaving coming up and There it is our first look at a Star Wars land aircraft I'm out good with the music, but there it is another parade Let's play It was hot sneaky dogs behind us. Yep. Thanks to Travis Sean to hang it out with us make sure you check out both of the channels and put them in the description And pop up over here And there's Paul and love the life you live Like a calendar and it just says who knows Veronica there's a bee on your shoulder It's gone instead I killed it Dead down dead now


Okay. That's it for presentations. Next up is council initiated discussion. You know it. You love it. You've done it before. You know this is where we sort of turn the microphones over to you. And we ask you for suggestions or recommendations of reports that you might want to hear either from the staff or invited speakers. Problems that you're hearing about in the community that you think should be brought to NHGRI's attention or basically whatever's on your mind. Now I've sat through enough of these to know that very often you're throwing questions at Eric and he's obviously engaged and integrated at a very high level at NIH. I'm not privy to a lot of those conversations and meetings. So I may call on some of the division directors if I think they know something about your particular question. So we'll do the best we can without Eric. I have to start assigning homework assignments to you guys. Wendy. It just seems that today's presentations have been great in terms of seeing some of the plans for being able to put data in the data commons or in the LC commons things like that. I'm just wondering what the plans are then for being able to support the research to do that those analyses. In other words it's going to be a real opportunity I think but that needs to be partnered with being able to have resources to do the analyses and that's sometimes underfunded. Very valid point. What are you asking NHGRI to do? Brainstorm on that and come back to you with a report. Yeah just yeah you know what are the plans and are there opportunities then to sort of tie in with this to make sure those opportunities aren't lost and that we don't lose any time. Okay. I guess another area that I'm naturally thinking about is just you know how do you because I actually think the presentations were super and I really like to listen to the overview of the presentation gives you a much better perspective on what we're doing on the grants. But you know long term where are some of these programs going right? How are they actually integrated into society at large? Do they you know are we do we think that many of them will be picked up and be self-sustaining through the economy and through you know the medical community or do we anticipate a number of them that will be going on for the next 30 years and and the only reason I say that is is just you know it's a lot of times we talk about the priorities and there's a lot of promise on all these things. The question is can they actually be incorporated and I'm not sure what I'm asking yet other than as a theme I'd be very interested to hear more about what what people are thinking. So again just so you know every time it's every time an RFA comes up for renewal it does come back to the council and we have a discussion with you and you vote on a concept to renew it. You have I don't want to say a control over it but at least the question is posed. Yeah I know I mean you guys have thought a lot about this for a lot of years and it'd be really interesting you know for the field in general to get a good perspective on this just because it puts everybody on common footing so you know with every new council member you don't have to sort of rediscuss this it just be useful. Yeah so with the strategic planning coming up and the timing with the I know the all of us program has this RFA out for genome centers maybe in September council it might be useful to get an update from them because I think the timing of the two initiatives is important. Yeah from the all of us program and what their plans are for the genome sequencing. Yeah along those lines I would like to hear more about what the plans are for the genome sequencing centers and I guess that's coming up maybe in September or. There'll be a discussion close session about that we'll see if that satisfies. Will there be like kind of regular formal update I mean you were asking about all of us getting an update will there also be regular updates to council on the strategic planning process or other than what's in Eric's presentation will there be like a dedicated discussion or something. So that same question was posed at the February council meeting and I think the answer to it is as needed and when relevant there hasn't been that much that's happened in the last three months so you're not getting a specific report but we are gonna pretty quickly now get into the period of frequent workshops and so you're gonna see the pace pick up. So would I mean would September be a good time for like a summary or too early still. I don't have the timeline in my mind. There's an update. I see Carolyn getting up to rescue me so. Internally about so we have I think for people who heard Eric's presentation in February this is open session or people who watched the strategic planning town hall that's also available online we have internally a set of focus groups five focus groups and we're moving along we're gonna have our first two town halls in addition to the virtual town hall and we've discussed sort of internally discussing in August a state of where we are after those initial town halls and other activities so I think September would actually be a very good time for us to come and give you you all an update as well. Yeah here's a request from left field but I've been kind of late to the whole notion of biohacking and this seems to me to be a significant threat really a threat in a couple ways threat to public health for the creation of organisms in entirely unregulated environments and really a potential threat to serious genetic research and science if people do get hurt and there's notions about how this technology becomes a threat rather than an opportunity you know maybe this will turn out to be complete quackery and a fad but I'm thinking that the power of these technologies in the relative ease and inexpensive nature of them really do pose a threat to society that you know I wonder where the genome institute has a role in taking seriously where society ought to be going with thinking about this sort of misuse of these technical tools so you know if others are interested would there be an opportunity to hear what the regulatory gaps are in our system at this point that folks are taking advantage of to explore you know genome technologies in their basements and bedrooms so I would be interested in getting some updates on how the new t 32s in genomic medicine so we have t 32s now in genomic science and genomic medicine and sort of hearing back on how those are going I think would be really useful because those especially the one in genomic medicine was a relatively new concept and just getting an overview I think would be really helpful so I don't know can somebody tell us when the first genomic medicine t 32 was awarded I don't think it's been it's been two years okay you may have to or I can just repeat for you sure so you're saying there's seven oh okay yeah so there's seven applications at seven programs and then okay so maybe some kind of report with summary statistics or success with recruitment it's an incredibly unique program and I just I think just hearing about what the successes and what the challenges and successes and solutions yeah okay all right I also think to Jeff's point the whole you know this to me this issue about biohacking it goes to to literacy of the public in genomic science and you know genomes and society and I know there's a lot of activity and HGI around that so maybe addressing that specifically maybe is too narrow but the broader the broader area of how to raise literacy in general without engineering bugs that will take over the world is I think it's an important topic and are there research opportunities there I mean we're not a law enforcement or regulatory agency we sponsor research so is it is there a need to study further yeah great question I don't I don't claim to know enough about it I think it's so rapidly moving but I've just seen I've just seen seen things emerge in the popular press really just in a relatively short period of time about this and I'm learning that there's all conventions of people who were engaged in these activities and so a landscape sort of research project might well be worthwhile to sort of see who's out there who's doing what what's the nature of the claims being made etc yeah I don't know exactly what the request is but I work with a lot of physicians that are very good clinical evaluation of patients and when we hear things like the undiagnosed disease program the intramural program the clinical center here I think it's fantastic but I also think it's biased that we're hearing the one side of it and and so what I'm I'm not sure who you would invite to talk about this but I'm wondering if having other Institute directors come that might have different perspectives either ones that work closely with NHGRI or ones that have sort of shied away to see what their perspectives are so when you say biased you mean too much emphasis on the molecular genetic lesion not enough on the phenotyping diagnostic yes as if the the genetic testing was the whole answer it wasn't and there's cases out there that are advertised as such very prominently when in reality the clinical the geneticists looked at the patient knew what they had and we don't hear about that we hear about oh they did a whole exome or and found the disease causing very from my perspective this is a long enough action item list between now and September Council so I think I'll call this to a close okay so to finish up just a few more administrative things we have two reports from our liaison societies the National Society of Genetic Counselors quarterly update in the American Society of Human Genetics Report to Council these are events that have been sponsored by these societies and if you're interested in those the activities of the societies I recommend these reports to you I'm now going to read the conflict of interest charge and this applies to all of the applications that will be reviewed in the closed session so you must leave the meeting room when applications submitted by your own organization are being discussed individually discussed in the case of state higher education or other systems with multiple campuses that are geographically separated own organization is intended to mean the entire system except where a determination has been made that the components are separate organizations for the purpose of determining conflict of interest you should avoid situations that give rise to charges of conflict of interest whether real or apparent for example you should not participate in the deliberations and actions on any application from or involving your spouse child a recent student recent teacher professional collaborator with whom you've worked closely close personal friend or a scientist whom you've had longstanding scientific or personal differences NHGRI staff will determine the appropriate action based on recency frequency and strength of such associations or interest either positive or negative and will instruct you accordingly in council actions in which you vote on a block of applications without discussing any individual one the so-called on block action your vote will not apply to any application from any institution fulfilling the criteria noted above now in your folders there should be an actual hard copy document please sign that and they'll be collected at the break between the open and the closed session so the last order of business is I want to take a moment to acknowledge our program analysts at NHGRI as the council's where well well aware there are several very large consortium like activities research activities that NHGRI sponsor and it's an awful lot of work to manage those consortia generally weekly phone calls lots of reports lots of tracking of production activities lots of action item lists and follow-ups that come from that and I don't think that our program directors want to contemplate a life or at least a working situation without the support of their program analysts now these analysts come to us for a two-year tour of duty there are all college graduates that want a different experience or some time off before going off to their next educational experience so it's time to graduate a class of them and I want to acknowledge them as a group I will tell you that they're off to MD PhD programs to graduate school to medical school to genetic counseling programs and even an opportunity in the intramural research program so they've worked very hard for two years they're a very dedicated bunch and they're accomplished by virtue of where they're going next in life so when I call your name would you please stand Aaron Curry Sarah Gould I'll let's save it for the end please Sarah Gould Ellen Howerton Jeff Kim no stay up you guys stay up Aaron get up melky Kasabi Sam Moore Laura scow and Margaret Genoza who left us last week so congratulations class of 2018 and for the council in September I'll be introducing you to the new class of recruits that come in generally over the summertime okay let's take 15 minutes to break this oh that's the official end of the open session we're gonna take a 15 minute break to take down the cameras we'll come back to review a few applications in closed session thank


Let's call the meeting to order at 6.01. Are there any additions or changes to the agenda? Hearing none. Is there any public comment? Okay. I'm gonna make one announcement, two announcements. One is that the public hearing for our budget for this CV5 or 2024 budget will begin at 6.10. So wherever we are in our process here, I'll stop at 6.10 to officially open that public hearing for comment. And we'll see how long that stays open, but it'll be open for at least the 10 minutes that I have described here. That's one. The other thing I would like to do, and I did this at the Executive Committee meeting as well, and it's my fault for not putting it on the agenda. I just wanna make a safety announcement, please. And the safety announcement refers to our field workers. And I ask that our board members, if you see folks working in the field to just allow them to continue their work and not to engage with them in any particular way, if folks wanna go out and see field work, that can be arranged. Very welcome to do that. And that's something that we can do. I'm relatively short notice. So that would, and that would be a wonderful thing. But I do ask, and I've been asked by our construction management crew to please ask that we leave the workers in the field alone, let them do the work. And it's really for matters of safety primarily, but also they don't necessarily have information that you may be asking for or looking for. And it kind of puts them on the spot to answer questions that they're not necessarily geared up to answer or would expect to even have the answers. So I just wanna make this as a safety announcement. I apologize for not putting it on the agenda, but it's something that's important and it was brought to our attention last week by our construction management folks, our field management folks. Any comment on that before we move forward? Thank you. I appreciate you hearing me out on that. Let's jump to the prior meeting minutes. And like I said, we'll come back to opening the public hearing. Jeremy, can you take that aspect please? Motion to approve the minutes for the meeting of October 10th, 2023 with my corrections by Alan Gilbert. Second. Seconded by Siobhan. And I don't even need to edit the yesterday the last motion except the date. Any discussion on this issue? Hearing none. Are there any opposed to the motion? Any abstentions? Again, hearing none, the motion passes. Thank you, Jeremy for moving that forward. Laurie Beth had mentioned that she might be late. So Laurie Beth, are you here? I don't see your name on the list. Okay, so Laura, I don't think Laurie Beth is with us yet. So we can postpone the treasurer's report as well. Moving right along. Janiel, would you be so kind please as to bring us through our construction update and all the way down through the marketing presentation and update please? Yes, absolutely. I'm gonna call on Lucas and Olivia, we're appropriate. To start with the construction update and outlook, we have numbers as of today. We have 159 miles of fiber and strand built. And we have 1,223 service points. 1,223 service points. Last but not least. Oh, I'm already about to go into operations instead of doing that. Do you wanna add anything to construction update Lucas? I don't know if it falls into construction or operations but we do have the conduit and power ready for the Romney School OLT site which Washington Electric has said would be end of this week or beginning of next. So that's good progress there, none too late. And we are still waiting on one Washington Electric make ready issue that is currently holding us up a little bit from getting the light to the cabinet but we are in touch with them about that. And I'm thinking it will be resolved in the near future and shouldn't hold anything up. Yeah, and we're constructing in CL-03 now as well because we did get the green light from Hardwick in some locations. So construction is moving along at a pace of about 2.6 miles per week. We actually added some crews today. It looks like we have a total of seven going on eight crews and Eustace has hired some contractors as well to try to increase the rate of construction even though we're going into the holiday season into the snowy season, construction still seems to be going at the pace it has been going at. So that's great news. Moving on to materials and warehousing. I think what you had mentioned, Lucas kind of falls into materials and warehousing but anticipating that we're gonna renew our warehousing contract that'll be on next month's board agenda. We're just wrapping up some final changes with warehousing. We are winterizing at the warehouse. We're creating safety protocols at the warehouse. We installed a safety light at the warehouse and are working on getting better cell phone coverage in there. Lucas is going to help us do Wi-Fi extenders at the warehouse. Lucas, you wanna add anything to materials and warehousing? No, just we have one relatively small order that we'll be placing ASAP and that will hopefully cover us for, I'd like to see the foreseeable future but you never even know with consumables but it should put us in a good spot to get into CL-03. So that's my main goal of that right now. Lucas, could you please make mention of the unfortunate fire at RK Miles? Yeah, so I believe it was two weeks ago now. RK Miles, which is neighboring Boxtown which has our outside fiber reels and strand and vaults and material like that. I'm sure many of you saw that went majorly up in flames and we were in touch, both Janela and myself with Justin with Shaitline Broadband slash Wild Blue Yonder that night to ensure that we're all had eyes on how that was approaching our material and luckily for us anyway, it did not get near it. We were not affected. RK Miles not so lucky, but it was contained. So we dodged a bullet there and now with a flood and that we've dodged a couple of bullets. So really looking out so far with materials and warehousing and these natural disasters that keep happening around us. I appreciate that Lucas. Janela, allow me to jump in for one second because it is 610 and I would like to open up the CV fiber 2024 budget public hearing. Is there anyone here with us who would like to make a comment on the CV fiber 2024 budget? I don't hear any. We will continue going through our agenda but we'll go back to this because this will stay open really for the duration of the meeting. It would be silly for someone to come later on and have us not take any comments.  Go ahead, sir. Yeah, I just wanted to say that I can keep an eye on the attendance and if people come in who seem to be members of the public and we can ask them if they would like to contribute. I also wanted to say thanks to everyone who worked on this. That's a ton of work and it's very much appreciated. Yeah, thank you, Jeremy. I appreciate you looking out in that way because I just won't be able to multitask in that way. I'm barely doing what I'm doing. So, okay, Janiel, I'm gonna hand that.  Go ahead, Henry, please. I think that comment needs to follow with a special thanks to Ray. Absolutely. Much indebted to Ray's work. Thank you, Henry. Additional comment or I'm gonna hand it back off to Janiel.  To continue, we had stopped at materials and warehousing. So next, I would like to talk about operations update and outlook. We have 33 live customers and eight in the queue to be connected. We're averaging seven new hookups a week in CLO one. That is our only open distribution area at the moment. And I will let Lucas and his sidekick take it from there. Yes, so yeah, and like you just said, Wagefield continues to schedule installs, working through some early pickups, but Wagefield really seems to be on top of everything. So very confident that we won't have those issues, at least going forward. They have a drop trailer at the Calis Town Hall, so they don't have to bring materials back and forth. They're not using our warehouse. So they're on top of all that. They have everything needed so they can just be central, local, and get it done as best as possible. Being the way we opened up the first DA, not being completely done, has caused a few issues, but they're doing their very best work through everything. And I'm assisting along with NRTC, so nothing too major, one or two. But all in all, it's just going really well.  Yeah, I was just wondering, can you tell us how many of which kinds of customers they are? Like how many residential first tier, second tier? Yeah, Olivia, do you have that handy? I know we can see that, but I think you might be the pro in finding those numbers. It's not a huge deal if it's the pain. Not handy. The only reason why I would refer back to Weitzfield on that is because some people have been changing their plans, meaning upgrading, and that usually is most up-to-date information on the Weitzfield, but we can certainly get that for you, Shabon. But do allow me to comment to Shabon's question, and that is that folks have been taking higher tiers more than we had anticipated it. You know, in our projections, we had a mix of such a percentage at our first tier, and then the next tier and the next tier, different diminishing percentages as we moved up in the level of service. And we're finding that people are asking for higher levels of service than we had originally anticipated. Linda, I see that your hand is up, go ahead. Yes, we have 17 customers at the 100 megabytes per second level, seven at 500, five at the residential one gig, and two at the business one gig. Thank you, Linda. Oh, thanks. Juniel, back to you, I think. Sure. So to continue on operations updated outlook, part of this is consistent messaging to be on the same page, our goal is to be on the same page with our operator to be conducting our business in the transparent and trustworthy manner that we build our business on. And part of that is messaging, marketing. So this is a perfect segue into the next portion of our agenda, which is marketing presentation update and outlook with Olivia. If Olivia, if you'd like to add anything to the operations update before going into anything else that you have planned for the marketing update, presentation and outlook, then perhaps you could mention it here. Olivia, give me one second before you start, please. Jeremy, I see your hand is up. Do we have someone here that is interested in making a comment on the budget? No, but, well, perhaps. Lori Beth is here. So... Thank you, thank you, Jeremy. We'll put Lori Beth after the marketing presentation and outlook. Welcome, Lori Beth. Sorry, Olivia, for stomping on you there, but... No, no worries at all. Go ahead, please. Most recently, we were in Middlesex on Sunday. We had a table right in between the Red Head and the local. Sybil helped arrange that for us. She was so kind to volunteer her time as well. It was a really great opportunity because we met with a lot of folks who actually pre-registered and said, we didn't know that you still existed. So that was very nice for us to validate that. But I also went around to all of the businesses nearby and left postcards and town update door hangers. So we have new town update pages on our website and all of the businesses were more than happy to hold our marketing material and distribute that accordingly because residents in Middlesex were very interested in terms of when we would be there.  So it was a really good event on the brand awareness side. In terms of CL01, noteworthy to mention that we are utilizing crowd fibers email functionality. So for all the folks who pre-registered in CL01 and did not sign up for their internet package, we sent out two rounds of follow-up emails and we had a 49% conversion rate in CL01, which is fantastic. Tough to tell. What does that mean conversion rate? I'm sorry, Olivia, what do you mean by that? Meaning out of all of the folks that pre-registered for CL01, we needed to send a follow-up email for them to actually go and select their email package. So we changed people over from just pre-registered folks to actual paying customers. That was a 49% rate, which is fantastic. Whether that will happen in other DAs is tough to tell, but we will be monitoring these metrics moving forward. So once we're ready for CL02, the same tactic will be applied. A couple of other things that are noteworthy to mention, we are utilizing front porch forum in several different ways. So first and foremost, we decided to do a November giveaway. So we have a new survey that is out. It is valid up until November 30th. We are giving away a fire stick, which was donated to us, but we've asked the public to respond to one question and 250 words or less, tell us how high-speed internet will change your life. And to date, we've received over 20 responses, which is really nice. So it adds, again, some coloring character in terms of why our work is really making an impact. And then the other thing that I wanted to mention was that on the messaging front, we've been receiving an influx of website inquiries from porch forum messages, social media posts. We are answering every single one that is coming in, either myself or Lucas. We are tag-teaming on those. So if there is something out there, as you've been doing so, please feel free to forward them. We are very comfortable in terms of the language, in terms of the most up-to-date timelines. And I think that, again, we need to become transparent and accountable. And I think that one of the ways that we will be doing that moving forward is issuing an end-of-year update and sending that out via email and posting that on all of our social media accounts as well. So a lot of things going on behind the scenes. Are there any questions? Thanks for your work. Very welcome. Tom Fisher put something in the chat. Tom Fisher said on the marketing front on our webpage, there's something on the splash page that shows signing up for service instead of sites availability. So it's something just to look into, Olivia, if you can see Tom Fisher's note in the chat. I will look into that and I'll respond accordingly. I'll follow up with you, Tom, via email, if that's all right with you. Olivia, were you planning on walking through the presentation as you did with the executive committee? I do. I would ask that, Janelle, maybe put a little bit of background to the presentation and I'd be happy to take everyone through that. Yeah. So we developed this presentation, mostly Olivia created this presentation with input from others from the team. And the purpose of this was to present it to potential financial companies because we are putting out an RFEI request for expression of interest. We actually already put it out and received some responses to get some private funding for our 2024 construction season in doing so we wanted to tell the CV fiber story. So this presentation is tailored toward those institutions. However, it is very, very tailorable to other audiences and does a wonderful job of showing who we are as an organization. Thanks. So I'd like to walk you through the CV fiber story. We titled it investing in the future of central Vermont and this was dated in October because this was when we initially had sent it out. So I wanted to begin with one word. Usually this is a really difficult exercise in order to find one word that really encapsulates the spirit of an organization. But the word tenacity was used by the deputy director of the VCBB Robert Fish when he was asked at our ribbon cutting ceremony in Calis on why they were excited to partner with the V fiber. And when you look at the definition of tenacity, there are a couple of other synonyms that come up. Determination, strength, courage, spirit and grit. And that only describes us as an organization but also those who we are serving, our partners, our ethics, our brand temple as well. And this is why we decided to start this presentation with this one word. I wanted to introduce you to Evelyn. We heard about Evelyn actually from one of our friendlies. She is a resident of Middlesex. Just to quote here high level in terms of her story. She has a goal of completing her graduate courses and she knew it wouldn't be possible with slow DSL at home. Since the Middlesex town hall offers free Wi-Fi access for guests, she drove to the parking lot in the evenings to complete her courses. High speed internet was such a critical reason why she was able to advance her career. So this is the level of determination, strength, courage, spirit and grit that we're hearing about from central Vermonters. And it also exemplifies the growing need for broadband access across our community anchor institutions, which is a term that the VCBB is actually using actively and focusing on. So providing high speed internet access to public facilities such as schools, libraries, health clinics, health centers and medical providers. So in central Vermont, the least traveled roads have little to no access to high speed internet. High speed broadband connectivity should be a universally accessible, irrespective of location. This is the stance and the point of view that we have as an organization that really irrespective of where you are in central Vermont, you should have access to high speed broadband. So we're part of a statewide initiative where nonprofit municipality with 20 community members were governed by community delegates were constructing 1300 miles of fiber to home network with a $20 million initial grant funding and $65 million estimated total required for completion. Our first priority, the unserved and underserved communities in central Vermont. A couple of data highlights. We actually pulled data together and did an average for the 16 underserved communities in our district. And we really find that this information helps paint a picture in terms of some of the demographics for the households and the businesses that we're looking to reach. So we're meeting a critical need. We're bringing high speed fiber internet to central Vermont. As a locally managed internet service provider and ISP, we're offering flexible packages, 24 seven customer support, symmetrical speeds and one free wifi router. We are governed by guidance. We are more interested in our stakeholders and not our shareholders. Through our executive committee and our governing board, we've had a couple of folks here that have served for over the past five years with a long-term commitment. So the initial funding has primed us really for success. Over the past five years, more than $20 million has been contributed to the development of the CB fiber network. You'll see here on the right, we've included a pie chart for some of the allocations of funds in 2023 for our investments for the year. We've hired a full-time professional team. We have an executive director and operations manager and a community relations manager. And they are working on the day-to-day operations in order to ensure that all communications and needs are being met from a full-time operational staff. In terms of the structure, we have a tailored scalable planning, a full process to address one fiber at a time. So we start with pole inventory with auditing, all the poles, their locations and how they interconnect network design where we're designing how the fiber is routed throughout the network, where redundancies are and doing a make-ready, preparing the poles to install the fiber, the actual installation and construction of the fibers, setting up the hubs, adding routing equipment, all the power and then finally connecting, which is the most exciting time where we're actually connecting the fiber from the poles to homes and businesses. And we wouldn't be where we are today without some of these key partnerships. So you'll see here key partners that we continually meet with on the construction side, operations, engineering and also grant funding. In terms of our offerings, we do have residential and commercial. The majority of our offerings, as you've seen from some of the numbers for CL01 are in fact for residential and we're offering four different packages with varying speeds anywhere from 79 to $199 a month. Now, this slide is really interesting because as Jerry had mentioned before, we've actually had an increased interest in the Lightspeed 501,000 plans. So we're seeing a higher average rate per user than initially expected. Now, these numbers are accurate as of October 22nd. We will be monitoring them moving forward as we move into other DAs, but these are some of the initial data points that we wanted to highlight. So where do we go from here? In 2024, which is phase two of construction, we have a strategic and robust plan to continue construction. This builds upon the work that has already been completed in years prior. So what does that consist of? Woodbury, Cabot, Callis and Marshfield with the construction of 215 miles of fiber providing access to over 2000 premises in those four communities and further building out in Middlesex and Moortown with the construction of 60 miles of fiber providing access to just over 570 premises in those two towns. For phase two, we've already made a couple of substantial investments with make ready, pull licenses, pre-purchased materials, all of the design work and the town installation contributions. A couple of bucket items for 2024 forecast and spend for pre-construction, construction labor, materials, projects and construction management, installations, operations and we've added a contingency budget as well. In 2025, which is actually phase three with an estimated $12 million in B grants matched with a $4 million in construction funding, the completion and construction in phase two will actually help extend the CB fiber backbone to access premises in Plainfield, East Montpelier, Berrytown, Orange and Duxbury with total passings in excess of 2,200 premises. And we have a three-year plan. So within three years, we have annual goals and milestones to reach but at the end of three years, we're looking to complete a total of 700 miles, 6,900 passings and hopefully 3,225 subscribers on board. So how do we get there? How do we get big? We're looking hopefully to help with funding about $7.5 million to help with some of the costs associated with 2024. And then a $4 million is a 25% match for $12 million in B grants for 2025, 2026. Fantastic, Olivia. Thank you. Any comments on Olivia's presentation? Any discussion following that? It's quite comprehensive. Don't hear anyone. I see some hands clapping. Thanks, Henry. I do wanna stop for a moment and ask a question. Is there anybody here from the public who wishes to make a comment on the CB fiber 2024 budget? We still have the public hearing open if there's anyone who would like to make a comment. Jeremy, nobody new has joined us. Okay, thank you. All right, just wanna make sure I check that box. Jeanille, I'll hand it back to you to round out the updates and outlook. Sure, so we heard construction and materials and warehousing operations and marketing as well. I believe this brings us to, or this wraps up those items unless anyone has any questions about any of those items that were presented by Olivia, Lucas, and myself. So I guess that wraps up that section. I was gonna say, I'll just make one more comment, even though perhaps it's something that is taken for granted, it's worth saying that we anticipate continuing construction throughout the winter to the extent that it is viable and safe and reasonable to do so. And we certainly will be continuing installations throughout the winter. So we're anticipating that our installations December through May will catch up to the construction that has been accomplished in 2023. So there's always a lag, it takes a while to do the installs. But we have enough, plenty of construction mileage ahead of us to fill this winter with installations. So we anticipate continuing with construction, especially in CLO three throughout the winter.  Any questions or comments so far? I'm gonna take a step back then in the agenda. I do believe that Lori Beth is here with us, am I correct? Lori Beth, are you here? No. Okay, now I'm back. There you are. I had to get the mouse. I had to get the mouse. I thought you were here. Thank you, Lori Beth. Would you, we moved the treasurer's report in order to accommodate your showing up a little bit later than the time allotted. So please, the floor is yours. Okay, thank you. I appreciate that. I don't know if David went over the preliminary profit and loss and balance sheets that Ray had sent out or not, but Ray did send one out. I do not have the reconciled bank accounts yet so I don't have any permanent one. But the balance sheet showed that we have 6,514,000 change in the various bank accounts together. And then in the construction area, one of the places he highlighted was the administration. We spent $45,072 and construction expenses. We did $581,686 and 10 cents. And then the operations, we spent $17,718 and 59 cents. Their design services and production that came to, design services was 126,386. And the total expenses were $777,460 in change. He highlighted that Ustis had, for the month of October, had 494,672 dollars, we paid them. Graybar Electric, we paid 11,183. KGP Logistics, we spent $69,157. And then Mission Broadband, we spent $4,545. NRTC, we spent $128,596. Selectronics Corporation, we spent $12,566. And Vickery Hill, we spent $1,991. And then there was a non-specified area and that was all various ins and outs with the payroll like it has always been. There was nothing other into that pile this time. And then he also put the expenses by vendor for the summary for the year from January 1st until November 2nd, we had spent $9,676,751.99. Thank you. Woo, go us. Yeah, any comments there? I'll make one comment and that is on the, maybe two comments, but they're both about timing. On one aspect, the, let's say, October's numbers really don't get finalized by our accountant until the middle of November. So we're frequently out of sync with finalized numbers. And that's why Lori Beth had mentioned preliminary because even though the numbers typically don't change very much from one to the other, they're still not final until everything has been, everything has been reconciled. So we're always a few days off, if our meetings were on the 25th of the month on the third Tuesday, let's say, instead of the second Tuesday, we would be able to give reconciled final numbers. But the reason that they're not is purely the circumstance of the calendar. And as I had mentioned in previous meetings, moving a meeting date is like moving heaven and earth. And I don't think we're gonna give that a try unless somebody wants to make a motion and we put it to a vote. But having finding another meeting time, I think we'll just live with preliminaries and backfilling with updated information if there are any substantial changes which they're typically aren't. That's the one comment. My other comment is please note that especially for our construction work, the work happens in advance of the payments. So it's very likely that the work that is being done today, we won't get invoiced for until January. And now we're keeping track of this, of course, because the funds are obligated and that's the key word. So they only get obligated to one place at a time. But just to keep in mind that there is a lag and it's a natural lag. There's nothing that as far as reporting expenditures, we can do about that. One of the things that's been brought up is changing some of the ways that we report information so that we're reporting not only expenditures but we're also reporting obligated funds as well, which is probably more meaningful to have both and not just the expenditures. And that's something that we'll be working on for future presentations and through the finance committee. Any comment there? Jeremy, any new additions to our attendance list? Not that I've noticed. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Lori Beth. I'll move on now to our finance manager. I forget sometimes we've talked about this a lot. Oh, Siobhan, go ahead, I see your hands up. Go ahead, please. It's just a quick procedural question. But I wondered, nevermind, I'm not gonna ask it right now, nevermind. Okay. Sorry. It's just not, it's not. You made us all stop. Yeah, I did, I did, I'm sorry. Okay, not a problem. So on talking about the finance manager, in, and I, if this has been said before to this group, I apologize for repeating myself. I know this has been said to the finance committee. It's been discussed in the executive committee and I'm not sure to what extent we've discussed this here, but in envisioning the professionalism of CV fiber and moving forward with staff as we necessarily must do, we saw that there was a gap in our staffing. And although we do have an accountant that works for us and handles our books and does an excellent job of doing so. And even though we do have a finance committee, which is a committee of volunteers, from a staffing perspective, there really was, there was a hole there. We have our treasurer, which is a volunteer position. What we don't have is a staff position that is managing CV fibers finances, really from all perspectives and has that as a day-to-day job to manage our finances. And by managing finances, that means keeping track of expenditures, keeping track of obligations, keeping track of planning for the future, keeping track of the budget and building a budget, not only monitoring progress through the budget, but assisting in building the budget for 2025. So that is a staff level position that we don't have. And the finance committee has been working on this and the finance committee has come up with a job description for a finance manager that was also recommended then to the executive committee and the executive committee approved that job description, excuse me, and also approved recommending, creating a finance manager position by the governing board, which is where we are tonight. I will also add that there is a line item in the budget, a placeholder for a finance manager even though the position hasn't been approved by the governing board yet. The idea was because of the timing and when the budget needed to be developed that it would be a line item, it would be a line item in the budget. So before we even get to any motion on finance manager position, is there any additional discussion about this? And David Manix, I'll reach out to you if there's anything that you would like to mention on this, similarly, Janiel, if there's anything you'd like to discuss about the finance manager before we move forward with the motion. You're on mute, David. Yeah, Jerry said it well, it's a role that's needed on a sustained basis and it's been done primarily with volunteers, although we do have good resources and accounting like Jerry said, we wanna have that financial playing and analysis role as well and see this role growing as more work comes on to be integrated in with everyone from operations, to revenue cycle, to construction, everything. So excited about this and hope we can move it forward. Excellent, thank you, David. Henry, your hand is up, go ahead, sir. What's the level of effort? Is this a full-time position or what? Well, we did some initial sizing of work. We went through each position today, batch elder associates time, how many hours of effort per month they're doing, what Lori Beth is doing in the treasurer function and what the gap is between what Ray's been doing and what Janiel does and everyone else. And we sized it about a quarter to a third of an FTE or best guess, like I mentioned earlier, we could see that growing over time as more grant requests come in, other types of work come in, more forecasting, multi-year forecasting, but initially we think we could start, this is a full part-time position and that's what we have the job description crafted as. And David, that full-time equivalent, would you consider that something like 15 hours a week thereabouts? 20, yeah, 20, I think Janiel we landed on, I think it was about 20 as what's in the posting, yeah. Yeah, we said 15 to 20, I do think 20 is a bit more realistic and because there's a curve, a learning curve, yeah. Yeah. Henry, does that get to your question, sir? Yep, I thank you. Sure. Okay, I'm prepared to make a motion unless there is someone else that prefers to make a motion. I'll give others the opportunity. Okay, I don't hear anyone else. So let me go through just a short list of whereas. Whereas the finance committee approved the job description for a finance manager, whereas the executive committee approved the job description and whereas the executive committee recommended to the governing board the creation of the position of finance manager, I move that the governing board create the position of finance manager in accordance with the recommendation from the executive committee. Second. Seconded by Jeremy Matt, thank you. Any additional discussion on this? I'm not hearing any additional discussion. Okay, then I suspect that we're ready for a vote. Are there any opposed to the motion? Are there any abstentions? Any abstentions? All right, hearing none, the motion passes. Thank you very much. We are looking forward to rounding out our staffing and I guess one other thing that I couldn't mention about this is that it's, you know, we are open to a firm, you know, a contractor, a consulting firm potentially taking on this role. It doesn't necessarily have to be an individual, especially when it's a part-time position that it may make more sense for a firm to take on this role than it may for an individual. We may also end up sharing resources with other CUDs on this issue as well. This is something that Janiel and Vickuta have been looking into. So thank you very much for that, much appreciated. Let's see, we have run through our agenda but for the human resources discussion. So before we go there, it's 650 and if there is no public comment on the CV Fiber 2024 budget, I would like to close the public hearing now at 650 PM. Is there any comment that hasn't been heard? Is there any anyone out there from the public that wants to make a comment on CV Fiber's 2024 budget? I'm hearing none. Did you see someone popping? I did see someone pop into chat. We now have 21 people but I'm having trouble picking up who looks like others at Josh. Okay. Okay, that's Josh Diamond. He is here for the human resources discussion unless he wants to make a comment on the CV Fiber 2024 budget. I appreciate the opportunity, but I'll sit this one out. All right, excellent. Thank you, sir. So with that, we need a, well, I guess at this point, I am going to recuse and I am going to leave the meeting and leave it in the good hands of Jeremy Matt to walk us through where we need to go next. I am also, let's see. I'm not exactly sure how to end my recording. I will end the recording now and Jeremy, you can pick it up and then close it when it goes into executive session. Sounds good. Okay, excellent. So I will recuse myself now and I will stop the recording. Bear with me one second as I do that. I'll be recusing myself as well. I'm just going to go ahead and leave. I'll talk to you guys later. Okay, the recording is stopped at 6.52 and I am also leaving the meeting at 6.52. All right, let's see. One last one. I have a seven o'clock commitment. So this is probably a good time for me to drop as well. So thank you all, bye. Okay, let's see. I do not unfortunately know where the recording button is. Oh, there we go, record. And I am not actually able to record. Is there anyone on here who is apparently signed, apparently I'm not signed in through my CV fiber account. So if someone wouldn't mind recording, that would be appreciated. Jeremy Hansen might be able to. Yes, I can. Okay. Actually, hold on. I'm logged on as my Norwich credentials here. If you want me to record, I would have to log out and log back in. Otherwise, are we required? Are we required? I believe we are as part of the agreement that we're able to be fully remote. I think we need to record meetings. But I didn't think we recorded, I didn't think we recorded executive sessions. We don't, but we're not in executive session. We need a motion and then we'll go in. But Jerry handed the meeting over to me at this point. Thank you, David. All right, so we recorded Jeremy. I see that we have restarted the recording and we are now on the human resources discussion item. This is an item that is covered by brain fart. I'm so tired right now. I apologize. It's a sensitive HR matter. So we're going to go into executive, or we're going to vote to go into executive session. So I have a motion, move that we enter executive session to consider a sensitive HR matter that if held in public session would present a substantial disadvantage in accordance with one VSA section 313A1. And further that the CV fiber executive director and legal counsel are invited into the executive session as they have information that is needed in accordance with one VSA section 113B. I'll second that. I'll second that. Who seconded? That was me, Jeremy Hansen. Oh, thanks. Thank you, thank you. All right, any discussion on this? Hearing none or any opposed to the motion? Hearing no abstentions. Oh, sorry, that was an echo I was hearing myself. I think I'm hearing some echo from Josh. So hearing no objections, motion passes. We are now in executive session. I would ask David Mannix, please stop the recording. I would say that alternates would be included. Do you think that's appropriate, Janiel? I do. Or that staff not listed specifically in the motion. Leave the meeting, please.


Well hello and welcome to this video now. Are you the sort of creative that can't find anything you need at any given time? Or are you totally structured organized with labels on boxes, and you know where everything is whenever you need it? Hmm, I feel a few people laughing in the distance. Do you run your personal and business life in the same way? Everything's super disciplined. You've got a timetable planners, and you are completely organized.  What about computer systems? Are they the same? You can't find the files and folders? Then this video is for you. I guess if you are the disorganized person, you likely have leapt on this video, how to be more organized in your art business, and gone Thank you Sophie for recording this topic. And if you are that super organized person, I feel you might pass this one by anyway. Well hello and welcome or welcome back to my channel. My name is Sophie, and I help artists just like you to set up market and grow their profitable art business. If you'd like more tips and tricks on how to do exactly that, then you're in the right place. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel and hit that little bell to get notified every time I post a new video. So, are you ready to get more organized in your art business? And like I say, I feel that some people will have gone off and got a cup of tea and they're like, I've got this sorted. While the rest of you will be saying, I'm waiting with baited breath, Sophie. I really need the help. I can't find anything at any given time. Now I like you guys watching to take a guess which one I am. You can leave your comments pipe, please, below this video. Do you think I'm super organized and I have everything labeled down to the nth degree? Or do you think I live in total chaos? Which one is it? Let me know in the comments below because I'd love to hear from you. So back to that organization. Let's get you more organized in your art business. The first thing we want to do is we want to get you organized in the space that you're working in. Now, whether that's the corner of a kitchen table, whether you've got the spare room upstairs, a converted garage, or you like myself rent out a studio space somewhere. You want to get that space organized. Now, I read a beautiful book somewhere. And if I can find it, I will pop a link to it below here. And one of the things it talked about in this book was having zones in your space, even if your space is tiny, you have a zone that's kind of the office zone. That's where the computer and your printer and where you keep any files or folders, diaries, planners, all that organizational thing. And then you have perhaps a sketching zone. That's where you have materials in your sketchbook and perhaps bits of paper for collage and your sort of creative, you're developing your creative practice kind of area. And then you have the zone where you're working on your product or service. And that's where you have all the materials and all the things that you need for that purpose. Now, if you also ship out products from your space, then you might also have a packing zone. And again, I watched a video the other day and I was super impressed by this artist's complete floor to ceiling cupboard full of bubble wrap and packing and cardboard boxes and the labels and all the things you need for sending out all the prints that she was sending out. And I thought it was a fabulous video because it was like, wow, this is really, really, really organized. So different zones to do that, you might also have a quiet or meditative zone where you might make yourself a little space with some incense and candles. Depends where you work and kind of the person that you are. But getting organized in the space so that you can walk in and get straight on rather than walking into wherever you work and then thinking, oh, God, where were those pencils I want in? I'm sure I had a folder with something over here and chaos ensues. All right, so the working space is the number one thing. If you haven't done it and you've put it off, then why not allocate some time and get it done? And again, I'd love to see a before and after. So why not take a photo of how it is now and then a photo of once you've got it organized and pop it below this video? Or if you are following me over on Instagram, then perhaps you can send me a direct message and show me a before and after because I love studio shots. Step number two, we're going to do the same thing with your computer. Oh, yes.  So you think about all the top level things that you need to organize. So you think, OK, what about my personal life? So what have I got? I've got some finance, financial things I've got, maybe travel plans or I might have household documents or I might have health and fitness. And I would create top level folders for my kind of personal life. And then you've got the art business. So what are the top level folders that you're going to need? It might be an artwork folder, marketing folder, planning folder, finances folder, admin folder. You get the idea. So it's really high level. And then you go within each folder and again, break down the categories in there. So if, for example, let's go down the artwork one. So if you have originals and you have prints and you have products or cards, then you might want to separate those off. You might want another folder just for photos. And actually what I tend to do with with my weaving products is I've got a folder with weavings and I've got a subfolder for each particular weaving and their photos and Etsy listings and everything sits inside there. So if I think, OK, that particular weaving, I want to put a photo, for example, on social media, I can go straight in weavings, straight into products, weavings into the direct folder that I need. I can take the right size photo and there is done. I don't have to look around and think, oh, God, where is that? Organization over time, this can grow chaotic when you don't take the time to file everything, just like it would if you had a filing cabinet like we used to have in the day. Back in the day, I had two filing cabinets in my office and one was super organized and the other one used to get a little loose. And every now and then you'd sit down and go, OK, I need to file these papers. It's the same with your online folders. You might find every six months you can go through and cull. Now, I'll give you a top tip here. I used to do this on a long haul flight, actually, because you don't need the Internet and less of a things in the cloud. But usually you can do that anyway. I'd sit through that flight and and reorganize the old things that weren't used anymore and refile things on the computer. Top tip. Hmm. All right. Number three, you want to use a good online calendar, whether that's Google Calendar, I use Ikel calendar. And then within that calendar creates separate different calendars and have them as different colors. So the different areas of your day or your week can have different colors so you can actually plan out your week so that you, again, are organized with what you're doing when allocate different times for different things and use different colors. Tip number four, you want to take that first time in the morning time to sit down with a mug of tea or coffee or whatever it is that you drink and just look over look at the planning. So you maybe just have a quick look at the big picture and your goals where you're going this month, this week. And then you pull off and look at today and you say, OK, this is what I'm doing today. I make sure it all fits in with the bigger picture. Doesn't need to be more than five minutes, but you do want to do it every day. Number five, really, really good to have a brain dump journal for better use of a word.  It might be plans for the future, sort of thinking, OK, I've got this idea for a workshop and you sort of write it all down or I'm thinking about doing a marketing campaign or I'm drawing and scribbling out ideas.  So that would be separate from a planner because this would be quite a creative thing. It might have doodles and drawings. You might stick things in it, whereas your actual planners need to be clear and focused and not distraction. So you don't want the two things in one place, all right, separate places for the two things. So step six, this is where you're going to do those planners.  And again, we teach all of this in the Art Business Academy membership. If you missed out on that and you're thinking, you know what, I could really do with some ongoing help. Then below this video, I'll put a link to the waiting list. So whenever we're next available, you will be the first people to know about it. So we have all these planners and we advocate using them in a certain way, going from big picture down to more detail. So number seven is to try and create processes and systems for every part of your business. So remember, I mentioned that packing earlier by having a simple, simple process of, for example, maybe you sell on Etsy, you get an order in, what happens? You don't scratch your head and think, wait a minute, what did I do with the bubble wrap? You have that zone, right? That's got all your wrapping materials. So your process might be great, get it, check the time. I've got to get it out in three days. So how do I do it? I actually have a funny system with my weavings in order that they get sent in a safe package. They get bubble wrapped, then they get tissue paper wrap, then they get some branding and it all looks very, very pretty. Then they get some corrugated card to keep that safe.  Looks like a Toblerone box. So anyone's receiving it's going, I've got a giant Toblerone. But actually inside it is a weaving. And by making that triangular box, it's kind of unbreakable. If somebody puts something heavy on top, that's my process. All right, the process then that you got the packing label goes outside and it goes to the post office and off it goes. Now, if you could do that in every area of the business, that would be amazing. But just start with one thing that's easy, like the packing and then gradually ask yourself, where can I systemise in the business so that I'm not having to do it all again? So, for example, if you do markets, this is not my primary thing. My weaving is a bit of a side hustle, but I'm doing a market at the weekend because I actually really enjoy them and I have a process for packing the car. I have a tick box of all the things that I need to take. And of course, where they fit in the car. Being that Virgo, one has to be a little bit organised there as well. And the difference between having that ready to go, that I can just go, yeah, got that, got that, got that, got that, got that. The difference between that and then running around the house thinking, Oh, what did I take last time? Did I need that? Did I need that? It's going to save you so much time. Step number eight, if you can start using automated schedulers for marketing. So, for example, social media is the first one that comes to mind. Whatever platform you use will have at least one really good scheduling tool. A lot of them cross over, like we advocate. Tailwind is really great for Pinterest and for Instagram. And I've got a link below here where you can find out about that. There's lots for just Instagram, like later and Plannerly. And there's lots of schedulers. You can actually schedule within Facebook as well for that. But anything you can do where you can batch schedule things, that's going to save you time in the long track. So think about what you can do, what you can automate out. And number nine, this is my favourite one. I remember learning this back in the day. And this used to apply to emails only, but I think it should apply to all of our business. And this is really what can you actually delegate or outsource? And what can you just dump, delete or get rid of altogether? There's going to be areas of the business where you think, you know what, that's not really serving me. Do I really need to be doing that? Let's just delete it out. Let's see if that makes life really simple. And then, of course, as you move forward and you start to get some money in, income in, you've got cash in the bank, then you want to start thinking about delegating that whole packaging scenario. You don't need to be doing that.  Right, what if you had a shop that goes ding, ding, ding, ding? You're going to waste your time all day long postage and packaging for things? I don't think so. You're going to want someone that comes in maybe once or twice a week for a couple of hours who collects all your orders and who processes the whole lot for you.  You want to make sure that you are doing the high-level things. Creation, making, delivering. Some marketing, yes, but at the end of the day, you can usually outsource pretty much everything else. Hallelujah, all right? This is when you get to the place where you really are enjoying what you're doing. What tends to happen when you build an art business at the beginning, you have to wear all the hats until you get to that kind of critical mass point where you've got some money coming in and then other people can take the weight off and do other things for you. And it's a great place to be, trust me. It's really, really wonderful. And that's my wish for all of you. I hope you've really enjoyed this video on how to get more organized in your art business. Let us know below, like I say, what do you think I'm an organized or disorganized person? And if you've got some before and after photos, we'd love to see those or any questions, of course. And like I say, you can do that below this video or shoot your DM over on my Instagram, as I would love to hear from you there as well. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you on the next one.


from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Interconnect 2017, brought to you by IBM. Okay, welcome back everyone. We are here live in Las Vegas with the Mandalay Bay for the exclusive CUBE coverage for three days for IBM Interconnect 2017. I'm John Furrier with my co-host Dave Vellante. Our next guest is Ed Walls, General Manager of Storage and Software-Defined Infrastructure at IBM. Welcome back. That was a mouthful, wasn't it? Welcome back to theCUBE, welcome back to the fold. Thank you very much. At IBM, so you're- Always good. You're leading up a big initiative. Take a quick second to talk about what you're the general manager of. Scope-wise, and then we'll jump right in. Yeah, so I run basically the Storage Division, which has all of our storage from mainframe to open systems, tape, software-defined storage, and software-defined compute, but it's all under our storage portfolio. So, development, sales, run the Pino.  So, what we talked, probably in October, I was 90 days in, so now I'm a whopping eight months in. I think we kind of talked about it. I kind of, my hypothesis for coming here was, look at it, clients are going through this big change, and some of your write-ups lately about the true private cloud and how they're trying to go from where they are now to where they're trying to get to, and that confusion needs some leadership, so it was a confusion. IBM has the right vision, but it's on cloud and cognitive, it's as much on-prem, so we have the right vision to help them get through that, and we have a history of doing that, and the second one was that we have a portfolio that's pretty broad, so we almost have an embarrassment of riches of what we can do with someone when they're really trying to look to modernize environments or transform, we can help them from anything from the biggest and baddest, but it really doesn't matter, the broad portfolio allows us to engage and bring it forward and then get them to the, whatever their path forward is, but we can give them that vision. And then, the one thing I was really talking about is if you could bring in IBM, what would be, if I could bring in IBM, the greater IBM, the true cognitive, the analytic team, and bring that together to bear for our infrastructure clients or inside storage itself, that would be where we'd have the trifecta and it taken off, so we're in the middle of that transformation going very well, but along the same lines, I have a fantastic product line, we're going to continue, in fact we're putting more investments on that, not only on the hardware arrays, but as much on software to find and going all flash, just because of a lot of operational benefits, but then really what we're able to do by bringing that large IBM behind us, IBM also did some interesting organizational changes in January, Ivan and Chris is now running hybrid cloud and research for IBM, so it's bringing the growth of IBM behind what's on-prem hybrid into the cloud, so it allows us to play a very strategic role, so. So, a couple of Wikibon buzzwords, right, the true private cloud that we talk about server sand, which is really sort of an instantiation of software to find. Really the impetus is that customers on-prem want to run like the public cloud, with that kind of agility and automation, so what are you seeing, what is IBM delivering to support that, first of all, are you seeing that? So it's kind of funny so that I do talk about a study a lot because I thought the true product cloud, the way you coined it is the right way to almost just say it's not what you're thinking I'm about to say, so it allows the study actually kind of, it's everything you get in the public cloud and you want to bring it on-prem, all the flexibility, all the development models, right, how you engage developers, but all the financial models as well, but bring that and then easily extend to the hybrid cloud. When you start going through that clients, that's every one of our clients, you know, we engage, they understand the value of cloud, they're at different maturity levels of how they're using cloud, but it's all in their vision, so it's about, we do a lot of work to help people bridge, so where are you now, let's talk about where you need to get to and have some meaningful steps to get there, so the true private cloud resonates with them and then what we're doing is launching, in fact we launched this week with Cisco, so we have a converge offering with Cisco called VersaStag, but what we're bringing on is how do you make a private cloud as agile and has the same use cases, specifically for developers or DBAs that you have in the public cloud and we're bringing those into the offering set for a converge offering, so what we do around on API layer, so key use case would be, to do that would be why do people go to the public cloud, business units like it because the developers, it's easy to use, they have true DevOps capabilities, they're able to swipe or credit card, single line of code, spin up an environment, single line of code, spin it down, they don't have to talk to an IT guy, they don't have to wait three weeks or do a ticket system, so how do you do that on-prem, so what we have now in market is imagine an API abstraction layer that for storage allows all the orchestration and all the DevOps tools to literally do these axing thing on-prem, so once you set it up, it allows the IT team, it's called spectrum copy data management, allow the IT team to set up templates, but through roles-based access, allow a developer or a DevOps tools like Chef or Puppet, so literally infrastructure is code, single line of code, spin up a whole environment, an environment would be let's say three or four VMs, last good snapshot, maybe data masked or not, most of the time it's data masked and bring up an offense network, but literally it goes from on-prem, I just can't get it done, it takes me two or three weeks, so that's why I go to the public cloud for other reasons, I can literally choose where I put it, where it's the right place to do, but I can give them the exact same use case on-prem by just doing the API calls and they use exactly the same tools for development they use in the cloud, like Chef Puppet, Urban Code, Python Strips. How's the reaction been to that? Give us some anecdotal. So once you have that conversation, that's just one of the things we're doing to make the true private cloud come to life, of course the extension is software and other clouds to get the people, all of a sudden they see a path forward, it's not as easy to, you have to explain it, how it works, but the fact of the matter is they don't have a lot of tools now to make, we can bring down costs, give you a little bit more efficiency, consolidate it, but that's not really how a true private cloud is, you need the automation. So they're responding to it well, in fact it's the number one demo on the floor for us as far as systems, people trying to figure out actually how to do the DevOps on the-prem, so. It's awesome, awesome. Talk more about this Cisco relationship. Yeah, sure. It's a lot of interesting things going on in the storage business, your consolidation, and the whole VCE thing, and then Cisco looking for partners, you guys selling off BNT opens up the whole new partnership potential. So how has that evolved, and where do you want to take it? So I think match being heaven between us, especially in storage and Cisco, if you look at the overall environment conversion, I have a conversion account for about third of the storage industry, so we play well, there's no overlap between us and Cisco, it's great, we're after the exact same account, and actually from a, you know, you think of the very top level organization all the way down, the two companies have a lot of the same cultures, and to be honest, we're very tight. So it allows us to have a great relationship, we've already had a good relationship, about 25,000 joint clients, which is amazing, and then what we're doing with Versacex specifically is we're putting the next generation, so we have a great converge offering that has all our flash storage, but also software defined, but what we added is we brought in what they did with our clicker acquisition, which is called Cloud Center, and you add that on top, make it single click, deploy an application anywhere, both on-prem and the different clouds, and it makes it very simple for developers. We talked about the API layer, you bring that into DevOps and the environment, so we feel really strong as far as if you look into bringing in a true private cloud, probably the best answer that we can do is what we do with Versacex, and we just announced it this week, and also we gave a preview, it's Cisco Live in Melbourne a week ago, but I think it's been a good uptake, but it kind of plays to, when you know what people are trying to do, but you need to bring the automation, you got to make it self-service, and that really drives, for the business units as well as developers, that drove what we brought into Versacex, we brought different assets in it from Cisco and IBM to make that kind of a reality. John and I were talking earlier in theCUBE this week, and somebody brought up, yeah, the CIO, they really don't think about storage, they certainly don't want to be thinking about the media, and the conversation has shifted way off the media, even flash now, it's like, oh yeah, yeah, we get it. But you mentioned something earlier, which is, and this is very relevant to CIOs, they want to get from point A to point B with this minimal disruption, they don't want to have to buy a boatload of services to get it done, so, and now you're talking about things like automation and self-service, how are you, what are the discussions like with senior IT executives, and how are you helping them get from point A to point B with minimum disruption? So the good thing about, you know, you think about the IBM brand as much about trust and helping people through it, so people give us just the credit to say I can engage with them, we get the innovation, but also we've been through these eras, so a lot of times we're asking how are we doing it, how are we transforming our company, how are we doing it internally, and then if you just kind of common sense walk them through, because the broadness of our portfolio, we don't just have this point solution and every answer is, oh, you buy this box, right? We're able to have that conversation, and when you get the broader IBM together, that's where we're kind of differentiated, so they love it. Now I've been to a lot of, what I'll say, IBM friendly accounts, which is great, but also some people that have never dealt with us are eyes wide open, because it's a new day. People are struggling with this big transfer, right? How do you get from now to where you want to go in cloud as a big change? Those new customers, what are they getting wide eyed about? What are they focusing on? What's the big focus? So we'll talk about what would be a true product cloud, but really what you can do as far as data and what we're doing around cognitive is really telling, right? So, you know, the ability to actually show them with symbol API calls to get more aware with it, you know, so I have a cognitive conversation that's an industry specific conversation really gets people lit up. Then in the end it ends up being, okay, I see the are the possible, then how do I get from here to there? And typically it doesn't start, well I'm just going to go directly that direction, it's how do I, help me with a multi-year plan to get to there? While I'm taking out costs, adding agility over time, but I would say the cognitive conversations are especially with an industry lens, which is what IBM brings to it, is really telling. So I got to ask you about the conversion infrastructure marker because the hot trend that's in the cloud native world is serverless. So is there a storage list version? Because what you're basically saying with the true private cloud is you're essentially doing serverless, storageless philosophy. Is that, I mean, how do you guys rationalize the serverless trend? The servers and storage are basically the same things in my mind these days, but I mean, you might disagree, but I mean. No, I think in general people aren't looking to the different components, they're looking for a way to operate in their environment that's more efficient. They're looking for use cases. They're also trying to have IT not be in the way of what they're trying to do development, but actually give them the right tools. So that's why, to be honest, go back to your true private cloud. I've been using it a lot, because it really resonates with people. It's how do you get that same experience but on-prem, because there's different reasons beyond-prem. It's like cloud native on-prem. You can get all the benefits of what serverless promotes, which is here's an unlimited pool of resources. The software will just take care of it for you. That's DevOps. And doing true DevOps, ChefPuppet, no compromise is exactly how you do it. So you change nothing for your developers, but now you're running on-prem or in a hybrid cloud because there's a lot of good use cases for hybrid cloud. If even if it's born in the cloud application, you're making a web application or iPhone application, the fact of the matter is, you might want to test it against the back end. So be able to do a hybrid cloud, bring the system of record data there to be able to do DevOps on what production looked like maybe last night or a week ago. It's much different than the current DevOps model. What's a good strategy too, if you think about the true private cloud, the way you're looking at it, which I think is the right way, is a lot of the things that we look at on theCUBE and talk about is three areas, product gaps, organizational gaps and process gaps. The number one thing is organizational gaps. So when you have that true private cloud on-prem, it's not a big leap to go cloud native public. Right. It's seamless in fact, right? Yeah, it's totally seamless. And on that case, a lot of the software talk about is we help people modernize and transform the environment. And the message is all about optimization on the traditional application environment. It's all about freeing up the resources. A lot of the stuff we do. That's the innovation strategy. That's the creativity, that's the development. And if you don't free up your key resources, they can't be on the digital transformation and without the right skillset because they're kind of trapped in operation. So a lot of the automation things we're doing are things that, to be honest, the storage team or the admin team would be doing. It's manual error prone, but take it away, but also you free up the team. So it kind of plays to all those, it's as much. That must really resonate with the CIO at least. I mean, I would imagine CXO goes, okay, I can have cloud up on-prem and then train my organization to then start thinking hybrid workloads as they start moving hybrid pretty quickly. And here's the thing, what do you have to change from developers? Tell me what I have to get by the developers or DBAs. And the answer is nothing. Use the exact same tools. So on stage it will only show me how Chef or Puppet, they're not doing trouble tickets or spinning things up, down. But same thing with deploying applications. It's a cloud center application. Set up the stack and deploy it either on-prem, different architectures, both converged and non-converged or in different clouds, and they allow you to just one click and deploy it and they deal with all those differences. But that's how you want to make it, you use it services. They don't have to worry about the infrastructure, but also we're freeing up the team. So Ed, I got to ask you, maybe end on a sort of personal note. I mean, I've followed your career for a long time. John and I, we call you the five tool star. You've had the startup experience, you got technical chops. You did a stint at IBM. You went to MIT and came back with that big brain, big MIT brain, brought it to IBM. So pretty awesome career. And by no means even close to over. What have you brought to IBM? I think I've known every GM of storage since the first GM of storage at IBM. What specific changes have you brought and what's the vision and the direction that you want to take this organization? Yeah, so it's a great culture, a great history of storage. So I guess that would be the first outsider coming into storage. But I don't think it's any different. I just have been in storage my entire career. I understand it. Some of it is optimizing the current model, the particular portfolio and what we're doing. Some of it is just making sure we have the right things in the sales and working with channels, which one of my companies was an excellent channel partner. So I think it's just a perspective of maybe a fresher look. But again, we have a great team, great portfolio. We're quietly number two in storage hardware software. Don't tell anyone. We don't do a good job of getting the news out. But the fact of the matter is- No, we'll tell everyone. You say don't tell anyone. We're telling everybody. When you sell stuff to tell everyone, we don't tell anyone. But we still get people, are you guys still doing storage? Literally, we're number two by revenue. If you, and this is the IBM Gartner software hardware. So we are a player in the space. We have a lot of technology. I guess what I'm bringing is just maybe a little, you know, spice of vision and then really bringing- Well, you guys have a strategy that's unique and different, but aligned with the mega trend. That to me, I think is something that's been in the works for a while. It's been cobbled together. Dave always points it out how the storage groups change. But the game is still the same, right? I mean, ultimately it's about storage. Now the market conditions are changing on the organizational side. That seems to be the thing. Of all, flash is a product thing. Yeah, but also what we're going to be, you're going to start seeing is bringing cognitive capabilities. So we're not going to call it lots of our storage, but imagine bringing lots in the storage, right? Think of all the metadata we have. So not only for support, but kind of insight. You can all start doing more cognitive data management and not only look at metadata but taking action on them, using Watson to look at images. So very interesting use cases that I think only IBM can cover. I mean, I could just vision a day where I just always activate Watson. Spin me up, more servers. And provision all flash, header byte, done. It's a, believe it or not, we can do a chat, but we have that working. But we're looking for applicability of that. And then Watson would tell me, well, you can't right now. You're not authorizing it. You're going to grab the Watson for storage URL. He's been grabbing URLs all day. I'm no daddy. And thanks so much for coming on theCUBE.  True private cloud. A good one. Love that research again from Wikibon. You know, kind of new, but different, but relevant. Very relevant. Thanks so much. So thank you very much. Appreciate it. Okay, live coverage here at Mandalay Bay here at IBM Interconnect 2017. I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante. Stay with us. More coverage coming up after this short break.


Dear students, in this module, we are going to talk about the subcultures and countercultures. Subcultures are the cultural groups within the larger society that share distinctive or unique beliefs, values and practices other than the central culture. In our society, there are many subcultures that share different distinctive cultural values. For example, if we talk about the rural urban society, there are different kinds of cultural representations within the rural society as compared to the urban culture. The living patterns can be different, the style of the language can be different, the dressing patterns can be different. Subcultures reflect the distinctive unique identities of the subcultures within any mainstream culture. So, the definition of counterculture includes the cultural groups that challenge or rebel against the dominant cultural norms and values of the society. Counterculture is generally a different culture from the mainstream culture that tries to adapt to a different culture which may be considered violation of cultural norms within the mainstream culture. So, it's a kind of deviant behavior, although it's not a kind of taboo, but it's a kind of deviant behavior. So, examples of subculture in Pakistani society include rural versus urban culture, youth have some specific cultures which are distinctive or different than the other population subgroups and also different religious or sectarian cultures. Examples of counterculture include alternative music which could be the rap music or other alternative mainstream modern forms of music and then the street art or the hipster culture. Hipster culture is a kind of reflection of different or unique dressing pattern or unique living style which is considered a kind of rebellious or kind of deviation from the mainstream culture. The role of subculture and counterculture in shaping the cultural diversity is that the subculture provides the unique perspective and contributes to the cultural diversity. Since there are many things in your mainstream culture that are in the normative pattern, the subculture is different reflections of the same patterns. In comparison to that, the counterculture challenges the traditional mainstream norms and values and brings new ideas and perspectives to the forefront. For example, after deviation, mainstream culture becomes a part of fashion and lifestyle. So, counterculture also creates positive effects. In general, mainstream culture initially reflects a reaction, but by the passage of time gradually it becomes part of the mainstream culture. The impact of these subcultures and countercultures may include the growth and evolution of society by challenging the status quo and promoting the cultural diversity. In this way, the cultural diversity is created based on those factors and the mainstream culture, in which most of the elite cultural reflection or representation is challenged.