Hi, everyone, Joe for jazby's casebreaks.com coming at you with 2021 gold rush baseball vault six box Random team break number two with the hit list promo. So if you go hit list Not a good not a good thing. No one wants to go hit list But if you do we'll take all those hit list names and then four names on top will get $25 of great credit each All right. So big thanks everybody here for getting in on the action There are the teams right here Let's roll it. Let's randomize it four and a two six times four names and teams one two three four five and six and final time Got Barry down to Daniel Hayes four and a two six times for the baseball teams one two three four five and Six and final time after six. We've got the Reds down to the Detroit Tigers All right, so we got this right six times right here. Yeah Barry with the Reds PJ with the diamond back Sean with the Rockies Ethan with the Cardinals PJ with the Phillies They're on TV right now Phillies Cubs Up a run one to nothing in the bottom of the second very early in the game Daniel with the Royals Shane with the Rays Sean with the Padres and the A's Ethan with the Mets Matt with the Red Sox Tyler with the Pirates Matt with the Indians PJ with the Nationals Chris with the Blue Jays Sean with the twins Ethan with the Marlins Shane with the O's Matthew with the last spot mojo star next to your name gets the Mariners 70% of the time last spot mojo hits 100% of the time So they say Tyler with the Rangers Matthew with the Yankees Cameron with my Dodgers and the Astros Sean O with the Cubbies PJ with the Giants Joe with the Halos Daniel with the Bravos and the Brew Crew Sean with the shy socks and Daniel with the Detroit Tigers All right, let's sort alphabetically by team and we're gonna pause the video I'm gonna go run and grab that gold rush case and And feel free to trade while the video is paused when we come back see if there's any trades No, we'll have the break stick around All right, welcome back everybody. There was a lot of trade chatter, but in the end no deals were done In random team break number two. Thanks everybody for getting into the action appreciate it There it is. There's the list official hot off the presses and There's the baseball vault break. Let's see What we got all six boxes, of course I have three extraordinary baseball hits According to gold rush. I've been seeing some nice stuff. We saw some nice up and break one. All right first one out of the gate Is gonna be a 9510 12 out of 25 Greg Maddox 2017 tops transcendent baseball Gold frame On-card autograph to 25 the auto is a 10 Very nice the professor that'll be for Daniel Hayes and the Braves He got some offers from the Braves. He was like, I'm gonna hold not trading the Braves right Next up is it goes this way Gold ain't got a guy. That's a nice Marlins patch right here. That's Isan Diaz It's out of 10 Marlins Ethan with the fish Nice room from an immaculate baseball. All right, we got another Beckett grade here It's just grading the autograph. It's a 10 and it's Glaver Torres Glaver day from 2016 Bowman Draft It's an authentic autograph For the Yankees Matthew Stubblefield. He got some offers for the Yankees to also Passed on those. It's the Glaver Torres Yeah, the fish cars do look pretty good. They got a lot of color Those patches pop another guy next guy old-school guy. That's Ken Griffey, Jr. That's an authentic autograph From 1989 Donner's Autograph right on his rated rookie card kind of hard to see the dark blue ink against his uniform Especially in this lighting during this part of the day, but pretty nice Seattle Matthew Matthew P last spot mojo 70% of the time hits 100% of the time There you go. All right non graded card It's gonna go this way Portrait mode it's you Chang for the Cleveland Indians and that's one out of 10 Rookie autograph Cleveland. This is for you Matt McLaughlin with the tribe had an authentic autograph here. It's Louise Robert From 2019 tops now off season It's on his rookie card and it's authentic auto like the tops hologram stickers that are kind of or kind of Layer right there White socks that's for Sean. Oh, oh speaking of oh, I have not been keeping track of the hitlist people here Let's grab everybody's names So we just had the white socks. So sorry Sean. You're not part of the promo We had the tribe. Sorry Matt Seattle is off the board other Matt Yankees another Matthew Marlins Ethan We started off with the uh with Daniel Hayes and that Greg Maddox. All right, we're on track All right, next up Yeah, that's probably that's it. That's not a bad rule Will yeah first rule of getting into a any kind of buyback product And never trade the red socks Yankees mariners or cowboys. All right, what do we have here? We've got a a 10 Nice Beckett grade 10 It's pita lanzo Tops now card rookie pita lanzo From 2019 tops now. So it's the centering That kept it from being all perfect tens right here But the edges corners and surface are all a 10 the centering is a nine and a half Giving it a pristine 10 Not the uh, not the black label tens But very nice Mets Ethan with the metropolitans. All right next one We've got a nine five on this one And it's Oh It's from transcended 70 out of 87 And that wall climb in baltimore Bo jackson, of course And there'll be moments sketch card reproduction Nice That's pretty cool Yeah, july 11th 1990 right around the time parkour was being developed in france jackson was doing a fair imitation in baltimore After stabbing on a drive over his head on a full sprint the royal centerfielder climbed Climbed four spider-man like strides up the wall That's the copy on the back. All right, that's kansas city royals daniel haze Nice moment there Yeah, better not be the corners. I got a nine on that one. We got a plate. We got a train whistle coming up for somebody it's sac man That's elvis andrews in an unusual juxtaposition elvis has led the ale in both sacrifice hits and sacrifice flies sac man sac man sac man Tyler stump. There you go, tyler Gets the triple relic and auto from triple threads baseball And all aboard the big hit express And next up next up get your gold rush here get your gold rush There is illoy hymen as cubs edition 2017 bowman baseball That's his authentic autograph authenticated by becket Cubbies that's going to be for shawn. Oh Who has the north fighters and the south fighters in this break? We got a what is this from definitive collection baseball That's rafael devours seven out of ten looks like some infield dirt right there. That's awesome seven out of ten for the red socks That's really cool That's matt medlin with the red socks I tried to trade couldn't trade mojo another becket authentic autograph And it's riley green on his bowman first card tigers daniel haze All right two more boxes to go All right another thick card here It's Juan soto for the nationals nice big silver frame 50 out of 95 From uh, is this tribute or transcendent those teas always look That's the transcendent this must be transcendent It's transcendent That goes to pj and the nationals Nice Juan soto Oh An each year old autograph That's nice Authentic autograph from 2004 bowman heritage baseball And that'll be for uh, matthew and the mariners Got a couple hits there nice break for the m's And we've got a Authent another authentic autograph It's a chip off the old block. That's chipper jones That's daniel haze with the braves All right final three boxes uh final three cards coming up in the last box Good luck got a jersey and autograph. It's reggie jackson Two-color patch and autograph two out of 15 from tier one baseball 2018 tops tier one baseball And that goes to Joe christian And the angel edition of reggie jackson. I must kill the queen. What do we have here? Gem mint 10 PSA 10 From 2017 tops Transcendent baseball Roy halliday 32 out of 87 commemorating his no hitter against the reds In a in game one against the nl in the 2010 nl ds Yeah, that was a pretty good moment For the fillies pj And the last one good luck Last one is a 9 5 10 And it's isan ds 2020 tops on demand rookie progressions auto 9 5 and 10 8 out of 99 rookie auto for the fish And that is for ethan and the marlin i think the marlin tit already they did All right now unfortunately There are some hitless people Not the most ideal outcome, but I appreciate you trying There's some new dice. There's a list right here You've got a chance at a little consolation prize So let's roll it and randomize That list one and a six lucky seven times And it's going to be the top four after seven Getting 25 dollars of break credit each one two three four five six and seven and final time after seven There's the top four right there cameron shon and shane shon winning break credit again We're going to I'm going to send that to you in one break credit code So look for $50 of break credit in one code right there cameron and shane 25 dollars each Thanks everyone for giving this a shot. I appreciate it. I'm joe for jaspercasebrakes.com And I'll see you next time for the next break. Bye. Bye


Hello, and welcome to My Career in Data, a podcast where we discuss with industry leaders and experts how they have built their careers. I'm your host Shannon Kemp, and today we're talking to Mona Brachiebe, the co-founder and CEO at Tomai. With a robust catalog of courses offered on demand and industry leading live online sessions throughout the year, the Dataversity Training Center is your launchpad for career success. Browse the complete catalog at training.dataversity.net and use code DVTOX for 20% off your purchase. Hello and welcome. My name is Shannon Kemp and I'm the Chief Digital Officer at Dataversity, and this is My Career in Data, a Dataversity Talks podcast dedicated to learning from those who have careers in data management to understand how they got there and to be talking with people who help make those careers a little bit easier. To keep up to date in the latest in data management education, go to Dataversity.net forward slash subscribe. Today, we are joined by Mona Rokkebe, the co-founder and CEO at Tomai, and normally this is where a podcast host will read a short bio the guest, but in this podcast your bio is what we're here to talk about. Mona, hello and welcome. Thank you so much Shannon. Hello. What a fantastic Friday evening to be with you and talk about my journey.  So you're the co-founder and CEO at Tomai. So tell me about Tomai. What's the company about and what is it that the company does? So Tomai is a data observability company that me and my co-founder Max Lukic have started almost two and a half years back. What data observability is that we look at the data using our machine learning statistical analysis and we extract insights about the data that tells us about the health of the data and we constantly monitor that. The company is, as I mentioned, two and a half years old, but we have built it out very rapidly. We have customers like Markov, ClearBit, Datastacks. We have built a partnership with GCP, Databricks, Snowflake and so on. The product has already been loved. We have great reviews on G2 and also what leaders in the GigaOM report for data observability. So seed stage, so far I've raised eight and a half million seed round of funding for Tomai and we are on a roll. That's exciting. So congratulations on starting this business. I can't wait to hear it until we get to that point. But tell me, as the founder and CEO, I'm sure you're wearing many hats at this point. So what is your typical work week look like? This is a very interesting situation in an early stage company specifically like Tomai. There's a lot to do always. And specifically with the role of a founder CEO, it cuts across many different dimensions and many different business units of Tomai from operations to sales to marketing because we don't have such a built out team in all these different functions. So first thing, my primary focus is to make sure that we build a strategy for the company. That's number one thing across like specifically around the product market fit. Once we set that strategy, there is a tremendous amount of distractions that can go in a startups world. So how do we make sure that we set the focus areas for the team month over month, quarter over quarter, so that we are all aligned and march in the same direction and reduce the noise and focus on the signals that we need to focus on. So those couple things are high level and how we deliver this is through a good culture and good team. So one of my key role is to hire the right team who are super top in what they do. Because at our stage, it's very difficult to execute if you don't have the right team. So the right team and the right culture and keeping that momentum. Having said that on a tactical level, if I just have to look today, I had a meeting about legal contract review sales negotiation. It's all over the place. Discovery call and somebody told me very beginning when we started the company, you have one role, which is to both of us, me and Max found a role. And that role is a very different role. You got to do whatever it takes to move the ship forward. So it is a very overloaded term. It's a very complex thing. I did not realize what that meant till I really started. It's literally anything that comes your way, right? I've been talking to people, whatever it takes to get this ship moving constantly. Oh, but how exciting and how fun to put all of your passion into this and build that up. It is. It is absolutely. And I feel fortunate that I even have this opportunity. Congratulations again. So let's back up a little bit before we get into the why and when you started. So so tell me, Mona, is this what you wanted to be when you grew up? Was this the dream?  And I'm going to co-found this company on what was the dream? So this is super funny because I am born and raised in a very small town in India. Or it is not super small, small, but it's definitely not the big city. So to put it really straightforward, my dreams also couldn't reach where I am today. So my dreams were humble back then.  So being a co-founder CEO of a tech company is something that I don't think my dream would have reached back then. So I have done my dream long ago. So it was a very humble dream. So I've come a far ahead from that part. So yeah. Oh, wow. So so tell me about that. So growing up, so then when did you start evolving your education? And what did you start focusing on as you got older and start creating those dreams? Yeah, so so a little bit like I've grown up in a family where like my mom was a homemaker, my dad, a government agricultural officer. So a lot of the town where I grew, Nasek, there were good colleges, but the engineering colleges were very tough to get in. And specifically computer science was a hard one. So I definitely did my graduation in computer science, programming is something that I like specifically was good in the logic behind programming. From there on, I stepped out of my town to a bigger city where I did my masters in computer science.  And then one was getting my first job, which was on campus much bigger than what I could have imagined or what my father could have thought that I would do. So that's where my career started. I got my first job as an engineer, started working as a developer in Java. Get away from there, started moving. I was a risk taker from the beginning, like moving out from my town and stuff. So that was one thing that always came along. And then I took another big risk of moving to U.S., like with not too much cash, not too much money is like, okay, what worst can happen? I don't like, I don't find myself settled. I'll come back again. Like things won't go that bad. So here I was with a couple of suitcases and now came to U.S. And then again, continue to work here, join companies like Oracle. Back then I was still working as engineer in Java side. Slowly what I realized that my inclination was more towards customer empathy, solve, using technology to solve problems. So when I started pivoting towards like understanding how the product is used by customers and move towards quality engineer, quality engineer, and I started actually doing functional quality assessment, like using the product, how customers would use. Started writing about that at Oracle, complex product capabilities, breaking them down into how customers would use it. Slowly that kind of carved out my path to product management, which was one of the pivotal change for my career. And I started moving more and more towards customers, so much that I used to love doing this day in a life of customers. So basically taking a technology, spinning it around, looking at the why part of why will this technology even be relevant? Why would somebody care about this? Like, are we doing it just to innovate or are we doing it to solve some real problems? And that's how from like, I was heading Oracle BPM product, sweet move, helped move to the cloud, then joined a startup. Right after that was my entry into the startup world at a master data management company called Reltio. I was the founding product manager. That's where I entered the startup world, which was so fascinating to be honest. It was so amazing. The pace at which I could make a change in a startup was awesome. Like the whole thing that I mentioned, working closely with customers, that was all tenets in a startup, right? Like you have a problem, you just get stuff done. There is no waiting for anybody. There's no, like just move. So I was, I joined there as a founding product manager, grew into heading their platform. The company was early stage and I was with Reltio till it's hyper growth into its unicorn status and so on. After that, the startup is what I got the bug, right? So when I quit Reltio, I'm a mom of two daughters by the way. So when I quit Reltio and I thought I wanted to take a break and my co-founder called me and he's like, you know, this problem we were working on and we kept seeing at Reltio and other companies, let's solve it with AI and data science. And I have this amazing idea. And as I told you, I'm a risk taker, right? So it took exactly two minutes. I had a two year old back then at home. Most people would be like, I have so much going on. But I was like, you know what, let's do it. Like let's just start a company. I don't know what to think these things. It felt right. The problem is something I knew. I told you it's important to have the right team and stuff. I knew this person. I knew the problem. And as always, I was like, what is there to lose? Like, yes, of course there's things I could over calculate. I could calculate a lot of things, but it feels right. The industry needs this. We have an idea, a novel idea to solve it. So let's go for it. So that's really how my journey was through engineer, turn product manager, turn founder, CEO. Oh my goodness. That's quite the journey. So let me ask you a couple of questions. So I'm so impressed that you were so confident in yourself. You knew what you wanted. You stood up for yourself and said, no, I'm going to go do this. I'm going to go get my masters. That's so impressive. It takes a lot to do that. And I don't know that risk taking it as much as just confidence and self-awareness of what you wanted to do. Yeah, it's both, honestly speaking.  Like everybody else. Right, yeah.  So you have additional pressure to prove what you did was right. And it was meant to be, right? Like I had that extra pressure of like going back to my dad and saying that, hey, that was the right thing to do. See, a good thing you send me out and everything out. And you're also paving a path for others who want to do the same thing. Yeah, so it may seem on the surface being confident or confident, but that also is a little bit of a scary thing. Oh, it certainly, I'm sure it was not easy. So confident, yes, but maybe a hard thing to do. So that's really impressive. And so what was the catalyst then too that made you decide you wanted to move to the U.S. and make this other big huge, and this was certainly a risk, you know, moving to another country. Yeah, so a lot of it was opportunities, right? It was a lot like, I was engineering and back then, now my husband, I was dating him, he's also in tech. And we both were thinking that it is time to kind of get out of our smaller pond and explore what we can do beyond, right? More opportunities being specifically, we were very curious and interested in coming to Silicon Valley. A lot of innovation happens, where a lot of advancement happens and again goes back to that mindset that, yes, we, at the most, we will feel that this is not right and we will come back. That path is always there. It might put additional challenges, but best case we go out and we know that there is something that we wanted, and like many immigrants, right? The funny story is like, I came on H-1B and I told that, look, my family is here, your family is here. We are not going to renew our H-1B. We'll stay for three years. We'll experience a new country, a new way of working. We'll be in a faster paced, more innovative place. And then we can, we'll go back, but that never happened, right? That three years and no renewal, that never happened. This is home now. I have kids, build a company. I feel like we did a lot for ourselves, like here. Everything said and done, this country is awesome for the amount of support we received as first generation immigrants here from career perspective, from a opportunities perspective. It was fantastic. Oh, that's so great. More and more companies are considering investing in data literacy education, but still have questions about its value, purpose, and how to get the ball rolling. Introducing the newest monthly webinar series from Dataversity, Elevating Enterprise Data Literacy, where we discuss the landscape of data literacy and answer your burning questions. Learn more about this new series and register for free at dataversity.net. And so then tell me a little bit then, so you had this conversation with Max, your partner, to talk about this problem that you wanted to solve. So you just decided to jump in and sometimes people freeze at that moment, but you dove in and you just did what it took and now you have seed funding and that is amazing. So just to go after that and... Yeah, so that journey was the immediate, yes, was super fast. And then the rubber meets the ground, right? Then you actually start making things. You have to get the company registered, start talking to people, fundraising, bootstrapping, like putting our savings into getting the prototype ready. Because until you put and show that really we strongly believe in this so much that we both quit our jobs. Both of us, although I had quit a little bit earlier, Max also quit and both of us were at peak of our careers where we were at that point. And we had a strong conviction. Now we had to work towards it. So we started doing, we first built out a prototype. Then we realized that when we are building an AI-based product, the funding is needed because you need to bring in some data science engineers. This is hard to just bootstrap with our own saved money. So at that point we started fundraising. We also got into Y Combinator, which also gave us seed money but also accelerated our learning curve as founders. So we were in Y Combinator summer 21 program. The same time we got into Y Combinator, we did a pre-sid round with .406 Ventures and Zeta Venture Partner, both our data infrastructure and AI-first investors. With that money, we were able to build out the product, push it out. Now again, there's a lot of ups and downs, right? Like fundraising is hard. Getting the first customer is super hard, super. I mean, I thought I knew so many people but it is hard for anybody to put their job online for somebody who has a great vision but be happy for those early adopters and that's not at all easy. It was a tough one. You have to go talk to people, prove out that your vision about the product is real but once you get those early believers then you have to prove out a lot more in terms of the product and because they have put their jobs on the line you have to make sure they are successful and you make them look really good in front of their company. So all of those things started like as we moved on. A start-up life, there are challenges. We had a team partially in Russia. The Russia war happened so we had to overnight change a lot. Our team was almost brought up to engineering, to a couple engineers and we had just onboarded like large enterprise customers. So a lot of some of these challenges started but one thing what happens very quickly in an early stage company like Telma is that you learn to adapt to these challenges very quickly and you develop a mindset of how do I solve this and move on quickly and not get stuck up and that's oh my god why did this happen kind of a mindset. So we kept doing that, we embraced that and within even before company turned two years we had three large customers. We had earlier this year we built all these partnerships and now we are on a super good growth momentum. So with those ups and downs in the end with the right team with the right vision we were able to kind of do a lot in these two years, two and a half years. So tell me then with all these different changes and risks that you've taken what has been your biggest lesson so far in your career? From a career perspective the way I would say Shannon is that if you go by a typical corp especially I've worked at large companies the way a growth chart is built it's based on statistics and data like most people they become an engineer after that senior engineer if they like the individual role they can continue to be a top class engineer and or an architect or then you pick the other ladder which is like people manager and stuff but often people get caught up in that and feel like that's the path they have to go with but that's not the truth you have often time you have to look inward what is my personality for me that was the moment right I love technology but I loved solving problems with technology right now there was no path like this to figure out right so when I started getting signals I just kind of moving a little bit lateral here and there QA product manager data company if problem solving is what you like then and if you're in a little bit of a different ladder then you need to figure out how to get out of that ladder right because the org structures are not designed for you they are designed on the masses and statistically designed right so sometimes you have to carve your path outside of that so that's that's my learning if I had tried to always figure out how fast I can go through that chart I would have missed these opportunities oh that's really really good advice and and and a really great lesson so you know especially then too as you as you're hiring people um in data do you see the importance of data management and the number of jobs working with data increasing or decreasing over the next 10 years and why I think it will increase and increase increased dramatically because there's a lot of sentiment in the industry that data and AI will take jobs but I look at it differently AI will make jobs easier AI will make things faster, cheaper, better what you are doing now which means that the human skills of like analyzing things differently putting a little bit of empathy will become a very premium thing right and you use AI for everything I am I use data for everything all decisions all whether it's marketing product decisions which what what should we do what features should we do let's figure out like what is the data show what is the user feedback show what does our research show so there's data there what where do we focus on marketing efforts how do we segment our market that's again data driven right so data is going to be everywhere people who adapt data-driven mindset will I mean will definitely have a premium will have a lot of room to grow and continue to grow problem solving with data will also be very crucial so I do feel like the importance of data will increase the jobs will be there the focus should not be so much specifically on the tools but on the tools and technology because they constantly well just in my career there has been so much of evolution the focus should be on problem solving with these tools and data and if you master that then everything around can keep changing but your skillset will never go out of fashion or whatever that's really important so you know and you mentioned data and how you use it all the time and you know it's a key component to your your company so what is your definition of data so my definition of data is exactly something that helps you what you do start cheaper and better right that is my simple way of thinking about data but there's so much complexity in that faster because now you have data to make decision and not just like hypothesis now you have some information that can help you quickly drive your decisions and everybody's impatient today right to everybody wants I mean think about the time when cloud came right the adoption curve was so like it took its own sweet time for everybody to adopt if you think of generative AI in November we all played with open chat GBT open AI and today so many companies are already have production models and like everything has become fast and then data helps things get even cheaper right like because in terms of now we have the technology to make decision faster cheaper and better that our bar for better has increased dramatically right every even for startup our stage people expect top-notch service top-notch product everything right and I feel data gives us these three things in general at every level that is really a great definition and I really I agree with that whole heartedly so then I'm gonna you know especially as you know what advice would you give then to people looking to get into a career and data in any aspect yeah so so first thing is data is here to stay AI is here to stay so the sooner we all kind of accept that fact and start learning and getting our skills updated and at every level we have to do it even at my level I have to always be two-step ahead of what is happening on technologies run so I would definitely advise everybody to embrace that first thing data is here to stay AI is here to stay so build that skill set and when I say skill set sometimes it's not so important that you start coding and doing everything start learning every single data data science algorithm but what you need to know is what how do these things apply to what you are doing and how can you solve what you're doing with the use of data data science and then the technologies will evolve and you have to keep learning so my top advice would be like embrace this start leveraging some of the modern technologies start updating yourself with what's happening in the AI world especially generative AI we did that at Telma we have like a hackathon and we are encouraging everybody to constantly see what can we do what we are doing better with AI it doesn't have to be in our product and as a part of our product but it could also be like co-pilot and how can we write better test coverage using AI and make our lives easier so really embrace that mindset that's that's great advice and so tell me what how do you keep up with the latest technology and what's happening in tech so I definitely read up most of the time so I read up I used to read books before a lot but now I even listen to books that helps me kind of do multiple things together I follow folks whom I feel have a good point of view whether it's in data science and data itself so who have a clear articulation who have good customers customer driven approaches to explaining solutions so I follow that I feel those are easier way to consume shorter nuggets the other thing that I personally like doing is I like to write blogs for tell my myself at least the outline and that enforces me to do a lot more research right it's a forcing factor and I have a personal objective of at least getting one or two blogs out which means and I pick a topic which I should research so let's say when large language model came and there was a lot of hype around it what is the impact of data quality on model training now that's the topic I knew there is impact I knew as somebody who's in the space that there is going to be impact of bad data on how you train your model fine tune your model so I said why don't I write it and if I'm writing it I have to do a very thorough research so that then I start reading about it and then I start following few authors and then so it kind of puts me in this forcing factor kind of a thing and by the end of it because I'm writing about it I kind of develop a subject matter expertise and point of view on that oh very nice I like the multitasking it's a very multi-purpose yeah oh well Mona this has been so great so I'd be remiss if I didn't ask if people wanted to learn more about Tamai where would they go so our website n.ai which is getting updated in next couple of weeks will have much more but there's a lot on Tam.ai I'm very accessible on LinkedIn I individual because as I told you before I love talking to people so I'm one of those people I have another kind of thing that I'd like to do is like people especially in the data space so having at least four or five meeting with new people and just understanding what their pain points are what they are learning about what they are seeing in their use case in their world is something that I absolutely derive a lot of insights from so easy I'm relatively very easy to get told off on LinkedIn and stuff so but learning about my www.tam.com tam.ai my bad and we have blogs under that and we keep writing about topics in the data reliability space data observability space also about data science and how we use AI to do what we did traditionally in a different differentiated approach so there's a lot on that blogs site of our website very nice and I'll be sure and grab those URLs from you and we'll get them posted on the podcast page as well for everybody awesome so we will mona thank you so much for joining us today I really appreciate it's been a joy getting to know you thank you so much and I'll stay in touch with you but this was really good conversation I hope my journey inspires I'll leave you with one closing thought I I'm a pretty mediocre person in every which way and that's why I I hope the audience learns this that do not try to pattern match you with others because that's very limiting if you're trying to look at people who are trying for dropout or MIT dropouts or MIT grads who are building stuff or that's not the case because anybody the message that I would like people to do is like just carve out your own path there's no pattern here for especially for starting things and not to say that I'm super successful or anything but at least carve out your path of your career so specifically since you're doing this for career for people I think that's a useful thing to walk away with such sage advice and and thank you for for saying that so that's that is our hope there is no straight path in data there's no straight path in any career and it's so true just following your passion following being true to yourself and as you say carving your own way it's it's yeah you don't have to follow the plan that's mapped out for you yeah I think a lot of us just try to pattern match with others that doesn't always work no I wish I had learned that a lot earlier in life I wish the same for myself also like a lot of time I kept like comparing and thinking yeah I mean that's that's one thing I would tell even my daughters like it's your path it's your journey and don't try to match it with others what a great note to end on Mona thank you so much for being here thank you so much and it was such a pleasure talking to you and good luck with everything likewise and to all of our listeners out there if you'd like to keep up and up to date on the latest podcast news and the latest in data management education you may go to dataversity.net forward slash subscribe until next time stay curious everyone thank you for listening to dataversity talks a podcast brought to you by dataversity subscribe to our newsletter for podcast updates and information about our free educational webinars at dataversity.net forward slash subscribe


This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Okay, we're back. In every way we're back. We're back from our trip. That's one thing we're back. In fact, next hour Carol, Monally, and I are going to do a retrospective on what it's like to go to Alaska by a cruise ship, you know. She went, you know, serendipitously one week and I was there the next week and we didn't, neither of us realized that we were going to be there on the same ship, the same trip. So we're going to compare notes and see who had a better time. Okay, and today we're going to talk about opera, and I love opera. I've been going to the Hawaii Opera Theater since I could, way back. 1970 or thereabouts that I started going. And one of the people who sits right near me in the opera is Lynn Johnson. That's right. Couple rows behind on the left, I think. Yeah, we wave to each other each time. So happens that Lynn Johnson teaches about the opera. She teaches about each separate opera. She teaches on the lanai, and I guess you'd say the eva lanai of the opera house there. Ward Center. Ward? Ward Lanai. Ward Lanai. And she tells you about the opera in advance and, you know, it really helps to have somebody explain it to you in advance, tell you the plot, the high points you should be looking for. She's also a professor at the School of Music in UH Manoa. Yes, I was. I was going to teach this year and I've finally retired. Okay. I'm going to go. Well, that way you can spend more time with us. That's right. But I'll continue doing the opera talks and teaching classes about opera. I hope so. It's a big thing for me. So welcome to the show, Lynn Johnson. Thank you. Very happy to be here. It's great to have you here. It's great to talk about Carmen. Carmen's coming up. So let's first, let's get it off the deck. Carmen is playing on October 13th, 15th, and 17th at the play sale. You bet. And it's one of the ABC operas, you remember that, of course. Yes. Aida. Bohem. Bohem, of course. Beef of Bohem. My personal favorite. I always cry at Bohem. I cry at all of them, actually. And Carmen. Carmen will always touch you.  Oh, it's a fabulous opera. And that's why we bring it off the deck. I mean, it's just so, it's so emotional, and the music is amazing. Yes, it is. Yeah. And it's memorable. It's one of those operas where you walk out humming the tunes. That's right. You want to hum anything now? That's from Carmen. That's from Carmen. And there are many others like that. And the people are, you know, they're so, they're real in their own way, you know. You can slip into their skins. The good guys, and maybe they're not so good guys. Yeah. Well, let's talk, let's talk about HOT for a minute. What is HOT? What does that stand for? And how long has it been around? And what does it do? Well, Hawaii Opera Theater has been around, well, I think it, I think in its own skin, it's maybe been around since 1970, something like that. Before that, it was part of the Honolulu Symphony. And you had part of the board that were opera people, and you had part of the board that were symphony people. And finally, the opera people decided to break off. And it was in the 1970s. And since then, it's been on its own. And we do typically three operas every year. Now we've added a fourth, a chamber opera. So we have three big ones at Blaisdale. And then this year, in a couple of years so far, we're adding a small opera with a more intimate setting that doesn't run as long and is usually a modern opera. So the new opera we're going to be doing this year was actually written, had its debut in 2014. Oh, wow, it's three years ago. 2014. And as a matter of fact, I don't know if we can maybe show a picture of it. Sure, we can. I think it's called As One. As One. Can we find As One and show that? I'd like to see that too. So get a description of it. There we go. As One. So you look at that, and you think, what is that all about? Well, you've got Sasha Cook, who happens to be a cousin of mine. It's not right. And she is an amazing singer. She loved her. Her father grew up here. He could not keep a tune in a buggy. He cannot sing happy birthday in tune. But he loves singing. And here his oldest opera has become this fabulous mezzo-soprano. And this is her husband, Kelly Margraff. They are going to be doing this opera. It consists of these two people and a string quartet. It lasts about one minute, an hour and a half. It's all about a chance gender. Interesting. That's Mary Margaret. And her husband plays Hannah before. And the wife, Sasha Cook, plays Hannah after. And it's all about self-identity, about finding your true identity, about there's humor, there's pay-toss. It's an amazing opera. And it's very edgy, and it's going to be in January. January. Okay. So is that part of a season ticket? It's part of a season ticket. And by the way, I have to put in a plug. If you are a new opera goer, or you've never actually bought a season ticket before, you can get the whole season for half price. Ooh. Yeah. The whole season. That's a good move on everybody. And I've been calling my friends and saying, you got to do this. Yeah. And you call Gaylene Williams at the opera box office. And you tell her, Lynn sent you, and you get this half price. Remember that? Lynn sent you. Yeah. Well, that sounds like a great bargain. I wonder if I can be a first time. Well, you can't do that. You can't do that. But you and I, but we've had the luxury of knowing all these operas all this time. And the other ones are going to be playing. You have, of course, you have Carmen. And then you're going to have, as one, and you're going to have the daughter, the regiment. Oh, sure. That played before. That's by Donizetti. That's in French. Yeah. And first one is in French, even though it's set in Spain. Yeah. And then you have Eugene O'Nagan, which is going to be in Russian. These are ambitious operas. And let's try Kausi. These are, these are bad, that's all. Beautiful, beautiful music. And so, you know, in Carmen, she dies. And the daughters of the regiment, she gets married. And then Eugene O'Nagan, well, it's kind of in between. It's very Russian. She doesn't die, but it's very Russian. You know, she doesn't get the guy she wants. She gets somebody else. And he found out too later that she was the right girl. And so it's kind of a little bit in between. And then in, as one, he becomes a girl. And she's very happy. There's always a transformation. There's always a transformation. Why do I feel so impassioned at operas? What is it that makes me feel that way? Nearly, well, at most operas, I feel that way. Well, you know, opera is the most, the most exciting genre of music because it has everything. You have the orchestra. So those of you who love symphonic music and all the instruments, you have that. And then you have the voices. And you know, it's different between opera and musical comedy. The voices... It's not generally not funny. Well, no, some operas are... It can be funny. Operas can be very funny. Cozy fortuiti, for example. The real difference is the voices are not mic'd. Of course. They're not mic'd in opera. So if you want to be an opera singer, it's not something like law school. I think I'll be a lawyer.  You either are born with it or you're not. So you've got to have the chops. What is it that you have to be born with? The ability to belt it out? Is that one of the strengths? I think it's... I think you have to have both the power and the quality of singing.  You know, her mother was a maid, right? And the woman of the house heard this amazing singing going on with the daughters. Your daughter's got this amazing voice. You've got to do something about that. You know? So they're born with it. Yeah. And it's our job to recognize them because they are musical heroes. That's right. That's right. It's fabulous to follow opera. I think it's fabulous. And of course it's interesting because it's done in all different languages. And this year we don't have anything in Italian. Which is unusual. I guess it's essential. Well, it's just unusual, you know? But no, I guess... You know, it just happens. You know, we have French and The Art of the Regiment written by Donizetti is actually going to be sung in French because he was in Paris when he wrote it. And then as one is going to be in English. And then we have Russians. So we have all these... I mean, usually you think of Italian. You think, you know, that's where opera started, right? But, you know, next year it might be all Italian. Who knows? It might be all Italian. Right. It's really wonderful the way HOT develops these operas.  Yeah.  I have a list here somewhere of all the speakers, singers that come in. They come in from everywhere. They're part of an international network. We have an international network. And what's also really neat is that we have some fabulous local talent. So for Carmen, we're bringing in Kate Aldrich, who'll be fabulous. She was here. But we also have Kip Wilburn, who lives here. Yes. Leon Williams, who lives here. Yes. He didn't always live here. No, that's true. He traveled here for the opera to sing, to star, to play in operas over the years and then decided he liked Hawaii so much he was going to stay. Yeah. Yeah. So we have some extraordinary talent. Kip Wilburn will be playing Don Jose. Uh-huh. Well, that's the leading role. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's take a moment and talk about that opera. Sure. Um, this is an opera with, gee, as I said, a lot of feist, a lot of action, a lot of pathos. Um, and it's a story, it's a story that came from a book which came from a story. That's right. That's right. How did that generate? Well, that's interesting. No, there's a wonderful author, 19th century author, French called Prosper Mary May. And he wrote these things where they were not short stories. They weren't novels. They were in between. So he called them novellas. And Carmen was one of these novellas and he went to Spain and talked to this wonderful woman who was a countess and she told him this story about this man who was robbed by a gypsy and then the gypsy fell in love with him.   Now, obviously the Carmen that we have is she was not married. She's not married. But there's a lot of similar points. But there's a lot of similar points and I think one of the real interesting things is that Carmen is a gypsy and in the 19th century the gypsies are associated with what they call the other. In other words, the woman who is outside of the mainstream. Especially the woman, no? Especially the woman who's outside of the mainstream and she is exotic and of course that was the 19th century you had colonialism, right? And so you had France opening up, you know, learning about the world through all the various colonies and people like Delacroix wrote these, you know, did these wonderful pictures showing these exotic women, right? And so Carmen is a gypsy and there shows, you know, that Moorish influence that exotic woman who is dangerous. She represents a threat to the household. So you have in Carmen, the opera Carmen, you have Mika Ella who's a good girl, you know. She represents the household. She represents the household, the good girl and this is where Don Jose is supposed to end up. He's supposed to end up with a nice girl like Mika Ella.  It's a girl every mother wants every son to marry. That's right. That's right.  He's addicted to Carmen and so he throws his whole life away and if you're looking at, let's say a trajectory, maybe Don Jose starts off here and he ends up down here. He gives up his job. He gives up his, you know, his future. He gives up everything for Carmen and what does she do? She leaves him. She falls in love with the bullfighter. Escamillo. Escamillo. Escamillo. Yeah. It's so, the real tragedy is Don Jose. But you can see it devolving. Oh, yeah. You can, you know, it's that slope, the devolution down, but there are points along the way where you know that Don Jose is losing it. Well, he makes choices. Yeah. You know, he makes choices. First of all, he tries to ignore Carmen.  You can't resist the Habanera. That's one of the arias. That's one of the arias. Right. It's, you know, it's a Russian, it's a Spanish dance with that wonderful rhythm. But what it does, it does something really interesting musically. It descends by half notes, which means it goes from white note to black note to white note to black note. And so you're going down this very subtle going down and it means that, you know what, Don Jose, you're going to fall in love. And what's interesting, another aria that has the same thing is Delilah's aria in Samson and Delilah. She's another exotic woman, dangerous woman. And they both sing this sort of half note thing and it's just irresistible. Men cannot avoid that they just, they just are smitten. Has anything changed since then? No, I don't think so. We can take a short break. We're going to come back. We're going to get into those steps that Don Jose goes through step by step until, you know, it's all washed up for him. We'll be right back after this break with Lynn Johnson. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. You're watching Think Tech Hawaii, which streams live on ThinkTechHawaii.com, uploads to YouTube, and broadcasts on cable OC 16 and O'Lello 54. Great content for Hawaii from Think Tech. Is it a feeling? Is it a place? Is it an idea? A dive heart, we believe freedom is all of these and more, regardless of your ability. Dive Heart wants to help you escape the bonds of this world and defy gravity. Since 2001, Dive Heart has helped children, adults, and veterans of all abilities go where they have never gone before. Dive Heart has helped them transition to their new normal. Search diveheart.org and share our mission with others, and in the process help people of all abilities imagine the possibilities. We're back with Lynn Johnson. She's a member of the board of HOT Hawaii Opera Theater, and she teaches, has taught music at the music school. But she gives and will continue to give lectures on the, let's see, with the ward, Lanai, and plays there. And also, I give talks at the Doris Duke Theater. And this one will be the one for Carmen I believe will be on October 4th, 10 o'clock in the morning. And what I do is not only talk about Carmen, I'll show pictures, do a little PowerPoint, and then I introduce the cast. So people get to meet who Carmen is. Oh, that's great. You actually have them. And then we interview them and find out how did you get into opera?  And Kate Aldrich will be there. Yes. That's fabulous. So let's talk about the history of Carmen. So it premiered, I guess, in Paris Yes. in 1875. Yes. Yes. It was what they call an opera comique. And you know, Paris, the French love opera. They're just crazy about opera. So you had your grand opera. You had your Italian opera. And you had your opera comique. And that was like the Walt Disney Studio of opera. You know, you were supposed to go there and have fulfilling family entertainment. And a lot of the times you would have spoken dialogue. So the original Carmen version was with spoken dialogue. So people went to Carmen, went to this one, thinking they were going to see the little mermaid, you know? And it was like they went to see the little mermaid and they got Lolita. And it was, they were shocked. They were shocked. And the critics, you know, this is terrible. You cannot have a fallen woman at the opera comique. This is just This is her. And this was Celestine Gallemarie. She was the first Carmen. She looks like the Carmen you've been discussing. That's right. That's right. And here's a description of her. This is kind of fun. Because Bisey won. And they apparently had an affair. That's what the rumor was. We don't know. Bisey is an opera star. That's right.  Now to me, that's a perfect to be unruly. And the thing about Carmen is is that she is free. You know, and you look at you look at the 19th century woman in Europe. She can't own property. She can't vote, right? She's the property of her husband. She cannot marry unless her father gives approval. And so here's Carmen who's totally free. She does what she wants to do and nobody tells her what to do. And this kind of independence, men want to control it, right? And she won't let, she is free. Don't you think that made it popular? You know, people had these, these, you know, urges, these aspirations to be free and gave them a chance to move that out. Sure. Sure. I think, I think a lot of women were both threatened by Carmen and envious. Yes. Right? Shocked by her, judged her, but then secretly perhaps were envious. And now the man in, I want to say Victorian, Victorian times, because Victorian England was not only in England. It was in France too and Spain, I think. So you have a fellow Don Jose. He's, he's, he's got some prestige. He's got an important commission in the Spanish army, I guess. Yeah. And he's brought low. He's brought low. And that's, and that's another twist. You expect him to be rising and in control, controlling women anyway. He doesn't. Yeah. He falls apart. He falls apart. And it's this, like I said earlier, it's like, it's like an addict. Yeah. You know? And you give your, when you're an addict, you can't tell right from wrong.  So there's, there's a thing, she gives him something. She gives him a rose. That's right. Hence the association of a red rose with Carmen. It's part of, part of the symbolism of that. What's the red rose? Is that, that's a seduction. It's a tease. It's a tease, isn't it? Yeah.  He ignores her. Yeah. Yeah.  I mean, she works in a cigarette factory.  She's been in trouble. She's been in trouble and she's violent and unpassioned and unruly and undisciplined. Yeah. You know, what more could you want in a woman? And cigarettes, cigarettes, it must be a symbolism in the cigarette factory itself. Not like today. I mean, you wouldn't want anybody, you know, working in a cigarette factory today. But I suppose in then it had a, it had a moral overlay of some kind, right? And she's, cigarettes are not for women. Women weren't smoking cigarettes yet. Men were smoking cigarettes. So it's, it's again, sort of a freedom thing that she should be working in a place where men have their, have their freedom, but women don't. Yeah. So the, then this is, this issue, I'm just stepping down those points where he loses it, where she refuses to answer the, the senior officer when he asks her questions. And as a result, he has her arrested or he tells Don Jose to arrest her. Yes. He has to tie her up. Zuniga, I guess it's his boss. And so he, she has to, he has to tie her up. And of course, what she does is, is basically talk him into letting her go. Yeah. And so he lets her go and then he has to go and, you know, spend some time in prison for being disobedient. So that's the first choice he makes. You know, he makes these choices. And so that's the first one.  And it comes time for him to be called back. The bugle is there and he's supposed to go back and be with the regiment. And he has a choice. He can be a good guy and go back and do his duty or he can stay and stay with Carmen. And then, and then all of a sudden Zuniga, his officer comes and looking for Carmen and I think Don Jose is jealous. He thinks, what's, what's going on between the two of them? You know? And so, and so, yeah, it's just, it becomes very complex and all of a sudden he's in the fight with his boss and, and then some smugglers appear and they withhold, they hold his boss and restrain him and all of a sudden he's got to go. And then he has to go off with that choice and he goes off with that choice. So he's now given up his respectability. He's given up his respectability and the final choice comes when, when, I think, his girlfriend comes to the camp where Carmen is and Carmen's now beginning to get interested in the, in the, in the bullfighter. Mikaela. What a wonderful name, Mikaela. Mikaela, she's beautiful. It's, it's angelic. Isn't it? It is. In there somewhere is the notion of angelic. Yeah. And she's asking him to return to her mother.  He knows it's a showdown. He knows it's a showdown. He knows it's a showdown. And he loses. Yeah. He loses. And the thing is you know that somehow Carmen, she preserves her liberty. She, she knows. I mean, there's this wonderful scene I think in the camp where Ms. Mercedes and Fasquita, her friends are playing with the cards and they're reading each other's futures and stuff like that and one's going to get a great man and one of them's going to do, have something and then they read Carmen's and she's going to die. So that's part of that's part of the gypsy culture. You know, the fortune telling is part of the gypsy culture. But that doesn't deter her. You know, let go of her freedom. Even if she has to die. That's right. That's right. So she knows at some level that she will die as a result of this contention between Escamillo Escamillo and Don Jose. And you hear what's interesting in the overture. You have this wonderful Bumper. Bumper. Bumper. Bumper. Bumper. And then you have Carmen's deaf theme that comes right in that, right in the beginning of that overture. So you know, right from the beginning, something's going to happen. There's going to be not only fun and games, there's something very ominous. That's the word. Very ominous. Yeah. That's a powerful scene. Again, down, down, down. That's right. That's right. And it's a case where you feel sorry for Carmen, but you really feel sorry for Don Jose because he's ruined.  And you make some assumptions there. I assume it's never on the screen, so to speak, but you assume that if he killed, if he killed her, which he does in the final moments of the opera, he is going to go to jail for a long time. Oh, yeah. You can't escape that. Oh, yeah. Just the way earlier, you assume that if he lost her as a prisoner, he would pay a price. Yes, that's right. Whether it was his fault or not, you know. It was his fault. Well, you know, that's a, to me, does the, what's the name of the character who's his boss? It begins with this. Zuniga. Zuniga is his boss. Okay. So you assume that, I assume that he figured out that Don Jose let Carmen go voluntarily. It's never spoken, but it's kind of an assumption there. And it's never actually said, but she was assumed that he knew that Don Jose let her go voluntarily. Yes. And so you're asked to, you know, build in some assumptions in how this is degrading. You know, and what's, I think what's really interesting is, is that, you say it's a matter of choices, Lynn, but it's somehow, it's, it's not. Somehow he's on a track where he can't help himself. That's right. That's right. And that's, that's why I compare it to crack. You know, somebody who's addicted to heroin, they no longer have free will. And that's the way Don Jose is. He is, he is totally obsessed with Carmen. She, she brings him, and I think she brings, she represents such passion and such highs and he's never known anything like it, right? He's never known that kind of passion in his life and he will do anything to have that in his life. So he has his own freedom in a, in a way. In a way. And, and, and so that's true. I mean, he's giving up conventionality, right? He's, he's giving up the proper life to have this wonderful, out of their time. Yeah. Yeah. So what, what can we learn from all this? We can learn that a, that a perfectly French, Frenchman can write an opera about what takes place in Spain. That's right. In the 1850s. Yeah. Well, of course, it was, he had wonderful librettist, Halavi, and I think another one, but, but he, you know, he put, he fell in love with that idea. He just fell in love with, with the whole concept and he was inspired, you know, time. He rewrote it thirteen times. And it's been polished not only by the rewriting of the libretto, but by the stars who bring, who create the culture of the character. They portray the character in one way or the other, like the one in the photograph, the first, what was her name? Oh, Gali Marie. Yeah, Gali Marie. Silicene Gali Marie. And you know what's interesting is that Bisey himself, George Bisey, who's the composer, is a tragic figure, because he died before Carmen became a hit. And so he assumed that it was complete flop. And the first, I mean, the first production debuted in March of 1875, ran for four and a half hours. The last act didn't begin until after midnight, right? It's too long. And it's too long. Too long. And a lot of it was in English, I mean, not a lot in that English. A lot of it was spoken and so on and so forth. And the audience was kind of like, well, I don't know. And the critics just banned it. And they just assumed, he just assumed, you know, he put his heart and soul into this thing, he assumed it was a flop. He died three months after the premiere. That's a tragic feature. And it was only 36. And it was so, it didn't become a hit until it went outside of Paris. And then in a course, over time, they got rid of the spoken dialogue, substituted for, substituted recitative, and of course shortened it. And so in a way, there's no absolute definitive version of the opera, because he died before, you know, the final thing came out. What was the music, the music we hear today? The music we hear here on October, October 13th. 13th. At 8.17. 13th and 17th. Will be the music that Bizet wrote. Of course. Yeah. He wrote all the music. Yeah. I have to go. Of course I have to go. Oh, yeah. I'll see you there. Yeah. And I'll wave at you just like this, like I always do. Absolutely. And I look forward to that. I look forward to the opera. In fact, I'll be on the lanai. Okay. I want to hear what you have to say. Yeah, absolutely. No, there's always something to learn. And this is what I love about being a music ecologist is that the more you know, the better it sounds. Isn't that true? Yeah. The more you learn, the more you learn about the background, the arias, the plot, the characters, the more you pay attention and the more you take in, because opera is just a conflagration of invading your senses. You have the, you know, you have the singing and then you have the music. And then you have the sets. And now opera singers today are fabulous actors. Much more than before. Much more than before. They don't just stand there. They used to be just stand there and you belt it out. And now you have to be a fabulous actor. Yeah. And they're good looking. They're appealing. They're good looking. And they play the role. Yeah. And I can't wait to see how Carmen does in this Kate Aldrich. Yeah. And we have a picture of our, we should show a picture of Kate Aldrich, who's going to be. Okay. Why don't we show last picture. We're going to show a picture of Kate Aldrich. And you can see who Carmen is going to be. You can compare her with the one in 1875. There she is. And I have one other picture of her too. That's a knockout. Yeah. She's a knockout. And that's a course. Isn't that symbolic? You see that she's on the, the spade there and the spade symbolizes death.  So isn't it, it's not a dramatic photograph. It is. I don't think that we're going to have that production. But, but you know, there's, the other thing I want to tell you is that there are many, many different ways in which Carmen has been portrayed. And I have a couple of different versions of pictures on there. So we, because we, we know it was set in Seville. One version has it set in 18, 1936 during the Spanish Civil War. Oh, perfect. But it's been set in the west of the United States. So if you have, I think there's one of a couple of versions of Carmen that, that you have a picture of. Okay. We only have a minute left. But let's take a look at one of those anyway. Let's take a look. Yeah. Some, you know, as you said before. There's two, there's two. As you said before, it's a multidisciplinary. Now you have the one at the top and you see that she's in a convertible. Right. And this is in the west there. And then on the bottom, this is the one that was just done in Exo Provence. And it's basically, it's set in the 20th century. And this is a couple that needs marital help. And so they go and play the role of Carmen. And he plays, you know, the husband plays Don José. And then there's another woman who plays Carmen. And of course it gets, they get carried away. Right. So this is couples therapy. It's an opera for all seasons. Absolutely all seasons. Thank you very much.  See you soon, I promise. Absolutely. Thank you very much, Jay. Aloha. Lots of fun.


Cool, thanks everyone. So my name is Will, I am a computer science graduate student at the University of Washington and I have spent the last couple of falls teaching computer science in Pyongyang. I haven't, so I did a Reddit A&A last year when I got back, but I haven't really like talked that much because the whole like issue around this country is extremely politicized and it's very easy to sort of end up in this sort of large narrative that I don't really have much to contribute to. So the disclaimer is there's going to be nothing about this or about this and this will be entirely be sort of like what did I see when I was there, what were the students like that I was teaching and what was sort of like consumer technology in terms of desktops, mobile phones and sort of what does technology look like there. So this is the campus I was at. It's the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology sort of in the southern suburbs still within Pyongyang. The taller building is the academic building. The two wings are classrooms. The little middle connecting part is where the professor's offices were and then the smaller building next to it, which is still quite large, had the cafeteria, had the library and had an assembly hall. And if off picture is dorms, we both both the students and the the professors lived on campus while we were there. So at this point, I'm probably like, if I was having a conversation, there'd be this question of, OK, so how do you get there? What are Americans doing there? So I found a video online about this university being created and I called emailed saying I'm interested in teaching and somehow that worked. I'm still I'm still not entirely sure myself. And so I ended up teaching classes in operating systems focusing on Linux and Android, which was what they were interested in. And then also an introductory databases course, sort of the mechanics of SQL, which were fun. So this is the lab that I was teaching in. We had a classroom as well. And these these are where my senior undergrads who were taking the operating systems class, you'll notice that they have computers and that they know how to use them. So we're off to a good start. I guess the other interesting part, though, is that there were these sort of two banks of 16 computers. They're on a land connected to each other, but they're not connected to anything else. So these students did not have access to the Internet. A lot of what they had learned were through books. And so this was an interesting challenge. So so I guess there's sort of three segments to the rest of the talk. The first is going to be the network and access what does Internet, Internet, all of these things look like. Then what do what's the desktop? What's the deal with this red star OS that they have? And then finally, mobile, what's the deal with cell phones? So surprisingly, I had Internet access. That was nice. There's sort of two players in the Internet industry in Pyongyang. They're both joint ventures with foreign companies. So the building is, I believe, that's the older iteration of it. But currently that's called Star Joint Venture Corporation, which is a joint venture between the DPRG government and a company based in Thailand. And they provide the fiber cables into the country. So they manage the physical connection. They appear with China Unicom. And so there was a fiber line going from a downtown office to the campus, where we got access. And I guess there's a couple of things that are interesting. One is that I had access. It was not filtered, either by China or by DPRK. However, there was a proxy that I had to go through that was at the campus level. So all requests were authenticated. It was in a squid HTTP authenticated proxy. You had to have a proxy authentication header. So they knew every request was associated with my username and password. The DPRK citizens, so the undergrads did not have access. The graduate students and the DPRK professors who were there did have internet access. They had a filter, although I don't know the exact details, but I know that it was somewhat restrictive. So in addition to that, and they had to go to a special room in the library area, where there was a lab proctor who sort of would watch while you were doing research. The other company of note is Coriolink, which is a joint venture with Oraskom, which is an Egyptian company. I think they've actually changed their name. They provide the mobile service. You can buy a SIM card with either voice or 3G data. I did not because it is quite expensive. It was 80 euros set up for voice and then another 120 euros to enable data, which gets you 50 megabytes of data a month. So not quite what we want, but there were cases where, I guess I would say, internet quite reliable, power less reliable. So for that maybe day a week when you didn't have like intermittent power, it was nice to still have some connectivity and you got that if you had wireless. Yeah, so I had access. So there's this intranet thing. There was not internet at our campus. I was told that that was very difficult. They did not like to have physical locations that had both. So there is sort of this sense of these should be air gapped and foreigners should not have access to the internal one. We visited Kim Il Sung University, which is sort of the top university. This is also where a lot of the tour groups go. They've got this sort of flagship e-library that you may have seen pictures of. It's where the tour groups go and say, we saw people sitting in front of computers not seeming to know how to use them. Those computers are on the Kuang Miang national intranet. It's sort of guessed that there's something like 3,000, 5,000 sites. The students were saying that like most companies that needed to do sort of communication would likely have some sort of site and email like access and be connected to this thing. I guess of note, one thing that you can see on sort of this nice Windows XP terminal in the library is that it's got its own DNS thing. The, the, it's sort of small, but it's like last.lab.something.edu.kp. And it's not a DNS record that exists on the public intranet. And so they've got their own DNS system. They have posters up showing that. And so again, sort of you've got all of these sort of new top level domains that we don't have. So maybe we can ask the IETF to include these. Our, our, you know, .web or .recreational or something. So I didn't get that much access to it. The students all knew it. The, the college students at other universities would have access to the intranet and would have more access than they did at our school where they didn't get anything. And so they were sort of somewhat unhappy about that. I guess they would prefer to be someplace where they had some connectivity. I guess the other question that sort of comes to mind is, okay, so, so then how do you, if you, if you don't have access to the internet, get new stuff? It sounds like there is some government agency or of some form that acts sort of like a librarian service where university students who wanted to get access to papers that were not available would request it. And someone at this agency would go to the internet, find it and, and send it back to them. So this is how you sort of get information in. It's sort of on request. Cool. Um, so the students had computers, uh, the laptops, uh, some of the, some of my students had personal laptops that they would bring to class. Uh, they were running Windows XP. Uh, we went to, uh, a mall that had an electronic market in it every couple of weeks for shopping. Um, and they had a bunch of computers generally running windows. Generally it seemed imported from China. Uh, a lot of Chinese brands were there. Uh, that seemed to be sort of what was there. It was cheap. It was available. I didn't really see anyone seriously using Red Star anywhere. This is the sort of mythical thing. Red Star is made by KCC. Uh, the Korean computing center is one of the two sort of large labs. The other one is PIC, the Pyongyang Information Center. Uh, it seemed my, my, my gut feeling here, and I don't have much to support that is that it gets used more for sort of industrial automation contracting things where some other company will go to KCC and say we want, you know, to automate our factory and they'll get a controller and that controller with custom software may well be running, uh, Red Star because you get vendor lock-in, which is great. Uh, and also just like that's maybe where they're programming, but for, for end user computers, it was basically all Windows XP, a little bit of Windows seven, but not much. Uh, but they do have this thing. Uh, the latest version looks very Mac like, um, very Mac like, uh, one, one, one thing of, I guess there's two things that are interesting here. One is that like it's, it's localized. So you can use this without speaking English. That's good. Uh, and it has a very prominent sort of like input method thing in the top that you can't really get rid of. You also don't get root on it. Uh, so it has a terminal, but, uh, by default on the install, you can't pseudo or sue or do that. Um, so I've got a demo, I guess I can log in. Um, it's a little bit slow. So let's see, we'll start the terminal. The, the, the other thing that's maybe interesting here. Oh, I guess there's a couple of things. So, so we've got a set of applications. Some of these are pretty clearly skinned, uh, and our Linux applications that you know and love. Uh, others seem to be much more made by hand. Um, we can look at the root and it looks sort of Linux C. It's got an applications folder though, uh, which maybe is not as commonly found. Um, and, and in there we see a bunch of dot app folders and in there, you know, in, in quick time, for instance, it's got a contents and, and then it has a red star folder for the binary. Uh, so someone, someone really like got Mac OS 10 and got told, make something that works like this and looks like this. Uh, which is pretty cool. Um, so, so one, like, yeah, uh, we can, we can look through and one application that's sort of interesting is there's a utility that I hadn't seen before called Bocum, uh, and it says you can't run this unless you're root, which is interesting since you can't be root. Uh, but luckily since I'm in a VM, I can change the disc and make myself root. Uh, so I've enabled pseudo on this one and it turns out that, uh, Bocum, uh, actually it should come out in a second. Uh, it, it, it allows me to make encrypted discs, which is pretty cool. So that, that got in, included, but sort of not easily allowed. Um, so I can make my, my new, my new disc that's thinking. Well, that wasn't what I wanted to show. Um, what I was going to show is that it was using AES, which was sort of nice. Here we go. Something's happening. Okay. So I'm going to, like show another one. So it's got, it's got Nenoraw web browser, which, uh, looks quite similar to, okay, it's, it's opening that again. Uh, Nenoraw is basically Firefox, but with a different name. Uh, but again, it, it does have, uh, special bookmarks. There we go. So that's Firefox. I don't want it to be my default browser. Uh, again, it, it, it's using, uh, a set of internal IPs for it's like default homepage and things that certainly won't load. So, uh, some of these are, are sort of customized. Other ones, uh, they've done, uh, a better job on. I'm not sure why the, the hard drive is being so slow. There we go. Except I won't let me make it. So, so I can look and I can put a password and I can choose my algorithm and I can make my, my, my special encrypted disc image that, that gets mounted. So it has this like security. If, if you want, if you want an encrypted disc. If you want an encrypted disc that you know the NSA hasn't done anything too. So the last part is, is mobile stuff. Um, so, uh, they've got a lot of Android. Uh, that seems to be it. The, there's a lot of older generation feature phones running some sort of Java feature thing. And, and the new ones that they're working on are, are Android based. So this is the Arirang phone, which came out last year. They wanted something like $600 for it initially, which seems like a lot. I'm not sure who was buying it. But, but it is starting to get out. It's running Android. Um, I bought a tablet. Uh, it's a tablet. Uh, it's party pieces that it has analog TV, which is pretty cool. What it, what it doesn't have is Wi-Fi or Bluetooth or anything else. So, you know, you, you can make things for your own market. I guess that's good. Um, I was told that the nine inch version did have Wi-Fi though. So, um, so in order to, to sort of make this a little bit easier, uh, I'm going to show videos of this rather than do it on the actual device, um, but just walk through a sort of basic interaction with this thing. Uh, and this is slightly ugly, but it should work. I think it gets less miserable. So it's got a cool background of like missiles in cyber warfare. Uh, it has, it has the same sort of browser thing, uh, which again has sort of like screenshots of a bunch of the, the internal websites. So at least when they were developing this image, they were on Kwameon, um, it's, it's sort of, I think ice cream sandwich level. So some apps they spent a lot of time on. So this is one that is sort of the collected writings of the various leaders. Uh, and so they've got their bookshelf and this is, uh, Kim Jong-il. You can see the, the different, so it gets better than that, right? So that was, that was just the different volumes. And each of these volumes is many different speeches and you go into the speech and you get the, the multi-page speech. Um, so, so there's quite a lot of material and, and for each of these like things, you can go in and get translations and get definitions of all the words, which is pretty good. Uh, and, and you can also, it has a voice feedback. Uh, I don't think that the HDMI thing is working on this one, but, uh, it will actually narrate this to you. Uh, so you've got that, which is cool. Um, in addition to like this, which has its, its place, I guess. Um, they had a bunch of apps that seemed to be much more just sort of, uh, customized, uh, from, from existing apps. Uh, so there, there are various games. Uh, there's Angry Birds. Uh, so Angry Birds does its thing. This I think is Rio. Uh, and it's got sort of a not quite the same color logo at the top in Korean. So someone went in and needed to change the sprites and that's okay. Um, see what else? I think, I think I had a couple more that were interesting. So in settings, uh, you plug USB into this and it doesn't do anything. You, there's no debug mode. Uh, you sort of have limited settings, but you've got some. Um, and so what more do you do with this?  Here's the analog TV. You get three stations, uh, and then when you're not there, they're sort of fuzzy. Um, so luckily it does have a debug mode. Um, and so if you start up and hold all the buttons down, uh, it goes into Android recovery mode and it's only slightly broken. Uh, it doesn't have a shell or anything to like actually use ADB with, but you can still use push and pull to get files on and off of it.  Um, it has like, it's got a little mini SD card that has eight gigs on it and like six or seven different partitions because that's the way you do things. Um, and, and they're mounted at slash data, which might sound right. And also slash data too. And the APKs reference file statically at slash data too. So they won't really just transfer over, which is unfortunate. Um, so, so I looked at this a little bit. I was able to get some of the APKs and it's like, yeah, angry birds is still angry birds just with different sprites in it. Um, the, the speeches, which was the one I was sort of interested in, uh, isn't nearly as easy. I couldn't find the actual speech content anywhere on the thing and looked at the decks, uh, decompilation and, uh, it turns out that like it's loading in another encrypted partition to like get to that speech data. So they're really like actually trying to make it hard to, to take that APK and, and put it somewhere more accessible. Like that, that is, that is part of this device and not meant to go anywhere. Um, and that was about as far as I got on that. But, uh, if anyone wants to take a stab, I would welcome, uh, additional help. So I think that's, that's sort of the main things that I took away from it. Um, they're really customizing stuff to work in their market. As you would expect, they've got phones. I think Coriolink has over a million subscribers, something of that nature, which isn't that surprising because you see phones around Pyongyang quite a bit and Pyongyang, something like four million people. Um, so thank you. Thank you very much. That was a really, really interesting talk. Uh, you were very fast. So we have a lot of time for question and answers. And please curl up to the microphones. If you have any questions and to the other ones, please stay seated during the Q and A as it gets to know that if you absolutely have a pressing need to leave, then please do it quietly and do not, uh, disturb the others here. So, uh, the first one on the microphone one, please. Yeah. I have, uh, a couple of questions. Firstly, there are only men on this. What, what? Newer to the microphone, please. So it can also be, it can be good. Newer to with the microphone. Take the mouse and get to the microphone. Yeah. Okay. Absolutely. So, uh, there are only men on this picture. Uh, why is that? Uh, when the school opened, it, uh, was determined that the initial student body would be male. Uh, the foreign faculty, uh, are pushing to get, uh, females. The, uh, response is that there may be a nursing program opening that will have females, which isn't quite the same, but we're getting there. Um, there are like the other DPRK computer science professors. There are female ones, so it's not a uniform, uh, at the gender difference. Uh, it sounded like it was something like the students are supposed to sort of not really talk all that much about what they learn outside when they go home for the summer. And it was decided that, uh, guys were less chatty. Uh, and what, uh, what language, uh, I was teaching in English. I don't know Korean at all. Yeah. And, uh, translation and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, okay. So the, this university, uh, as, as students come in, they take one year of English, uh, English language as a foreign language, but most of them, I think pretty much all of them have had English in high school before they get to university level. So that's already somewhat good. And then a year of just intense English, uh, gets them up to the level where they, they do quite well in their major classes being taught in English. Okay. The next question for microphone, two please. And after that, we will have a question from the internet. Uh, so one question is there some kind of system dump of the operating system of the Android phone or Android tablet? Uh, so, so I got some of the partitions, but other ones don't like copy directly with ADV so I don't have the full thing. And it seemed weird to just have like partial partitions, uh, which is why I haven't done that. Okay. Now the question from our signal angel, please. Okay. Um, the first question from the, sorry, the first question from the internet is, um, how do you actually, um, keep up with the, uh, scene or culture with all the North Korean tech? I was there for two falls. Uh, so in fall of 2013, I was there for three months, uh, teaching and I went back for a few weeks, uh, earlier this fall for another lecture. Okay. Then we will go around for the number three, please. Hi. Um, I was wondering if you had any insight on what they're using, what you're, what you're teaching them for. I mean, what are they programming? What are they making? Do you have any idea or not? Right. So, so my basic sense because they kept asking about Android was that they realized that they've got this whole tablet and phone ecosystem that they need people to like develop. Uh, and they sort of would like to have more people who can do that. So it seemed like, uh, many of the students were, uh, as after they graduated likely to end up working on developing more of these apps and sort of advancing that. Uh, so the first, the first undergraduates, uh, graduated this fall, uh, and we know that some of them, uh, ended up going into sort of graduate programs for more education and other ones, uh, did end up working in these KCC MPIC labs, uh, doing computer stuff. Okay. Microphone for, please. Um, did you witness any non-elite students use technology outside maybe the university? So, so, um, you would see phones around Pyongyang. So, so beyond just the students, like the, the, the, the life that I saw was Pyongyang. We did not leave the city very much. Um, but although we did leave campus to some extent. Um, and so you would see people who were sort of normal Pyongyang residents and they would not be uncommon for them to have phones as well. Um, and you know, these, these students, not all of them were from Pyongyang. Some of them were sort of upper class, but we're from other provinces and, and came in for schooling. Uh, so it's not completely limited to the city, but I, I don't have a sense of exactly how that distribution of sort of the gradient of who has access falls. Any notebooks in the city somewhere? What? Any notebooks witnessed in the cities? Notebooks. Uh, you'd see them in shops. Some like you'd see the, the point of sale or that sort of thing. I didn't see that many, like I don't know if I was in situations where I would see people using personal laptops. Uh, like I didn't see in that much or nothing that like stands out to me, but I don't think I was expecting to either. Okay. To have a fair distribution of questions, uh, we have four minutes left. We take please microphone one, then two, and then the question from the internet, and then we will see how much time we have left. Oh, sorry. Sorry. I've, uh, it's very unfair. I didn't see you. You are hard to see from up here. Okay. I, I then we keep the order of the microphone, five microphone, six, and then we go on. Um, did you bring any of your own devices to the country and were they checked in any way? Or could you elaborate on this? Uh, so I brought a Chromebook, uh, because I liked having a TPM. Uh, it was not checked, uh, and it was, you know, seed seemed to stay fine the whole time.  And that got sort of a skeptical look when I opened it up at the border. Um, but they didn't seem to have problems with a bunch of bear circuit boards and camera modules. So. Hey, my microphone, what you want? Yeah. Microphone six, please. Uh, thanks for the talk. Uh, could you please upload an image of, you know, Red Star of S to the internet for research purposes? Yeah. So, okay. Uh, so, so I actually went, uh, uh, after asking one of the, the miners. So, so I guess I hadn't explained that we, we could walk around campus freely, but to leave campus, we had to go with, uh, a guide. Uh, and so there was a set of guides for the campus, for the foreigners. Uh, and so at one point I was able to convince them to take me to a computer store because the normal one we went to did not sell Red Star. Uh, so we went to, uh, I believe it was a reseller of KCC and for, uh, 2001 or 25 cents, I was able to get a copy, which is great. Um, however, I'm, I didn't want to like distribute it because it was like, well, I'm the only one who's like said that I've had it. But the good news is I got contacted earlier this fall by someone who claims that they want to put it online. So I would not be surprised if it actually ends up online pretty soon. Okay. We have still two minutes left. So some short question from microphone one, microphone two, and we will get to the internet. Yeah. If a question about, uh, kind of a level of network knowledge, because the map you have seen everywhere, class A, B and C networks, which is not available anymore since 20 years. Um, the first question is this class less into domain routing, uh, known there and is IPv6 available there? I did not see any evidence of IPv6. I don't think they're, they're up on that one yet. Um, the books that they had had BGP, they would ask me questions about BGP every once in a while. Um, I don't think it was a huge problem. They sort of just did things. So the campus network, right? I mentioned that it, uh, had a proxy. Uh, when you connected your device, it didn't have DHCP or any sort of default route. You had to explicitly type in the IP address of this gateway that you wanted to use as your proxy and sort of normal traffic you sent out would just fall on the floor. Um, and they chose that that internal network was going to be like the one 10 slash eight address space because they could, and I think it overlapped with a set of South Korean IP space. So that was cool. Um, so, so they sort of used segments of IPv4 that they want to. So just a short question, please. I know you wanted to take and talk about technology, not so much politics, but could you maybe tell us a little bit about the attitude of your students? Is there a hacker culture and spirit similar to what we have today value digital freedoms, individual empowerment like, like we do? Or what's the motivation of the students? I think the motivation for the students was pretty varied. Um, there were some of these guys really did enjoy computer science and computers and hacking on them. And like in their free time in the evenings, they would go up to the lab and play computer games or, um, work on coding. Uh, and so there was, there was some evidence, a lot of them sort of, uh, seemed either to end up at the school because, uh, it was pretty clear that English as a language is a pretty good skill to have, even if you don't care so much about your major, somewhere in that boat. Um, so I guess one, one anecdote to that is that there was this sort of copy of a DOS level operating system that some previous student that I think I got told Kim Il-sung University had, had written that you could boot up directly to that had a competitive two player Tetris that they really liked to play. Uh, and it was like nice 256 color, like, and they were really good at it. Uh, so, so there's, there are people who like are doing cool things over there. Uh, but I think it's not, uh, nearly at the same level as it is here. Okay, the time is nearly up. I think we take the question from the internet and then very, very short question from microphone six. I know it's unfair to everybody standing in line for the microphones, but we know we have only so much time. Please stand in line. Okay, um, the internet wants to know on which name the dot com top level domain is introduced there. Which top level domain do they use? Yeah, no, um, the dot because they want to know if like dot com was we labeled like, uh, what did they, uh, imperialist forbidden namespace or something?  And when you were on the internet, you were using public DNS. So I don't, I don't know of any particular remappings. Okay, so the last question, please. Yes, um, since they're using so old software and don't have access to updates on the internet, how do they handle viruses or hacker and so on? Or is this not happening? They keep reinstalling their operating systems regularly. So thanks to everyone. Sorry that we are not able to have all the questions asked, but I think you can meet Will Scott afterwards.