I will call the common council meeting to order for the fifth regular meeting. Will the clerk please say the court of the day Thank You mr. Mayor Communication works for those who work at it All right Would you call the roll as well all the person acle here all the person born here all the person Decker here all the person Felde? Here all the person Felikie Pineski here all the person Laster here all the person Mitchell excused all the person Pirella all the person Salazar here all the persons of Aglio present there are nine present for everyone in attendance. Would you please stand for the pledge of legions? Okay, is there a motion to approve the minutes for a previous meeting Move to approve second There's been a motion second any further discussion on the minutes from our previous meeting seeing none all those in favor, please state aye And you want to pose minutes are approved Anyone for public forum today clerk there is no one all right 5.1 Mayor appointments various city attorney The mayor has the following Appointments for your consideration to the board of marina parks and forestry commissioners Maryland month of mayor as the plan commission representative the joint review board mayor Ryan Sorenson as the city representative Mark Belke as the representative from the school district right clues from Lakeshore Technical College Roger to strutty County representative Roberta Felikie Pineski public representative to the library board Andre Walton To the mayor's international committee Tony Romer Deidre Martinez Peter Janssen Deb Sable Williams Dana Elmsen and Nick Laurie All right those will lay over 6.1 confirmation of mayor's appointments city attorney Submitting the following appointments for your consideration to the zoning board of appeals Nancy Maring to the housing rehab loan commission Andre Walton to the board of marina parks and forestry commissioners John Kailer Rebecca Clark Marge Mattern to the board of review Kathleen Donovan to the Historic Preservation Commission Carolyn Lee to the mayor's International Committee Carolyn Miesfeld rich Miesfeld Dane Schaefer and to the Shambuig and Transit Commission all the person Trey Mitchell All the person Barb Felde all the person Dean Decker Is there motion to confirm those appointments I move to confirm There's been a motion second.  All right seven point one confirmation of mayor's appointments city attorney mayor submitted the following appointment for your consideration Alderperson Leslie Laster district eight to be considered for appointment to the licensing hearings and public safety committee to fill the unexpired term of Ryan Sorenson whose term expires April 18 2022 I move to confirm second motion seconds. This is again a roll call roll call vote Eight eyes one abstain All right, that's approved. All right 1.8 is this presentation by our senior service director Emily Randell Arajo So Emily come on down Thank you mayor Sorenson. Thank you for pronouncing my name so well. No one gets it that well. Hi everyone I'm here this evening to share with you our new brand for the senior activity center of Sheboygan a few months ago Some members of the senior services commission and the friends of the senior activity center started the process of Going through a formal rebrand but this conversation has been going on for Five plus years probably our own alderperson flaky Paneski conducted some focus groups five years ago That identified that our membership was not happy with the name senior activity center of Sheboygan often abbreviated to sacks they also Don't enjoy being called seniors some other issues with the existing name of senior activity center of Sheboygan were that Where there's a lot of confusion with other organizations in town? Nursing homes rehab facilities most specifically Sheboygan senior community out on highway Y for which we receive calls About once a week and they receive calls for us about once a week So our goals when setting out on determining a new name and new brand to go along with our new building on North 8th Street was that we would have a unique a Unique name that would not be confused with any other organization and would accurately reflect the population that we serve which our adults 55 plus That are independent and active and still have a lot of life left to serve this community So our new name Members of the friends and the commission work together with dynamic agency Through the rebrand process the friends of the senior activity center are paying for this $25,000 to include the name the logo and a new website and Scott if you want to pull up our new name So the name that we agreed on and was voted and approved on by the friends and the commission last month is Uptown social with the tagline Sheboygan's hub for active seniors. So if we look at the next slide, we'll see the new logo We're very excited. We think this accurately reflects the population that we're serving The seniors that have been involved in the process feel strongly about the name They're very excited to not have to come to the sacks and we're also excited with the possibility of abbreviation Uptown social abbreviates to us and so we plan to have a lot of fun with our marketing terms Using us and Uptown social and so our intent is later this month we will be sharing this information at the annual meeting of the friends of the senior activity center and Going from there as we prepare for our new building I know you have a lot on your agenda. So if anyone wants to follow up with me separately I'm always available and I brought a giveaway for everyone any other questions for Emily at all Thank you. All right. Thank you. All right. Now. We'll do 1.9 mayor's announcements. All right. Good evening everybody. Thanks for being here This Monday evening, I'm gonna keep it relatively quick because we do have a long day and we've got a long agenda So I'm just gonna jump right into it and do some proclamations. So this is the fun part. All right. So first one I'll read both of them out to you first proclamation whereas President Abraham Lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation on January 1st 1863 Declaring the slaves in the Confederate territory Officially free paving the way for the passing of the 13th amendment which formally abolished slavery in the United States of America And whereas word about getting the signing of the emancipation proclamation was delayed by some two and a half years to June 19th 1865 and reaching authorities in African-Americans in the South and Southwest in the United States And whereas on June 19th has been a special meeting to the African-American community And it's officially called Juneteenth combining the words of June and 19th And is the oldest known public celebration of the end in slavery in the United States And whereas Juneteenth commemorates African-American freedom and celebrates the success gained through education and greater opportunity And whereas on a larger scale celebration of Juneteenth reminds each and every one of us The promise of freedom equality and opportunity are at the core of the American dream Now therefore I Ryan Sornsson mayor of the city Sheboygan do hereby proclaim June 19th 2021 as Juneteenth day And I would present this proclamation to pastor Michael Thomas And as well as other members of the black American community outreach. So if you want to come on up Present you this proclamation on behalf of the city and if you'd like to say a few words As the president of the black American community outreach, I would like to say Thank you to mayor Ryan To the city common council, you know Lots of people say that they care and they say that they should support and Then there are those who actually show that they care and show that they support I think that this is a great show And so We at the black American community outreach are gonna do our best to continue to uplift the entire Community in which we live in and I hope that you all will come out on June 19th and celebrate Juneteenth day with us. Thank you very much All right next one Whereas Sheboygan County the city Sheboygan is a community full of diversity and whereas the city of Sheboygan recognizes the importance of equality and freedom and Whereas we as a nation have come a long way since the Stonewall riots in 1969 And whereas the movement towards equal rights for lesbians gays bisexual transgender People still carry on with so much more progress to be made and whereas everybody should be able to live free without fear of Prejudice discrimination violence or hatred based on who they are as a person And whereas the city of Sheboygan is dedicated to fostering a community of acceptance regardless of one sexual orientation or gender identity And whereas June is celebrated as LGBTQ plus pride month all over the globe and now therefore I Ryan Sorenson mayor of the city Sheboygan do hereby proclaim June 2021 as LGBTQ plus pride month and I will Present this proclamation to the Sheboygan County LGBTQ Alliance so Carolyn come on up and other members of the Alliance come on up as well Mayor thank you so much the Sheboygan County LGBTQ Alliance exists to raise awareness of the diversity of the LGBTQ community Address the needs of our queer residents and build solidarity and allyship and support action for intersectional justice We envision a community that is welcoming safe and informed Two days ago with the Alliance hosted Sheboygan's second annual pride celebration Virtually this year and we heard personal stories and messages from a series of local LGBTQ plus residents I hope many of you were able to tune in but if you weren't you can find the recording on our Facebook page one of the major projects of the Sheboygan County LGBTQ Alliance is working on is organizing a comprehensive LGBTQ resource guide that something that has never been done in Sheboygan County and in addition to that We're focused on outreach to employers educators Healthcare providers and community leaders so that we can be more responsive and proactive in addressing the needs of our community We're really excited about what's to come and though we're still an all-volunteer community-based organization We want to evolve into the go-to local resource for LGBTQ community members and our allies I'll just close by saying progress can often seem slow or difficult to measure But it means something to have formal public support of the queer community at the city leadership level I can tell you having been privileged to be the officiant of the first legal same-sex marriage in Sheboygan County seven years ago this week and Also now to have the honor to represent the Sheboygan County LGBTQ Alliance as its chair Tonight represents progress and here tonight with me are Jamie Lammers and Kate Krause two of the co-founders of the Sheboygan County LGBTQ Alliance and I know that each of us has experienced real setbacks and discrimination as members of the local queer community This won't be the last time you'll see the alliance in these chambers as we continue to push for full equality for the LGBTQ community in Sheboygan And so while there's still a lot of work to do we're really pleased to join you tonight to celebrate progress. Thank you Thanks everyone and for folks. You don't have to stay for for this part, too You're excused unless you want to stay Alright, we'll jump right on to the consent agenda 2.1 is their motion to receive and file all our O's and receive all our C's and adopt the resolutions I move to receive all and file all our O's receive all our C's and adopt all Resolutions and ordinances second. There's been a motion second any discussion on the consent agenda. I have one Go ahead. Roberta. I would like to Have an explanation for 2.2. We are being asked to authorize Licensing and I read the document the licenses have already been granted. Can we know? Why? You're not you're not being asked to authorize them They are being reported to you as is required by ordinance So what you're doing is receiving the document and as As it's been as the licenses have been granted. Perfect. Thank you Any other discussion on any items from the consent agenda? Right. This is a roll call vote. So please check your board docs. I'm asleep. I I keep it keeps going out. Okay Thank you nine eyes. All right Port of officers 3.1 our number 21 21 22 by the city plan commission to whom was referred Resolution number 9-21 dash 22 by elder persons Mitchell and Pirella approving the capital improvements program is Recommended by the capital improvements commission for the program period from 2022 to 2026 in adopting the program for Implementation which is to report that this matter was discussed at a at the regular meeting of the city plan commission on April 25 2021 and after due consideration recommends adopting the resolution Hold a person Pirella Is there a second second motion motion in second any further discussion all the person born Your wolf. Could you tell us? I believe it's going to be about $3.1 million in capital improvements And what the breakdown is going to be between borrowing and fund balance? Thank You're all they're born With this this upcoming program and capital improvements We are looking to perk to borrow two million in geo bonding and we are looking to Utilize one million forty five thousand in General general public general funding. Thank you. Thank you Any other questions from elders? So you minister any additional comments on this item? Thank you, mayor I guess what I would like to Bring forward is that this program Which is quite different than what we've presented in past For those of us that have been through capital improvements To me this was a very streamlined process for 2022 It also keeps us within the guidelines that I've brought forward to the council where we need to Continuously review the amount of debt that we we incur in the future years We need to start utilizing some of our general fund balance and being better stewards in in our borrowing Borrowing practices so this takes advantage of all of that it keeps us within Two million dollar borrowing and it also is utilizing a million forty five thousand dollars of general fund and please understand that from 2020 We rolled over In excess of a million two hundred thousand plus dollars in round numbers. So really this is net neutral From that perspective. We're not actually pulling out of the pool. We're actually just using a Million forty five thousand of the rollover. Thank you Any additional questions on this item? This is a roll call vote Nine eyes All right items three point two through three point six will be referred to various committees 4.1 through 4.7 will additionally be referred to committees as well reports of committees 5.1 RC number thirty five twenty one dash twenty two by the finance and personnel committee to whom was referred resolution number 10 dash 21 dash 22 by elder persons Mitchell and flaky Paneski Authorizing a budget adjustments for the appropriations in the twenty twenty one budget regarding the my civics citizen engagement system Software system and recommends adopting the resolution all the person flaky Paneski I move that we adopt the resolution Second just been a motion in a second. Is there any discussion on this item? Any comments from the city administrator on this item? Thank you mayor I just want to thank everybody for the support on this mice my civic My civic is going to be a great addition to the to our city It'll basically give us an an app where we will a will be able to actually communicate Outwards and our constituents will be able to communicate better in words within to the city So it's not just a 3-1-1 where people can basically report a pothole Because that never happens or other issues within the city It's more of the fact that we can push information out to the constituents But it's also going to be a hub as you get as we've all been Presented where we'll be able to actually have you know the the city's website Connection will be able to have DPW In the future. We're hoping to be able to get our Restaurants and our downtown district to actually have A link in there where they can click on it and it'll take them to the many wonderful Restaurants that we have within our community and other features. So this is this is the beginning It's also going to be able to assist us in our upcoming strategic plan in communicating with our constituents So thank you for your support Any additional comments? See none. This is a roll call vote. Hi nice. All right 5.2 RC number 3621 22 by the licensing hearings and public safety committee to whom was referred general ordinance number 3-21-22 by older persons Feldy Ackley and Decker amending the municipal code So as to temporary reduced fees for sidewalk cafes and recommends adopting the ordinance older person Feldy I move to receive the RC and adopt the ordinance There's been a motion second any discussion on this item see none. This is a roll call vote Nice. All right. That is approved Items 6.1 through 6.6 will be referred to various committees 7.1 Other matters authorized by law city attorney 7.1 is an arrow by the city clerk submitting various license applications for the period ending December 31, 2021 April 14 2022 June 30 2020 32 in June 30 2023 All right, and that will be referred to the licensing hearings and public safety committee All right number eight. We have a contemplated closed session older person Feldy I Move to convene in closed session under the exemption provided in section 19.851 E Wisconsin stat Statted for the purpose of discussion related to a possible development Incentive regarding the former shopco store located at 518 South Taylor Drive We're competitive and bargaining sessions require closed session and under the exemption provided in section 19.851 g Wisconsin statutes for the purpose of discussion Related to possible litigation related to the termination of one or more city employees were legal counsel We'll render oral advice concerning strategy to be adopted by the body with respect to litigation in which It is likely to become involved Is there a second second all right, there's been a motion in second. This is a roll call vote to convene in closed session My nice. All right. We are we'll convene in closed session in about two minutes then so everyone from the public please We will not be coming back into open session. So this will conclude our meeting for the day. Do we want to meet in here?


What lies ahead for the narcissist? What do they have in store for them? What awaits them? Narcissists can be very grandiose They can be very impressive and imposing in appearance and style They can be arrogant and audacious They can be very entitled They can reveal an exaggerated sense of their own importance and abilities Which leads them to believe that they are inherently deserving of privileges and special treatment and when you first meet them You may believe in this illusion You may validate their false self But as time goes by You begin to realize that it's all a lie They're not as great as they claim to be They're just exaggerating they're trying to impress you Because not only does it get them what they want But it also gives them supply it makes them feel special and important It makes them feel desirable and attractive But this only works as long as people believe in the illusion As long as people validate their false self Once you stop believing in it it all falls apart They can no longer control you or make you do what they want And they will immediately sense it They will notice that you no longer believe in the illusion They will notice that you no longer validate their false self and that is when they will discard you That is when they will no longer want anything to do with you Because the narcissist does not want to live in reality They only want the fantasy They want to live in this imaginary world where they are everything. They wish they could be and when they leave you This desire doesn't magically go away They still want to be this larger-than-life character They still want to have it all but to manifest any of that You first have to accept that you don't have it While narcissists just want to be that right now Without putting in any of the work They just want to fast forward to the part where they get reactions of admiration and desire from other people Because there is no real meaning or purpose to anything they do All they care about is how people respond to it Which is why they can never be happy Because they focus so much on other people's reactions And although many people may fall for the illusion As soon as one person doesn't it hits them like a ton of bricks It makes them forget about everyone who did support them And then they just want to destroy that one person who didn't validate their false self Who didn't go along with their agenda Because in that moment, it's like life or death for the narcissist Their feelings about themselves don't come from within Which means that they cannot experience true happiness They can only experience emotions based on how they think other people think of them Many YouTubers who talk about this May say that what lies ahead for the narcissist is nothing but difficulties and problems And while there may be some truth to this, I would like to take it even deeper There are times when it seems like the narcissist is happy There are times when it seems like they're having a good time But the truth is that none of it is even real Because their experiences are not generated from within They can't be generated from within Because even they're not real They created a false self Which needs to be propped up by other people So they experience life through the lens of how other people view them Rather than how they view themselves Which means that they're not really living They're operating on a very low consciousness They're not really experiencing life What lies ahead for the narcissist Narcissists experience conflict with almost everyone they deal with There's always something that needs to be resolved Nothing ever goes smoothly They deceive everyone they meet They lie to them And at some point people figure them out They realise what they're doing And then they want nothing to do with them Because they realise they've just been conned They realise they've been taken advantage of And they don't want to be their fool anymore They want to take back control over their own lives By no longer being involved with them So as time goes by, people will abandon the narcissist They won't want anything to do with them The narcissist may go through a period of isolation They may be left alone Or they may find an enabler They may find someone who gives them the means to continue their behaviour Or this person may be too afraid to leave Because that's usually what they end up with People who don't really want to be around them But they're afraid to leave They're afraid of what the narcissist might do if they try to escape But the narcissist never really finds anyone who really loves or respects them It's either people who are too afraid to leave Or people who are just using them People who just want them for money or sex The narcissist created a false self Because they wanted to feel valued and respected When that was the very thing that stopped them from ever receiving that Because how can anyone ever value or respect a porn artist Someone who lies to you Someone who intentionally tries to deceive you So in the end or they end up with Are people who are too afraid to leave Or people who are just as fake as them Because anyone who really loves and values themselves Is not going to want to deal with them They're not going to put themselves in a position to be disrespected Because that's all the narcissist is going to do They don't value themselves So they cannot value you Which is why the best thing you can do Is just to leave them alone Walk away and focus on your own life I'm not going to say that all that lies ahead for the narcissist Is misery and pain Maybe there will be times where they actually feel like they're happy But it isn't real It's all a facade It's an outward appearance that is maintained to conceal a less pleasant or credible reality They're just doing everything they can to escape how they really feel Which is actually the very thing that would set them free Narcissists are broken damaged people Who will do anything to appear whole and complete When the irony is That the first step to them being that which they seek Is to confront the fact that they are broken If they would just do that they would be fine But they don't Because it's too painful for them to deal with They have too much pride and arrogance They're crazy They don't want to do the work And they don't think that they should have to But because of that It greatly affects what lies ahead for them Because even if they think they're having a good time without you It isn't even real Their happiness is determined by how they think other people see them It's not based on how they feel about themselves Because they don't self reflect or look within They live from the outside in rather than the inside out Which means that all they can experience are the other people's realities Which is why their identity is just a concoction Of different people that they have seen in magazines or on TV Because they're not really living They're not really alive They're just imitations It's like a simulation of life Because they're not connected to reality Reality to a narcissist is like sunlight to a vampire What lies ahead for the narcissist? What do they have in store for them? What awaits them? What lies ahead for the narcissist? Is similar to what they have already seen in their lives More problems and difficulties More stressful situations Which they struggle to deal with And while it may seem like there are moments of happiness Or peace It isn't real A narcissist idea of having fun Is to make other people envious or jealous of them That's what gives them satisfaction Because they cannot experience anything they have directly It doesn't do anything for them They can only experience it vicariously for other people Which is why they have to make you envious or jealous They have to make you feel like you're missing out Which then makes them feel like they have something They look at it like If you want it Then they must have something great But they cannot experience that directly on their own They can only experience happiness and satisfaction Based on their real or imagined perceptions of other people's envy or jealousy They live vicariously for other people They live in a way that is experiencing their imagination Through the feelings or actions of other people Through imaginative or sympathetic participation in the experiences of them Other people are merely mirrors They reflect something back to the narcissist Which is why there's never any real human connection You never feel like you're understood by them And you have difficulty understanding them A person who is detached from self Will be detached from other people But they watch how other people interact And they mirror their behaviour That's how they create the illusion But really Nothing good lies ahead for the narcissist If it looks good It isn't real Thank you for watching I hope this video resonates with you Please like, comment, share and subscribe If you would like to donate My PayPal link is in the video description Coaching Inquiries You can email me at coaching.narchsurvivor.co.uk Thank you for watching and I'll talk to you soon


Today we had the change of command ceremony for the battalion command position. My battalion commander, former battalion commander was Lieutenant Colonel Haynes and now we have just introduced our new battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Gary Dales. It is my honor and privilege to serve with you as your commander and teammate. We have a lot in common. We shared past units. He's a former sky soldier such as I am, so we have so many things in common. He is going to provide strong guidance. He's going to be one of our biggest supporters. He's going to always advocate for his soldiers. Exciting times for the battalion. I know it's exciting times for him. Being the new commander, he is just full with excitement and he's ready, he's chomping at the bit to get started.


Hi, I'm Jackie, the nurse from Professional Supplement Center, and today I'd like to talk to you about some products from our featured brand, Metagenix. Based on sound scientific research, Metagenix develops medical foods, nutraceuticals, and lifestyle medical programs that are designed to address an individual's genetic potential for health through nutrition. Since 1983, Metagenix has provided innovative formulas of the highest possible quality and strives to offer a unique approach to wellness by delivering safe, effective, and reliable solutions for targeted, enhanced health support. Based on customers' reviews, here are some of their top-rated formulas. Cal Appetite Bone Builder Forte, backed by 30 years of clinical research, this product supplies a full spectrum of premium quality macro and micro minerals, which naturally comprise healthy bone and support of bone nourishment and mineralization. Multigenix Intensive Care Without Iron, formulated with high-quality, bio-available vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, and designed for optimal absorption, this product provides advanced nutritional wellness support. Myocom PM, this product provides a synergistic blend of natural, bio-available minerals and specialized herbs for comprehensive support of the muscle skeletal system. Strategic Nighttime Muscle Relaxation, and the Relief of Occasional Sleeplessness. If you have any questions about these or any other products from Metagenix, please call, email, or visit Professional Supplement Center where our knowledgeable and friendly staff is always happy to assist you.


The Minister of Defence, a Major General Bashir Salehi Maghshi, retired, has commended the Nigerian Air Force for its readiness to support the Independent National Electro-Commission, INEC, to airlift its staff and logistics before, during and after the 2023 general elections. The Defence Minister gave the commendation during the roll-out ceremony of C-130 Hekali's aircraft at the 631 Aircraft Maintenance Depot in Ikeja, General Maghshi, who was represented by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence, Dr. Ibrahim Abu Bakr Khana, said he was pleased to recognize NAV's preparations towards the forthcoming elections. logistics and the forthcoming general elections. It is on these notes that we welcome NAV 918 back to operational readiness to achieve its logistics assignments. In country, periodic maintenance improved Nigerian Air Force aircraft's visibility, as well as significantly reduced its maintenance cost of carrying out such maintenance overseas, thereby conserving foreign exchange for the country.


It's better to ask for forgiveness than permission unless it comes to marketing. Keep watching to find out what book we're talking about today. So hey, I'm Kyla Denayo and welcome to Kyla's Reading Day. So today we're talking about the book Permission Marketing. Okay? This book is written by Seth Godin. The genre of the book is nonfiction. The theme of the book is marketing and business. So I saw this book. Come on. The cover. Of course I had to pick it up. Of course. All right. I was still going through my whole confidence boosting business. Let's get it. And so I picked this up and the book was very, very simple. And the whole point of the book is very simple. You need to ask permission before you start contacting people for things. Okay. And it makes me think about sales funnels and how you bring all these people in with your lead magnet on your website. If you don't know what I'm talking about, Google it. And then they put in their email address and you can start emailing them. Hey, are you interested in this? Hey, do you like that? Hey, do you like this? And the more people that open your emails and look at them and whatever, you move down the funnel. But the whole point is go back years, years, years ago. Examples in this book are about Yahoo and AOL. Things that are not really prevalent right now and AOL just stopped using their email addresses, right? So old, old examples, but the point is still relevant. So honestly, I would say that this book is the precursor to most online marketing things. I mean, definitely MailChimp, ConvertKit, those kind of things where you do put customers into a sales funnel and you start to predict what they need and how you can show them that you have value so that they buy from you, right? So the entire point of permission marketing is just that you should have your customer's permission before you start to ask them to buy from you, before you start to ask them to read your things and to do all the stuff because once you have willing participants, it's a lot easier to sell to them. So that's what we would call having a warm lead versus a code lead, right?  They're not going to say anything about it. If I post this shirt on my You Are Lawyer podcast page, that page is full of lawyers, law students, people who know me from law school, they'll probably say, yo, where can I buy that shirt? Okay? And it's the difference between having a code lead, someone that you just know casually from anywhere and a warm lead, right? And then if we narrow that down even further to people who are part of my newsletter list, not really a plug unless you're interested in lawyer things or you just think I'm cool.  Clearly you're enjoying the video. You're still watching. Go ahead and hit subscribe so that you can find out what I'm talking about in other videos. Okay? You're used to hearing from me. You're used to getting emails about the podcast and things I'm doing and all of that kind of stuff. So you'd probably say, oh, of course, the next step would be for her to have a shirt or something like that, right? So it's a completely different thing. But I will say that while reading this book, I did have to Google is permission marketing still a thing? And I found that people aren't still calling it permission marketing right now in 2023, there's all of this legislation and all of these legal acts where you cannot just collect people's data, do anything with it, right? Data privacy is an entire new sphere, a new department of most law firms, most corporations. So now there's all these different things, right? But I have to believe that they were all grown from permission marketing because the whole point of this book is if you have permission to contact someone about specific things, then you'll have a lot more success with selling to them. Okay? Very good book. There was a point where Seth Godin told 10 things that you needed and I wrote those down. Find the lifetime value of your new customers, find methods of dating, right? Are you dealing with someone who wants to be around all the time, someone who kind of wants to be casual, you need to figure out what kind of customer. Third, change all your ads to include a call of action, measure permissions that you receive, assign a person to guard the permissions, decrease work to frequency, all this other stuff, right? So a really important book. And what I reread it, absolutely. I mean, it's about marketing. Marketing back in 2000 is no less important than marketing in 2023, right? Again, change out the companies, AOL and Yahoo, switch out those things for, you know, chat, GBT and Slack. But it's all still marketing. It's all still contacting people. And it's all still ways of turning strangers into friends and friends and the customers, which is the tagline of this book. So thank you for hanging out with me today. As we discussed the book permission marketing. Okay, let me know. Are you a business owner? Are you remotely interested in marketing? Right? I didn't go to school for marketing. I'm only looking into it now because I want to start a new business. And I look forward to talking to you about other books I'm reading on Kyla's reading day. Bye


And moving on to other parts of Africa, France is looking for other alternatives for its Barcaine forces that are leaving Mali following the fallout with the current regime as it has earlier announced it will position its soldiers in other Sahel countries, including Chad to help in the fight against Jihadists in the region. The announcement of the withdrawal of the French force Barcaine and the European members of the Special Forces Group Tacuba had been anticipated for several weeks in the face of hostility from the ruling junta in Mali and parts of the population. On Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron made official the withdrawal of French troops and their European partners from Mali, where France has been fighting Jihadists for nine years but wants to remain engaged in the fight in the Sahel-enabling countries. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


I'm Lise Dusset, BBC correspondent, and I first moved to Jordan in 1994. And being here today at the Dead Sea, at the King Hussein bin Telal Convention Centre, at the lowest point on earth, I can't help but remember the stirring words of King Hussein a little more than 20 years ago, when he invoked the urgency of peace by saying world leaders had to do it for the sons and the daughters of Abraham. Here we are, more than two decades on, and it's not just the sons and daughters of Abraham that are waiting, it's the grandsons and granddaughters and grand-grandsons and grand-granddaughters. And the risks and dangers now confronting this region would have been unimaginable in 1994. And yet for all of the dangers confronting the region, and the possibilities too, I think all of you would agree with me here today that the core problem, the core issue to be resolved remains the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And a man who believes it in his core, who has spent a lifetime on this issue, is our guest in conversation for the next half hour and more.  And your story is indeed the story of Israel and the region. A man who played the leading role in developing the Israeli military in its early years as a state. A man who also won the Nobel Peace Prize with Yasser Arafat in an effort to make peace. Twenty years on since the Oslo peace process, Shimon Peres, there is no peace, no process. Oslo is doing pretty well, but that is about it. And we would like to explore with you a little bit about how you see the way ahead. But let me begin first with a personal question. You're a man who has always said that you find vacations boring. You have held every top job in Israel. You have served in 12 governments. You completed your term as the Israeli president. How would you describe your job now? To look to the future like always. I think the past is irrelevant. And what happened happened. It's over. Now we have to look with a fresh eye at the new world, by the way. It's not there is just another tomorrow. We live in a tomorrow already. Because in addition to the old arrangements that were basically done by governments and people made their life out of the land of agriculture, there was a set of government, which included the defense of the land, the attack of land, you need armies, you went to war. And all of a sudden we found ourselves in a new age of science. Science is borderless. You cannot make the world again divided by borders. Then again, science cannot be conquered by armies. Finished. Science cannot be commanded by governments. Because it depends upon the people who are innovating and innovating in a surprised way. And science changed even the meaning of democracy. It's no longer, it's not longer enough to say that democracy means that every person has an equal right, equal rights. Today you have to adhere to it. Every person has the equal right to be different. Difference as well today recognized as equality. And look at the global companies. You'll find there an assembly of people from all four corners of the world. And we don't need partitions. We cannot organize the globality in governments. Globality is the major economic rule, but there is no global government or global companies. And they exist based upon norms and behavior. And the global companies know they don't have power. They will not have power. The only power they have is good jobs, good products, telling the truth, serving the people. Even there is no room for leaders today. Because leaders cannot order. Leaders can serve. And global companies today are more serving than ruling. And they don't worry anybody. Previously, if I would come to the country, I would have to say I am Israeli or you are an English or American or whatever it is.  You don't carry a flag. You don't carry a passport. You are not going to win anything but to win the trust of as many clients as you can. So now the world, half of it is already in the new age. Half of it is in a transitional period. And we can see the cost of transition. We live in a new age with an old mind. And it's very hard to get rid of the old mind. You know, historians previously investigated history in order to learn from history. Today they do it in order to escape history. Let's look to the future. You've outlined some of your philosophy of business, your philosophy of globalization. Many of the men and women sitting here are here in the Dead Sea because they want a better, stronger economic future. But they all know that there cannot be a stronger, better economic future unless there is a better political future. When you spoke at the World Economic Forum in January before the Israeli elections, you said the Israeli elections would determine the fate of the peace process and whether the stalemate would be broken. And you said the contest in Israel was basically between those who believe in a two-state solution and those who are managing a crisis. Well, the Israeli public voted for those who are managing a crisis. So do you believe the prospects for a two-state solution are now lower? If it's possible to manage a crisis, you don't have a crisis. A crisis is a situation that you cannot manage. And every government must go out of the crisis. Do you think there is a crisis in peacemaking now? The government just started. It's a one week old government. And there were already some major events. Not all of them were accepted as great favor, as you may know. And I think when I think about governments, they told you respect to the prime ministers, to the ministers. They must submit to realities because they cannot change them. So to announce a policy is not enough. You have to follow the real trends in life. And sooner or later, I believe that the trend, the new trend, will have the real world. When you're saying what has the policy so far, what we have to judge so far, are you referring to the effort to try to segregate Israelis and Palestinians on buses in the West Bank? No, no, no. That was a terrible mistake. And even the prime minister himself condemned it. And he said clearly, as I do, this is against our own laws. It is in contradiction with the Declaration of Independence of Israel. In the Declaration of Independence of Israel, all people are equal, have the right. And we have two million citizens who are Arabs. So what? So they are, I mean, there are citizens with the same rights like any other citizen. And they have 13 member in the parliament. And they are being counted. And also what you said about peace, I know, let's not forget there was something that we shouldn't forget. It's true that we have to have peace with the Palestinians the sooner the better. It's no way in my judgment to achieve it without the two state solution. But don't forget that we have already two agreements of peace, one with the largest Arab country, Egypt, and other with our nearest Arab neighbor, Jordan. And it holds on already a long time withstanding many difficulties and many disappointments. Either them or us doesn't matter. But it's a piece. War never ends. Peace never stops. Help us to understand Israeli society. Now you said this morning that a large majority of Israelis would like a two state solution and absolutely believe this. Yes. But everyone here would have watched the Israeli election. And of course, we're going to accept the verdict of the Israeli public. But the vote seemed to swing in the final days when Prime Minister Netanyahu made it clear that there would be no Palestinian state on his watch. What are we to understand then about the Israeli public? Are they moving? Are they truly still believing in a two state solution? Or how do we interpret their vote for someone who said it would not happen? Prime Minister Netanyahu just this week, the foreign minister of Norway and the foreign minister of the European Union, it made clear that he didn't give up the vision of the two state solution. So it's not dead. Now counting depends how did it find. If the Prime Minister says I am for a two state solution, I would say he belongs to the majority. He's appointed a chief negotiator, Sylvan Shalom. Yes, he's on record saying he does not believe in a two state solution. We all know it took Nixon to go to China that history can bring surprises. Well, I don't think that you can be a member of a government without following the policy of the government. Private views are private views. They were the Prime Minister declares on behalf of his government to foreign ministers. I think the rest of the members of the cabinet have to follow suit. You probably know better than any other Israeli leader, the difficulties and the challenges of making peace. We've heard from President Obama this week, he's done an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, in which he talked about how the present situation was at a dead end. How would you see, how would you advise to try to revive this peace process and if it's possible to do so? The best way is to start as soon as possible the negotiations between us and the Palestinians. We agreed on many points. It doesn't start from zero. There is also an interesting document that was published by the Arab League by this audience calling for peace. Some points are acceptable. Other points are controversial. So we have to negotiate the controversial points, but we don't start from nothing. And I believe that what should be done, I just saw the president of the Palestinian people and he says he's ready to go to negotiate without prior conditions. I think it's a right approach. When you call for talks, should these be direct talks or should it revert to what John Kerry had brought about, which was mediated talks with the United States? Well, we have had dark talks with the Egyptians, and it succeeded. We have had dark talks with the Jordanians, with King Hussein, God bless his memory. And they wind it up as a success. I think we have to follow the same way, better to speak face to face. Because actually, when you negotiate, you're looking for alternative solutions. Then you see that two parties cannot solve, cannot agree. And you think you have two options. One thing that I would advise to every negotiator, never forget there is a third option that you didn't think about. And that may be the option that will be accepted. Because when you have two options, you have already two oppositions to the options, either by the other side or in by yourself. And you have always to introduce creativity and ingenuity to overcome the bridge. And I remember I was active in the two negotiations. There were problems we thought we cannot solve. The last moment, we found a way out overcome them. And for that reason, I think direct talks is the best way. I don't know what President Abbas said to you today, but what we know is that the Palestinians have begun to look at another option joining the ICC pursuing statehood through the United Nations recognition in European capitals, because they say, we've waited 20 years since Oslo, we cannot wait any longer. What do you say to them? I say what I think, namely, that the ICC is not necessarily machinery to make peace. There's another task, whom to blame. But it is not as simple to ask the ICC a priority to blame somebody. Because one of the rules of the ICC is, if they found that the government that is being accused has investigated the case herself with the proper group of charges, that's another story. So ICC has to start and understand the postpone that the considerations. But ICC is a problem. That's the reason, for example, like the United States is not a member of it. You cannot be a law enforcer if you don't have laws. We don't have a book of international laws. And what about their quest to get recognition in various European and other capitals? I think... Country by country, a Palestinian state is born, but not on the ground. I am not sure this is a very wise way for the simple reason, because at the Security Council, there are members that can put a veto. Better to go. We are for a Palestinian state. We think it should be recognized. But we suggest the recognition will come after we agree, not before a dot instead. Otherwise, you go again in another controversy, and people are becoming angry and protesting, but as itself. You have to, first of all, agree and then to recognize, because we have complicated problems. And just to give a recognition as an expression of words doesn't serve the purpose. I think everything should be judged on the record of doings, not on the record of declarations. Do you understand the Palestinian frustration then to say, we've waited 20 years, and so they're judging it by the record that there isn't a state now, and they believe it becomes less and less possible by the year. Look, I can understand the Palestinian frustration. I hope the Palestinian can understand our frustration as well. And not that I want to go into an argument, but I want to make people understand why is there so much opposition to continue the peace process? One day, the most unexpected person, Ariel Sharon, who was the greater settlement maker, stood up and to the surprise of everybody, he says, I am going to leave Gaza. We had 22 settlements there, 8,000 settlers. We are going to leave unconditionally. It was a tragedy in the eyes of many people. To bring back the 8,000 settlers back home, we have had to spend over $3 billion, and we have to send 75,000 policemen with integrity. Yet we did it completely. Gaza was handed over to Palestinian lands. None of us, including myself, can understand then or now why after having back everything, and Gaza becoming completely Palestinians. Why did Hamas started to fire missiles against us? Against mothers? A million mothers that couldn't sleep a night with their children? Why? We are not in Gaza. So, you know, frustrations is not who is announcing it with stronger voice. But you must be sensitive when you negotiate to the outside as well. This is, I mean, as you know, the issue of Gaza. And now, excuse me, just, and you know, that's one of the problems people say, how can you trust? Suppose we shall do like it in the West Bank. And we shall give away, give back the land, some of the land. And they'll start shooting at us. It's very hard to convince the people. You know, the people are saying to me as a negotiator, for example, says, yes, we are for peace. Yes, we are ready to pay the price. Why are you paying so much? Why are you so naive to believe everything? Or can I convince him that I am a great negotiator? Very hard. I can convince them that we are not paying too much, but we are really making peace.  Peace is a little bit like love. You have to close a little bit your eyes in order to get to the wedding. And not look back. Gaza, as everyone in this room knows, the situation in Gaza is a complicated history, including control of the borders and control of the sea. But we're not going to, for the purposes of this conversation, we won't. No, Gaza is not complicated. We recognize Gaza as part of the Palestinian land. In Gaza, the borders are clear. And we are not there. So what is complicated? The complication comes from something that complicates the life of all of us, Arabs and the Jews alike. And that is terror. The problem in Gaza is not territory, but terror. And it is in many other countries, like in Syria, like in Iraq, like in Yemen, like in Libya. We have a common problem. And I think we have to draw in forces to bring an end to terror. To terror is to killing innocent people in the thousands. And blood is flowing in the streets. Or to see a million refugees, all of a sudden, men and women and all the women and young boys are losing their homes. That is the great problem today. This is again, try to help us to understand the thinking in Israeli society when they when Israelis look at Gaza, then they are members of the government who start advocating the annexation of the West Bank of unilaterally drawing the lines of the West Bank of one state solution. Different options are being being proposed by leading members of the Israeli government. Are these serious options? Would they would they have a chance of being implemented? Options have the character of not being implemented. It's an option. So people are free to suggest whatever they want. We have to refer to facts and deeds. The problem in life is never what to be. The problem in life is always what to do. And I would refer to the doings, not to the speeches. I mean, the Middle East is not short of speech makers. Some of them are even a little bit exaggerating. It doesn't matter. But what really counts are the facts. Let me bring it to the business community.  You've come to many of the world economic forums. And I think many of the people who are coming here will remember that one of the hopes of this forum, and in fact, you can describe the forum today as one of action and hope, was that it could serve to bring together Israeli, Palestinian and Arab business people to have a better economic cooperation. But in fact, it hasn't had that impact. Nine wefts on. That dream, that ambition, which seemed to make good economic and financial sense, has not been achieved. I think you are right, but only partly. Because today there is a dominating economy. It's the global one. And the global economy, there are no Arabs, no Jews, no black, no white. It's as I have said, an economy without borders. And an economy without differences. An economy which is based of a fair play, transparency and honesty. And there are a great deal of business already between the economic forum here, or like many other global companies, that there are corporations already, much more than people know, but not enough that people hope for. So we have to push it ahead. I think we have really to conduct our peace negotiations on two levels, a two deck bus, one the national, the other the global. One should not be instead of the other, and the other and one should be before the other. It can be done simultaneously and parallel. And that's why I have much respect for this meeting and gatherings. But even with global companies, we will find today, global companies who come from different nations and are going to many other nations, even if they don't have good relations. Because the global meetings, you don't have confrontations. We have really cooperation. We started actually the first meeting. And I think that also affected very much the global forum. And that was a very large gathering that took place in Casablanca. There were 4,000 people from the Arab world, from Israel, from elsewhere, kings, ministers, businessmen, entrepreneurs, it was a great success. And many connections started there. And they existed this day. You know, usually, the business people are not as anxious to publicity as the politicians are. A politician must, unfortunately, keep his name on the headline. Well, there wasn't. And the companies give their name on the balance sheet. There was a time about 15 years ago, where in Israel and in Palestinian areas, they said, let us try, let us the business community try to make peace, because the politicians are failing. And then they too became frustrated and disappointed. Why? Peace came followed with Egypt and Jordan. And our joint business. And there are also joint business between among individuals, from many Arab countries, from Israel, from elsewhere. Because business is business. And conflicts are conflicts. They are not the same. And I really believe that the global economy gives us a chance not to wait until the peace negotiations will be completed. But right now, to deepen the relationship, because I want to tell you what one learned, including myself, is you cannot escape poverty just by agriculture. The best way to escape poverty is by high tech. And two large countries that were among the poorest on earth, China and India, escaped poverty, not by foreign aid, but by introducing technology and high tech. There is no reason why Arab countries or not Arab countries will not do alike. And they can do. Then again, I would like to say there are 400 million Arabs in the Middle East. 60% of them are below the age of 25. As the President Assisi says today, they are the future. Many of them are ready on their way to enter the new age. 144 millions of them have smart phones. If you have a smart phone, it's like having X-rays. And I think they are the future. And I think they will save their countries. And all of us pray for them. Because the better the Arabs will have it, the better relations we shall have with the Arabs. And we are very much interested to see the Arab world flourishing. And we feel like many Arabs, that the tragedy is terrible, that leads to nowhere. I, there are different religions. I don't know any religion that says that to cut the head is an order from the Lord in heaven. I don't know any religion like it. And I think also the religious leaders have to raise their voice. Because the terrorists are very smart in their public relations. And they tempt many young people to come and become terrorists telling them a simple truth, cut the head of people and those of the problems. It's nonsense. And I think the leaders, the religious leaders must come together, raise their voice. Tell the young generation it's wrong. It's a sin. It shouldn't be done. And believe me, we are on the same front. Exactly the same front. That was changed in the Middle East.  They are endangering lives of all of us. Well, let's finish this conversation with one last look ahead by you. This of course is a forum which wants to look at the opportunities, the potential in the region and not the problems. And yet the problems are there. We have the advance of the so called Islamic State in Iraq and in Syria. There's the unresolved Israeli Palestinian peace process and an American election is looming, which means America's eyes will will be elsewhere. So there is a window, a very important window right now. How would you see the next six months ahead? Because these are business people, they want to know what for their planning, what is going to happen in the next six months? What will you leave to them today? I can't tell you what I wish it will happen. But I'm not sure I can tell you what will happen. I don't have this extra power. I wish in the six months, the Palestinians and the Israelis will meet together and conclude the negotiations that was started and right now interrupted to renew it. I believe in if it will be successful in six months, we may have peace. If we shall have peace, I believe then there will be a united front of all of us to stop the tragedy, the danger and the ugliness of terror. It can happen in one month, it can happen in six months, maybe it will take more because none of us is a master of what's happening. There are some people, even in Israel maybe, who think that you can master a status quo or you can manage a crisis. It's nonsense. If you can manage a crisis, you don't have a crisis. If crisis is manageable, what is the problem? You have to get rid of the crisis and you can get rid of the crisis by a positive door and not just by a negative submission. And that's what I would wish to see in the coming six months. Most companies like to have a plan B, so you've given them plan A that peace will work in the next six months. Give them the plan B, what if it doesn't work? We have to try harder. I don't have any answer. Shimon Peres, at 91, you have been trying for a very long time. 92 now. Thank you very much for sharing your wisdom. I think we would all want to believe that peace is possible. I think everyone in this room knows and has lived through some of the difficulties and challenges, but everyone should try harder, but hopefully the situation will become easier. Thank you very much for spending time with us today, Shimon Peres.


Good morning, John. About a year ago, I had an idea and I wanna walk you through a little bit of the process of where this idea came from. I am obviously in the business of e-commerce and so I spend a lot of time looking at the landscape and thinking about it and it's boring. It's not boring, actually. So it turns out that there's a lot of products that people are just gonna need in their lives and manufacturing high quality products is getting easier. And so you have a lot of companies that have very functionally similar products that are differentiating themselves on their story. But oftentimes, and I'm not trying to make any enemies here, these stories are pretty thin facades over what are very similar or sometimes actually literally identical products. And so everybody in this business is talking about how the only important thing is your story. And so I'm thinking, what's the best story? Everybody is trying to figure out what the best story is but there's one thing that they won't really compromise on which is that ultimately the company needs to make money. And I'm like, does it? Because if you're gonna have a company that sells stuff people need and it's fairly easy to make the stuff, then why not just have a company that does that but then gives all the money away? This isn't a new idea. Back in the 80s, Paul Newman, American amazingly attractive man and also very talented, sweet guy. He like made salad dressings for fun. And then he was like, well, I don't wanna make money but I do wanna make salad dressing. And so he created Newman's Own with some friends of course. And now there's this like fairly major food brand that gives all of its profit to charity and it's been around for like 40 years now. They've given away half a billion dollars. I'm like super obsessed with their story.  I think maybe obviously, but maybe some not so obvious reasons as well. But there are also ways that it makes it easy. And I think if everything's gonna be about story, then let's make the story actually good. So this week, John and I are launching the Awesome Socks Club. It's a sock subscription. Every month of 2021, you're gonna get a different pair of socks delivered to you and every one of those is gonna be designed by a different independent artist that we found on the internet. We've got more than two pairs designed but we're just showing the first two because part of the joy of this for me anyway has been being surprised by what our designers have come up with. They look great, they feel great, shipping is free everywhere that has an address. And yes, 100% of the profit goes to charity. Right now it's going to decrease maternal and child mortality in Sierra Leone but we hope maybe as this thing grows that it will be able to do more good in more places in more ways. It's already doing extremely well. It launched on Monday. We've got thousands of people signed up already. It's very exciting. I did a bunch of brand deals with TikTokers which has been amazing and very weird. Also might hear ads for it on some of your favorite podcasts like 99% Invisible and the Try Guys Tripod. This is definitely the start of a great sock subscription club. Like already it is that. But I'm hoping maybe it can be the start of something even bigger than that. So on this Black Friday, if you'd like to give a gift to yourself once a month for all of 2021, you can sign up at awesomesocks.club slash vlogbrothers or you can give it as a gift to someone else or you can ask somebody to give it to you as a gift. But you have to sign up before December 11th because that's when we close the subscription down. This way we know how many socks we should manufacture and there's no waste. And also if you wanna have a more robust picture of what the sort of commerce landscape of Nerdfighteria looks like this season, we're also gonna have a charity calendar that's coming out fairly soon. It's just not quite ready yet. I'm gonna be making a video about this delightfully creepy Christmas story that I discovered on the internet. I didn't write it or illustrate it but I wanted to collaborate with the artist to make a video about it and the artist will be selling that. I just loved it and I wanted more people to know about it. My publisher has put an absolutely remarkable thing on sale in e-book format for $3. So if you wanted to give that a try, now is the time. Also in general advice from somebody who runs an e-commerce company, if you're buying stuff online this Christmas season, order it right now because the shipping infrastructure of this country is already very at its limit. Links for awesome socks, scrub and the doobly-doo. John, I'll see you on Tuesday.


Okay, we're back here live at IBM IOD. This is theCUBE, our flagship program. We go out to the events extracted from the noise. I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconANGLE. I'm joined by co-host Dave Vellante, the co-founder of wikibond.org. Go to siliconangle.com for the reference point and tech innovation. Go to wikibond.org for free research. Draw the research analysts there, putting out free content. And of course, always come by theCUBE and see where we are in the events. We're going to be at Amazon web services event. We'll go to the events extracted from the noise and share that with you. Our next guest is Tom DeClerc, CIO of Superior Group. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you. Dave, you and I love to talk about CIOs because maybe we get the real scoop on things. So first, why are you here at IBM IOD? Let's get that out of the way. Let's talk about some of the things you're doing here and what you're seeing here. So I've been with the company three years. We're a staffing organization. Why I'm here, I was actually here last year and we've implemented three major systems in the last three years. One was SAP Enterprise, ERP system, second being IBM Connections, and the third being IBM Cognos. And so over the course of the three years, you know, we're trying to roll out these projects. So I'm here to learn more about the capabilities of Cognos. And the biggest one for me is that with Cognos and SAP, SAP when they bought, or not SAP, I'm sorry, when IBM bought Cognos, it was at 8.1 they had a report pack specifically for SAP customers. So when they went to 10.1 and 10.2, they didn't offer that product. So they just started developing a year ago, I sat down with some senior executives of the IBM organization and said, you guys are losing an opportunity here of customers that have an implementation of SAP and trying to get information out other than using SAP's product, business analytics. So over the course of the year, we've been developing a report pack that they can offer the customers. So we're part of the beta testing program for IBM. I'm here to actually talk to some other people and understand some other things. Listen to you, so you had an impact on product development, that's good. Well, yeah, there's the continuous improvements. Even on the, when you look at the report pack now, it's still in my mind. And I fed this feedback back to IBM. There's a to-do list. Oh, absolutely. But that's any type of a rollout of any product, you can expect that. So tell us a little bit more about Superior Group. You guys, your staffing company. Yeah, so we're a company that's headquartered in Buffalo, New York. And we started back in 1957. It's a privately held company. We have a total of 400 staff employees and roughly anywhere from seven to 9,000 contract employees. So we provide workforce solutions as well as outsourcing. And primarily in three areas, people process as well as the outsourcing, project outsourcing. So on the people side, it's your traditional recruiting for staff augmentation, executive recruiting as well as direct placement. And then on the process side, we offer a managed services program. We also also vendor managed services, independent contractor compliance. And then on the outsourcing, we have IT outsourcing, HR outsourcing. So that's pretty much our company's makeup. Tom, we were talking off camera about sort of the role of the CIO and everybody would like to be more strategic if they had time, but a lot of the CIOs, especially in mid-sized organizations, you just don't have as many people to be able to sit back and do some of those more strategic things. But so a lot of CIOs talk about transforming the organization. You've kind of transformed it with three huge projects in the past. What would you say this was? Two years? Yeah, so let's put some perspective. SAP was started in July of 2010 and then we started last year with the IBM Connections and the Cognos reporting. Okay, so but still over the course of, I mean, that's some major disruptions to your business. Talk about how you manage that. So it was extremely challenging, especially given the number of resources that we have. We're a mid-sized company. And when I, so I came from a manufacturing organization. Spent 15 years working for manufacturing. So going from that vertical into professional services vertical, I was used to having a lot of IT resources to be able to support an organization. So highly leveraged the contractors and consultants, both with SAP, they're implementing partners as well as an IBM. It was critical for us to leverage IBM's knowledge and their skillset in order to be successful in rolling out our products. So the SAP rollout was the most complicated item? Oh, absolutely. I mean, by far. Oh, by far. It took literally years to do. Yeah, so we rolled out ECC 6.0, their latest, with a full suite payroll. So we provide payrolling as one of our services. So HCM, which is human capital management, the sales and distribution material management. So a lot of the fundamental components of SAP we rolled out. So it was quite an interesting experience, at least. Was that core human capital management or success factors? Nope, it was core. We've looked at success factors about a year ago. And it just doesn't quite fit. At this point in time, as they start to develop and their product becomes a little more mature, that may be a better fit for our organization. And connections. What was the driver behind bringing that in? Talk about that a little bit. Sure. So for us, connections, we did some analysis. Early this year, I think it's January, went a project strategy where we looked and discussed with some of our internal associates and interviewed about 30 staff employees. And one of the two fundamental things that came back out of that analysis was, one, we don't communicate properly our business goals throughout our organization. So we're headquartered in Buffalo, but we have over 50 locations worldwide. So we have a lot of connect offices remotely and people that aren't sitting at our headquarters. And that was another concern or feedback that was brought back to us was that we don't have the ability or that the people at the remote offices felt like they weren't part of the whole process or communicating properly with our corporate headquarters. So we felt that this would be a perfect platform to allow us to enable that. And so we did quite a bit of research. We have a director of marketing and mobile strategy that went through a complete analysis. And we looked at the SharePoint product. But what's nice about this product as opposed to the SharePoint is the look and feel of the LinkedIn, the Twitter, and that social media aspect of it. So it really leveraged for us an opportunity to collaborate and to reach out to these locations. So the objectives were collaboration, better communication. So how is that being used? How widely is it being used? How did it change things? I'm sort of curious as to the outcome there. So actually, it was a very positive outcome. And as you roll out, when you take a company and you actually do a transformation into a social media-type organization, it's never, in my opinion, never done. It's a continuous process. So we're still evolving as we go along. I think the key is to be a frontage that has the right adoption strategy. So last year in January, I attended the IBM Connect down in Florida. And I actually participated in an event with some senior execs with Sandy Carter from IBM who heads up that part of the organization, the social media. And so it really was about adoption strategy. And it's key to really not only is it just to implement it. That's an IT thing. And that's pretty straightforward. But I've seen in the past, it's always the challenge of not only just implementing the technology, but then it's adopting and getting your users to use that. And so because it had that look and feel that a lot of the people are familiar with, you know, your Facebook's in that, it's actually been extremely successful in rolling that out. Now that said, we still think there's additional opportunities. And we're looking at doing some enhancements, social dashboarding, looking at executive blogs. A big value add for our organization is just when we roll it out, not just internally to our staff employees, but rolling it out to our contractors. So we have anywhere between 7,000 to 9,000 contractors working for superior. And so they'll be working in our business. There's a high turnover rate. You'll go and we'll place someone at a company. They'll maybe work there for a month, two months a week. And when they leave, that knowledge goes away with them. So we're really targeting our value add to be able to roll this out to even to our contract employees. So when they go work on site, they start to collaborate, share information, invent that they do leave, we still harvest that information. And that's bi-directional too. I mean, they're a representation of your company, even though they're transient. But so you can communicate to them, like you say, executive blogs, what the corporate messaging is, policies, whatever it is, that they can take it as representing you essentially as an extension of your workforce. And as you say, you get knowledge back, right? Oh, absolutely. It's one of the key values that we place is that when we did that analysis I said earlier, is that we didn't feel like there was a communication. So now with the social media platform in place now, we have people that are in our Bangalore office can communicate and feel like they're in touch with our corporate headquarters and also their co-workers that are sending it on site facilities that are customers. So it really has improved that collaboration and that communication. It's really brought the organization together. Did you ever think at one point, wow, why don't we just use publicly available social tools, Facebook, or LinkedIn, or just start a blog? Yeah, and our organization has done that. We have the Twitter account, the Facebook account, but this was an opportunity for us to develop it and tailor it more, customize it more for our specific needs. So you've integrated those public networks, those networks, right? Yeah, if you go to our website, you'll see the links and connections right into that. Yeah, so functionally, it's obviously a more rich environment connections, right? So why don't we talk about that a little bit? What additional value did that bring to you? Could you pay it for it? Well, sure. So you had to justify it. What value did you get out? So there's several areas that we feel have brought value. One is it's a platform that can be accessed anywhere. So you don't have to be on our internal network to be able to access and collaborate and communicate, right? So that was a huge value add for our organization. It allows us to connect and stay together. It empowered our users to be able to contribute openly, to be able to collaborate, to be able to innovate and be able to take calculated risks. From an IT standpoint, we see a reduction in email. I don't have the actual numbers to tell you what percentage of reduction in email, but I'm pushing very strongly that we have an opportunity to use and leverage connections instead of sending emails. Traditionally, people will send an email, check this, where with connections, you post the content or you put the files, upload the files in there, and they'll send a notification. So you're not plugging up your email system with additional data, so. Yeah, there's a productivity aspect to that, too. Absolutely. Tom, look at. I was just gonna say, and the other thing is that the time to market for solutions has definitely reduced and even the increase in efficiency. So I know we spent some time looking at, I think it was Ed Brill's book on opting in, and then there's just his situation, identifies in the book, is the traditional product manager that you find in manufacturing is really moving more towards a social product manager, leveraging the IBM connections, or for superior, we took an opportunity to do that. So I gotta ask you about the social software, Dave and I have been tracking, Jive, all these other companies, John and Mark, the Facebook for the enterprise is kind of what they've been calling it, but the feedback we've been hearing from CIOs, was that I just signed something, it's in the social media team is running it, that other team. And so we were talking about the metaphor that the social media teams are a lot like the web teams in the 90s. Oh yeah, we need a website, yeah. The kids are doing it, right? Like the new guys, the young guys are putting, we got web pages, searchable. It grew, obviously it's relevant, the websites grew and became big business e-commerce. Social media is the same way, it's like everyone can see that it's real, they know it's gonna be important. It's not a lot of budget associated, it's not a lot of personnel. So the issue is that they get implemented, they get sold these software packages and then they got to implement it, kind of like communities, but yet there's other stuff happening, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, events, live streaming, so a lot of other social activations going on. So I want to get your take on as a CIO, do you get involved in levels like that on the app side? Is those apps decisions made with that in mind of like the personnel costs and the actual to run it? And some guys just say hey, I bought that, I don't use it anymore, why? It's just there's too much hassle. So there's a hassle factor, what do you take, what's your take? So my take is first of all, I'm very big on when I get an asset or acquire an asset as best you realize in that asset. You know when I came to this organization, I saw several situations where assets were purchased to your point and just sitting idle because maybe you had to take additional initiative to implement that. So in our situation, I work very closely with a gentleman that really did most of the work and doing all the research and his name's Frank Gullo, he's a director of digital mobile strategy. And so he went out and did all the work for us, came back and sat down with myself and our president reviewed what makes the most sense. I came from a manufacturer facility that utilized the SharePoint, so I was big at SharePoint. So I was kind of pushing that direction but when I actually sat down with him and we went through really the true value ads, what we can gain from that, it was really a no-brainer for us. Do you ever have a situation where you put your fist down and say hey, you know what, we just gotta abandon that right now, let's cut our losses, move on. In physical example, there's another use case where same situation, I won't name the vendor, it was an IBM, it was another one where, hey, we wanna do some new things, we don't have the staff, the guy's making us drive this engine until we get an ROI out of it. In other words, they were like, we're gonna ride this pony until either collapses or ROI comes out of it. When in reality, they're just driving down a cul-de-sac. So at some point in an emerging market, like we're in agile is the option to abandon, you gotta know when to cut the cord, right? Oh, absolutely, and I'm not in a position where I'd say absolutely wouldn't abandon if it made sense. It's gotta be a business decision. Ultimately, my position has always been it's gotta work with the business and let the business drive and not IT. IT's there to enable the business so we can provide our input and on the day they let them make the decisions. Now, we didn't talk about the Cognos implementation in any kind of depth. So tell me what you're doing with Cognos. We talked a little bit about the SAP extension, but how are you using Cognos? So primarily we have, as I mentioned before, part of our businesses and the managed services program is we offer MSPs, which we have a tool called Work Nexus, which is our vendor management solutions as well as our MSP. They, our customers will use this tool for recruiting, for looking at time clocks, looking at approving time sheets, invoicing and so forth. So we have some pretty strict requirements of pulling that information out and providing reports to our customers. We use our platform that we've developed on is based on the domino environment. So in order to give them the reports, we create what's called ad hoc reports out of domino, very limited capabilities. So that was our first target area, was to use Cognos to provide more enriched type dashboards, active type reports for our customers. We're just about completed with that part of the project. The next is really to pull reports out of SAP. And so the standard reports that I have with that IBM has provided is really more in the SD area as well as in the MM area. So for our organization, we're so heavily on payroll and people, we really need to have reports target in that area. So in the next year, I'm trying to work with a partner, a local partner in our area, LPA systems, to help develop more reports tailored towards SAP to provide workers compensation. I need to run a report that pulls out the worker compensation to do it in SAP so much more costly than to do it out of a Cognos. And so that's our goal in the next year is really to pull more reports using Cognos out of SAP. Okay, I wonder if we could talk a little bit about cloud, which sort of stands on some CIOs say no way, others say yes, others got shadow IT going to the cloud. What's the state of cloud from an infrastructure standpoint and even a SaaS at your organization? Sure, so we're currently in the process. Actually, I'm looking at our organization and a traditional IT become a cost center. So I'm trying to actually move it into a profit center by offering services. So we're targeting in the Buffalo area, it was small companies were roughing, hosting cloud-based service, whether it be private or rather be a public cloud services. I'm not opposed at all to using a cloud-based solution. In fact, on my SAP side for my DR site, I'm doing just that. I have a contract with a company that's providing me a cloud-based solution for my DR. Okay, so you use it for disaster recovery. Are you doing any sort of production apps in the cloud or would you ever consider doing that? No, because I would consider, I'm not sure if I would consider this company because our information is very controlled. We follow under the SSE16 because we host data that has the HIPAA regulations, all the different regulations. So we have people's social security number and that. So to offer that in the cloud, not to say that it's not secure, but we have a much better control and we have an infrastructure in our organization that has enough bandwidth, has enough cooling all the normal environmentals that you would have for a data center. So right now for us, it makes more sense for us, but in three to five years from now, maybe even sooner than that, we'll probably look at possibly what's the cost differentiation between doing it in-house, having the resources to do it versus offering. What about test and dev? Are you doing any test and dev stuff? Oh yeah, yes, we have in our SAP environment, we have a traditional three tier landscape, so we've got dev quality in the production, all of which is housed inside. The decision actually to have that done was before I joined the company. So the decision was made, that's in May of 2010 I joined in July. Had I been beforehand, I really would have pushed to have that hosted somewhere else because in my opinion, for an organization especially like ours, we don't have the technical expertise to be able to manage the basis capabilities, the architecture, the hardware, all that type of stuff. So I think that's a better fit for most people in doing SAP implementations of looking at that, maybe the first, second, or third year, especially if you don't have that experience if you're new to an SAP type environment. Are you doing any Hadoop? No, no use case for it, right? No, not this one. Using Bitcoin at all? No. I mean, we have a conversation last night about Bitcoin. I'm gonna still look at it. The next tool of craze, you know. PayPal's looking at it, it's in the news. It's not mainstream enterprise. We love talking to CIOs, obviously at Wikibon community, we have a lot of CIOs, we have a lot of CIOs in our network and this is a challenging opportunity but the good days are ahead. I mean, we're seeing huge investment opportunity, growth, new top line drivers that are changing the business where the CIO is kind of CEO-like dealing with all the normal cost side but really driving profits. So I got to get the question before we end. The segment is cost center versus profit center and you guys mentioned, you guys are now P&L profit center. How does that change the game, mindset-wise and how you execute and what you can adopt and how fast? Well, obviously the owners of the organization love the fact that we're offering that as an opportunity to generate some additional revenue. I'm assuming you took the facilities equation out of your P&L, right? So before I join the organization. Did you write that down yet or? I'll keep track of that for sure. Okay, go ahead. But before I join the organization, I jokingly say this, we had more bandwidth in some banks. I mean, we really had the infrastructure in place and fully redundant and so forth. So we had long-term contracts. So I've got five-year contracts with services, with companies that I have to keep. Otherwise, you can pay the penalty and get out, but so we said, you know, why not leverage? And we did a virtualization project. When I first joined, we recovered over 50% of our data center space. So I have all this empty space. I have all this bandwidth sitting here. I've got all the redundancies and the environmentals to be able to support that. Why not go after small companies? I'm not going to be able to compete, you know, with the bigger companies and that, but we're targeting some of the local companies and we're doing quite successful. Yeah, why not? That's great. Yeah. We're here live at the IOD conference. This is theCUBE. We'll be right back with our next guest after this short break. Stay with us.