Good morning. This is House and Senate Judiciary Committee meeting on H317, an act relating to establishing the Bureau of Racial Justice Statistics and the Bureau of Racial Justice Statistics Advisory Panel. There is a companion bill in the Senate, S108, but through agreement with Representative Grad and myself, we're dealing with the House bill at H317. This all has been going on for quite a while. One of the frustrations, every time we try to deal with something as the matter of what it is, it's in the criminal justice system. We lack statistics. We lack information. We don't have that. The Justice Oversight Committee and the Racial, I always get it wrong. HATON's group, he's the chair of that, but they have done a lot of study. We've done a lot of study on what we should do, and this is actually presenting today a plan forward to have good statistics in Vermont that we can rely on to make good policy choices. When you're making policy choices without statistical information to back you up, you often make the wrong choice. This will also help us in making sure that different agencies take government follow, as well as local government follow what we present and be able to understand. That's basically the impetus for the bill. I welcome Representative Grad to make some comments before we hear from Eric. Thank you. I think Senator Sears really covered it all, and I really appreciate Senator Judiciary joining us today, so we can all start off on the same page as well as our witnesses. This is a very important bill, very important concept, really, in terms of moving forward in our criminal justice work. With that, should we turn it over to legislative counsel Eric Fitzpatrick to do a walkthrough? Does that work? I did forget to mention one thing, if you don't mind, Representative Grad. When the Justice Reinvestment Group from the Council of State Governments Justice Center were in Vermont trying to make recommendations regarding racial disparities in Vermont's criminal justice system, they were unable to, in a large way because of the lack of adequate statistics, and they're a data driven organization that relies on statistics. I think that was one of the parts of the bill of the effort on Justice Reinvestment 2 that wasn't as successful as it might otherwise have been because of our lack of statistics. Great. Thank you. Eric. Eric, welcome. Thank you. Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Eric Fitzpatrick with the Office of Legislative Counsel here to walk the committee through H317. As Senator Sears mentioned, there's a Senate companion bill as well as 108. Both of them identical introduced in both bodies, but they're both entitled, an act relating to establishing the Bureau of Racial Justice Statistics and the Bureau of Racial Justice Statistics advisory panel. As you can tell from the title of the bills, essentially what's being done here is the creation of two different entities that are charged with collecting and analyzing data that's, I'm going to quote from the language of the bill now, related to systemic racial bias and disparities within the criminal and juvenile justice systems. So it creates two different entities that are going to be involved with that project that were just mentioned. And as a moment or two of background before we actually look at the language, it's helpful to know that this proposal is coming out of, started really with Act 148, the Justice Reinvestment Act because it was in that act that you folks, the legislature charged the racial disparities in criminal and juvenile justice systems advisory panel with taking a look at this issue with a number of other parties involved also, of course, but analyzing the racial disparities in the criminal justice systems issue. And out of that study came a report. And the RDAB report to the Joint Justice Oversight Committee last year, toward the end of last year. And within that report is the recommendation for the creation of an independent entity to study this issue of racial bias in the criminal and juvenile justice systems. And that recommendation forms the basis of the legislation you're looking at today. And that obviously, there's a lot of details within that. And very many of the details are also reflected in the bill for sure. But in the big picture, you know, it's that recommendation of the establishment of an independent entity to look at racial bias in the criminal and juvenile justice systems that came out of the came out of RDAB's report to Justice Oversight, that forms the basis of age 317 and S108. So that's kind of a moment about where this all came from. And the entity that the entities, I should say, that were as a concept recommended in the report are reflected in the Bureau of Racial Justice Statistics and the Bureau of Advisory Panel that we're going to look at in just a moment. I also want to mention, though, that conceptually there's also some history of these sorts of panels and these sorts of biases being established in Connecticut specifically. And that Connecticut model was mentioned in RDAB's report and was also used as I was drafting it as a basis for where I was pulling language from and sort of the concept of how this was all coming together. So I think it's helpful to know that as well. And I think that I think, in fact, the Connecticut model, and I'm sure the chair at time will talk more about this, but was specifically referred to in some detail in the RDAB report. And obviously that also was able to serve as a basis for the legislation, the bills that you're looking at now. And the concept there you'll see that's reflected that's both in Connecticut and in the bill is that you have these two different entities. You have one entity, the Bureau of Racial Justice Statistics, that's really an IT entity. You know, these these those are IT professionals who are data analysts and collection professionals. And that entity really collects, organizes, assimilates the data on on racial disparities. Whereas the other entity that works with and oversees the Bureau is the is the advisory panel. And then they're more of a policy entity. So you kind of have a data collection, data analysis entity that's really crunching all these numbers. And you have another body that works with them, oversees them, advises them, and also connects to the legislature. You know, important that you have a sort of a voice with the legislature sort of analyzes that data that the Bureau is creating and can come up with recommendations for where the shortcomings are, where the where improvements need to be made, what legislation might be needed, for example, and they they can connect with the legislature. And in fact, the legislation will see requires them to report to the legislature every year. I think the at least the concept there is that there will be sort of this this, you know, this ongoing communication. So that as the data is collected and analyzed, the recommendations can be made and can be sort of a circle of communication between the legislature and the bodies that are working in that area. So one last sort of background common as well before that the language I also wanted to mention the fact that sort of where these entities are placed in statute is also something to sort of keep in mind, because that was also an issue of discussion. You'll see that the way that the way the bill is now these entities are placed in the executive branch, specifically in the in the agency of administration, sort of where to house this is certainly a policy decision for you. I think that the two main possibilities, not that there aren't others, but the two main possibilities that were being discussed. So we're sort of on the one hand, it could be a completely independent entity, right, not housed in any existing government office, but could be completely independent, say, like the victims compensation board, something like that, there's plenty of models out there for that as well. Or on the other hand, could be housed within an existing branch of government the way the bill does. And there's, you know, positive and negative to both approaches. On the one hand, full independence, you have the sort of idea that wouldn't be any potential impact or influence by existing, existing branches of government. On the other hand, you don't have really administrative structure in place to help out with the way the committee's functions are meant to be. So it's really a discussion for the committees to have. And it's not that there's a wrong answer. But the one at least for purposes of getting the discussion started was to put it in the administration, which makes some sense. I'm just going to pull up one document here to let you guys see that. Also, I think it's helpful to look at the existing chapter where this goes in. I'm just going to make sure that I'm a co-host, which I am. Thank you very much to whoever did that, Evan or Peggy. And we're just going to see for a moment, Chapter 68 of Title III, which is where this is proposed to go, which is where the Executive Director of Racial Equity and the Racial Equity Advisory Panel exist currently. So you'll see that the, here it is right here. So this is Chapter 68 of Title III, which is, you'll see it's the, this entire chapter is called the Executive Director of Racial Equity. But as well, the position is created, which is works with overseen by, advised by the Racial Equity Advisory Panel, and both of them are already there in Chapter 68 of Title III. So it made some sense to add the Bureau of Racial Justice Statistics to this existing provision of law. And you'll see right there, if we turn to the bill for a moment, you'll see what that does, is it just adds, it breaks up the existing Chapter 68 adds a new retitles the Racial Equity as sub Chapter 1, and then adds a new sub Chapter 2, which would be Racial Justice Statistics. So there is some logical sense to having it there. But as I say, as a sort of policy resource matter, that's certainly open for the committees to discuss. But that is the reasoning as to why, at least as to get the discussion started, the Bureau was housed. In this location, you'll see, in fact, when we look at the language that the language of the Bureau of Racial Justice Statistics Advisory Panel is modeled very closely to to the language that's in this exact existing chapter on the Racial Equity Advisory Panel, very similar to the roles are sort of similar in that they interact with, with another body in a similar sort of way. So having said that, I could, since we have the language up on the screen, I could start right in with the walkthrough, but I'm going to hold off pause for a moment to see if the chairs want to pause for questions before we start that, or whether whether you're put your preferences for how to proceed next. Senator Sears. I was muted and I, I'm fine with going forward. I just wanted to mention Senator Benning is not here this morning. He's been delayed by a court hearing. Unfortunately, unfortunately, unfortunately, his job sometimes is a defense attorney requires him to be. Great. Thank you. Great. Go ahead. Thank you, Eric. Thank you, Senator Sears. All right. So let's move right into the language then. So I know the committee has a lot of witnesses scheduled to come up to us. I'll try and move pretty briskly. But as always, I can't see hands. So if anyone has a question, please, please interrupt and stop me anytime. Happy to, happy to pause whenever it can make sense. So as I just mentioned, the, the proposal is to establish the Bureau of Racial Justice Statistics and the advisory panel in Chapter 68 of Title III, where the Executive Director of Racial Equity is currently this Bureau, as I also mentioned at the beginning, remember the Bureau is the information technology arm of this process. This is the, this is the entity that collects, analyzes the data. So, and you'll see positions are created for that later on at the end of the bill. So the initial language states right off at the beginning that it creates this Bureau within the executive branch, as I mentioned, the Agency of Administration specifically. It's a charge is in lines four and five, collect and analyze data related to systemic racial bias and disparities within the criminal and juvenile justice system. So it's charges laid out very clearly. The Bureau is also told to work collaboratively with and have the assistance of so other state agencies, all state and local agencies are instructed to work with the Bureau for purposes of collecting this data. And you'll see that in quite great detail here, the types of data, and that's what subjects and C is now to deal with next. So now the Bureau is established. Now it's charged with collecting data. And so the obvious question is well, what data? And so that's, you know, identified next. And this goes into quite a lot of detail. This, these recommendations came out of the hard apps report that I mentioned that the report went through the data that it felt would be useful in quite a lot of detail. So that formed the basis or some of this, the data that's used in the Connecticut statute also went into the selection of this data. Again, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it also went into the selection of this data. Again, it's, it's an initial take on it. So obviously changes, additions, subtractions, whatever committees, preferences are can be made. But for the starting, starting the discussion, it's quite detailed and quite specific and sort of goes through the entire juvenile and criminal justice processes. That's the attempt anyway, from the beginning to the end, collect all the data related to and again, look at lines 10 and 11, the data related to systemic racial bias and disparities within, in this case, the juvenile justice system. So data related to that, in connection with, and just moving right through this list. The first one, it's demographic data involving offenders, parents or guardians of offenders. Remember, we're in the juvenile justice system. So that's why the parents were guardians. Pieces here are included. Attorneys, judges, GALs, DCF, law enforcement officers, witnesses demographic data about all those actors in the system. Number two, you start at the beginning, again, sort of the chronological process of, of the juvenile justice system. So the first sort of point in the, on the chronology is the interaction between the offender and whoever they might be interacting with. So you see, that's what this talks about. Encounters with law enforcement officers, DCF staff, mandatory reporters, school staff, school resource officers, any person who, you know, might be involved in that initial encounter. And that data would, it would specifically include information about where the encounter happened, the location, who, with whom the encounter occurred, whether that initial encounter resulted in release, citation, custodial arrest, basis for initial arrests, the level and length of any detention prior to the court appearance, any reports by mandated reporters, any data regarding particular schools and counties with justice involved youth as well. So remember that's pre, pre-charge. Now you have, you move on to any post-charge diversion and community justice program, pre and post, I should say. So this is really related to diversion community justice systems and data about, about those programs, including referral rates and who, who it is, which entity made the referral, acceptance and rejection data, length of the program, completion, failure rates, type location and outcomes for any risk assessment tools used. That was number three, by the way. So moving on to further down the, the timeline of the proceeding, next you get to the delinquency petition. So a petition is filed, data on that, including initial and amended charges, challenges to the charges, pre-marriage dispositions. You got data on defense counsel, including counsel's legal experience and the offenders access to an assignment of defense counsel during all stages. You got data regarding detention and other custodial statuses. So you've got pre-trial detention, release, discharge from custody, any conditions of release, level place and duration of detentions, custody reviews, status changes, number of placement changes. So moving forward in the proceeding, you know, we're now past the filing of the petition. What about the agreement data that also is here, including offers made, total numbers of agreements entered into elements of final agreements. Disposition data, so juvenile case disposition data, length of time until the final disposition, minimum maximum sentences, location and level, fines fees, restitution, probation terms and conditions, any other disposition alternatives. And lastly, data regarding any sanctions and disciplinary actions against juvenile justice system participants. So data about other actors within the system to be available, made available. Eric, can I just break in there on line five, page four, minimum and maximum sentences? Do we don't have that in the juvenile system? Yes, that's a good point. That might have been left over from the, that was probably language that inadvertently carried over from the adult system language. So it should be, you're right, A, the length and time of the disposition should be there, but it should be, should be a reference to dis, final dispositions, not sentences. The length of time and custody or those types of information. Yes. Thank you for that. I'm just noting that real quick here, but yeah, I think that probably was an inadvertent. There also wouldn't be fines and fees. Unless they're motor vehicle offenses. Right. The fines and fees. Yep. There's a whole, I mean, that section probably needs some work to update for the juvenile justice system. Also curious about where the youth offenders come in. Yes, I think you're absolutely right. That whole subdivision be there. I think was just came over from the adult section. So that needs to be reworked. Thanks for catching that. Okay. So speaking of the adult criminal justice system, that's what you'll see next. The language here will be very similar to what you just looked at. So it's really just very parallel on, in many cases, identical data regarding the adult criminal justice system and the racial bias and disparities within that system. That you just looked at with respect to the juvenile justice system. So again, pause me if I go too quickly, but since we just looked at most of this once, I won't hesitate too much as it would go through. But again, the demographic data regarding all the participants and parties within the system is present. First data regarding pre-charge, you know, again, it's similar to the initial encounter that led to the charge with whomever it may be custodial arrest, length of pre-arrayment detentions, diversion and community justice program data. Again, also mentioned in the juvenile sentence context rather, including cases eligible, number of cases referred, and acceptance and completion rates. Charging data, also similar circumstances around the charges, including initial and amended charges filed, challenges, pre-trial dispositions, data about defense counsel, including counsel's legal experience and offenders access to and assignment of defense counsel. Again, diversion and treatment program data, which we just looked at as well, referral rates, who made the referral acceptance and rejection data about that. This is all identical to what you just saw in the juvenile language, length and completion, failure rates, outcomes, pre-trial detention release, including conditions of release, bail amounts, defendants held without bail, bail reviews. This is all unique to the adult system, obviously. Changes to pre-trial detention status, conditions of release, revocation of bail, conditions of release. Plea agreement data, offers agreements centered into and elements of final agreements. Data about sentencing, length of time until final sentences. And this is actually a C subdivision B. That's the language that we just saw that was inadvertently included in the juvenile section. This is irrelevant to the adult section, not the juvenile one, which is minimum and maximum sentences, location and level of detention, spines, these restitution, probation terms and conditions, other disposition alternatives. And lastly, the same language you saw above about any sanctions and disciplinary actions that are publicly available against juvenile justice system persistence. Again, there's a typo. So that 10 should be in line, a line eight, there should be, there's a straight juvenile word, word, juvenile. So any info about sanctions and disciplinary actions would come in under paragraph 10. So we just went through all the data that needs to be collected, right? So then the next question is, all right, well, what happens to this data? And that's what is discussed next and requires a bureau to analyze essentially all of this data. And towards what ends to see a couple of different tasks that the committee is instructed to do with respect to this data. First of all, identify the stages of the criminal and juvenile justice systems at which racial bias and disparities are most likely to occur. So again, through this data that it's collected, hopefully it will be able to identify where the disparities are most likely to happen. And also significantly organize and sympathize, synthesize the data in a cohesive and logical manner so that it can be presented and understood again. So these are information technology specialists who are, who are, have been hired under the bell and charged with assimilating all this data. But the idea here is to, you know, be able to organize and present it in a way so that can be understood by, by any other actor or reader who, to whom it's presented. So. Sorry. If I, if I could just interrupt quickly. Eric on the bureau shall subdivision one. It says develop a system to standardize the data collected. Does that mean they develop a system that will be pushed out to the various law enforcement agencies. To use and collecting it, or does that mean that they will create a system to standardize data given to them in various forms. In other words, do they, do they have the power to, to develop a system that will be adopted statewide. By the law enforcement agencies. I think they have the power to develop that system and in fact are instructed down below to develop a standardization system as to how it's adopted. I'm just moving ahead here because there's a little bit that kind of addresses your question a bit, Senator Baruch. I don't think there's a requirement. That other entities adopt their system, but you'll see in subdivision two and three that it is. It's put out there. In subdivision three, for example, there's a recommendation that, that the panel comes up with, to recommend evidence based practices and standards for collection and retention. Subdivision two proposing methods to permit sharing and communication between state and local agencies. So I think that the system of standardization. That's talked about above is also could pretend to be part of what they recommend, but, but no, I think if I understood your question right, it's not a requirement. It wouldn't be sort of here's, here's what other state agencies have to do. It's more of a recommendation that they, that other entities could adopt. Okay, because I just wanted to flag that because that seems, that's the troublesome point. I come at it also from the agency of education and trying to standardize data around districts. And it's, it's participation in a standardized data plan. That's the, the failing statewide. So it seems like one way or the other. If we're going to ask for this sort of robust data collection. It should be uniform from the get go. Otherwise we're. We're hamstringing ourselves, it seems. Anyway, just wanted to put that out there. May I comment on that? Thank you. So I think that from the law enforcement perspective that they're already starting to standardize how they collect the data. And most of the system, most of them are already using the same system now, the same reporting system. So I think that that this goes to hand in glove with, with their attempts to already be standardizing the. What they collect and how they reported. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Not seeing any other hands and nobody's jumping in. Okay. Thank you. Go ahead, Eric. So moving on from what, what the. What the bureau does with the data. The data, you also see that the bureau is required to maintain a public facing websites as a transparency subsection basically. So you have a. Ability for the public to see what the bureau has been doing. And they have a website, a dashboard that specifically maximizes the bureau's transparency. And assures the ability of the public and historically impacted communities to review and understand the data. And that is the state has been collected and also it's being made public so that there's an ability of the public to see it and understand it. Beyond that, there's some reporting requirements. You see that's an annual, annual reporting requirements. So on December 15th. Starting this year and every month thereafter, the bureau has to report to the panel. So we haven't gotten to the panel yet, but there's a requirement that the bureau is going to remember that the bureau has a policy. Policy. Charged arm of this, the structure. And so the bureau collects the data. And synthesize it and provides this analysis and recommendations to the panel every year. And then as well, January 15th of the, of the year after the bureau reports that same data analysis recommendations. To the judiciary committees and the government operations committees. And you'll see similar reporting requirements for the advisory panel as well. Which I'll pause for a moment. Just to see if there's any questions before we talk about the panel. So again, as I mentioned, the panel is the more the policy oriented body within the structure. Specifically has the administrative legal and technical support of the agency administration. And so the bureau has five members and you'll see there that actually I'll just take a moment. To look back at the racial equity advisory panels. I mentioned. The structure here is very, very similar. To the existing racial. Equity advisory panel, which works with. The director executive director of racial equity. And you'll see that for example, A through E, the members, and of the members who does, who makes the appointments, how they. How their terms are going to be staggered. All of that is just exactly the same as the existing practice for the racial. Equity advisory panel under section 5002. Title three. So that is repeated here. Again, so this is the, the bureau of racial justice statistics advisory panel. And that has same similar, very similar five members, and that is one by the committee on committees, not a current legislature, one by the speaker, one by the chief justice, one by the governor. And one by the human rights commission. Identical language about the backgrounds of the, of the members that would be drawn from diverse backgrounds to represent the interest of communities of color and other historically disadvantaged communities throughout the state. And have experience working to implement racial justice reform. And I think that's the key thing. Like I mentioned, there are also some geographically diverse areas of the state. Some rather boilerplate language that you next see about the staggering of the terms. The idea is to make sure that, since, you know, this panel is just getting started, that they're going to be staggered at the beginning. They're going to be three year terms, except that, you know, they're going to try and stagger so that everybody doesn't expire at once, especially during the first year. But that's pretty standard language. I'm sure the committee has seen. The members of this panel elect by majority vote a chair. And the idea is to get them appointed on or before September this year so they can get ready for when their terms begin in January. So moving on to the duties and responsibilities of panel you see that again very similar to the executive director of racial equity relationship. This panel here works with and assists the executive director of the Bureau of Racial Justice Statistics to implement the requirements that we just went through in other words other data compilation and reporting requirements work with them on that. Advise the executive director to ensure ongoing compliance with these purposes. Now here's a crucial one though this sort of starting to get into the policy role of the advisory panel. They evaluate that data and the analysis that they get from the Bureau and rate recommendations as a result of the evaluation so there's this back and forth communications loop. They look at the data and consider what other steps need to be taken or any other recommendations as a result of the policy goals of both bodies. So every year on or before January 15 report to the committees on judiciary and government operations with its findings and you see their subdivisions and be very important for what these reports have to contain the findings regarding systemic racial bias and disparities in the criminal and juvenile justice systems based upon the debt and the analysis that the panel received from the Bureau so they take that data from the Bureau synthesize it and on the basis of that they make recommendations the panel makes recommendations to the legislature. That's the sort of information loop that I was mentioning earlier, and as well the report has to include the status report on progress made toward this. The goal of addressing systemic racial bias in the system so it's sort of got a combination of recommendations status report what have we done. You know what needs to be done next. You're standard per diem compensation for each member of the panel language. As I mentioned earlier, you also have specifically positions created within the Bureau racial justice statistics and as you can see, these permanent positions are all with the exception of the administrative one administrative support position. But in addition to that one the other three positions including the executive director they're all be there. They are all information technology data analysts to staff persons who are it data analysts and the executive director as well. So this is a very much a an it it data operation, as opposed to the panel, which these requirements are not in effect and they don't have to be dead and was the panel panel or as the broad diverse background, meant to be the policy direction of the of the structure. There's an appropriation as well as the appropriations based on numbers that I received from the joint fiscal office as to the support needed for the for the four positions I just mentioned. Eric, can we go back to the executive director position. The one in existing line I mean for no one. That's the exact. That's the current. Yes, sorry, yep. The executive, the exempt executive director of the Bureau should be an implement information technology data analysts that's as want to be confusing as executive director of that in the executive director of their racial title title. I didn't quite follow the sorry Senator Sears that having two executive directors in the same department. Oh, I see what you mean. I think that I think there's only this one I think they're all referring to the same person. I can clarify that it's confusing that the idea is that the. So here's the executive director spot in the of the Bureau of Racial Justice statistics. So that's the position that's being referred to in the, and the panel works with the executive director. And the panel I don't, I think just has a chair right. Yeah, so the panel has a chair. But there's only one executive director. But was on as an executive director. And we're putting it under her. Oh, I see what you mean. So how many, you know, wouldn't be, I think it's confusing to refer to both as executive director. Right. Absolutely. Certainly clarify that just to be clear though this position is not under the existing executive director separate from just so people know that separate chapter within the same chapter of statute but this, this position is under this panel. No, this is under the Bureau of Racial Justice Statistics advisory panel. This is where this executive director resides totally separate from Susanna's position. Representative Rachel had a question. Thank you, Senator. So I think one way or the other the titles of these two people are going to get confused one way or the other even though they're separate entities. And I think that it's strange that the only qualification that's listed for this executive director is that they be an analyst, like, don't we want somebody who is committed to. So it does seem like the executive director has other duties besides being an analyst and that muddies the water. It also said that this position reports to the governor unless the governor delegates that responsibility to the commissioner or the secretary of administration. And it'd be good to talk about that too to just see if there are any nuances about that if it gets delegated. And again, I think the role of what this executive director is going to do and ultimately what the qualifications in the name are are going to need more discussion. Could I ask a question about that also. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you, Madam chair. So I just wondered if we had a discussion about whether this, the, this whole bureau should be under, under Susanna's position. As part of racial justice and set of creating a whole new new office or new, whatever. So I would like at some point to have that discussion and then I'd also just question. And I'm not sure Eric if this is for you. We have the Bureau analyzing and having a website that people have access to before the panel actually does any policy work around it and recommendations and I, I would just like to have a discussion sometime about how those two issues work together because it seems that the analysts can put forward information, but it's the panel that's setting the policy and the recommendations and if, if, if we need to do some adjustments there. So those are two issues I would like to discuss at some point. Thank you. Thank you. Definitely flag those. Thank you so much. It's a great process that I, that representative grad and I had planned would be for the house to take the first shot at this so they may solve that problem. Okay. But certainly, then if we come over to the Senate, obviously. I'm hoping that we can do it this year. Okay. Thank you. Great. Alice, can I ask a question? Absolutely. So I'm just wondering with regard to the school data and the juvenile data. I'm wondering. It seems like things are very specific with regard to the demographic data and not sure what the demographic data in this will include. But I don't see where it addresses confidentiality. And in terms of small numbers from certain schools that are very small. I don't think those schools won't be immediately put out in the limelight as having some situations that perhaps should be kept confidential. So I'm not sure how is that being addressed or can that, I'd like somebody to address that if it isn't somehow covered. I don't think it's specifically covered in the language center, but certainly absolutely it's an issue that you can just can address. I'm jotting these issues down as, as. As the legislators mentioned them that the representative Rachel send center white center series have mentioned these and I'm jotting them down so I'll jot that one down as well. Thanks. Yep. Let's see Selena, I think I saw your hand. Yeah, I was just going to say in a couple of recent bills that we passed where we had data collection requirements we worked with crime victim services center and the crime research group to come up with some language about sort of reporting up to the point of just ensuring protections for victims privacy in particular and so maybe there's a basis there and I can point you to some of that language if it's helpful Eric. Thank you that'd be great. So that actually is the end of the walkthrough I could. Should I pull the document down I think I mentioned the appropriation. Yeah, I can leave the document up or pull it down whenever the preferences for the chairs. Yeah, the effective date July 1, 2022. I got why we did that. Yeah, I think it was just as it often is wondering whether everyone involved needs more time but on the other hand, maybe it really should be 2021 especially since you have the appropriation in there and their language we saw that the appointments needed to be made. We're always the goal is to have them applied sooner. House House can take that issue up as they work on it. Right. Consider if we can get this bill done this year. So noted. Coach, I see your hand. Sorry, get unmuted. I'm thinking in terms of what representative Colburn had mentioned. There is language and Senator Nick. There is language in both human services and education for that disaggregated data for small populations. You know, we've got schools that, you know, have very small numbers. And when you identify a poverty student or a disabled student, or a BIPOC student, if they're the only family in the school, it's pretty obvious. You know, where the disparity is. So there are provisions in both agencies for how that data is treated. So it would be worth maybe incorporating that with the other language that we used in the domestic violence related bills. Just food for thought. If I'm jotting that down to thank you representative Christie. Great. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Eric for keeping track. Yep. Jade it. Okay, I'm not not seeing anybody else. Okay, great. Thank you so much for your, your thorough walkthroughs and drafting. And this was a heavy lift, big, big piece of drafting we asked you to do so. I appreciate it. Happy to help. Thank you. I did mention the last thing that I did mention this, the type, the Bureau of racial justice statistics is in some ways drawn. I'm sure people have heard that. The Department of Justice has a Bureau of Justice statistics bjs. So that's where I came up with the name just seemed like it would be appropriate to similar entity but targeted specifically toward racial justice statistics so that's where that came from. Great. Well, thank you. Thank you. There aren't any other questions and it works for you, Senator Sears. How about it? Yes. We go to Dr. A10 this red and long ago. Sounds great. And good morning and welcome. Good morning. Thank you representative. There you are. I'm here. I'm here. Can you hear me? Absolutely. Okay, great. Great. For the record, I'm Dr. A10 nest red and long ago and I am the chair of the racial disparities advisory panel. And I'm here this morning to present their current thinking on this bill to you in hopes that it may be of use. As you probably know, we meet once a month for two hours. And so since this bill came into being we've had literally six hours in which to discuss it. And we've been working quite diligently quite hard on this, talking about the location for this proposed Bureau. And I would also say that this has not led to a clear conclusion and that may actually be of use to you, because it would allow some flexibility in in your thinking and I'm hoping to contribute to that. So we have a summary here of some animating concerns behind the panel's discussion of the possible entities for housing this bureau. First of all of these was the issue of independence. That was very, very much prime in the minds of the panel as a whole. I'm not going to make a vote and so on for this, but I'm going back over our minutes from the last three meetings, and this was absolutely the first determinant in discussing locations. Next was trust in the results that the Bureau comes up with a certain that would also of course allied with the notion of transparency. But there needs to be competence in the work that the Bureau performs. Also another issue that was raised by several panelists was sufficient authority to do the work. In other words, that the Bureau needs to be given the authority to request the data that it needs in order to perform this work and that may sound slightly obvious, but it's not to some people who are very smart who are on the panel that that needs to be made very, very clear. And then of course, another important factor is that there need to be sufficient financial resources available to do the work. Another panelist Sheila Linton, who is the co founder of the Root Social Justice Center in Brattleboro, said quite bluntly, I strongly support an independent body on this. We need to guarantee actual independence and the perception of independence. We need public trust. And that gets to what you've already put in the bill about the public facing website and such. But this was really a very strong sentiment that many people on the panel had. I've prepared a slide, not a very elegant slide that I forwarded to Evan O'Connor, and I don't know whether you've all had a chance to look at it it was simply outlining the eight possible locations that the R DAP has discussed. I'll go through those the first was. Oh, there it is. Again, as I say, not extremely elegant but there you have it. The first was under the executive director of racial equity under Susanna Davis's office. There were some pros and cons on this and some of them were in fact expressed by director Davis herself. The first was under the agency of digital services. Next, as a standalone body. Fourth in the legislature's joint fiscal office. Next, the second in the office of the secretary of state. The office of the Vermont State auditor, seven, the Human Rights Commission and I believe there's been some discussion about that already. And then lastly, but not by any means least, the National Center for restorative justice which is a more an academic entity that's housed in a variety of institutions, including UVM. There's been a bunch of discussion about all of these from the standpoint of pros and cons. James Pepper from the office of states attorneys and sheriffs weighed in. And he noted that for some, like a standalone body, the joint fiscal office or the Human Rights Commission have the, they would have this body would have the benefit of a fair degree of independence from political pressure. And the second force that exists already obviously deals with similar topics. Others like the agency of digital services, the state auditor, auditor, or the Human Rights Commission have particular skills, useful to the work of the bureau that they already use between business like data collection and analysis conducting investigations and audits or investigating discrimination. Even with those there could be an awkward fit between their core mission and the bureau's mission. Some entities like those under the direct control of an elected official may experience political pressures that do not align with the bureau's mission. Rebecca Turner, another panelist, and I believe she's speaking this morning so I certainly don't want to take her thunder away but she contributed very heavily to this conversation she is a supervisor, supervising attorney in the appellate division of the office of the defender general. She made the point that it doesn't necessarily make sense to put this body within the task force or under the executive director of racial equity, just because it's on a similar subject matter. And that similarity doesn't mean that the structure of that office is suited to this task. And that is partly I believe if I remember correctly because those those offices report to elected officials. And that compromises independence. I believe that the Secretary of State of the auditor would have independence from the governor, and a certain responsiveness to the people of the state. The auditor does investigations now and can support this type of effort. The Human Rights Commission, obviously deals with similar issues, and does investigations. And at this last meeting it was one of those wonderful moments when as a teacher you have an arc, and then one of your smart students throws in a curveball you want to hit them, but it's brilliant, and absolutely to the point. And at that last meeting that was Tyler Allen from the Department of Children and Families and he was a wonderful I was completely thrown but it was marvelous. He asked if the collection and analysis would be handled by the same entity, or would they be separated. One should collect the others should analyze, and the panel agreed broadly with Tyler's question, which was basically should be one entity or two one for data collection, and one for data analysis, and that that should. It can and should be part of the discussion around choosing an entity or entities, under which to house the proposed Bureau. Another person who's interested in this work was sort of helpful in this to me. And that would be Christopher Loris of the crime research group, who drew my attention to h265 and act relating to the office of the child advocate. In, I guess it's what chapter 32 subsection 3202, which is specifically on the office of the child youth and family advocate there is certain language at the end of that paragraph. So, while the office shall be embedded in and receive administrative support from the agency of administration, the office shall act independently of any state agency in the performance of its duties. I have not been able to bring this before the panel yet our meeting is a week from last night, as a matter of fact, but I think a broad support for including some sort of language like this in h317. I think it would be helpful and prudent to put something like this in very explicitly on a broader problem that needs to be addressed and several of you have mentioned that already this morning. I think it's that the data needed across all state systems of state government need to be analyzable extractable present and open to public scrutiny. In short, what is proposed here ought to be a template for all of state government to assume that the criminal and juvenile justice systems are separate is perhaps a bit. Is it wrong. Certainly short sighted. As we all know racial disparity exists in many locations. We see it in healthcare, the governor made some decisions about vaccinations based on that acknowledgement, we see it in education. It would seem that this notion of standardization that came up very, very prominently in the report that the panel released is still a prime importance and needs to be considered, and perhaps considered very broadly. I would like to wind everything up with just making a few notes on the issue of independence and why that is of such great importance here. And I want to do that by talking about the difference between civil rights and human rights. Civil rights of course are always considered to be the rights of citizens to political and social freedom and equality. Human rights are considered to be a right that is believed to belong justifiably to every person. Clearly, there's a blending and a blurring here, voting is thought to be civil, but it also belongs at least in this country quote justifiably to every person, unquote. Apparently this isn't entirely true all of the time we're now looking at a situation where in Georgia, if you're poor and cannot easily travel, you will have problems voting, given legislation that is currently pending. Another issue here would be water. This happened in Flint, Michigan. At one point, the water was coming very nicely from the lake and now it's coming from the Dearborn River, and that isn't turning out very well for the children of that community. Racial matters are always thought to be civil rights.  They don't argue human rights. They're inalienable, except that they're not. And we all know that they're not we argue these all the time. Civil rights are always held to be in some political realm where debate happens, where disagreement happens, where the statement, people of good conscience can disagree functions. The cornerstone of the democracy this notion of debate and disagreement. And there's a connection here that's obvious, I think, between the civil and the political, whereas the human is ideally believed to rest beyond the political, even though in practice, as I've just sort mentioned, it doesn't always.  Why weren't they human rights. I was wondering why my rights were something people could argue about. They don't seem arguable to me that if we're talking about the pursuit of happiness, which is a phrase that has been enshrined for over 240 years in this country. I would say that's a human right. It's considered that way. And there's a blurring here that I'm getting at between the civil and the human recently transgender people went through this sort of change in political wind, and they did it quite dramatically, and it's not over. There was a relative opening under the Obama administration, and that a dramatic closing for service members around issues of rights under the last administration. And now, I'm not sure we know there does seem to be opening under the Biden administration, but history tells us that that should not reassure anyone for the long term, all it takes as an executive order. All it takes is an executive order, and the damages here are obvious among veterans in 2019. Transgender patients had a more than two fold greater hazard of suicide than then then their cisgender patient compatriots did more than two fold greater hazard. One can legitimately ask how this politicization of rights plays into this fact.  I would argue that it's rather difficult to pursue happiness if you're dead. That seems like a human right to me. It doesn't seem very civil. The fact of these questions, just among this one historically stigmatized group demonstrates the need for independence in this proposed bureau. This is why it is of critical importance to the our dad. We think of simple matters of legal inclusion within the body politic as being within the realm of civil rights. I suggest that they are not. I would further say that politicizing efforts at equality becomes unavoidably a human rights issue when the matter of simple well being or existence is factored into the social calculus. People of color cannot depend upon the direction of the political wind for relief. They simply cannot. And this is why the our dad believes so strongly in this idea of independence and urges you to consider it with the same seriousness that we have used. We ask you in closing to take these matters into account as you deliberate and debate, and we ask you to think of the blurring of the civil and the human, and the not necessarily monetary costs involved in this blurring. Thank you for your attention. Thank you. Thank you so much and and also thank you to your group for their very thoughtful analysis and feedback and I look forward to us hearing from from some of the members that are here today. What if I turn it over to you because I know that you're well I know. Yeah, we're going to be leaving in about five minutes and hopefully, you know, and I'm glad that we got to hear the testimony. I don't have any questions right on anybody on the Judiciary Committee that does we're going to be leaving at 1015 and moving over to another bill for the Senate Judiciary Committee House Judiciary Committee will continue on. I really thank Representative grad, Eric, a ton for allowing us to join you this morning to hear the important information in this bill we look forward to continuing to collaborate and work together. Whatever folks decide on where to put this, whether it's an independent organization. It's to get adequate information or Vermont to be able to make good policy choices and to make sure that we can explain and to look at why certain things have happened in the past and what what we can do to all those and I was, you know, disappointed when the justice reinvestment effort went on and was unable to come up with data that would have informed us in a better way because the data didn't exist. So whichever way we do this whether to stand alone. However we do it we need the information. I think not having the information leads us to making wild speculation sometimes. So, thank you all very much. See the Senate Judiciary Committee over on the other channel. Absolutely. Whatever that might be. Thank you. Thank you so much. Great. Bye bye. Okay, so why don't we were about five minutes ahead but why don't we take our break now and come back at


from the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. It's theCUBE, covering Hoshokon 2018. Brought to you by Hoshokon. Hello everyone, welcome to this special CUBE coverage we are here live in Las Vegas for Hoshokon. I'm John Furrier, the co-host of theCUBE, and this is part of our continuing coverage and our initiating coverage of the blockchain crypto world been doing it since January. Covering on our internal website, silkenangle.com, since 2011, covering Bitcoin and all blockchain stuff, but this is the first security conference dedicated around blockchain and crypto put on by Hoshokon. It's an industry conference and we are here covering it and this is an open small kernel of smart people really trying to have a top level conversation around security. And our next guest is Christopher Ford, he's the CTO of 3BX, welcome to theCUBE. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, pleasure being here. So before we get into some questions around security, what do you guys do? What's the company do? You guys have a unique approach. Take a minute to explain what you guys do. 3BX is essentially it's a marketplace. It's a digital asset marketplace. We're trying to build a community around trading digital assets. We're really trying to focus on pulling away from the term cryptocurrency because we think it'll expand into a much broader term. So we're structuring our platform on the support of any type of digital asset, whether it be a crypto kitty or whether it be an ebook, a concert ticket, something that has a digital form that can be traded person to person. So basically you're spanning the definition or actually depositioning crypto because it's kind of narrow relative to how you guys see it. It's pretty narrow. Digital assets, I mean look at gaming. Gaming culture is not new. I mean they trade stuff all over the place. Even in game tokens, they don't exist on a blockchain yet, they're not cryptographically secured. So those are the types of things that I expect to see hitting a lot of these marketplaces soon. Well that's smart. I mean I think if you look at it, I mean certainly we have run on blockchain. Our entire media company has been moving to blockchain and crypto and token economics, but really the blockchain piece has been very limited and it's like it's got very poor functionality and all the top blockchain implementations are either private blockchain, low latency and fast and developer friendly. So Ethereum's great for smart contracts but this doesn't scale relative to what most people need. If you're running, you need a million IOPS and you've got a marketplace. Some of these large scale, hyper scale networks, they're massive marketplaces. How do you guys fit in there? Do you guys, what problem are you trying to solve? Let me start with that. You know we're trying to pull away from the complexities of an exchange. We're trying to give kind of the community a good tool to trade without a lot of knowledge of tokenomics. One of our unique assets or unique features is that you can trade with no market impact, you don't have to worry about price slippage or the complexities behind order books. So we give kind of a familiar interface to trading, so something you see on a traditional e-commerce platform. So we're trying to kind of introduce it to a wider range of people. We've talked to a lot of people who have a lot of difficulties, especially with the decentralized exchanges. What are their problems? Just like reliability. Reliability, liquidity, I mean there's a lot of issues with liquidity around them which causes problems when you try to trade any significant amount of coin. So we're trying to give traders and the coin companies another outlet to trade without having to worry about liquidity, or the risks of liquidity associated with. So what's the status of the company? How many people you guys got? What's the size? Do you have any deployments? Are you guys engaging certain communities? We are live. We released a kind of invite only beta about two months ago. So we've been out there having traders for about two months. We're a very small team. We're based out of Las Vegas. There's a development team of three people. We're just now kind of broadening into more partnerships, more marketing. So you guys have been hardening the platform basically, been jamming and coding. We went kind of product first and then took a step back and are now approaching the market. So yeah, we're really excited. That's smart. You didn't hype it up first. But you could've definitely hyped it up I mean a lot of people who are winning right now are quality deals that had opportunities to do an ICO. Just people that are throwing money around. Just go back to February, the numbers are just off the charts. Kind of bubbled burst in February. Certainly the SEC announced today I'm covering the news. Major crackdown on all those ICOs on violations for the United States. It just causes a distraction. And I brought this up with hard charge last time I interviewed him in Toronto at the Futurist which is exactly kind of what you guys are doing. And this is a core trend and I want to get your thoughts on it. A lot of the alpha entrepreneurs are the ones that are building companies. Don't want to get distracted from stuff that's not optimized on building a company. For instance, if I do an ICO or you get involved in domicile issues outside the United States, you're optimizing all of your energy. They're on an airplane or market dynamics that aren't building a company. This is kind of almost a distinction at this point. You can almost look at opportunities, startups, entrepreneurs and ventures and say, okay, we can almost see who's doing what. You agree? Yeah, I think it's important to have something before you go and you spend a lot of energy raising money, building a pipe around a company. I think we're going to see a huge trend towards product first, having something, having a development team, a concept, a patent, whether it be not just based on a theoretical white paper. So it'll be very interesting to see how it goes. We decided to go product first. So no one had heard of us until we went live with our product. It's a good approach, I like it. I think it's solid, good. We'll see how it turns out. But I got to ask you, and I want to dig into the product a little later on this interview, but I want to ask you specifically around some core trends I'm seeing and patterns. It's pretty clear that when these emerging markets develop, total activity on the entrepreneurial side, a lot of people build and developing, attacking the market, but it's a trend. Everyone's throwing out a common thing. I need to have community and I need a two-sided marketplace. So the common trends, and if people don't have those, you can't just buy a community. Communities aren't bought. You can't just say, hey, I need a community. Put a telegram channel, write some bots, and next thing you know, I got 25,000 people on telegram. That's not a community. That is AI bots looking like a community. And then the two-sided marketplace, you got to have a value proposition. So these are things that people are putting into their plans that don't have answers for. What's your thoughts on that around community and about marketplace? What are you seeing in the market developing right now? I mean, building a strong community is very difficult.  They have to align with your vision. They have to understand what you're doing and at least have a use case for it. So we're really trying to kind of have the community drive our development roadmap. So we've done a lot of outreach, trying to get what people are interested in, what's lacking in the industry currently, what they want to see, what they're unhappy with. And we're trying to build a community around allowing people to have input and influence into the product that we're building. So we find it, we're really early in the process, so it's difficult for me to really say that it's easier, difficult to build a community. So you're engaging the community. We are engaging the community. What are the number one things you guys are solving and problems that you see that are immediate low-hanging fruit that you're knocking out right away? What are the core things? I think some of the big ones are simplicity, the usability of these interfaces, kind of the knowledge around it, trying to do a knowledge transfer to our customer base and trying to help people realize that there's a company behind these coins. I think that's a huge, a huge thing that we have to kind of push towards is it's not just a token, it's a token produced by a company with a cause. So how does your product work? It's like a basic marketplace that you would see in kind of eBay or in Amazon where someone posts an offer, posts a listing, and other people can buy from it. So it's a buy and sell kind of- And you have your own native token? We have a native ERC-20 token that we use for fees. Because we're targeting the digital asset generally, we've externalized fees from traded goods. So we want to make sure that we can handle something that may not be divisible by Bitcoin is. So if you trade a book, for example, a lot of these exchanges would take a page out of it if you use the current model of fees where they're kind of coin-shaving off of your trades. So we're trying to eliminate that so we can expand into non-fungible or non-breakable assets. We're also developing a wallet that basically encapsulates cryptocurrency into smaller assets to be traded off-chain. So we plan on kind of revolving around our internal token to handle fees of those assets. There's a blend of on-off-chain dynamics. So you can do a lot of stuff and not have to do a lot of writing to the chain if you're going to be new. There's a lot of read-writes. All right, so the question I want to ask you that thing that's important in everyone's mind is, okay, Hoshokon is the first inaugural. We'd love to go on inaugural events because you don't know it could be the last one. Or it's going to be big. I think this is a big trend and one of the things we heard last night at dinner was, and we were having a conversation with, was there's no real conference. These conferences don't put security in the front. They really kind of have it as a side panel and it's always kind of an adjunct to something, you know, bigger pitch competition, big sponsor-driven kind of programs. This is a security conference. What is the impact in your opinion of this Hoshokon and security in the blockchain that's going to shape the industry? What is your opinion? What is your commentary on that? I mean, obviously it's important to focus on security. I think a lot of people had a lot of kind of assumptions that blockchain-specific or blockchain-based technologies were unhackable. You know, the decentralization of something makes it secure. And I think that's a myth that, you know, they're going to have to debug and we're seeing it with hacks. I mean, there's a lot of, I think, assumptions around even the hacks that are incorrect.  You still need to be careful. The smart contracts still have, you know, vulnerabilities and risks involved. It's not... Software is software. Software is software. You know, it's unavoidable. When you start writing code, there's going to be... You don't want the blue screen of death. Certainly, you know, when you don't want to have to reboot. I mean, move fast and break stuff was great for web scale, but when you talk about security and currency, you need rock solid, 100% reliability.  Yeah, it's something of value that you're going to lose. It's not a social media account. It's not, you know, something like that. It's, you know, you're losing money. And it's very interesting. I think the more people know about this security behind blockchain cryptocurrency, the more they're going to realize that it's not a, you know, an end-all solution to everything. It's going to, you know, it takes time to evolve. Standards will probably have to be put in place, you know. I mean, there's a lot of people I remember when I was, you know, your age and the web was coming around. Everyone was afraid to put their credit card down on basic e-commerce transactions.  And then they got over that pretty quickly. You saw PayPal and those companies came out. You can still mention eBay. These online sites are now secure. Crypto is almost like an unknown lack of education in the mainstream. And so we got to get to that point where, you know, wallets are wallets and they actually do a good job and you don't forget to leave your wallet at the restaurant kind of thing. You know, like, there's some hygiene and practices that are needed. I mean, maybe older generations maybe might not get it. But the younger generations, they're getting it, right? I mean, what's your opinion of this? Because this is a generational shift. I mean, this crypto blockchain market, it's really generational. Anyone under the age of 30 pretty much loves it. So it's happening, right? So what is the views around security generally in the mainstream? I mean, I don't think there are too many. Like I said, I think people kind of put a lot of assumptions in the security, the inherent security of blockchain stuff. And I think they don't realize that, you know, we're trying to make it easier through mnemonic sequences or passwords. So we're hosting wallets online now. It's not necessarily a pure wallet in the sense that it sits on a piece of paper. So we're going towards usability, which we're sacrificing security for. So the more usability we get with a lot of these kind of mainstream products, the more we're going to have to realize that we're getting back to a place of, you know, existing security vulnerabilities with passwords or, you know, stuff you would see with your bank account. So it'll be interesting to see the balance between, you know, the raw security kind of inherent with like Bitcoin or, you know, a traditional cryptographic wallet and then usability, whether it be cloud-based stuff or these exchanges. You know, Chris, one of the things that you're doing, I think it's interesting and it kind of points to the, if you connect the dots, the trend of granularity, really levels of granularity getting down to the micro level. It's microeconomics. This beautiful thing about this market is that you can take a page out of a book, you can track it and how you use that page. You can pay for all kinds of digital rights stuff, digital assets, if you look at just the world as a digital asset, this brings up the question of, okay, this is now, there's going to be software that's going to be written to manage this level of micro transactions or micro assets. So how do you view, in your opinion, this whole notion of token economics because we've used tokens for years on all the stuff we program, authentication, you know, all tokens are used in computer science, not a new concept. But if you think about tokens as a currency and as a mechanism for computer science, software, do you see a multi-token world? I mean, why wouldn't everyone have their own token? And then there's going to be software to manage the tokens. If you have a token and I have a token called the Kubecoin and you have your token, there's probably going to have to be some interaction between coins. Do you see that day happening sooner than later or do you even see it happening? You know, it's going to really depend on the use cases that they find, whether a single platform is going to come out and kind of take over the standardization of managing it. Or, you know, who knows? I mean, you see some of these transactional bridges like between Dogecoin or Ethereum. So you can see that happening between tokens or everything being built on the same chain or having these bridges between chains, whether it be like an EOS to Ethereum token chain bridge. I don't know, I mean, we really have no idea. Multi-chain is interesting, right? I mean, this is an interesting conversation. My vision is I think multi-chain is a good trend. Why wouldn't you want to have multiple chains if the use cases are not overlapping? I mean, I just don't feel comfortable with a monolithic approach of tokens. I just kind of am uncomfortable with that. I mean, I think it would be important and like you said, it would be very important to have a good solution to manage them. I mean, people aren't going to want 100 programs on their computer to manage their tokens. They're not going to want, you know, multiple apps on their phone. There's going to have to be some standardization so that people can manage it easily. Otherwise, it's going to be impossible to keep up with and that kind of the interchangeability between tokens will be important. Chris, final question for you. What's this event like here? Describe for the folks who aren't here, what's the vibe, who are the people? What are some of the conversations in the hallway so far? What kind of person is here? What is this event about? What's the relevance of Hoseokan? Well, it seems like it's a lot of, you know, technically-minded people kind of hoping to push forward the security in the blockchain world. We've had conversations about everything from educating the masses, so, you know, kind of the average person who doesn't maybe understand the complexities of Bitcoin.  And that's, you know, Hoseok is really pushing forward. How do you audit your code on the blockchain? We're on a lot of these platforms and I think it's really important to have these conversations because it's opening up new worlds of, you know, new thought habits for each of these companies. I mean, everyone has their expertise. You know, Hoseok specializes in smart contract auditing and, you know, we may not have the, you know, that in-depth of knowledge of how to audit the contract so, you know, it's nice to kind of share the knowledge and see that there's other solutions out there than everyone doing it on their own. What do you hope to be known for for your company? If you could have that vision down the road three years from now, what do you want to be known for? I mean, I think it would be best if we were kind of known as a platform to bring newcomers into the space, you know, informing, caring about the community, making sure that they understand what they're doing before they do it.  A lot of these cryptos are very unforgiving so it's, I think it's very important for us to kind of get to be known as someone who helps bridge that, that kind of intimidation. All right, Chris Ford, for three BX CTO entrepreneur building a company, doing it the right way. Plants to use tokens, and you guys, did you raise any money? Did you? Not yet? No raised money, we're privately funded. Nice. So we're going that route. Good, bootstrapping, making it, getting it done. Taking a different approach, which is, which is the classic approach of building a company, the right way. That's theCUBE. We are here in Las Vegas for Hoshokan. I'm John Furrier. Stay with us for more coverage after this short break.


Welcome folks, we have the Dow Industries trading down 421, NASDAQ is off 331, S&Ps down 70. That's a down draft for the NASDAQ of 2.2%, 1.6% in the S&Ps and 1.1% in the Dow Industries. Gold, gold contract down $17.90 traded at 17.34 in ounce. We get silver down 22 cents, $22.47 in ounce. Sweet crude off $0.37, $0.75, $0.08, notes and bonds, the 10 years down 11 ticks, trading $131.14, the 30 years off $1.126, $159.10, and $king dollar, $king dollar is up $385 ticks. That is trading out at $93.768, and I believe what it actually just did is that it actually just took out So the high of March, May rather that was going after was $7.29 here at $7.69, so it took it out. Bottom line is that looking at this dollar, we pulled this up. That's going to be pretty wild, man, because that's saying the dollar now can run to like 94.700. That's going to be a big number, no two ways about that. Now let's take a look at the market. So we take a look at the spy we have with the spy here. Spies coming into its big down draft date. Now with the trading, here's where the divergence comes in, folks. Okay, you get 86 million shares, you're coming into the $166. So that's saying that the spy is going to more likely reject lower price. That's how this baby is set up. That being said, the NDX100, the three Qs that have confirmed ABC structure on the way down, now they almost made a one to one. They took out the swing, they took it out with volume, the swing that we're talking about at 76 million, we've already done 76 million. The price projection there was a 356, I believe, and we got a 359. So this is going to get intriguing. Now what happens here with this divergence is this. That is, because we have so much volume in the Qs, that's saying this low is going to get tested. You know what my take is? My take is that we're actually going to 350 too. We'll see how this baby shakes up. But right now, bottom line, Qs still want to go into lower price. Spy? Different ballgame, man. Different ballgame altogether in the spy. And if we go take a look at the Dow Industries, Dow Industries right now, they're the strongest. Down fourth, 15. That's nothing. I mean, the Dow, the last time we were down there with the 336, 32, we made it to 34, 254. So the spy wants higher price. Stay right there, folks. Come right back.


Hi everyone. Well, this is pretty special to be here in Paris, in France, especially because it's here. I would love to see who here is actually from France when raising your hands. OK. All right, so it's really special because I'm French. And I was telling my friends, oh, it's going to be so amazing we're going to share this moment with the French cloud native crew. And then they said, they're not going to know you're French because you don't sound French. So I thought I would read a little quote from a French artist. A really profound quote just to share what's in my heart with all of you. It's in French, I apologize. I hope that's OK. And I'll translate it after. OK, I'm going to stop here. So the English translation is, it's all about the people. Or you can just ask a French person next to you. OK, so I'll stop joking around. Or not. Really, it means there's so much for me to be here with all of you because we're all platform people here. We have a difficult job. Our job is to help other people make their dreams come true while we toil away in darkness, making everything work. And it's a difficult job. It's a rewarding job. I love that job. So yeah, I think we got so much done in the last 10 years and more. And I want to talk about that a little bit. What we've achieved and what we can achieve still in the future. So it did start here in France, at least for me. I think maybe not everyone here knows this. But actually, within walking distance of here, in my mom's basement, is where we got the first working build of what you could recognize as maybe one day docker. And yeah, we were just a painted picture. We were nobody's. We were young losers excited about this weird technology for some reason. There were a lot of exciting things going on in the world of technology. We were not part of them. Nobody knew about us. Nobody cared about us. But we were just excited. We had a lot of time. So we started building things. And just to set context for what was going on at the time. This is 16 years ago, by the way, 2008. We got this first working build, just to paint a picture. 2008, cloud. The word existed, but it was this new kind of dreamy thing. Serious people did not run serious applications on the cloud. That was not a thing. And if you're into systems programming and platforms like I was, which at the time meant racking servers, the really exciting word for me was infrastructure. This concept, that was a really bleeding-edge word at the time. And it blew my mind this idea that instead of deploying one server at a time, probably by hand, and then having a developer deploy their application of that one server at a time, you could take all the servers and combine them into sort of one big computer, and then somehow the application would sort of consume all of it. And if a server goes away, blah, blah, blah, you know all this, but at the time it was amazing, an amazing idea. And nobody knew how to use this for applications. There were no tools. So I thought that was really exciting, to create tools for this new model for applications. And we didn't know any of the best practices at the time, because, again, no connection. And so we're just sort of building weird tools that we thought were exciting in our gut. And so the technology that attracted us was what we now call Linux containers. But it wasn't called that at the time. I think it was called lightweight virtualization, Linux virtualization. And it was very new in the Linux world. It existed in Solaris. Ask if someone here, Solaris people, Sun people? Yeah. Well, we did containers before you. You did. You did. But Linux did have lightweight virtualization. You had to patch the kernel. You had vServer. You had OpenVZ. And people did that. We did not invent that. People did that in production. It was a nice trick if you had big farms of servers. But it was a way to virtualize your machine. So it was a spectrum. Do you want to use VMs? Heavyweight virtualization, which was also pretty new at the time, or lightweight virtualization? It was all in the same plane. It was all about trade-offs, faster, more strong isolation. And what we wanted to do, let's take this container tech and stack it on top of VMs, because we thought it could be units of application virtualization. And that's the part that people thought was very weird, because it would be like running a VM inside a VM. Why would you do that? It's like a cool hackathon project, maybe. But we thought it had more potential than that. So it involved things like patching the kernel twice. Once for VMs, you had to apply Xen, for example. And then once for vServer, OpenVZ. And you had to find the right combination of patches. And so it was just really janky, weird stuff. And then if you want containers to be an application deployment unit, you need to bring in other technologies. You need a copy and write file system. You need some way to manage these images, not at the block level, but at the file level. And you need a way to track changes to them, move them around efficiently. At the time, what we did was we put the whole file system in source control. Not git, but mercurial. Remember, this is 2008. And yeah, we managed the state in CouchDB. So we had a very 2008 stack. It was already in Python, because Python is making a comeback now. Anyway, very weird. No one cares, by the way. Did I mention that? Nobody cared. Meanwhile, the industry, the real computer industry people over there in America, were kind of converging towards a way to do this, a way to deploy applications to the cloud. And they called it pass, platform as a service. And the idea was you choose a winner. You choose the best compute, the best storage, the best build, the best application runtime.  And then developers send the code, and it takes care of everything, and it's beautiful. It's the cloud. And you just got to pick a winner. And then the PASWAR started. Because of course, everybody wants to be the winner platform, the one platform that's going to run all the applications on the cloud. People really believe that would happen. We believe that would happen. And we thought, well, we could do that, because containers are good for this. And so we started this Pascal.cloud. And we were competing with the giants like Google App Engine, and Heroku. And we were in awe, starstruck, but still competing. And our approach was, well, we think the most modular platform will win, the most customizable platform will win. And containers are great for that, because you can have multiple. You can easily swap out application runtimes, databases, et cetera. We ran all of it on containers. And then we realized, OK, this is not going to be enough. Because even the most modular and customizable platform in the world will just not be modular enough, because this is just too big. There's just too much choice, too much diversity. It's all of the software, all of it's going to the cloud. And it's growing, software is eating the world, et cetera. And so at some point we realized, OK, we're definitely not going to run all the applications to the cloud, because we were like 10 people. But no one is. It's too big. And so we thought, OK, this container thing, maybe we could build an ecosystem around it. So of course, the rest, this part of the story is better known. We pivoted to Docker. And then did our best to convince everyone to use it? And somehow they did. And then I think you heard the rest of the story earlier. But really this approach to modularity, the fact that the way to solve this is to rebuild all of the infrastructure around a unit, a fundamental primitive that everyone can then compose and choose how they compose. That was the key. And look at us now. We're there, right? 10 years later, we have this ecosystem. We have all of the things, all of the components, all compute, all storage, all everything. Just rebuild around containers. And then all you have to do is just pick everything and just assemble the perfect platform. This is one problem. If you're a developer, the experience is not great. It's actually less good than in the past days. If you were lucky enough that your application did fit in Heroku or Google App Engine, life was good. You push the code, you forget about it. And I think some developers kind of missed those days. And some of you are thinking, well, my platform is just as good as Heroku, I billed myself, et cetera. But maybe. But it's just not the average developer experience. So this is where I think as an industry, we have to be careful because the temptation is to go back and say, you know what? Paz was actually not that bad. Let's just do it again. Let's pick the best of everything now. Let's bundle in a black box. And then let's just say, that's the platform that's going to run everything. And you just can't do that at the scale that we're talking about here. You can't run all of the applications that way. You can't standardize on that. So we're just not done. We have to somehow figure out a way to get the best of both worlds. We've got to embrace and own this choice and diversity that we have now with this crazy huge ecosystem. But still, we've got to give developers a great experience every time. So I spend a lot of time thinking about that. And my favorite analogy for this is factories. So the physical world has actually figured this out. It's just us and software still working on it. If you're designing a great physical product, you're also designing how to manufacture it at the same time in an integrated way. When Apple designed the Macintosh, they didn't do everything, finish everything, and then go to the factory and buy a factory at the factory store and say, hello, I'd like a factory. I'm going to manufacture a Macintosh. It's a completely integrated process every step of the way. You choose components. You think about the price, the sourcing, the manufacturing process, the partners, et cetera, et cetera. And that's the model that we should follow. And a natural consequence of that is that every factory is different because it aligns perfectly with the product being manufactured. And it's natural if you think about it in a physical world. So I think that's our model. We need to approach this as a manufacturing problem. And that means if you're building a software project and it becomes successful, you're going to have to own the factory that ships it. It has to be you. No one else, you can't outsource that. And some people do that already, but here's the other thing. It also has to be, as agile, a process to improve continuously the factory than it is to continuously improve the application. And that's where I think we have a little bit of work to do because when I talk to people, say, I have my internal platform, we built it, it's awesome. But you spend a year building it. And next year, there's going to be a new thing that you have to incorporate into the app, maybe an AI feature, maybe. And now you're going to start another 12-month process and spend half a million dollars rebuilding a new factory. It's not sustainable.  Continuously rapidly iterates the product and the factory. So I guess my message is, it's OK to own the factory. You have to do it. But you have to set a higher bar at we. I have this problem, too. We have to set a higher bar and think of it as an integrated process. So that's mostly what I wanted to tell you. And the last thing I want to tell you is the same friend who said, they're not going to know your French. Also said, you talk about the AI. So OK, I'm going to talk about AI because, thank you, friend. No, it is relevant because I spent three amazing days with all of you. By the way, please come say hi at the dagger booth. That's the tiny booth in the back, all the way behind the docker booth. I would love to talk. I would love to talk about this with you. Yeah, but one topic that came up a lot in these conversations was, well, is AI, we're the cloud and everything. It was hot 10 years ago. But now we've grown older, we have gray hair. We're the legacy now. All the cool kids go to the AI conferences. And I say, that's a mistake. You are wrong because those AI is software. AI apps are apps. And guess what you need to ship an AI app? The same thing you need to ship any app. You need a factory, you need a platform. You need this group of people. We're going to ship these apps for the years to come. And now's the time to think about, OK, how do you improve the factories to do that? So I think this is the most exciting moment for the platform community since the containers, the whole new generation of apps to ship. So we've just got to figure out how, of course. But yeah, we'll figure it out together. So that's it. Thank you so much for having me. Merci.