Frequency is a universal language. It's like the foundation of how everything works in the universe. Like in the Bible, for example, there's many instances where they talk about frequency. One major one is when Aaron was assigned to be the great priest of the people at that time. Before he could enter the holy holies or the most sacred part of the temple that was built at that time, he had to put on special stones, and he had to wear this breastplate made of some specific stones. And then apparently God told him exactly what stones to use to put onto his chest as a way to protect him when he was going into the holy holies. If you go too close to the ark of the covenant, it will basically fry your immune system or fry your nervous system.


So in this video I'm going to show you how to price your products for maximum profitability. I did a video on this topic two to three years ago but as we know the online space changes pretty quickly and what worked two to three years ago doesn't necessarily work today. So I wanted to record this video and take you through the new set of rules that you can use to apply to your products to make as much money as possible. Pricing your products as an e-commerce business owner is obviously a very important aspect.  Price them too cheaply, people will assume the products of a poor quality and again they'll leave. So in this video I'm going to take you through a set of rules that you can apply to no matter what product it is you are selling that will help you price it for maximum profitability. So firstly there is no one rule to suit every single product, it's a combination of many things. Give you an example of this, let's take this LED floor lamp here. If we apply a common rule you may hear of doubling the price of the cost of the product that would mean we would have to sell this lamp for 40 pounds. 40 pounds is probably about right in the ballpark number for this product so in this case it actually works. If we apply the same rule to this robotic vacuum it would mean we would have to retail this product at 440 pounds. That obviously makes these products really expensive and really difficult to compete with the other competitors selling this product. So to avoid this I'm going to take you through a set of rules that will help you price your products correctly. Number one as a minimum you must allow for 20 pound ad costs. So what this means is if we go back to this LED floor lamp the cost of this product to us is 20 pounds. Make sure you include any shipping costs on top of that. As we can see it's free shipping with the products like this so 20 pounds and 14 pence is the final price to us. As a very minimum then we would then have to retail this product at 40 pounds to make sure we have that 20 pound room for ad costs. Through my own experience 20 pounds is about right but when you do the math taken into account the averages of Shopify as a whole it works out at approximately the same. So if we do the maths we can see the average cost per link click according to HubSpot is 78 pence. The average Shopify store conversion rate with ads of put at 4%. If we take a look at blend commerce they say the average mobile conversion rate for Shopify store owners is 0.9%. If we look at trustmarry.com they say business owners getting into Facebook advertising can expect around two to three percent conversion rate right after the get-go but you should aim to improve that number to six percent. So the reason I've gone with four percent is because we're running ads. When you're running direct marketing your conversion rate will be a lot higher versus just relying on organic traffic. So if we apply this four percent conversion rate to a 78 pence cost per link click essentially we need approximately 25 visits for every single purchase and 25 visits times the 78 pence cost per link click is 19 pound 50 an ad spend. If we base our numbers on worst-case scenario like this a customer comes onto our site and buys one single product we can still make a profit on the front end this doesn't account for any upsells or any re-tagging. So the key takeaway from rule number one allow for a minimum of 20 pound for your ad spend and make sure you include upsells to bump up that average order value i.e. the profit per sale. Let's give you an example of what upsells might look like let's take a look at an example from conversionbear.com. So this is an example store of theirs the customer would come onto our site if they like the product they hit the add to cart button and it will take them to the cart page. The next step obviously for the customer is to hit that checkout button and this would be the point in which the customer is hit with an upsell offer. If you do this correctly and offer a product which is cheaper and falls in line with the initial trigger product the initial products they're buying then you can expect a conversion rate of anywhere between sort of three and ten percent on this. If you drop shipping just make sure the upsell product comes from the same supplier as the trigger product that way they'll be shipped in the same package and you'll only be paying one shipping cost and not two. Rule number two when it comes to pricing your products is what is the perceived value of the product so i'm going to show you some examples of where perceived value can make a difference. Example number one is if you're selling a product which is very technology based like this robotic vacuum everybody would expect a robot vacuum to be quite expensive they wouldn't expect them to be cheap because of the technology involved. Surprise this product as expensive as possible while staying cheaper than your competitors. So if we have a look on Curries which is a popular store in the UK which sells a lot of kind of gadgets and technology based things everything from appliances TV and auto computing etc. If we have a quick scroll through we can see 200 pounds 250 pounds 900 pounds 300 pounds 200 250 150 450. So if it was me I would put the sweet spot in and around the 300 pound mark. When it comes to perceived value then branding can be a point as well. Example number two is problem solving the bigger the problem you can solve for somebody the more they're willing to pay for it. Products on screen is a heated knee massager this can obviously drastically and literally change somebody's life for the good therefore the product has a significantly higher perceived value and therefore somebody be willing to pay a lot more for it. With products like this it's obviously really important that you target the right audience. For a young person who is an experienced in knee pain they would pay significantly less for a project like this versus somebody in their 70s who was an ex tennis player and experiences knee pain on a daily basis. Example number three is passion the more passionate somebody is about your product the more they will pay for it. As an example we can take this vegan t-shirt the vegan niche is obviously something people are super passionate about and therefore they would pay more for this t-shirt versus say and meat eater and because they're so passionate about veganism versus somebody who say eats meat they're obviously much more likely to pay more money for a product like this. This is one of the reasons why I love Facebook ads so much and I've used them for nearly five years now is because you can target people based on their interests. To sell a t-shirt like this to target an audience would be really simple because you can target interests like veganism and other vegan brands. Speaking of brands this moves me on nicely to point number three which is if you have a desirable sought-after brand then you can definitely charge more. One great example of this is coffee. If you go to a highly branded coffee shop like Starbucks or Custer then expect to pay a lot more versus a smaller privately owned coffee shop. The same for this can be applied to many of the different industries as well if you consider clothing, car industry, sports industry and definitely the technology industry as well. Just to go over a quick recap then of the main three points. Number one as a minimum allow for 20 pound ad costs. Make sure you also have an upsell trigger in your store to bump up that average order value. All number two is what is the perceived value of your product. People expect to pay more for your product don't be scared to then charge more for your product just make sure you charge a similar amount in line with other competitors. If your product solves a massive problem for somebody and can drastically improve their lives per se save them time make them healthier give them pain relief and a perceived value of your product is a lot higher and somebody would be willing to pay a premium price. An example number three is passion. The more passionate somebody is about your product or your brand the more money they're going to pay for it. If you're still not sure how to price your products then there's a last resort you can use competitors. You can use the Shopify products tab on sell the trend. I featured this in my video yesterday which will show you exactly how to use it. You can find the exact same products you find on AliExpress but what people are selling them for in their Shopify store and you can use that to mirror the prices on your Shopify store or you can use a simple Facebook search go into the top left put in your product followed by buy here and then you can filter by posts or by videos and you'll be able to see ads from companies selling the same product. You can go to their Shopify stores and see exactly what price they're selling it for and with that being said that's everything I wanted to cover in this video. Thanks for watching I really do appreciate all the support on these videos. If there's anything you feel like I missed make sure you let me know by leaving a comment in the comment section down below. Make sure you hit that subscribe button to stay up to date with my latest content. I'm one final very quick message before you go. If you are looking for a program to take you from day one the very beginning from scratch as a complete beginner all the way up to having a fully fledged functioning business on Shopify make sure you check out my e-commerce academy there will be a link in the video description below. Thanks again I'll see you guys in the next one.


Hello, thank you for joining me. I'm on a Chilton Railways class 165 and I'm on my way to Oxford. Today we're going to the City of Oxford Model Engineering Society's railway at Cutler's Low Park. So it's another episode of Minutes to Railway Britain. I'm going to be getting off at Oxford Parkway which is fairly new. It opened in October 2015 because from there it's a shorter walk to Cutler's Low Park than if I was to get off at the main Oxford Railway station. So we're still very much in the country as you can see just see the Bambry Road, just see the Bambry Road to Stone Terminal. The driver's just letting us know that the next station is Oxford Parkway. So that's where we're going to get off and then I've got a walk. It's not too far. It's about half a mile, three-quarters of a mile walk from the railway station to the park. So I've never been to this railway before so I'm really quite excited about this. It's a new railway for me and I've been to Oxford many times before but I've just never been to this railway. It's right in the northern suburbs so that's why I'm getting off here rather than the main Oxford station. So we're just pulling into Oxford Parkway now so I'll show you that. I will obviously have to stop filming to get my ticket out for the ticket parries then I'll walk and wish I'll show you as we arrive at Oxford Parkway. I mean sorry at the railway so we're arriving at Oxford Parkway now. Let's get off the train. So I'm going to class 165033. I saw the number of this one when I came in. Not sure what the unit on the back is but we'll see that as we go out and just let you have a look at the station as we before we leave. Oxford Parkway tell we're in the Cotswolds and now the Cotswolds stone of the bridge. There's our train we've just come on. So for a while when they reopened this stress attract this was the terminus for the children railways trains going to Oxford and then they finally extended the last bit down into Oxford so let's just watch the train go. We're going to visit the miniature railway at Cutler's Low Park. We've been walking for about 20-25 minutes so probably about a mile three-quarters a mile. I am from Oxford Parkway now I'm now walking through this rather pleasant rather quiet residential area in the northern side of Oxford but just up here the residential area ends and the park begins so I've never seen this railway before so I am literally recording this as I arrive so who um this is going to be interesting I don't even know when I get into the park which direction but I have a feeling it's going to be in that direction so oh it looks quite busy there's a lot of cars here um so obviously if you don't want to do what I did and come here by train you could drive here so that's also an option but um I do try and go to as many minutes as I can by train but sometimes it's nice to drive there especially if I take my ladder there's a map there um so we're here this is miniature railway I can see it so not too far now um what I'm going to do I've shown you the arrival of the park I think it's going to be a few minutes walk down there so I'm going to keep walking and I'll show you when we get there so I've just come down this drive and I can now see the miniature railway over there and it's quite a bit cute so what I'm going to do I'll walk around we'll have a look at the train first um and then I'll go and queue up and have my ride so as I said very excited about this not been here before um walking here a whistle of a steam lurker so that's a very promising sound there's the countryside out over there so you can see we really are on the very northern edge of Oxford um it would you could walk to the city centre I probably will because I was going to get a train back later on from the main Oxford railway station but I thought I'd come this way for a bit of fun I can just see I don't have to come just going to get out but I can just see a cloud of steam as a steam train disappears off in the distance so um let's see what we can find well I've never seen such a bit cute for a miniature railway it goes right the way around there so it's just going to be interesting it's double headed trains two um two quarry lines about to depart so I think I'm going to do a walk up here and um watch them go so I can see at least three locos in steam so this is really really quite exciting I think that train's going to come let's watch this train go by I'm going to go and join Q and have my ride well I've had a great afternoon here at Cutler's Low Park um really enjoyed riding behind the four steam locomotives very north wales feeling here today in Oxford um because on that train we had the quarry hunslet and we had Charles which um is a miniature version of Linda from the Faustino railway and we also had a miniature number seven Tom Rolk from the Talliglin railway along with another narrow gauge loco so it's really had that very north wales feel here today um as you can see this is the seven and a quarter and five inch gauge railway this is a head jump this side in here which is only seven and a quarter inch it's to get trains into the carriage shed so um you can see a train would have to reverse over these points up to the head shunt and then the racetrack line here swings out the way and then you've got the tracks going around there into the carriage shed I knew the racetrack railway wasn't going to be running today so um I wasn't expecting to have a ride but at some point we'll come back in the future and um we'll do the racetrack railway and as for the society themselves they've been around for quite a long time they started in 1955 they used to be at Berlin Palace and um they had a railway there they left Berlin Palace in 1988 I'll put a picture in now that's a headboard of the last train that ran in Berlin Palace they came here in the late 80s and then last year they built this extension here out into the park you can just see the Cory Hunslet and Charles out on that extension now so this was only open last year this extension which takes the line round there so previously the ground level tracks went round here and as I said we've got the racetrack in the middle so it's a really really nice railway you can get here by train or you can drive it took me like I said about half an hour to walk from Oxford Parkway I'm going to walk back to Oxford station just for the fun of it which I know is going to take me longer than it did um from Oxford Parkway but it's accessible by public transport and if you don't fancy the walk you can get a bus here so it's a really really nice railway it's in a very nice park so you know why not come and visit the railway at Cutlerslow Park I've had a great time so um thank you very much for watching please do feel free to like subscribe and comment and from the Cutlerslow Park Railway goodbye


Hello friends, welcome back to another episode here on the channel. For those that are new to the channel, my name is Lee also known as Osiris. I hope you're all doing well and ready for more VGC 2021 content here today. And we've got another rental team that will be featuring today. So I basically got a little notification earlier from me, Luca VGC, who is a Korean player. He posted a team that he got actually ranked number one on the battle spot ladder with earlier. So I don't know, he must have been playing this recently. I don't know if he hit the rank today or if that was just a couple of days ago, but very recent, obviously. And this is a team that he posted earlier on today. Obviously the rental code will be down in the description. I'll make sure to tag that. And also me, Lucas VGC's social handle as well. So you can drop them a follow as well. And it is his birthday today. So big, big happy birthday to me, Luca VGC. Here is the team that will be featuring today. It's very centric around the Reggie Drago. Obviously going to be the main centerpiece of the team. Or at least to me it is. And that's what's really attracting me, too. Because I think Reggie Drago, we did an episode on it. I think it's a very strong Pokemon, but I do feel like it struggles a lot in this format. But there's lots of nice Pokemon around it to get rid of the Pokemon that give it a lot of problems. You've got Nileego, something I haven't really featured too much on the channel this season. So going to be nice to play that. And also the Tornadis as well. Now, the other three I can make an exception for, because we've had teams with these Pokemon in flurries throughout the last couple of weeks. Obviously the Urshifu with the Choice Band there. One of my favorite items on Urshifu then caught on with the Assault Vest. I haven't really played the Assault Vest variant too much. So that's going to be nice and interesting. And then Incineroar with the Shuka Berry there, reducing the damage from ground type attacks. So that is the team. And like I say, a big shout out to me. You look at for posting the team and sharing it with the community. Very nice of him to do that. And obviously it gives us the opportunity to kind of feature it today on the channel, which is going to be very fun. So we've got our first opponent of the episode. They are playing a team of Robombi, Trevenant, Wigglytuff, Dusknoir. Dusknoir. Is that how we're saying it? I don't know. Stackataka and Guzzlord. OK, this is not your kind of standard looking team. You've got to imagine there's probably speed swap on the Robombi. I don't know why else it would be in there other than that kind of little gimmick that it's got going on and plays well with the rest of the team. You know, you've got the Trick Room mod from the Dusknoir. The Trevenant is what my guessing. Comparative on Wigglytuff as well, to kind of punish, intimidate from ourselves and then the big hit as I don't know how hard Guzzlord will hit, but it's something not to be underestimated. It is a bit of a tank if you don't have the fairy typings to get around it. And then Stackataka as well. We all know how dangerous Stackataka can be. And has the Robombi got? Has it got the mental hurt? Because potentially we could have we got taunt on Tornadus? Let's have a quick look. We do because we could taunt it, I think as well. I'd like to lead Urshifu. That's definitely a Pokemon I would like to lead. Tornadus, the thing is Naileego is not a bad lead either here because it kind of helps check the Wigglytuff, you know? Also, Cortana isn't bad as well. I think we'll bring Drago and we'll bring Tornadus in the back as well. OK, so let's see. I mean, Incineroar might have been an option here. It kind of gives us a little bit of an option if the trick room gets set up and gives us a little bit of a means to stall out the trick room turns, especially with the Intimidates, London or opponent, fake out, things like that. But we haven't brought it. So we're going to have to manage without it in this one. Here we go. Those moonballs with the Dusknoir and the Wigglytuff. OK, well. We can definitely remove the I don't I don't really like saying that. I like saying disclops, disclops, it rolls off the tongue. But Dusknoir doesn't feel so good. And I might even be saying it wrong. The obvious thing here is obviously we go for the wicked blow into the Dusknoir and that would remove it. That takes away the option for a trick room, unless it's sashed. And I feel like this team's got lots of little gimmicks on it. The thing is, though, we do have Nilego sitting here, where we can reverse the trick room if you want. And we could just get a sludge bomb into the Wigglytuff. Wigglytuff could potentially max. Or we could see that, which is not so good. If we get the poison here, that would be helpful. Not going to be very effective, though.  But we are going to have to readjust our board position here because now potentially it doesn't gleam coming out from the Wigglytuff. Definitely going to threaten our Oshifu. And with the trick room set up as well, we're not in a great spot. And obviously locked into wicked blown out way of super vulnerable. So we'll we'll see if we can switch out. Maybe think Tornadus out of everything is probably the better thing to bring in here. The one Pokemon that I feel like we could maybe kind of sacrifice at this point out of everything else. Everything else that we've got in the field feels quite important. So and we do have the sash there. So there's a dozen gleam like we thought come out. We take that pretty comfortably on both Pokemon and the Paul two guys. Picks up our mental herb, which is this is going to hurt. Oh, OK, just hanging on to reverse that trick room, which is ideal. This is exactly what we need. Now, the problem is OK, I think what we'll do is we'll go for the taunt into the disney. We'll go for a meteor beam this time because we just go into the disney as well with a meteor beam. Because if we see the ally switch, we get the taunt onto that. Now we go after. Yeah, we go after the Wigglytuff because we want to get the taunt. Hopefully it hasn't got mental herb. No mental herb, but there's a shadow sneak, so we're going to lose. Nile ego, but that's fine. We prevent we're preventing the trick room, which is the big play here. Hyper voice coming out. Take some hefty damage from that. OK, the problem is I kind of want to get like a close combat should take down the Wigglytuff. But we still have to contend with a heat wave not going to be not going to be the play here. And I don't think it's time for Reggie Drago just yet because Reggie Drago is not going to be able to damage that Wigglytuff. We need to be able to remove the Wigglytuff really from the field. I mean, we could tailwind here. And then if, yeah, if we tailwind, I just worry about the ally switch. That's the only thing. Yeah, no ally switch. I'm hoping a banded close combat takes down the Wigglytuff. This will open the door then for Reggie Drago to come in and do a bunch of work. So there's the shadow sneak. That's fine. Yeah, close combat. They should take the Wigglytuff down. OK, perfect. We are locked into close combat, which is an ideal. I'm a poison just ticking away at that desk noir. So what's going to come in? At least it doesn't was taunted for at least one more turn. And if in that turn, Tornelist goes down, that's perfect, because then we get Reggie Drago into the field, which kind of opens the door for us to kind of start doing some big damage here. The other option is maybe, hmm, actually, we just want to go after, we just want to go after. The stack attacker. Yeah, let's just go after the stacks. Because I think with the fairy down, unless Robombi is the last Pokemon in my opponents slot, then we should be fine. But if Robombi is the last Pokemon and things get a bit tricky, we'll probably see a shadow sneak here from the desk noir. I think into Tornelist just to remove it. It'd be a bonus if we don't see that and we could potentially get a heat wave off. OK, we're going to see. Stack at just retreat. Guzzlord coming in. OK, I don't mind this at all. Because as long as Tornelist goes down here, what? No way. We're seeing. OK. Ha ha. Didn't expect to see this. Dynamics desk noir. So this gets super interesting. I would have never, ever, ever expected this. Now, the thing is, if the taunt was off here, that's perfect for us because they're just not getting their trick room up. And I think there's pretty much locks again for us because I don't expect us to lose Urshifu. I at least I hope we don't. OK, well, there's the Guzzlord going down. I'm hoping they attack into Tornelist here. That's where I want them to go. But I don't think they will. I think they'll go after Urshifu. Max Knuckle coming out. It's going to take Urshifu down, I think. Yep. Oh, we actually survive. I'm surprised about that, to be honest, because the minus two. So I know it is like Max Knuckle's capped, but we're minus two defense.  The other the other issue is obviously Stack Attack are coming in that does have access to trick room. And so it could go for that now. So it's probably worth our time actually not going for the Heat Wave and going for the taunt into the Stack Attacker and just following that up with a close combat. Because at this point now, as long as we can taunt the Stack Attacker, yeah, we've got Reggie Drago to come in and just kind of clean up after that. But we unfortunately get the win, but we don't actually get to see Reggie Drago, which is a little bit unfortunate. But the team showing they can kind of perform even without it's kind of it's starts mascot. It's the biggest member. So really kind of getting off to a nice start here.  Has it got the speed swap? Yeah, there we go. OK, we've seen enough for the rest of the team, but very good game to my opponent. And we will move on to our next game. OK, so next up, we have got a team of Venus or Tocall, Porygon to Reggie, Aleccy, Urshifu and Glastria. So we've got a definitive trick room core in this team. You can see the Tocall and the Glastria, they're supported by the P2. It's going to be the trick room set. And then you've got the rest of the team in pretty speedy mode. You've got the Reggie Aleccy, which is going to cause us all sorts of issues. Then the Venus or with the chlorophyll ability with that drought ability on the Tocall, something that we need to think about and really try and mitigate if we can. And then the Urshifu, which kind of rounds up the team. So, Incineroar, definitely a good Pokemon for us here. It's a lead with, for sure. Do we want to go with Tornadus? It's a nice option because it gives us a way to shut down the P2 if we do see it. And it gives us a way to kind of mitigate the chlorophyll ability as well, if we do see it from the Venus or Tocall. So it's a nice option. The only issue is obviously the Reggie Aleccy is probably something that will lead. But then with the fake-out support from Incineroar, we have a way of mitigating that, at least. I do want to bring Reggie Drago here, but I think also we probably need... What do we need in our last slot? There's a lot of ground threats here, like Glastria, Kary's ground threats, Tocall and Venus all do. But I do feel like Nilego could do a job for us here as long as the speed conditions are in our favor, because if we're in a trick room obviously with Nilego, it's not going to be great. But we do have the option to reverse the trick room if they do get it set up. I don't think we need to worry too much if as long as we can get a tail wind up, if trick room's kind of avoided, that's a nice option there. But we'll see what my opponent goes with to lead and it's going to be the Reggie Aleccy and the Venus or... And a nice play here for my opponent would always be going for the... Volt switch into Tornadis, get us down to our sash, get the Tocall in and allow the Venus or to attack before anything, we can do anything really. So we've got a couple of options here. We can go for a fake out into the Reggie Aleccy, but does my opponent read that? You see, and just switch straight into the Tocall, maybe go for a sleep powder here. I think what we're going to do is go for a flablet. Read the Hald switch from the Reggie Aleccy here, I think, go for the flablets into the Venus or and get a tail wind up as well. I think the Reggie Aleccy's too threatened here to stay in. Yeah. Oh, it's interesting. It's P2, huh? Okay, I didn't expect that. Okay, but it's a nice play from my opponent. So no hard switch from the Reggie Aleccy. We could have faked out that slot and there's the Volt switch. And I'd imagine Glastriemi may make an appearance onto the field. Now, what we're going to have to do is utilize Tornadis before the P2 can set the trick room up because that's the thing that the P2 is going to definitely go for now. It's going to go for that trick room. Okay, and the Tocall coming in. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, I think what we'll do is just allow the flablets is going to do some nice damage to this P2 as well with the Sunup. You know, that really helps us out a bunch. But we know my opponent's full Pokemon, which is also very nice. The one thing we could potentially do is go for the taunt and go for the max with Incineroar, you know? Or is it worth just keeping it for later maybe? Just I don't like to pull the trigger too early on the max, that's the thing. We could go, I just want damage into the Tocall really and the only way to do it is to probably get damage into it is going to be gone max darkness and then taunt into the P2 to stop that trick room. Worry about obviously an ally switch here, which mitigates our taunt to a certain extent because they can get around this play and then set the trick room up the next turn. The issue in doing that for my opponent would be though is that they would have a bit of an issue with the P2 taking too much damage, meaning it's probably would be in KO range the next turn. But ideally here what we want is to stop the trick room, prevent that, allow tornadoes to go down, get Reggie Dragoon to the field this next turn in our tailwind and start just firing off dragon energies because everything's kind of in range now for us to start chipping away at and this special defense drop as well on the Incineroar plays into this whole idea. Now the eruption coming out which is ideal because I guess it does take down the tornadoes which is what we want and Incineroar in a great position. And now we should be able to actually see Reggie Dragoon in action which is what we really want and this works out then this is great. I think we just got for another max darkness maybe this time into, where do we go for max flare? I think max flare into the P2 and we go for a dragon energy, yeah. Because I think with the P2 not being able to recover, do anything it feels like it may want to switch out and we may see a play where my opponent keeps the talk all on the field, protects it and switches the P2 out to something but doesn't look like we're gonna see that as a dragon energy, kind of take both down that would be incredible if we can see. Bye bye. The field, it's just like the delete button, it's the best, it is the best. I mean we're not gonna get the most out of our max move now but I'm hoping that I know depending on how the opposing Reggie Leckie's trained, if it's modest there's a chance that we could out speed it with Reggie Dragoon. It's not, it's gonna be tricky. We'll definitely out speed the Venus or this turn and we can go for a max flare into that slot so that's fine. Obviously we're not gonna out speed it with Incinero but we're not in any worry of getting knocked out here, not by a max quake anyway so we'll go for another dragon energy. We just need to jump on Reggie Leckie pretty much because a max flare will take down the Venus and the damage even if it stays on the field and protect will be enough to put it in range for the next turn hopefully with two Pokemon. We just need to take down this Reggie Leckie here. So we're gonna see Venus or I believe in the Pokeball. Go for it's G-Max. I don't think a dragon energy will take down a Venus or a G-Max Venus or I just can't see that happening. I mean if it does, I mean Reggie Drago here we are but we just need to out speed the Reggie Leckie which I'm not, oh what it actually out speeds everything. Okay, it out speeds at Drago. Doesn't do as much damage as we kind of, okay. So is that a slow, Reggie Leckie? Dragon energy should still do a good amount of damage. Okay, so we're still gonna get a good chunk of damage. Yeah, and now the max flare should take down the Venus or okay. Okay, underestimating how speedy this Venus always but we make quick work of it and now Reggie Leckie isn't gonna be able to do very much to what we've got left on the field because we can just drag and pulse to mitigate the HP loss that we're kind of relying on for the dragon energy. Obviously, one of those moves, a bit like eruption, a bit like water spout that you see on Kailga where more HP you've got the stronger the move is. We'll just go for yeah, a flare butt and a dragon pulse and that should do the job but at least we got to see Reggie Drago in action here. That's the main thing. As we've seen Electroball come out from the Reggie Leckie we do resist that being dragon and the dragon pulse here gonna be enough to take down this Reggie Leckie and wrap up this second game for us friends. So that is, that's a really nice game for us to feature along with our first one today especially with the Reggie Drago didn't feature too much in that first one so nice to get it here. And yeah, that is just chose the team and how well built it is and what a good team it is. So we'll jump over to the rental cord and we'll end the episode wrap up. So here is the rental cord my friends and once again just a big shout out to me, LucaVGC and a big happy birthday to you as well. Hope you've had a great day and I hope if you guys try this team out I would definitely recommend it. It's a very, very nice build and the Reggie Drago is not something to overlook. It's a very powerful Pokemon in the right conditions. You've got to be very careful if you're going up against fairy types of course they're immune and you've got no coverage here with Reggie Drago. It's one of the biggest drawbacks of it as a Pokemon in general. So what you want to be doing in situations where you're seeing fairies in front of you is making sure that they are the priority to take down. That's your win condition. Once the fairies have gone down, you've got a game plan where potentially Tornadis, Reggie Drago in the back and you can bring it in in the end game and just really just obliterate your opponent and just overwhelm them with the speed control that you've got from Tornadis and then that dragon energy boosted by the dragon fine as well as well as dragons more which is just incredibly strong damage and that's the end game. It's a bit like translating it to those older players that maybe you're not familiar with this format if you're playing pherathon, the win cone is getting rid of the fire type and then pherathon just wins out because it's just such a good Pokemon. Reggie Drago is a little bit different. It needs a bit of additional support in that speed control. So as long as you've got that next to it, you're gonna be fine but the rest of the team does an incredible job at dealing with the issues that Reggie Drago sometimes struggles with. You've got two ultra beasts here which deal with fairies. Like it's nothing, you've got Incinero which is a more offensive build which is really nice and then Urshifu which is just busting. This format so it's a really nice team and I'm really, really thankful that we got this share as well. So big shout out again and we'll wrap things up there. If you have enjoyed today's episode, please take a moment and hit that like button down below. It does really help the video out and lets people know about it a bit more because YouTube decides that it's gonna push it. So it does help out and if you have enjoyed the content as well and you're not already subscribed to the channel, do consider subscribing. Hit that notification bell as well so you don't miss any of these episodes when they do go live. So, friends, thank you so much for tuning in. Have a great rest of your day. I really appreciate you coming and enjoying the episode and the team with me and we'll see you for another episode very soon. So until then, friends, take care of yourselves and bye-bye.


So this is going to be about encrypted cloud storage as you might guess from the title and specifically about a security review an independent security review we did of this spider oak one application and what we found so the basic goal will be to to see you know what do they claim to provide and what do they actually provide in terms of security. So this will be basically what I'm going to be talking about so I'll start by describing the threat model we used for this review then I'll describe at a very high level how this spider oak application works and then I'll show some attacks on how this can the security can be broken and as a small disclaimer here we did report all our issues and if you're using spider oak then you should just use the newest version I guess that holds for all software all right so I think I'll start by comparing you know or trying to motivate encrypted cloud storage that might seem I don't know silly at a conference full of cryptographers but I'll try anyway so traditional cloud storage I think has some privacy concerns for example you know besides ourselves the user who else can read our files if our files are basically stored in plain text on the server then anyone with access to the server can essentially read these files and that's probably a problem there's also this issue of you know what happens if we when we delete files are they actually securely deleted and the same holds when we close our account so you know the files that we had at some point are they totally gone now from the server or is there still some you know liftovers basically and that's not so cool maybe and finally you know what happens if this cloud storage gets so cloud storage company gets sold so it might be that we are fine with the company as it is now but if it's suddenly sold to somebody else who has a different approach to managing user data and so on then we might not be too happy about this but essentially we have no real control over the files that we store in this service so we cannot really control it after you know it's sold and the solution I guess is obvious right we just encrypt everything on the client before we send it to the server and hopefully you know all the cloud or all the server sees is encrypted files and he shouldn't be able to use that for anything really all right so but this this like begs the question you know that this encrypted cloud storage easiest it should give something more in terms of security than regular cloud storage in particular I think we want our files to stay secure even if the server turns malicious so all of the points I had before can basically be considered as you know some kind of malicious server the server starts looking at our files or poking around in them and and so on and it also seems that real products basically agree with this sentiment that you know we do not necessarily have to trust the server so I've taken all of these quotes from the various websites and they all basically seem to be saying the same that you know you should not necessarily have to trust the server or your files stay secure no matter what and and so on and it's the button one will be focusing on in this talk okay the question is of course you know is this malicious server threat model thing is that actually used so for this spider case after we disclose these issues to spider they wrote this blog post basically stating that it was built in a time before they considered this threat model and therefore it is not secure against this malicious server so that's too bad but I guess that you know spoils the spoils the results that we actually did found find some some issues in this if it's not secure per their claim finally there has been some previous work on on looking at these cloud storage company or cloud storage in cryptic cloud storage services and the kind of security they provide so I've taken two examples here that consider spy dope in particular and you know one of them the top one considers an external adversary in in the form of some kind of web adversary and the bottom one considers only file sharing and shows that the server can actually read the file so when you share a file with somebody else in this application you lose this guarantee of security basically and this file sharing I'll get back to because it's a bit worse than this all right so so our threat model is is pretty simple so we assume an honest client for I think obvious reasons otherwise it's not so no so fun to look at and since we are talking in the context of you know a real application that we want to assess the security of this simply means that we receive this software from the server before the server turns evil and it's kind of necessary because of course if we start assuming or start you know looking at what happens with the server turns evil and obvious questions of course but the server you know it could just upload a broken client so we don't consider that because then security would be I don't know hard to analyze so informally our threat model looks at basically two questions so first of all are we secure against some kind of passive adversary so if all the server does is look at the files we have we are storing but otherwise does not do anything out of the ordinary are we then secure so I guess this this should be pretty clear that this is should this should at least hold right because otherwise there's no point in doing all of this then we're no better than a regular cloud storage solution the other thing we looked at is what happens if the server suddenly starts deviating in some some sense so of course this cloud storage or these cloud storage applications are in in essence some you know client server protocol so of course there's a lot of communication between the client and server and a question is of course you know what could the server do actually that is it would not normally do and how does the client react to this so specifically you know the protocols that it has and can these be misused and again since we're considering considering a real application that's also the question of the client's implementation finally we do provide this in a bit more formal way in our paper which can be viewed it's on e-print and it's basically just an in this thing is your ability experiment between a and yeah client and a server which I think most of you have seen such kinds of our definitions possibly a hundred times or something like that right and our definition only considers confidentiality so it's really the very minimal I think that we would want from one of these products okay so spider one some very basic facts about this application so it's an encrypted cloud storage application and it has received some praise or endorsements from both Edward Snowden and the EFF so if you care about these authorities in in popular privacy or what have you then this this is a nice attribute to have I think it uses this interesting name no knowledge for their encryption routines and before that they use zero knowledge and it's important here to note that this zero knowledge has nothing to do with cryptographic zero knowledge is more like saying that we have zero knowledge of what you're storing because we're encrypting data and that's also what actually led us to look at or consider spider oak in the first case because we thought it was very interesting that they use this name without really you know considering that it actually has a proper definition okay it supports all the media operating systems nothing fancy there there's some partial support for android and iOS it supports file sharing it's written in python so it's easy to decompile that was nice it uses certificate pinning and tls which means that the attacks that we do find cannot actually be run by somebody outside because an outside attacker would of course have to break this tls thing to run the attacks we find of course that's easy for the server because the server is the intended recipient of the client's data and we did our review on this 615 which was the newest release or newest version last last year when we did this all right communication very roughly looks like this so it proceeds in two parts there's an authentication part which is only run on install so when you install the application the first time either as part of a new account or just installing on a new computer the server gets to pick which protocol to run uh for some reason there's four protocols that the client will run but it only runs two of them um and so the the intro or the important thing here is that the server actually chooses this so of course a question i'll come back to is you know what happens if we run run one of these protocols that is not actually run and of course this being a proper or i shouldn't say that uh this being uh you know i i don't know if it's uh uh yeah all of the protocols are not standard basically homemade so this is also interesting i think um whether or not that's a good idea is of course up to debate i think um everything else basically is done using rpc calls in a python library and this is surprisingly comprehensive for an application that basically just uploads and downloads data so there's around 90 different procedures that the server can actually call on the client that's of course also very interesting to analyze encryption in the application is done like this so if you store a file f this is uh means that you would derive a key in this way by hashing f together with this mk which is a random string these kf is or kf's keys so file keys are encrypted with a per directory key so you have a um you have a unique key per file and then to protect all of these file keys you use a key per directory all of these directory keys is then encrypted by some long-term key so a long-term key is just a key that is created when you create the account and then it's just the same forever and finally these long-term keys are encrypted by uh a key derived from the user's password so of course everything in the end depends on the user's password for security and then it gradually i guess fans out as you go down this tree on the right a small note here about password changes so if you wanted to get some sort of future secrecy you know if you break one of these keys then you'd have to rotate it at some point when you change your password unfortunately this does not happen so if you change the password in the application only the encryptions of these long-term keys are actually recomputed but the keys themselves are not changed or anything so if you know these long-term keys then changing the password does not you know give you some sort of future secrecy here all right i'm yeah right so this is basically what we found so we found four different issues that we could actually use to attack the client and what this means is that there was some issues or we found some issues in the in the client that the server in some ways can trigger and this degrade security in some uh definable or miserable way so we found one uh issue the first one here which basically weakens the security of a hash drive from the user's password so one of these authentication protocols i talked about before is basically just asking or sending some parameters to the user and asking him to derive a hash of course you know if the server is malicious he can choose these parameters in such a way that this goes wrong or this degrade security there's also some some interesting consequences of using a pretty out-of-date python library in this but i'll skip this part then we found two attacks that can recover the user's password and one of them is totally without the user actually knowing what's going on this is of course pretty bad i think and then we found one attack which in some situations will recover files that are actually not shared so this the last one here means that in some situations where you share a concrete directory you would actually end up revealing files that are not part of the directory to the server also which is interesting to get back to this active passive thing uh we have in our thread model uh the two password recoveries are active so they require the server to do something it shouldn't do um the passive one is basically just this all the server has to do is inspect the data that is sent and of course we implemented all of these and and verified that they actually worked and so on so the first password recovery so remember that i mentioned we had these uh four protocols but we actually only saw two of them so one of them looks like this so the server will send a list of rsa public keys and some chl random string the user uses something called rfc 1751 to computer fingerprint and what this does is that or it hashes all of these keys first and then it uses this rfc to computer fingerprint this rfc is an rfc from i think 94 that describes a way to turn a list of or a string of bits into english words okay then it displays this fingerprint to the user so the user gets involved in some uh non-trivial way like besides just inputting the password and supposing the user accepts then you compute this layered encryption thing of the user's password and this challenge uh which looks interesting of course the issue is pretty obvious here you know the server can of course be the one that picks these these keys in the first place and this will let him decrypt uh the user's password when he sends it back although this leaves out the question of this fingerprint so of course this fingerprint the way it's used here it should be pretty obvious that it's basically some kind of out of band authentication for uh this list and i think this is used in their enterprise product uh for escrowing keys but it can also be used in the single user product which is interesting and the question is of course you know what should you the the user be comparing this to this this fingerprint to so this this is uh an i so this is the question right if he hasn't ever seen this fingerprint before which i think is a valid assumption if we run this against the user that is not supposed to uh or against the client that is not supposed to run this protocol then he hasn't seen a fingerprint before and of course you know what should he do so spydo takes this trust on first use tofu approach for this and this is the message that it is displayed together with this fingerprint it basically says that if you if you have not been giving this fingerprint then you should just click yes and move on of course this doesn't work in in the case where you know you're a malicious server so this this authentication does nothing to again or in in this active case i would argue right so the file recovery so it requires some basic or some quick observations about how uh directory sharing happens in this application so remember we had this tree or hierarchy of keys of course the most efficient way to share a directory when you have this structure is to just reveal this directory key and that's what spydo does so by simply revealing basically one uh symmetric key you can share gigabytes of data so this is very efficient unfortunately we found that when you move files uh between directories no encryptions are updated and we also found that these directory keys are not updated this of course leads to two scenarios that i think are very plausible so first of all suppose we have some directory with some files this could be easily be like a directory with the vacation photos or something some of them are i don't know maybe too private to share with your colleagues or something so you move them to a different directory and then you share the old ones so now you can show these photos but from this observation to this file that you move away is actually still shared with the old key so when you reveal this to the server as you do when you share this the server can actually recover these different keys a similar thing happens as a consequence of this observation three if you have some shared directory and you stop sharing this add new things to it then these new things is encrypted with a key that the server still knows and of course the server can then recover this and i think it's important to point out that in both these scenarios the files that the server can recover are actually files that the user takes specific steps to avoid sharing so it's not just random files it's actually files that are the user doesn't want to share so this is all nice and so on so so this is the last password recovery or the second one the silent one i think this is bad enough of it itself but okay so after installation in order to avoid having the user input his password on every year you know every time he starts up the application the client will write out the user's password in plain text on a file locally okay i guess this is a problem if you you know are afraid of somebody stealing your computer or something like this so we analyze these rpc methods and we found an rpc method that given a file path will return this files content if the file path matches the regular expression and i guess you can see where this is going right the file path for for the file containing the user's password matches this regular expression and the server can actually just ask for the user's password and then it will the client will happily return this password or the file with the password in it yeah okay so i'll give my because the original title of this was something about some lessons so i'll give my because i think all of these issues reveal some interesting well known i think problems with developing software and anti patterns if you will so first of all i think this complexity plays a big role in this application you know all of these rpc methods uh different applications protocols authentication protocols and so on and so forth actually the last password recovery attack we found the one way you could just ask for it the fix for that was to just remove these methods because they were not used it was dead code basically uh there's this interesting issue i think of using the same secret for both authentication and encryption uh and all the password recovery attacks was actually enabled by you know using the password as an authentication uh secret if the password or if you had a separate password for authentication and encryption then um breaking these authentication protocols would not be that big of a deal because presumably all you would get there was then be encrypted data there's some some moral about making assumptions about where what the user should do or how he should act in different uh you know situations and in particular i i think the client should avoid making assumptions about the user and i think that should hold or holds for most most software so the application where the client has to accept this strange fingerprint or the context where the client has to accept this strange fingerprint might make sense in the real situation or the correct situation where this is run and it might make the application very insecure in the other one so and if you care about you know security against the server that can behave as he as he wants to then of course this is something you have to consider and you cannot make these assumptions that the client should know what to do in in every situation so this was what i talked about basically finally uh i think that the main quite or the main takeaway here it should be that these cloud storage uh services the reason they do encryption on the client side is that they want to provide something more in terms of security and i think it's it's it's sad that at least some of them actually don't have a threat model that captures this and it in makes it you know i think it makes it somewhat moot to to make these statements and make some i don't know empty yep that's it thank you anders so we have a minute or two for some questions questions upstairs well i have one was this all done manually by decompiling the python and and looking carefully no automated support to look at how 90 different rpc calls interact with each other yeah so this is manual work it's a bit sad because it doesn't uh generalize very well manual work as a spider or a user i appreciate it so thank you okay nice okay you should just update to the newest version i guess so all right so let's thank anders again


Hello, everyone. I'm James Mulan, and welcome to this episode, the third one in our series, Check It Out. And Check It Out is now taking place for the first time, exactly where it should, which is at our Robbins Library in the glorious reading room. I am joined, we were just discussing before we went on air how this is a summer of transition in Arlington for sure. And this is well represented by my guests here today. I am with our current library director, Andrea Nicolai, and the soon to be acting library director, Anna Lytton. Thanks to you both for being here. Thanks to letting us, for letting us be here. Of course, it's a pleasure to be here. And now we're, I am personally absolutely delighted to be talking with both of you in this space, which is one of the absolute glorious spots in the town. So let's talk though about the fact that, you know, I'm talking to you on the last day of June and tomorrow, July 1st, which is a Friday, will be your last day. Is that right? That's correct. Yeah. So you and I spoke, you know, recently in terms of just looking back over your tenure, et cetera. So we'll spend this time looking forward a little bit.  Or do you get to take a little bit of a break before you take on your next job? Yeah, thanks for asking, James. I am super excited for this new challenge in Albany. I'm gonna be executive director of the Albany Public Library. And my family lives in Albany. A lot of my family lives in Albany now.  But I have an apartment squared away and I do have some time off between jobs, which is gonna be really nice because I look forward to exploring my new neighborhood, the new area. So yeah, but I cannot believe my last day of this library is tomorrow. Anyway, thanks. Yeah, we're having a lot of bittersweet moments throughout this early summer so far here in Arlington. And this is certainly one of them in a lot of ways. But let me turn to you, Anna, just briefly and say, and ask, well, Andrea, at least the short-term prospect is for a little break for Andrea. I suspect it's the opposite for you. How are you feeling about that? Yeah, so this is gonna be a challenging summer. But it's also gonna be a really exciting summer to dive a little bit deeper into some work that has really been always in the director's hands. So I'm excited to continue some of the work that I've been doing and also pick up some really great opportunities to learn some new projects. All right, well, we will talk about those. Obviously, we will continue to talk about those here and check it out for the foreseeable future. Absolutely. But Andrea, can you give us a sense of, I mean, I'm sure you can't be too involved because you're moving on to your next thing. But I think people will be curious about just what is the search for the next director? What does that look like in general? And if any sense of timeline or anything like that, whatever you can tell us. Sure, so the job has been advertised already. So it's available on the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners site. It's also available on the ALA American Library Association job list, which is kind of, those two sites are kind of the go-to for anyone who is looking for a leadership job in libraries. That's like one-stop shopping, well, two-stop shopping. And the ALA job list post also carried with it a diversity add-on, which puts it into a marketplace that's in front of all kinds of different groups that represent, well, underrepresented folks who are seeking library leadership positions who might be underrepresented in library leadership. So that's really, really cool. And as far as the hiring process, the town leads the hiring process just like for other town department head positions, my position reports to the town manager. So the new town manager, Sandy Puehler, will be ultimately the appointing authority, but the Board of Library Trustees, which is a seven-member appointed body, will also have representation on the hiring panel and not totally sure exactly what that's gonna look like, but our excellent HR department has it well in hand and I'm sure there will be updates along the way through the Board and the public, so, yeah. And Anna, I'm curious, you have been the assistant library director for just about four years, right? Exactly, yes. July 9th is my anniversary in that position. So very close, so congratulations for that. And I know that Andrea was assistant to Ryan Livergood, the director at that time for two years, so now you've had four years, hopefully, good grounding and ready to go in that way, but as you take on the duties of the directorship, what happens to the job that you already had that was super busy? Yeah, well, obviously some of the director roles and of course some of the assistant director roles meshed well, so one of the projects that I'm really looking forward to working on this summer is some of our strategic plan implementation work for fiscal year 23, and in that, of course, we'll be teasing out where can we make gains to serve our community better? What can we do to expand our reach and make sure we are truly meeting the needs of residents here in Arlington? That, of course, ties in with much of my existing work already, so there are many places where there's overlap as acting director, of course, it'll be a little bit heavier on the plate to meet some of both of those goals, but there is so much overlap between the assistant director position and the director position, and to me, this is a wonderful opportunity to be more concrete about how our work, specifically around the strategic plan, can really extend our reach, meet our community better, and explain that to the community through our work and our strategic plan implementation tools for the upcoming fiscal year. All right, well, I actually also had a question because you were mentioning the two-stop shopping before about the fact that the job is posted on both of Massachusetts scope site, and then ALA, I assume is national, is that right? Yes, of course. So from your vantage point, from your perspective, having come, of course, to the job of assistant director from New York, as I recall, is that right? Do you think that that national scope in terms of looking for a library director makes sense in terms of, again, is somebody who's worked in a very different kind of situation coming into Arlington, how do you think that that, do you think that that makes a lot of sense? Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, this is a very attractive place to live. I mean, notwithstanding the high cost of living, which is, you know, gotta be mentioned, but it's a fantastic area.  And so, I mean, when I was in New York looking for a job in a more livable place, and I mean, Arlington was just so attractive right from the jump, so I think that, you know, there's absolutely no doubt this will be a position that attracts a lot of attention. That said, it's a really competitive hiring market out there right now, and it's like a, what do they say? What is it? It's a seller's market, not that. Right, so it's like it's an employer's market at the moment. It's an employer's market at the moment in some ways, but. Yeah, it may not be in restaurants and retail, et cetera, but in the world of library directorship, I guess probably it always is, right? Yeah, well, somewhat, but I mean, there aren't as, you know, I think I might have had that turned around. There aren't as many good applicants for positions because there are a lot of people making different choices about their careers and there's the great resignation happening, so a lot of retirements. So that means that there's a lot of great opportunities for, you know. I understand, so we are competing in a sense as a town looking for a library director, we are competing with a lot of other towns for a limited supply, relatively limited supply. That's exact, yes, thank you for saying that much, much better than I started to. So, but that said, Arlington, again, this is such an attractive place to live and work and so easy to commute to from a number of different areas in the region. I mean, I just think for all kinds of reasons, Arlington doesn't have a lot to worry about in terms of getting a quality candidate pool. And Anna, I'm sure that Andrea and her answer just now covered a lot of the ground that I might be asking you about, but you have been here for just about four years now and you're not from Arlington specifically or anything like that. So what has been your sense of the town, especially because so much of that time has had to be a time of coerced innovation on your guys' part. Exactly, very true. This is a fantastic town to work for. The libraries are always well respected institutions in their communities and in Arlington, that respect is a little bit an overdrive. We're such a well supported library by our users, by our support groups like the Arlington Libraries Foundation, the Friends of Robbins Library. So this really is a wonderful library to work with and a wonderful town to work in, the support for the library from the community. And I think one of my favorite ways to measure that is the ways that we partner with organizations outside of the library. A good library is always very outwardly focused. It's not just about bringing people in but how we can push ourselves out into the community and find ways to work with our community partners to support the projects that the community is interested in. And there are so many examples of wonderful community partnerships that we can offer here from the Robbins Library. I'm thinking of a new partnership we're offering this summer with Monotomy Manor. So we'll be hosting a story time at Monotomy Manor and then a parade from Monotomy Manor to the Fox Branch Library to really introduce that the library to community members at Monotomy Manor who might not be as familiar with the library services that are available there, the free library services that are available there. Yeah, I'm thinking about projects that we work on like the Arlington Author Salon that was co-founded with Andrea's support to help elevate voices of writers here in this community and help our residents hear from fellow residents who are writers. So there's just so many ways that we have partnered with community members over the years, we will continue to do that. Yeah, I mean, among others with ACMI. Exactly, exactly. Really in a lot of ways our missions are so compatible and so symbiotic. And just trying to figure out how to get out and serve the community in addition to inviting people in to our respective facilities so that they can enjoy the services that we provide. We do want to just create those connections at ACMI. You guys are so good at that, as you were saying. Well, we couldn't be good at it if it weren't for your openness and ACMI's flexibility in partnering with organizations. I mean, ACMI has been phenomenal for the library especially during the pandemic. But any time I've reached out for any kind of help or assistance or even for a special event that you weren't necessarily expecting, you've been there for us. So I do want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for being such a great partner to this library during my tenure and I'm sure going forward as well. Well, thank you for that and I promise I wasn't trying to make this into a mutual admiration society kind of thing. But it is, I did notice as you were speaking just kind of how well our sense of our respective missions really aligns with each other. And I do expect very fruitful collaboration for many years to come. So let's talk a little bit about what we may be able to, well, what we can expect from Robyn's coming up and how we might be able to help. So what are any, like this is check it out. So we should figure, we should also find out about things that are going on at the library. Yeah, absolutely. What's the big stuff that's going on? So summer is one of our very exciting times of year here in the library when we host our summer reading programs for kids, teens and adults, special programs for all of our age groups here in the library. Children's summer reading is a mainstay in public libraries and our summer reading program again because of our great collaboration with our community partners, librarians visit elementary schools here in town and are able to really share the word with kids about what summer reading looks like in the library. We currently have over 700 children from Arlington signed up for our kids summer reading program, which is amazing and is running much higher than our year to date for kids signed up there. Teen and adult summer reading programs are newer in the library world and so enthusiastically embraced here in Arlington. It is just a joy to, particularly for adults who don't know that summer reading for grownups is a thing, for them to find out, hey, you can do this fun bingo card, you can get raffle tickets and enter our fun raffles. There's just a palpable joy when people find out that we want to bring the same joy to summer reading that kids have to adults and teens. So it's wonderful to see those programs taking off really well this year. Our summer reading kickoff was on June 18th. There were lines around the corner, so much excitement and it's just really fun to introduce the community to those programs then. And are there any, there is a deadline coming up? That program is open for sign ups through, excuse me, August 19th, so open all summer, people can come in whenever they want throughout the summer and sign up for those programs. Children sign up in our children's room here or at the Fox spirits library. Adults and teens can sign up at the adult reference desk or again over at the Fox branch library. So I have one more thing that I want to ask you guys about in terms of library operations at the moment and that is I've talked to both of you relatively consistently over the last two and a half, three years and seeing and we've covered a lot of the ground of what kinds of innovations you guys had to introduce in order to continue to make the library the center of a lot of town activity even while we were all isolated, et cetera. So now we are back to some form of normal. I noticed when I come into the library that even though there's a mass or a recommended sign at the front that there's a real mix between mass wearing not, et cetera, everybody seems to treat each other just like we want people to which is whatever you're comfortable with we'll accommodate, et cetera. But you guys had to introduce a number of new programs and some of those probably were very, well not probably, were very successful. How is it that you are moving forward kind of integrating the things that you did before in specific response to the pandemic and the way that you normally do business? I think this is a great time to talk about hybrid and what we're doing in particular with the Arlington Author Salon that's happening on July 14th. In partnership with ACMI. Oh, there we go. Okay, what a setup, what a great setup. So Anna, can you talk about how that program is being supported and actually I'll note that with respect to some of our other book discussion groups and public programs, we're seeing a lot more online participation as opposed to in-person. So that's been an interesting thing to see, to observe and that's been for sort of smaller scale like book discussion group type programs. So it's interesting to see people taking advantage of that option that was of course a pandemic, well not innovation, but it was a pandemic evolution going into the virtual world of programming. But take it away. Yeah, so the Arlington Author Salon is a quarterly program that has been running since 2015, 2016, 2015. And that program of course pivoted to Zoom Only program in 2020. And here, sitting here in the summer of 2022, it was time to bring that program back for some in-person programming. This play out that we see with online attendance and in-person attendance, we definitely took that into consideration thinking about how to bring that program back and decided to bring that back as a hybrid program. That program has historically been hosted at Kickstand Cafe. So finding a way to create this live program with speakers and a little bit of a sensory kick added to that piece was a little bit complicated. But again, we partnered with ACMI, Katie Chang, the amazing ACMI staff member was able to really, was really able to help us think about how we could convert that program to both a Zoom program and an in-person program. So that's gonna be happening on July 14th and signups are available. Hoping many people sign up, either for the in-person ticket or the Zoom ticket, both of those options are currently available when you go to sign up for that program. And I'm really looking forward to really offering programs moving forward in a way that works for the community. So does it work to offer this as an in-person program? Does it work to offer it as a Zoom program? Or can we offer that as a hybrid program? And I see we are moving to quite a few hybrid options. Yeah, and I'm wondering whether, you know, whether both of you can kind of, as you cast your eyes forward, whether you think that that hybrid option is going to just kind of stay in place simply because you can get to more people that way or you can make things a little bit easier for people to take in whatever the particular event is. And if so, if you do see that being kind of more of just a permanent or indefinitely, for an indefinite amount of time, exercise option, is that more work for every individual event? I assume so, because it is from our perspective. Definitely. I mean, it also depends on the nature of the event, I mean, with the salon. It was a particularly intimidating challenge because of the sensory elements that we like authors to be able to offer the audience because of the number of people involved in the program. So that's definitely an example of a more complex program to finesse in terms of hybrid, but there are much simpler options like the genealogy program we had the other night where, you know, it was a very simple setup. The speaker just had, you know, was on Zoom and the audience was in front of him. So the in-person audience was in front of him. So it was a little bit of a lighter lift in terms of setup for that. So I think it'll come down to the complexity of the program. Yeah, the complexity of the program, the audience for the program, children's programs. We are really not offering any virtual children's programs right now. Kids do need that personal touch. As we all found that, because really, you know, parents of younger kids. Exactly. So really, our goal is to meet the appropriate audience. So I think the salon, the genealogy program, our great examples of programs that offering this as a hybrid program is opening up that program to the right audiences who are able to access those programs via Zoom. Children's programs, I can't see us going back unless we need to. We definitely saw that it is better for kids to have those events in person. Yeah, I have to say that that is a great way to, a great place to end up this conversation because my experience of the library under your leadership and my anticipated experience under yours to come is really about what you just said, putting the, you know, figuring out what the audience, what works best for the audience and whether the audience is a group of children or a group of seniors or the community at large, et cetera. That's something that you guys have been clearly dedicated to. It's been a kind of guidestone for you as you move through your daily operations. So that's what we want. That's what we get. We appreciate the fact that you did that so well and we wish you the best of luck in continuing in that tradition, obviously. I just want to invite you, in particular, Andrea. I know, again, we spoke recently and you had a chance to address the community. You had a farewell garden party, so to speak, very recently also. But just any final words to share with our audience? Oh, boy. Well, as I said at the garden party, I think it's never been more important to support public libraries and it's because of the role that we play in promoting a pluralistic society, a society where opposing viewpoints, where different perspectives can be honored and respected and civil discourse can happen. I think that what we see in society these days is a horrible divide in so many ways. And I think that information and access to information and access to community events that bring people together can only help this society. He'll grow, change, help people be good citizens and thoughtful voters and thoughtful people in their everyday lives. So I mean, that's how I think of public libraries these days and it very much is tied to that idea of social infrastructure and how we undergird all of that. And yeah, support your local library. Absolutely, and that was very well said. In that, within the larger context in which we're all living and we're highly aware of such atomization, such division, et cetera, libraries connect. Libraries connect people around simple and pleasurable things but also around difficult and naughty and kinds of conversations that have to happen. And let us hope that we can continue and I'm sure we will be able to continue to count on the library to provide that glue for us as a community here. And hopefully for libraries in general as you were just saying for public libraries throughout the country to be able to operate in that way because God knows we are in desperate need, as you say. Anna, last word goes to you because you're about to take all this on. So whatever thoughts you'd like to share with us and with Arlington. First, of course, I think on behalf of so many people in Arlington, I of course want to thank Andrea for her amazing service to the community. Our library is in such a strong place right now because of Andrea's leadership over the last 10 years and I'm really looking forward to continuing the work that we have seen in the past few years. Of course, to continuing our deep community relationships with our other departments in town and our other community partners and continuing to look for ways where we can better serve the community. All right, well thank you for that. I have to say Andrea that you are the third as people are well aware of three kind of high-profile town leaders who are going to be leaving in a short period of time. And I put you and your influence and your contributions right on a level with Adam Chapterland as the town manager, with Jenny Raid as the director of our Department of Planning and Community Development. You've left us in a great place. We will do our best to continue to keep it so. I'm honored by that statement. Thank you. Thank you. Everything's going to be fine here. Everything's going to be fine. Everything's going to be fine. Yes. Here at the Robbins Library and here and check it out. I have been speaking to Andrea Nicolai regrettably for me for the last time officially. She has been the director or the ABLE director of our libraries for 10 years now. And also to Anna Lytton who is about to step into that role and we look forward to getting together with Anna many times in the future. Thank you both for being here. Thank you for being here. I'm James Milan. This is Check It Out and we'll see you next time.


Welcome back to Geeks are sexy. I'm Jason, and we've got our all stars back today We brought all of our guests back today as part of our panel discussion And we've been talking about different aspects of style and entertainment and security here in Las Vegas And one of the things that that really comes to mind when it comes to entertainment And we talked a little about this in some of the other segments is nobody does anything great alone If you've got a big goal something big you want to pull off We all be part of a team to pull that together and nobody does entertainment better than the city of Las Vegas And I want to understand how each of you brings your talents to help a great help pull off a great entertainment event And Dwayne since you're the promoter Why don't we start off with you and you can talk about how do you how do you rely on people like Sean and Katie to help Pull off a great event and what you know what roles do you all play? To make that event great for the fans and great for the talent as well Well, I play sports brought up and tell you teamwork to make the dream work for sure That's for sure. So the first thing I do with any events. I think about my network Who do I know at this venue know this art is that could minimize my cost I think you're ready any hurdles that aren't allowed me to make that event happen You know, so I'll find out who do I know like Sean the security industry to help take care of my security Who could help style my artists for me even myself when I go out? You know, so the linear network could determine your network, you know, say my money my pocket I work with my family and friends. Cool So Katie, what is what is some of your experience working with someone like Dwayne when you bring when you bring your When your clients come in they come into an event like this. How do you fit into the picture? Well, I mean you want to know the person who's running the show We obviously want to know who's gonna obviously who's protecting the show, too Just because you if I need to Get something last minute. I mean I like to turn to the person in charge because it's just going to help me Like get that whatever task I need to get taken care for my client as quick as possible And so if I'm new in town and out of you know I would deal with I would definitely want to talk with him because in that way my clients happy I can I can see that where you're new to town you got a client who's never been here You're trying to get they need something You've got the network in town and you need to work together to find this thing to make this show go really great Yes, sir. So and then how does how does security fit into the picture? What what are your objectives when you come and do security for a big entertainment event? What are you thinking about? Well, I mean it's Las Vegas We deal with entertainment all the time especially summer's hitting we're getting calls left and right all you know We got EDC coming up. We got life is beautiful at some point during the year all these huge events that we're well prepared for What you want to look for in a security company is can they handle the level of event that you're looking for?  You know professional with it are they gonna find the right staff are they gonna work with you? And you know with with anyone and find who the best options for your security Are you gonna need 30 guys here? Are you gonna need one guy to get simple as that? So I love working with businesses. We work hand-in-hand. We'll have a discussion We'll sit down with you figure out what the best need is for your events now What are the things you talked about?  We don't have a really good handle on what the security is It's a whole different environment once the event starts. No, it really is All it starts with is us as far as myself and the branch manager. We go out. We'll be on the property We have the experience military and our past security experiences will walk it will observe We'll see there's an entrance right there is that can be blocked will people be able to get in and out this way Where's the entries? What are the vulnerable points? Where's the stage at? If as unfortunate as it is in the climate that we are now, you know We need to look at are there advantage points if someone did want to do something How can we limit those vantage points? How can we put someone to cover those? Areas that might be vulnerable To limit disasters like we've all seen here in Las Vegas recently Yeah, unfortunately We've had some things like that and that that brings up a conundrum when it comes to entertainment events because Because we want the fans to have a great time there needs to be access But there also needs to be security and protection and how to use promoter balance that the access for the fans The accessibility to get them in and out quickly because if they can't get in out quickly and easily They're not going to come to another event, right? How do you balance safety with the artist with the artist's desire to perform right sometimes sometimes? We're our own worst enemy, right? We want to be out there with the people who want to be with us But we also have to we also have to protect ourselves How to use the promoter because those ultimately at the end of the day, this is on you.  And you're we didn't talk about that in your sim But the insurances events must be astronomical. Yes, they are so how do you handle the balance between? Access and having a good time and protecting everyone involved Well, just like Sean said earlier you have to work together. So you work with the venue, you know You work with the management there and you work with local police officers FBI agents and also local security officers make sure we're all on the same page You know the size of the event determines the amount of security you need So if we're having a 300 person event, I may not have to get the FBI involved But yeah, but now unfortunately for life is beautiful after one October They're gonna have to get that beyond ball in that just to make sure that we're as safe as possible for the fan You know, and then it comes with the show you have to plan the right event So pick the right artists for your demographic and make sure you have a diverse crowd that where you're not really exclude anyone Now one of the things you're thinking about because when you're styling someone You may not be thinking about their personal physical protection You're thinking about their image and who they are and what they're trying to represent Do you factor any kind of security considerations in when you're doing the styling for someone? I stay in my lane. I let everybody else do their job Right like I don't try to tell people to do what I don't know anything about like you know I like that's that that no so but what I'm hearing is your job as a stylist is to is to let your client's Personality come through just like we talked about in your first segment And you're relying on these two guys to make sure your clients protected You're not you're not doing anything with their style To try to try to keep any not that you should but you're relying on these two guys and the rest of the Team to keep your clients safe and the fans safe Awesome, right We're not quite halfway through 2018. Yes, we're all entrepreneurs with big goals. Tell me something you want to accomplish in 2018 because One of the things I believe really strong it strongly and there's no finish lines in life We're all working working forward towards something. What's something each of you want to accomplish in 2018? Okay, ladies first ladies right on the spot Is to do more Personal appearances That I'm doing right now because I will be I I'm in the process of building my brand so and one thing we didn't get to in your segment style retainers in eight cities Nationwide right now and one overseas right now one in Canada Yeah, one in Canada So do you have a give a goal for how many cities you want to be in by the end of the year? Not necessarily cities, but I have a number that I'm wanting to hit within my business of clients I'll keep that to myself, but like But yeah, so so there is that that number that I'm wanting to hit by the end of 2018 for sure So no matter how success we successfully again, we never stop setting goals. There's no finish lines We keep the torture to yourself. You just Like you always want it. I know how that is Sean. What's something you want to accomplish in 2018? Huge goal that I have and I would definitely love to accomplish it It's very possible. I want to open up a new branch in a neighboring city We have three branches right now Chicago is our headquarters branch We have the branch here and then the branch in Florida as well so I would love to Explode and get big enough and gain the networks that we could open up a branch see an Arizona and New California Well city cities looking to bring somebody in Contact Sean, maybe you could be in the running just like that Amazon headquarters that we didn't get here in Las Vegas Right, talk to Sean. You can be in the running Dwayne I know you've got a lot on your plate, but tell me something you want to accomplish in 2018 Oh, congratulations like getting married by the way. We didn't talk about that and you're saying very much Thank you very much Katie Back to business unfortunately For the rest of the year and in the NBA I know we're just really gonna grow our book of business 34th quarter will have four to six events and then 2019 will do six to 12 But we'll build it from there on the entertainment spectrum on my side entrepreneurship business We're gonna focus on a coffee shop this year. Yes, I'm excited Organic coffee smooths and teas marijuana friendly and then we're also gonna open a bar this year as well So that's that's the focus for you. So not a whole lot going on All right, well, thank you so much for coming it's always a pleasure to have guests on the show It's always a pleasure to meet new people and introduce them to the audience Thank you tell our guests again one more time how they can reach all of you Before we close out the show Facebook entertainment capital group LinkedIn Dwayne Davidson and then phone number just Email Jason. He'll get it to you. I'll get it to you Katie at Katie Watford calm and just email me and you will chat from there. All right office number<PHONE_NUMBER> or my email my first initial and my last name spelled out at Morrison security calm All right, Sean Phillips in for Morrison security Dwayne Davidson for entertainment capital Katie Watford fashion stylist with a new business style retainer Thank you so much for being here. We actually got I got a text nobody put anything in the Facebook lives We're watching but I got a text from one of my friends who really really enjoyed the show and really enjoyed all you guys So thank you for coming. Thank you. We're getting great feedback on the show I'm Jason the Duke from evil genius leadership consultants. This is geeks are sexy and we will see you the fourth Friday in May Thank you for watching


Red Lake Nation officials called for unity on the reservation at the annual Red Lake State of the Band of Dress. Reporter Cheryl Moore is live in our newsroom tonight with a full recap. Cheryl. Thank you, Josh. More than 250 people are in attendance tonight at tonight's State of the Band of Dress, including U.S. Senator Tina Smith. Let's be kind in one, one another, love one another. Because it's not the way of life as I should not be people. From infrastructure projects to potential policy changes, there are many topics addressed at today's Red Lake State of the Band of Dress. We talked about legalizing marijuana. We talked about environmental justice issues such as the line three replacement project that's going to impact us and having our people provide input to make sure that our decisions are really in line with what the people want. During his speech, Chairman Seeky Sr. spoke about things like reclaiming land, creating more jobs, improving communication with members, and making the reservation a safer place to live. He noted that while drug problems have been declining, the opioid epidemic is still a big hurdle. The bottom line is they're poisoning our membership, and because that's the other thing I always talk about is incarceration doesn't work. We gotta help them heal. The chairman also went into length about the impact of the government shutdown. During the shutdown, the government stopped paying what they owed us, which placed a severe financial strain on us and threatened our ability to continue providing government services for our members. He says officials had to be creative to ensure people did not get laid off. This was something Minnesota State Senator Tina Smith says really resonated with her. I was really glad to hear Chair Seeky speak out about that and I am cosponsor of legislation that would make sure that tribal nations have advanced funding for their most important projects so that they don't have to deal with what the red light band needed to deal with this year, which is to not have the money to carry on really essential really essential functions. Moving forward, red light nation says they are putting the people first. Chairman Seeky Sr. says he has an open door policy, and anyone is welcome to give their thoughts. I just want to see a friend, a friend through everybody. My door's open for them, even though they don't like me or get me. They don't need help, but I will turn them down. And some of the new infrastructure projects that are in the works include new senior housing and a new halfway house. Josh, back to you. All right, thank you very much, Sheryl, for that live report from our Lakeland Newsroom. Senator Smith also made stops at the Bugga-Negasig School on the Leech Lake Reservation and Epimagee State University. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


The mouse game for about two or three additional hours, we did apprehend the two individuals. At the time that we observed the individuals through our halo cameras, it appeared that they were carrying what appeared to be two long rifles and a bag, a sack. When we apprehended the individuals, they did not have the rifles or the school bags on them. So currently the individuals are apprehended. We're in the process of searching the school in hopes of finding what was in those sacks and also recovering what appeared to be those two long rifles. So the cameras showed they have those, you just can't find them? Yes, the camera shows what appeared to be two rifles, one each with the rifle and with the bag sack. Can you describe the curves? Yeah, what we know right now, they're both our juveniles, given the fact that the juveniles were unable to release.


I mean, I just want to basically point out that there's plenty of us in the room. There's Mark Kirsten over here, Manolis Kelly, Jason Ernst, Mike Pazin. So there's a lot of folks who are deeply involved in the ENCODE project.  And our goal is to interact with the community. The reason why we have these workshops is to reach out to the community to collaborate, to sort of help you use the data. Hopefully the tool should make us obsolete, but we can also start thinking together about the data. So part of the reason for having these workshops is so that you actually get to meet all these people. Again, Mike Cherry is here, Jill Moore is here. So please, Dan Gilchrist all the way back there. So please come talk to us. We're friendly. We're eager to collaborate. And again, I want to thank all the speakers, and thanks most of all to Feng for putting all this together. So thank you.