What's up everybody? Jayce here for jayspeakscasebreaks.com. We just sold out another mixer here guys, 10 boxer 2324 series 2 hockey Picker team number nine guys, which reaches four tins, four blasters, four hobby So basically guys, this is our last mixer of hobby tins and blasters. We ran out of tins and blasters basically Hobby will have leftover boxes from the case about half a case left So what we're gonna do is for the next one we post up. It's not gonna be called a 10 box mixer We're just gonna use hobby boxes from here on out. We're gonna post them as a four box hobby So basically the equivalent of four box hobbies is what it is for four tins four blasters since they're significantly much cheaper So yeah number 10 will be just hobby, but it will stay the same thing two teams gets a chance to win the Blackhawks and Yeah, John. I mean bought it all out. So I don't have to do a randomizer or anything This is a basically a little personal 10 box mixer So good luck to John chairmon. Let's let's get him a couple of the dars not just one but a couple Here we go We'll do the same way as we always do Start with the blasters And go with the hobby now we haven't hit much bidard out of the fresh cases that we've opened up to be honest So I feel like we're definitely Definitely do for some bidards and Probably take a little lunch break after this too guys Tuesday around the time I take a lunch break around seven ish Don't know if I'm gonna get lunch again, but just take a little break See what the wife wants to get she wants to get some food for blasters tie-car tie All right, there's a bit dark glossy It's a good little start for a blaster Panther young gun there ma'am Murray Tyler Sagan Monty ball The trans a little canvas and maybe you should be able to get one young gun Maybe still the dart and the glossy is the only thing you got the dart wise for the blasters And we go to the tins which you get three to four young guns per tin plus a Dazzler pack Everybody Tins Emerson Sweezy on there was a lesky canvas Walker Philip Dino outbursts next last next tin Krasinski teaser That dude Justin Falk outbursts the boy Nicholas Monte Carlo Scenes Dmitri Ronka Tomkins Tate Thompson canvas Piotras you only get one Maybe two per case Young guns, and there's some cases that have zero wrecks So even though We'll see a lot of them pop up. There's they're really not that They're really actually pretty hard. They're basically short-perna. Oh Yeah, well, yes, there's only like once-in-a-generational kind of players McDavid's one of them and this bit dard is supposed to be the other right Happens like once every ten years really where you get like kind of one of those once-in-a-generation players We got lucky to get two years in a row. We got make David and Matthews, but um, but yeah A lot of hockey players are great players, but it's also yet to remember to that these guys are Canadians These guys killed it in Canada And also to you know for McDavid He plays in a big Canadian market and then the dards playing for probably one of the best United States markets With the Chicago Black Hawks when it comes to hockey, so that's also the hype around it, too Is that they're playing for great teams in hockey and like I said, they're also Canadian It's like if they're Canadian and they're superstars they're always gonna get the hype hockey is very bias So not there's not always a Canadian number one overall pick, you know what I mean? Beecher. I think that's what it is, too memory There's McDavid Logan Fooley. I guess something man. Let's go Simone Gagné. All right, it's gonna be up to the Dazards and Hobbies Tage Thompson, Sergachev, Nocates Braden Point Gustafson said the kid Kellan Robertson Sveshnikov. I would say he was born in California Raised in Arizona He moved to Arizona as a probably two or three years old, so Probably McDavid only and I don't even think I honestly gonna call it they both are never gonna win But I can't really see Toronto ever getting past the first round. I think others probably have a better chance about how to choose one or the other But I Think if you go down the bolt of the goes don't ever win unless they switch teams get traded or go to a new team Be sad to hear that though, but it could happen But I think in this day and age with hockey I don't think you need to win a ton of them to be considered one of the greatest players of all time I think you just kind of have to win one and then let the stats do the rest of the talking You know like a veteran has won. I mean he'd be a Hall of Famer one of the greats ever But you can always say he has that once down in Cup he won, you know, you know sitting cross we have a couple I feel like the only thing That is very competitive when I come to the Hall of Fame I think being goats is basketball and football. I feel like are considered where you need to win championships to be considered the greatest Especially basketball, I don't feel like hockey you need to win multiple championships to be considered the greatest ever And I don't think that matters in baseball either You would like them to win one But I don't think it matters. All right, here we go man. It's airing. I mean, I don't think so Rex I don't I mean at least for baseball. It doesn't seem like it is heroes I Think for individual players, it doesn't matter maybe for teams. Yeah, how many rings you got? You can say like that, but I feel like that that that that is a that is a thing that is very big on football though How many Super Bowls your team has that's right, you know Like that's a big thing You know basketball too, I feel like championships is big But I really don't think it matters that much in baseball or hockey Would you like to have one under your belt for sure, but I Don't think it fully makes a big difference Mad Murray. Yeah, because baseball is more of a is more of a For at least a Hall of Fame at least is more of a More of a personal stats. Well, I mean Hall of Fame is always meant to be personal achievements You know, but think of it as a perfect example like let's just say Eli Manning if you go look at his stats career-wise He's definitely an average quarterback Right But because he beat Tom Brady twice on the Super Bowl and he has two Super Bowls He probably has a chance to make the Hall Which is crazy to say. Wow back to back loser, but because he has two Super Bowls He's gonna get a chance You know the farrier to the turbine and Sweeney Tyson Berry who's not soft as their Acto, we need the holy miracle here Little moss Rock and roll Hall of Fame. I have no idea how they judge that but it seems like to me if you're gonna be in the rock and roll of fame it probably matters about How many albums and number one hits you've gotten? It's all gonna be that it doesn't matter if I'm a I'm a band.   I think numbers will tell you how good you are I personally wouldn't care Kyle Palm area the 250 It's a deluxe Ilya oh, so you're upset because it's only supposed to be rock and roll Well, do they not have a Hall of Fame for general music? I mean, I guess you could only in I guess you could only induct so many rock and roll bands. I Don't know bro. Take under maybe the Hall of Fame We got one. Thank God at least one Maybe the committee hates the smashing pumpkins. All right, John. Well, I'm sure you wanted a lot more, but At least your chase you got one is over for that Ferrara, so that's our first young gun in the hobby boxes So Could still be one more hiding in the remaining or if not maybe something else Takes Thompson Billy Corgan is a Q a non-dork Is that is that is that someone from the smash pumpkins? All right, we respond to that Rex All right There you go, man. Got one to dart. Obviously you got everything else too, but I Know that's what we really wanted There you go, man. So again, I'll post it more guys. It'll just be hobby boxes from now on until we run out I appreciate you guys. Thank you


Hey, what's going on guys? Patriot Prime here once again with another episode of The Sit Wrap. And with me tonight is Matthew Baldwin, aka Deluxe Baldwin from YouTube, Hail Hasbro Reviews. Matt, how are you doing tonight? I'm good. How are you doing, man? I'm doing very well. Very well. It's great to have you. You're the reason that I started doing this. I had so much fun talking with you during our little interview at one night. Well, thank you very much for having me. It's an honor to be on here and just to pay back what you did for me. So, you know, I was happy to come on here. I love doing this stuff. It's fun. Excellent. Yeah, it definitely gives you a way to meet some people. Well, here's how the Sit Wrap, I'm sorry, didn't mean to interrupt you. Exactly. That's what I do. You get to see people in the fandom and the collecting world that they would not usually have a platform to have. You give them that platform to talk, you know, I interview anybody and everybody. And some people just don't have that, you know, and I really like to find out what they're thinking about the fandom and their transformers and their love of transformers or whatever they love. Excellent. Well, how the Sit Wrap works is I have 10 questions for you. The first five are regarding Transformers and the last five are regarding you as a YouTuber. So, if you're ready to go, question number one, sir. What is the appeal of Transformers for you?  You know, as a kid, you saw a big robot and they transformed it into vehicles and everything. For now, I like, you know, I love the engineering, you know, just so they can take a car, a jet, a beast force, you know, whatever they can take and they make it to a robot and they can do triple changers, you know, they got so many options and everything. So I just think the lore of that, you know, along just the engineering part where you can make something that looks awesome as a robot and a car or whatever you want to be. I love that. I think it's really cool. But as a kid, you know, it's just big robots fighting each other. I mean, come on now. You have to love that stuff. You can't go wrong with that, especially the engineering. When you compare a G1 character from 84 to a new mold of his figure today, for example, let's take a generation one Megatron compared to his masterpiece. I mean, it's amazing that you hit it right there. You know, it just how far we've come along for 30 years, you know, 30 plus years now the trend has been along.  I just love it. It's just neat. It's just neat what they do now. It makes me more excited. What's down the road? Yeah, exactly. All right, sir. Number two, aside from G1, which is always the number one answer, what's your favorite transformer fiction? Yeah, I thought about this one. That's good. That's why I like to give everybody the questions ahead of time. Yeah, I thought about, you know, I love Transformers Prime. Beast Wars is a really good storyline. I mean, it's probably one of the better storylines of there. Siege, I'm loving the new sea stuff. I'm loving what we're getting from Siege. So, but I would have to probably go, man, it's a top between Siege and Prime, I have to get that. I mean, but as far as story wise, Beast Wars has one of the best storylines, I think, out of all this stuff and everything. But Prime is up there also, too, in the toys also. And but the new sea stuff, I'm really impressed.  Oh, I finally watched the video review on jet fire where they showed off how he transformed. Oh, yeah. You see that he looks like skyfire. That's all you think about. Yeah, well, the hands, you know, how it's got that where you close them. Oh, yeah, the hole pops out. Oh, yeah. Come on now. That's like a masterpiece thing, man. I was like, oh, it was so awesome. And then I'll make it look really good. You got, you know, because you got Springer comes out coming out. That's really nice. Starscream, so, man, I'm really excited. I mean, it's awesome. And it's really it's great to be a Transformer fan right now.  If you do knockouts, I don't do knockouts. But, you know, people who like that stuff, that's fine. You know, if you're happy, I'm happy. Thanks. All right, sir. Number three. Do you have a favorite figure or a grail? One toy you'll never let go of. Say you had to sell your whole collection, but you're keeping one figure. What would that be? So many because I've given, you know, stuff that people have given me stuff before. I love, you know, I've gotten some stuff from other people. And I wouldn't, you know, I couldn't sell that. But if I had to keep one, it would probably be the Make Toys Starscream, which he is right. Where is this? Right there. Trying to find your figure while you're on camera. Yeah, exactly. It's make, if Make Toys had come out, it would be probably the masterpiece. But the Make Toys one just, man, looks like it just came off the screen, especially in an alt mode. Looks so beautiful. I love it. It's a great transform. So if I, and I'm actually up to my life, if I, you know, when I passed, I would like to be buried with that. That's the one transform I would be buried with as a Make Toys. So I would probably grab that one because, you know, he has my favorite character and he's just really, really well done. But if I had to throw in another one, which I don't know, I'll talk about it later. Anyways, sorry. But yeah, the Make Toys Starscream would be mine. Thanks. All right. Number four. What figure is your white whale? Your most wanted toy. You could stop collecting if you get this figure. Wow. That's a great question. I would love a Mint and sealed box G1 Starcream. That's what I would love to have. Well, Mint and sealed box or Mint and box would be fun. I have, you know, a couple of G1s and there's, there's actually a clear, I have an E-Hobby one. It's a clear version of it. Or, you know, when he died or whatever, and he has a clear version, there was one, I think there was one like maybe only five made, I think throughout the whole world. I would love to have one of those too. I mean, I think it's impossible to find. But yeah, a Mint and sealed box G1 Starcream is one of my career roles that I would love to have. Nice choice. All right. Number five. This is the last Transformers question. What is your favorite Transformer character? Anti-fiction, anti-media. Starscream, an auto-media Starcream. I, as a kid, I loved it because he transformed in jet.  But I think him and Megatron, the, the... Dynamic.  But come on, nobody would follow him.  Everybody knows. But, and he couldn't defeat Megatron. I understand that. But I always liked him as a kid, you know, when he transformed into a jet. I always wanted, I always flew out my arms and flew around the room and everything, make Transformer sounds. And he would just, he just stuck with me. And he actually got me back, kind of back into Transformer and back in 2001-ish, or rather, R.I.D. came out and I started collecting that. And then I stopped a little bit. Then I saw Starcream from Armada in the stores. And I picked that up and that's where it just started from. That's right. Starcream was my favorite. Cool, cool Starcream. That was the one that could pull his wing out for a sword, right? Yeah, yeah, with the, yeah, he has a little mini con and his little, the rocket launcher was a flip over and he makes some noise like sound or whatever. Yeah, that's what got me back into it. So yeah, Starcream has always been my favorite character. I have tons of shirts and I have like, oh God, how many figures? Over at least a hundred figures of Starcream. Wow. All right, well, the funny story about Starcream, I remember when I was in elementary school, my parents were both school teachers at the same school I was in and I traded somebody for a Starcream. And I remember going to the parking lot because I would ride home with mom and dad. And I remember getting home and realizing I was missing his little black landing gear. So I had dad drive me back to the school, park where he parked and I looked all around because I remember setting my book back down, getting into the car. We looked all around that parking lot for probably 30 minutes to an hour and I finally found that damn landing gear. Oh, nice, yeah. I love that little piece and then the short missile were easy to lose. I mean, do you want everybody lost stuff back and then a little, you know, that was easy because I understand the landing gear. Yeah, I've seen a lot of people lose that. That's why that stuff is plastic gold right now. At least fortunately, all the landing gear is interchangeable with every seeker. So you, there's no difference. My mom was a teacher too. She was an English teacher, so that's cool. Oh, nice. Mine were both elementary school teachers. They kind of did everything. Mom was fourth grade, dad was sixth. My mom was a high school. She taught English. She did drama also for a little while and oral communications and everything, so. Next, well, that wraps up the Transformers question. Now comes the hard stuff, YouTube questions. Number six, what possessed you, a grown-ass man to do toy reviews on YouTube? That's a good question. Well, I am a part of another podcast called Sharecast Uncut. I've been doing that for like five years now. Nice. And I'm part of that. And my friends, you know, Bobby Skull Face, I'm sure everybody knows that guy. He's on the podcast. He's a good friend of mine. And Justin T2RX6, he's on the podcast also. And they do reviews. Justin doesn't do so much anymore, but Bobby does. And I was just, you know, I played with the thought of doing it for a while and, you know, I asked him and everything. And I think that's when he started. He was doing a little more before I was. And I just said, man, I can do that. So I just went to Best Buy. I got a camera and I was like, I could do this. So I just started doing it. And yeah, I've been doing it for about three years or three years now. And yeah, that's why I did it. And yeah, that's about it.  You're doing all kinds of different things. So you never know what to expect from your channel. Yeah, I got a lot of free time, man. I'm in class right now. I don't have a job. I'm in school. I worked for a company and I got laid off. And I got workforce released. So I got my job, got sent overseas. So they pay for my school. So I'm going to school for HBAC right now. I'm going to be a heat and air guy. So I'm just trying to get through that. So I have a lot of free time. So I put out, yeah, I've done, I think that when people just do reviews, I think it gets, especially for me, I get kind of bored of it. So I'm trying to do stuff like with the run in the 30 minutes. I'm doing evolutions of characters. I'm doing what's doing transformers. So I'm trying to spice up my channel just to give them a variety of stuff. And it's fun. I like doing that stuff. I love doing reviews too, but I love doing the editing on, you know, some of the evolution of stuff and everything. So it's fun. It keeps you on your toes kind of things. Editing is my favorite part.  I love those.  All right.  I mean, I just, I love doing it. It's fun. You know, I think once I get to the point where I'm not having fun, I'm going to call it quits because there's no point in doing it. You can, there's a lot of reviews out there. And I mean, you can tell if someone's not having fun. It's just, if it's just a job, you know, they're doing it like that and everything. So I don't want to go through that motion. I don't want to, you know, I can, people will tell that, you know, you're just doing this for this and that and everything. I'm having fun. I mean, I think I bring some relief to it sometimes, you know, and everything.  I mean, I like doing it in my spare time and I love taking pictures. I've been doing a lot of photography and everything. Yeah, your pictures are great. I love them. Thank you very much. I'm trying hard. I mean, I would love to get a camera. I'm trying to, you know, try to save up for a camera. I just use it on my phone now. And I just, you know, it's just fun to do. Yeah, exactly. I use it on a phone and I just, you know, got some good, you know, decent lighting and that's everything. And it's just fun to do, man. I love doing it and it, you know, kind of relaxes me and calls me down. I love getting new transformers and just talking about it.  For me, of course, you know, I have a hard time. There's nowhere for me to buy new figures. It's either online or something happens to follow my Walmart. So doing this gives me a way to appreciate again what I have. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.  You know, if I don't get anything new and it gives you a chance to grab something off the shelf that you don't normally would grab off the shelf.  So I'm like, huh, I've been playing with that for a while. So I'll grab it. Now, you know, maybe I need a review on a new thing.  It's always fun to do that. And when you pull it off that top shelf, it gives you a chance to dust it off. Man, if you saw my, man, my room is, it would take me literally a month. You know, you don't want to do that. I know, you've got the Star Wars stuff. Yeah, exactly. It would literally take, you know, just like, you know, it would literally take over a month to get my stuff just to clean it and everything. So it's rough. All right, sir. Number eight. There are thousands of toy reviewers on YouTube. What makes you different? Well, I don't know. I don't see many 40 plus individuals getting on the floor and playing with their toys at the end of the reviews. Yeah, that's floor time. I am known for floor time and the Hell Has, bro, that started on Shattercast and the floor time actually started on Shattercast also. We was at our first TF Con, which was in Chicago. And I had bought a Pretender. I forgot which one was offhand, but I was, and I walked in and Bobby Skullface, who I was talking about earlier, he had a, he was selling some of his merchandise. He had a table and everything. We had a table too. But when I went back there, there were no chairs. So I don't care to sit on the floor. It's fine with me. So I got on the floor and started playing with my toys that I got and everything. And Bobby and I think Greg and Justin over there started laughing and everything, all that stuff. So it just kind of stuck with me for a little while. And then when I started doing, when I asked for some help, when I want to start doing reviews, Bobby and them suggested I do floor time. Like, you'd like to do that on the floor. So why don't you do that? So I started doing that because, and also brought it in because it kind of brings you back to when you were a kid, when you were good times, when you were on the floor on Saturday morning, watching cartoons, eating cereal, doing whatever, eating cheese and crackers, whatever you got to do. You would sit on the floor and you play with your toys. And I try to bring that back. I know I'm a 40-year-old man doing it, but I like to, it's just something, it's a fun thing to do. And I like to bring the child back into the people's heart and say, this is how a toy would be played with on the floor nowadays when you're 40-something or so. So that's what I'm known for, mainly as floor time. So that's how that floor time came up about was that back then. Number nine, what is your thoughts on the Transformers social community, i.e. YouTube, Facebook, and do you have any special shout-outs? The community, I think overall is really good. I would say 95% is good.   I try not to respond. I try not to get in the middle of that stuff. Cause I've, there's several times I've been on Facebook and I've wrote about grass, people complaining about stuff. And I'll just sit there and I'll talk for a paragraph and I'm just like, do I really want to get into this? Is it gonna be worth? Well, it was just the other day. Yeah, I'm just like, it's not worth it. Delete. So, you know, I try not to get, I'm a very positive person. I love Transformers. I've always loved Transformers. It's my collection, it's my go-to, what I do. And I try to get everything to benefit of the doubt. There are some crappy Transformers out there. I know that. But I try to give them the benefit of the doubt and try to point out the good stuff. And if I don't, you know, it's very seldom that I really just hate stuff. And I've reviewed some stuff that I've hated. But I try to stay positive and give a, that positive vibe, you know, and everything. And I, you know, hate everybody, all that stuff and everything. I just try to have fun. And, but, you know, I don't let the negativity get to me. Cause it's not worth it. You know, you're not going to change somebody's mind. They're not going to change my mind. And it's just, you're going to go back and forth. It's like fighting with a potato. You know, there's no point in doing it. So, but, you know, for those people that like to troll and do that, you know, more power to you. Like I always say, if you're happy, I'm happy. And that's what the block button is for. With that. And that's what the block button is for. Exactly, yeah. I mean, you don't have to, you know, you can delete all that stuff and everything. And I like this stuff. Shout out to everybody on Characast, the RLC, a room of collectors. Shout out to our new podcast for doing those guys and everything. I'm really excited to do that. We're actually going to do that tonight. Yes, everybody. That's how we're kind of speeding through this interview. As soon as we're done, we're going right over to another, I guess, podcast called Transformers Unite on Nathan Simmons channel. So I'd say, yeah, check it out. He'll have that uploaded by the time this is uploaded too. I think we're actually doing it live. So I think we're going to, it will be live soon. We'll do it live. Then it automatically loads up to YouTube and everything. Shout out to those guys. Just shout out to everybody that, you know, that likes, you know, watches my channel, that future people that hopefully that will sub to my channel and all that good stuff. And I don't know, that's it. And I wanted to touch on something else.  I'm a fan of Marvel and Star Wars and DC and all that. And I have to give the Transformer community props because Marvel's Star Wars has gotten absurd with the toxicity and it's unreal. So Transformers so far, so good.  It is just constantly, I was like, why, I mean, I understand, and everybody has their right to their opinion. I'm not taking anything away from that. But it's just like, why, what's the point of just complaining constantly and constantly about something? It's a toy for grown-ass men. There's no point of arguing about a toy. Whatever, some people get off on that and that's what you've got. That's what you wanna do. If that makes you sleep better, I'm happy for you. Right there, buddy, keyboard warriors. Exactly, exactly. All right, sir, our last question, not really a question, well, yeah, it kinda is. Do you have any new channel goals and where can our viewers find you? This is your moment to plug yourself. Goals, man. Thought about this one too. You're getting up to 2,000, right? You're getting near that? Yeah, I would love to get to 2,000 by the end of this year, which I should hopefully get to do that. I don't, like I said, I'm not really doing this for the subs. I'm doing it because I like doing it. Once I get, if I don't start like doing it, I'm not gonna do it anymore. But I love that people love my stuff. I really appreciate it. Anybody that says anything, I try to respond to everybody as quickly as I can. I don't respond all the time, but I'm trying to respond to everybody. My goal is like that. I would love to hit 2,000. I'd love to hit more, but I would hope to hit 2,000 soon. And you can reach me, or you can reach me anywhere. I'm on Shattercast. We put a podcast out every Thursday, Thursday night, and it's supposed to be Friday morning. I'm on Hell Hasbro Reviews. Just look at what any other system looks to present. Hell Hasbro Reviews. And I'll have that link in the description as well. Okay, cool, cool, thank you. And credit to this video. Cool. I'm also on Instagram. I've been taking a lot of photos lately.  So you can give me an Instagram and I have a Facebook page, which I'll link to on my bottom in my description and everything. And you can reach me on Facebook under Matthew Baldwin. That's my name and everything. So, and that's it. And there we go. Nothing's under my wife. Well, that's pretty much it for the sit rep. Once again, I thank you for stopping by and chatting with me for a while. And I'll see you in about 20 minutes on our other podcast. Awesome, thank you. Once again, thank you very much for having me on. I was honored. I know we rushed through the questions. I'm sorry I wasn't very long or anything. So, but I plan on trying to get you back on to around 30 and everything. And anytime you wanna do this again, I'll be more than happy to. Thank you. Well, thank you, buddy. And I appreciate every one of you watching. This is Patriot Pride. Signing out. Hooah!  Good job, folks. Hey, I really appreciate you guys stopping by my channel. Don't forget to like and don't forget to subscribe. Also, check out some of my other videos that I've done on Generation One Transformers, Modern Era Transformers, and Toy Hacks Reprolabel Sex. Once again, this is Patriot Pride. Hooah!


Hello everyone. My name is Vinit Singh. I'm from the University of the South Pacific University South Pacific Originally from Fiji. So with me. I have a question Bali the lead developer for MDT But it is shy to come up. So he's there. So if there's any question at the end, he will be able to answer that I'll be discussing about this online tool a mathematic diagnostic tool, which we have developed and how we have used Moodle and Moodle features, which really enable this tool. Before talking about the tool itself, let me just give a brief description about my University. So you would have an idea why exactly we came up with this tool. So the University of the South Pacific operational since 1968 and we have around 26,000 students as of semester 1 2017 We consist the University consists of 12 member Pacific Island countries and There are 14 campuses throughout the region. As you can see in the map there are multiple countries and The campuses are located in these many countries such as Mashallah Island, Skiribat, Niuwe, Tuvalu, Tonga, Solomon Islands, Banwatu, Niuwe, Cook Islands, and Samoa. Of course Fiji has the main campus called Lodala campus. All the IT structure, infrastructure and all the main things are done in Fiji in Lodala campus. Fiji Lodala campus acts as a hub. Most of our courses are online now due to the fact that majority of our students or students are also located in these remote islands or these campuses. So we have to have our courses online to support all the students. Before I talk about OMDT, I have a short video where this John and Rohini actually explains a bit about OMDT. So hope this gives you a chance to learn more about OMDT. What is the OMDT? Last year when I attended the USP Open Day, I found out that the OMDT means online mathematics diagnostic tool. It consists of a numeracy test and remedial. The test is assigned to doctors or detect students' illnesses in mathematics. The OMDT is absolutely free and can be taken from anywhere as long as you have internet connectivity. The duration of the test is one hour, 15 minutes, and it consists of five modules, algebra, functions, differentiation, integration, and probability and statistics. There are eight questions per module. Four questions are from the easy category, two questions are from the intermediate category, and two questions from the advanced category. Okay, five modules in one hour, 15 minutes. Does that mean I have to complete one module in 15 minutes? Yes, that's right. It's important that you complete the five modules. So once you have completed the eight questions for one module, do not waste time but click on the button which will take you straight to the next module. Also, I know that once you have completed all the five modules, you are required to fill up question 11. You will receive your certificate. The certificate will give you a great base on your performance. You can also view your performance for each module. What will happen if I fail one of the modules? If you fail a module, you will be directed to take the appropriate remedial, which is also online. It can take simplified notes and connectivity. Wow, that's interesting. Oh, Ruhini, I just have one last question. Why do you want to take this online test? Well, you see, USP consists of 12 member countries and students study different curriculums and take different exams before coming to USP. Also, there are students who have been working for sometimes and want to join USP to further their education. Many courses in USP have some percentage of mathematics and to ensure that all students are well prepared for their courses, students are required to take the OMD team. Awesome, I will surely take the OMD team.  OMDT is open to everyone, even to high school students. The students can take the OMD team by registering via the Gmail app. Okay, thank you. So hopefully that gave a brief description of what exactly OMDT is and why exactly we have. I will emphasize some of the points from that. OMDT is basically developed to diagnose and detect incoming students which we have in the university and detect the weakness area in mathematics in those five topics. So, the OMDT has two modules. One is the test part and the other part is of course the remedial part. Five modules, algebra, functions, differentiation, integration, as we have seen. It started, it was piloted in 2014 in the science faculty, but today OMDT is throughout the university and it is compulsory for the first year students to do. If they do not do OMDT, they cannot register for the second year courses. So now it's compulsory because of the fact that mathematics is needed in most of the courses. Of course, there are three different types of OMDT. OMDT 1, 2 and 3, OMDT 1 is for the science students which comprises of more advanced questions whereas OMDT for non-science has easier question. OMDT 3 is for general public which we have opened and they can access that using the social authentication. Approximately there are 5,000 students per year who actually participate or attempt OMDT. As Rainy and John explained that due to the nature of ESP we have different students coming from different countries and the level of mathematics taught there and also the fact that some schools may not have good facilities, untrained teachers, unqualified teachers. So for those reasons we have this particular tool. Basically to come to ESP from secondary to tertiary, we want to close that gap and for those reasons we have this OMDT. Looking at the overall flowchart of OMDT, so there are five tests initially. Students are to attempt one by one so using the conditional activity. The first module comes up as a quiz. Student takes part in that, attempts that and next keep doing that till the five modules. After doing five modules they take part in questionnaire. This is basically a feedback on the modules and if they have passed all five modules then they will be awarded a certificate and that's it. They finish OMDT but if they fail at least one of the modules they'll be directed to that particular remedial and they have to attempt that remedial. They do retest for that particular modules and then they finish OMDT getting the awards and certificate based on the retest and test rates. One of the cool features for MUL, of course the question banks, this really helps us to develop the test module. For five modules we have five categories in question bank and each category has subcategory, easy, intermediate and hard, advanced. So there are at least 150 questions or more in easy and 100 in intermediate and 50 questions in advanced. So randomly this question is selected and given to students. As for the science students, four easy, two intermediate and two advanced for non-science it's basically six easy questions and two intermediate questions. So that's how the test selects all these questions. All these questions are basically multiple choice questions and these questions were prepared by the mathematics professors from university and basically these questions are based on ES 12 and 13 questions only. It does not consist of any questions from FESTIA University. Looking at the remedial bit, each module has its own remedial, those five modules and we have used basically Adobe Captivate to develop this remedial to make it more interactive and engaging. If you have used storyline or Captivate you would know how easy it becomes to actually implement the gamification logics or idea and use of multimedia and many things because there's so many tools within it that makes our work so easy. So to make an engaging and interactive remedial model we use basically Adobe Captivate. All the notes are basically in specific context so that it's easier for the students to understand the concept better and the remedial has the gamification features so throughout the remedial students will be able to collect the coins and stars. Remedial is designed in a way, for example even for Algebra, there are multiple topics and it starts from easy to advance. Just like in the games we have level 1, 2, 3 and 4 and continues same way this is designed so throughout the students are collecting the coins and stars which at the end of the remedial is converted to the marks and displayed to the student. Looking at the overall flowchart for remedial it begins with notes then students are given examples, video tutorial and then there is a short test for that particular topic. If the student pass they get maximum coins and they continue to the next level but if they fail then the video tutorial comes up again. They view that, learn some more concepts and then retest that particular topic. If they pass they continue further with bit less coins. If they fail then notes and examples comes back again and again retest and this time if they pass a failure it doesn't matter they will continue to the next level but with minimum coins. Some of the features of Moodle which we really used and we found very important for this project to work conditional activities. Most of you would be using this. This helps us to set the procedure. If there is any procedure which we want to follow for a particular pose it makes our work so easy. Similarly we use this to enable like first short test 1 and after completing test 1 then go to test 2. If student fails test 1 then they are redirected to remedial test 1 for test 1 so that concept conditional activity really made our work easier. Next as I explained the quiz and question banks so those are the features of Moodle which we used. In this forum for all the discussion and MDT updates and SCOM activity on Moodle. There was really again the SCOM the way it is designed on Moodle is very interactive and the good part is that whatever SCOM you use whether it's Adobe Captivate Australia at the end of the day all the marks and whatever you want to report from the SCOM really goes well or synchronized well with Moodle. All the marks and all the reports goes back to Moodle in a way that you want it to be. We use a progress tracker to show students where they stand. Social authentication this was one of the plugins which we used for OMDD3 where the general public can log in with the social Facebook or Gmail account and do this MDT. Next thing we have is certificate and transcript. Certificate basically is the initial certificate plugin which was developed by Mark Nelson. So we extended that certificate according to our needs and gave the student certificate based on the marks basically distinction, credit pass or participation. Now I understand that the custom certificate which he further developed is well advanced and already caters those but back then when we developed this we had to do some modification and then we implemented that. Next we have transcript. This is not on Moodle yet. So basically we extended the certificate plugin to a transcript plugin. So what happens? There's five modules Algebra and those integration and differentiation. So for each module or for each topics the student can get grades A, B, C, D based on their mark and percentage. So basically we extended that certificate into transcript. So this is a sample transcript and certificate. Future we would like to make the remedial offline due to the fact that it's content heavy and most of our countries do not have this internet bandwidth, a nice internet bandwidth. If Moodle can have a distributed Moodle created so that would really help us in future. Thank you. Any questions? Quick question. Hi Vinny. Thank you for your presentation. That was really interesting. I was involved in a similar project that wasn't nearly implemented as well for certificate students at UniTech in Auckland. But I can immediately see use for this for perhaps our diploma and bachelor students. We've got much the same market. Many Pacific Island students come to us and probably went through the same school systems as you're seeing. So that's really interesting. I'll look into it further. Thank you. Thank you Vinny. Next up. Thank you.


All right, well in that case, let's begin. So the first thing we had on the agenda was the the end user survey, which we have now converted into a survey monkey survey, which we emailed out yesterday. There were a couple of bits of feedback which have now been incorporated in there. And if there are no other sort of significant objections, we're planning to send the survey and the white paper to the end user forum this week. And Cheryl will be will be will be helping us with that. And I'm putting like a covering notes with it. And I'm suggesting that we put an end date of the 10th of May for responses to the survey so that we can collect the information and have something to discuss for kube kind of possible. Does that sound okay with everyone? Yep, sounds good to me. All right. On that on that note, we we also got a slot with the end user forum. Unfortunately, the the the first first slot that was available was the 9th of June. There was an earlier slot in May, but it's conflicted with the coupon Shanghai. So we moved us to the night of June now, sorry, the night of July. Sorry. Well, kube kind of Shanghai is in June. So that's right. Sorry. Yeah, it was it was if the first slot was the 25th of June and conflicted with the Shanghai event. So we'll get the night of July instead. The next item on the agenda that we had was to discuss feedback from the the open ABS discussion and some of the points that Saad had raised in a number of emails to this and the talk mailing list. I don't know, Saad, if you want to maybe quickly summarize some of those discussions. So I don't think I have any more outstanding concerns. I think I was mostly just confused about the process and why we were doing this. So to summarize, I think one was around. I think it all just spurred from I saw the presentation. I saw the discussions going on if we're going to be inducting EBS open EBS into the CNCF. And my first question was why there are lots and lots of file and block storage systems out there? Why are we picking this one? What is special about it? What is what is the reason behind doing this? So then that kind of led to another question, which is what is the process of induction? And actually it led to a third question, which is what is the purpose of this group, especially now that it's turning into a special interest group? So I think the answers that I got, I am mostly okay with. It sounds like there are different levels of incubation within the CNCF. The bottom most level is called sandbox. And as I understand it, the steering committee for the CNCF wants the sandbox to be as low a bar as possible to help incubate new types of projects that need help, that need a community to kind of foster their development in. And the entire purpose of this sandbox is not to have a very high bar or try to be very selective in terms of who gets in or who doesn't. And the other important thing to note is that the sandbox is explicitly not endorsed by the CNCF. So that kind of changes things. The induction of open EBS into the sandbox isn't really an endorsement by the CNCF. So the question of why are we picking this project, it is a little bit less relevant. Yeah, just to add a little bit to that, you know, there was there was a lot of first debate around what the criteria are for, you know, the different levels within the CNCF projects and the sandbox included around last year. And one of the, you know, the major points was that the sandbox was about, you know, projects attempting to build the community as opposed to the CNCF endorsing them, as you mentioned. And there was there was a little bit of sort of, I guess, TV issues around a couple of the first sandbox projects that were that were included, because the CNCF did did end up actually doing some press release or something like that. But I think, I think that kind of sort of took that feedback on board and now it's fairly clear that, you know, the CNCF is actually endorsing the sandbox projects per se, and they're not receiving, you know, publicity or marketing benefits. It's more around building the community and kind of giving the project a foundation to grow where it can potentially then move up to the next year. Yeah. Yeah. No, that makes sense to me. I fundamentally still think that's a little bit of a strange direction to go in, because as soon as you have, you know, any kind of benefit that's being given by the CNCF to a project to a certain extent that is an endorsement. And, you know, that is, and we should have, I think, a higher bar to provide that kind of endorsement. But I think it's a fine line. So I can I can completely by the argument that, well, the benefits that are being given here do not justify a, you know, a very high scrutiny for the projects that'll get in. That's not the purpose of the sandbox. So I think that makes sense to me. Well, I would just like to say, I agree with you that there is an implication maybe not of endorsement, but certainly of providing aid and taking under their wing a project. And, you know, we need to be aware of that. And although the, you know, having a low bar is good, there still needs to be some kind of bar. And we probably should still continue to have some discussion on where does that, where is the level of that bar, right? And I agree also with the validity of the first question, which is why this project, right? Is there a need ahead of time that's been identified, you know, and have we sifted through other projects that might also support this need? You know, is that the process? And I was unclear too, reading through some of the comments in there. So yeah, I can respond. I can respond to that set of questions, which, which I wanted to do anyway, because I think there is some confusion, which I wanted to make clear. So I was pretty actively, it's Quinton speaking, by the way, formally on the TOC. And I was pretty actively involved in defining these tiers and having this conversation, the TOC. I think this notion that we need to kind of compare all of the alternatives and pick the best one is, is, is not right. So there is no such requirement. And there is actually a counter requirement in the TOC that we do not pick winners. But that actually any project can come to us, we have a set of criteria that they need to fulfill. And if they fulfill those criteria, then they get to live in the CNCF. And the criteria are actually fairly simple. For sandbox, they're like, essentially, are you, you know, interesting to the CNCF in the future at some point, maybe you don't have to have any code, you don't have to have anything, you just have to have a plan to build stuff that we think is interesting and sort of cloud native-ish. And that's by design, very low barrier to entry, etc. Incubation says that you have actual momentum, you have an actual thing, and it's actually used in production by some number of companies. And graduation, you know, just raises that bar, you have multiple contributing companies, you have a larger number of production use cases, etc. And nowhere in there does it say that you're the best in your category, or that you're better than somebody else, or anything like that. So I wanted to just make that very clear. The fact that Open EBS is in the CNCF, I mean, it happens to be in sandbox, so it's kind of even less relevant. But even if it works in incubation or graduation, does not say that it is the best, you know, distributed block store out there. It just says that it is a distributed block store. It is used in production. It does have, you know, various characteristics with regards to contributor communities. And the owners of the IP decided to donate it to the CNCF. That's what it says. Does that make sense? That's a lot more clear. And I appreciate you sharing that because it does clear things up. The only hesitation that I would still be left is making sure or, you know, is there a way that we avoid nepotism in the process of bringing projects into CNCF so that it's not just a cozy little... Makes perfect sense. And that's why all of the evaluations are done in public. And to be clear, not all of these are like selected by the CNCF. So OpenEBS actually came to the CNCF and said, we want to donate our project. We did not approach them. And our job at the CNCF in that case is to say, do you fulfill the criteria that we have specified for sandbox or incubation or graduation? And any project can come to the CNCF and say we would like to donate our software to the CNCF and accrue the benefits that come with that. And if we decide not to do that, then there's usually some kind of public evaluation whereby it either gets voted on by the TOC or they fail to find sponsors in the TOC to sponsor them. And usually there's some reason behind that given. And if not, you can ask the TOC why did nobody sponsor this project? That would be a perfectly reasonable question. It can be asked in public and hopefully somebody will be in answer. Does that make sense? Yeah, that clears a lot of things up for me. I was confused going through the thread and I think you straightened me out. I appreciate it. Awesome.  So what it does highlight though is that the logical end point of that is we're going to have many, at least several of similar or I hesitate to use the word, but competitive projects in the CNCF. And we already have that in various spaces. The service measures are one example where we have several. And it is incumbent on the CNCF to make it clear what the similarities and differences are and to enable users to be able to choose between them. And so we do need to take that fairly seriously. Whereas if we only decided we had one block store, then that's the block store that the CNCF proposes because it's the only one we have, which is not the case. Sorry, Xing, carry on. Oh, I just have one question. Do you have an example of a project that wants to join Sandbox but got rejected for some reason? Yes, I believe there are some. Some of them, for example, I mean, if you look at the CNCF website has a very clear definition of what cloud native means. And we kind of fundamentally believe that cloud native architecture is, you know, compatible with the CNCF's mission. And if you come to the CNCF with a project that is fundamentally not of that nature, it will be rejected on that basis. I mean, to use a sort of corny example, if your software only deploys on a mainframe, a fairly mainframe, somebody will say that is not a cloud native approach and therefore does not belong on the CNCF. Got it. Thanks. Yeah, I think the challenge is that we need to get better around educating the CNCF members on landscape and options and that sort of thing, right? So we kind of are going to be in a bit of a scenario as the CNCF grows, where in the early days there might only be one or two projects in a particular category.  And on the other hand, you might end up in a position somewhere down the line, kind of like what happened with the Apache Foundation today, where there are so many projects and so many things to choose from, that people will need just their guidance as to what's on the landscape and what things are used for what purposes. So I think that's something we need to be aware of. I'm not sure there's sort of any obvious solution other than increasing awareness of different options on landscape. Yeah, I agree. We're 20 minutes in now. We got a few other things. That sort of adequately addressed people's questions there. I think that was a useful conversation and thanks for bringing it upside, because I don't just to be clear, your confusion around this is not unique. The similar question comes up, you know, fairly often. And I think it's, you know, the CNCF has actually failed in some respects. I'm not making it clearer. And that's a well understood problem. And when the people are looking to solve. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for clarifying that it does explain things a lot and what's going on and why things are happening. I think fundamentally, I still disagree philosophically with that direction. I think we should be the CNCF should cultivate a ecosystem of projects that are more complementary to each other and be more selective. But I can also understand the draw of making the ecosystem more open and actually just say, Hey, there's all of these options and we'll help you figure out which one's best. So thank you for taking the time to clarify that. Sure. I can respond very briefly to that because that's a reasonable point of view. You just pointed out the counter argument is that it's not usually very successful to try and pick winners. It's much better for the winners to emerge from the ecosystem by virtue of, you know, ending up with more strong contributions and lots of use.  Statistically, most people are wrong. So we kind of avoid making that mistake. And we just say there are a bunch of them and over time, the community will decide which ones to use and which ones to contribute to and those will become the strongest and we don't even try to predict what that will be. Yeah, no, I completely agree with that. But what I, if I were to make the decisions here, what I would do is say that for, in order to get into the CNCF, you either have to have just, you know, pure adoption where you're the clear winner in this space. So that makes you, that that is the criteria for you to get in or there is a strategic kind of whole a gap where it's important for the CNCF to have a project in a space but none exists or there's one that's kind of fledgling provides support for that. But it does leave a gap. Like you mentioned for projects that are brand new, they're not clearly the winner. There's competition in that space. Where do they go? Personally, I don't think they should go into the CNCF if there's something under the Linux foundation or another kind of some sort of like if we could shift the sandbox somewhere else, remove the CNCF branding from it, let that be kind of an incubation center and then let CNCF be the kind of cultivated catalog of the products that complement each other within the CNCF ecosystem. I think that would be a best of both worlds approach. Okay. Yeah, maybe we should pick that up as a conversation at a KubeCon or something sometime. It's like a longer conversation. Let me see your point. And I think there, I mean, it's not clear to me that that would be strictly better. What you proposed would be strictly better than what we have. I do think that we do need to be very clear about the branding. And that that was a mistake that the CNCF made in not drawing a clear enough distinction between sandbox and the other levels so that it became very blurry whether this thing was like this super successful, well adopted, well supported project, or it was somebody's idea that got into the sandbox. And that that messaging has been made a lot clearer since then. But, but, you know, some of the damage was already done. Yeah, I leave conversations up. So thank you. Awesome. I'm just going to sort of extend this conversation too much because he said we've already spent some time on this bit. I do really like Southside idea about products that complement each other. And somehow I think maybe that might be worth the discussion either, you know, some other meeting or perhaps in a KubeCon event where it would actually be useful to talk about how products make the sort of the the end to end stack of the cloud native ecosystem better. Like, you know, for example, if if products, you know, make Kubernetes better or they make logging for Kubernetes better or they make service measures or security or whatever better, that's probably more valuable and more CNCF friendly than say, I don't know, something that that that makes some sort of proprietary orchestrator better, for example. I mean, I think there is value in that because because at the end of the day in the CNCF is here to make the adoption of cloud native technologies more successful and more and more pervasive. And therefore, there is value in making sure that there is some sort of sense to the end to end stack. So products working together and products complementing each other should be a goal that we, you know, attempt to move the needle on through through some process here. Yeah, absolutely. I agree with you. And I think a lot of that happens naturally. But yeah, more discussion for sure, we can we can take take it up elsewhere. Cool. Okay. The next thing we have on the agenda, which is probably more significant for the working group today is that the fact that the working group is transitioning to a CNCF SIG, the proposal for CNCF SIGs was was voted on and approved a number of weeks ago now. And Quinton has drawn up a draft charter which is put into the agenda for the for the day's meeting. Quinton, do you want to quickly just run through this? Yes, I can do that if people think that would be useful. Perhaps I should present. There you go. Can everyone see the document? Yes. Okay. This does not represent months of work by any such imagination rather a couple of hours. I tried to keep it as simple and stripped down as possible. Otherwise, these things can become pretty unwieldy and philosophical and whatever. What I try to spell out is what we consider to be in scope and out of scope as perhaps the starting point. And then turn that into a, you know, shortest possible mission statement. And then just be clear with how we overlap with interface with and otherwise interact with related groups. And then the basic operating model, which is actually covered in the SIGs proposal. So all I really wanted to call out was the stuff specific to our SIG that I think in on principle, we just follow the standard SIG operating guidelines and pick a few people and that's about it. And yeah, we can go into that later. So maybe talking about scope would be useful. So we consider to be in scope any storage systems and approaches suitable for and commonly used in modern cloud native environments. There's a link there to what a cloud native environment is as defined by the CNCF. We can jump there if you like, but it's fairly self-evident. And especially where these differ significantly from storage systems and approaches previously commonly used in traditional enterprise data center environments. And these areas are not already adequately covered by other groups within the CNCF and there's detail below. So that was kind of what we consider in scope. And we strive to understand the fundamental characteristics of different storage approaches with respect to the various different characteristics and relate these to the suitability to various cloud native use cases with a reference to the white paper. So does that sound reasonable? Is there anything there that anyone has any violent disagreements with or thinks is missing? Should we be, sorry, I was actually going to jump to the next one, the out of scope. Sure. Do we want to consider databases out of scope? I think for the white paper we actually out of scope them for the initial for the initial white paper, but in scope them in general for the storage working group. They are officially in scope for the working group definition as defined by the CNCF TOC. So after working with the SIG. So maybe we should actually... Yeah, I mean, I kind of made a point of trying to keep the in scope stuff short. I didn't want to go to block stores and object stores and this kind of store and key value stores, because as we go into some length to explain in the white paper, some of these things don't necessarily properly define something. There are interfaces, there are implementations, there are properties associated. You can have a highly durable object store or a totally not durable object store. So object store doesn't necessarily mean what you think it means. But for that reason, I didn't explicitly call out databases, but they are implicitly in scope. Okay. Is there going to be like a SIG workloads or SIG apps or something for the CNCF? Yes, absolutely. There is such a thing. I... So at least on the Kubernetes side, traditionally we've said, hey, databases are the responsibility of SIG apps. I'm not sure if we want to make the same distinction here. If not, that's okay, but maybe it's worth being clear and we don't have to explicitly define it as part of in scope or out of scope. I was kind of just looking at the examples that you have below. Maybe we could add a database as an example if it is within scope. Sure. I've just flipped across to the actual SIG definitions here. And so to answer your one question, application development operation and testing is a SIG. And it covers everything to do with, you know, PAS, serverless operators, anything to do with application development, etc. And has a relatively small number of projects. I imagine that will grow. And in particular, this kind of pipelines and workflows and all that kind of stuff is is hotting up a lot. Storages, block, file, object source, databases, key value stores, etc. So that, you know, is officially delegated to us. Okay. You know, we can obviously complain about that and we can say we don't want to SIG apps, but I think it fits fairly well in here. Yeah. I think conceptually it does. In terms of expertise, I think the people who tend to be experts in databases are not necessarily experts in the lower level stuff or vice versa. Yeah. That's something we'll need to address. You know, we need to find experts and get them involved. Yeah. So that third tech lead, if we could find someone who's familiar with database, that'd be awesome. That's a good idea. Awesome. Actually, actually, Shang Lee, he has, well, he's a maintainer for EDCD, right? So he has expertise in that. That's true. I mean, it's not technically a database, but you know, we do have TIKV and the CNCF. So that's a, you know, more classic distributed database. And also Vitas, as for the MySQL. That might be an idea. Maybe somebody from the test community might be interested here. Yeah. That'd be great. Okie dokie. So the stuff out of scope, I sort of somewhat jokingly said anything that's not in scope is out of scope. But in particular, I think we don't really, you know, go into researching nonvolatile memory or any of the sort of underlying hardware devices that actually store the stuff. We don't spend a lot of time on that other than to the extent where it, you know, has fundamental impact on some of the cloud native specific stuff. I tried to make that as short and understandable as possible. And hopefully that makes sense. We don't get too carried away with authentication, authorization, accounting, auditing, etc. All of these things obviously apply to storage systems, but there is another SIG called Security that that is fully occupied with worrying about such things. So yeah. Quinton, for that first point, is it worth making it a bit more explicit and kind of saying the focus is on software and services as opposed to hardware? I didn't want to go quite that far because I don't think that's true. I think it's perfectly reasonable to have, you know, a honking grade storage cabinet or several of them in your private cloud, for example. I don't think that is out of scope, but figuring out how a spinning disc works or how an SSD works will spend a lot of time doing. So that's the distinction I had in my head. I don't want us to preemptively exclude non-software based storage solutions that can in cloud native environments. I'm open to people objecting to that quality, but that was my point of view when I wrote this down. I support that fully. And maybe we can read a word that's likely to make it a little clearer. I think the distinction... So I was actually referring back to this statement of where these differ from storage systems and approaches, blah, blah, blah. Now, you know, hard disks, SSDs, NVMe, et cetera, they don't look any different in cloud data centers than they do anywhere else. So they're relatively less interesting. There are other organizations that spend a lot of time designing and figuring out how this drive should work and how SSDs should work, et cetera. And that's not what we spend a lot of our time on. That was the point I was trying to make. Make sense? Yep, make sense. Cool. So, you know, the other ones are all basically areas that are already adequately covered by other groupings in the CNCF family. So, CNCF security is one example. CSI is another example. And storage abstractions and APIs for container orchestrators fit within those container orchestrators. So Kubernetes obviously worries about that stuff. So we're not going to try and replace or duplicate any of these existing functioning groups. Make sense? Yep. How about disaster recovery backup, backup software, that sort of thing? Where would that fall? That's a good question. I definitely think data redundancy. So disaster recovery actually covers much more than storage. It's more about sort of high availability of services in general. As it pertains to off-site backups and all that kind of stuff, I think that is in scope. I mean, that's explicitly what things like object stores typically do is replicate their objects to multiple physical locations, et cetera. So to that extent, yes, I think they are in scope. Yeah, I would suggest that data protection in general, you know, whether it's snapshots or backup software or replicas or whatever else, those kind of all fall within, you know, typical technologies that are used in storage. I think they are kind of gets into a bit of a gray area, especially when we're talking about cloud native, because it probably has overlaps with sort of federation and multi-cloud and all of those kind of areas too. Yeah, disaster recovery normally covers more than just data and storage. It's usually entire, you know, replicated data centers. It's a good question. Where does that fit in the current SIG landscape? And I don't have an obvious answer to that. I mean, there is this. So we have, we have a, we call the core and applied architectures, one of the SIGs. And that is intended to cover the container orchestrators and specialized instantiations of them. So things like cluster federation, edge, Kubernetes and edge environments, those kind of things. So it sort of fits in there. And we could certainly talk about the data and storage aspects of disaster recovery in this group. Yeah, I wasn't trying to quiz you on it. I just was bringing it up because I know that's something that would eventually come up, right? Make sense. Yeah, sounds good. We have to cover that in the white paper. We covered that. We did. We talked about, yeah, we talked about the carbon recovery and those are all in the white paper. So should be part of this. Even if anything go beyond it, then maybe another group can take a look as well. But yeah, definitely there'll be storage area. And from the software side, is there a distinction made about how we're working with the actual storage piece? If we're talking about software applications that do backups and that sort of thing, this group would be covering just the function of putting data to disk, right? That's not within our scope to deal with the application backup application. Yes, it's always, yeah, there's a boundary somewhere. I think it should still be responsible of this group. But maybe we can work with another group on this. Yeah, I was going to suggest a similar thing. I think there's an overlap between application development and storage there. And I think we need to just sort of call it out. And I can add it here to the, how do I do this without messing up your comment? I think we can do that here. We need to add a, oopsie, really messing this up. I think I watched your comment there, Shing, but we'll fix it up afterwards. I think we need to add here cncf apps. All of that. How applications use storage. That makes sense. I'll flesh out the details, but I think is that what you were referring to? Exactly, yeah. It's something I think we should definitely focus on and then also should have some understanding about not getting sucked up into app dev and how these applications are going to work in terms of distributing, managing distributed workloads and that sort of thing in terms of how a backup software would do that across clusters, across data centers, that sort of thing. That to me seems like more of an application specific thing, whereas the storage piece of it writing the desk would be where I feel like this would be a focus for us, right? I think there is increasingly an overlap there. I mean, I think when you look at things like HDFS and Hadoop and Spark and many of these things, the line between the storage system and the application is quite blurry in some cases. And I don't think we need to be too prescriptive about saying, oh, that looks too much like an application. We don't want to talk about it. My pragmatic approach is if there is already a group that is actively discussing this stuff or has a strong interest in taking care of it, then we should be comfortable deferring to that group. If there is no other group discussing how applications that need to do persistent state are being architectured, if that's not being covered somewhere else, we need to just talk about it here until a better home emerges for it. What I don't want to happen is for all the SIGs to defer everything to some other non-existent SIG and then have big holes in there's actually nowhere reasonable that you can have this discussion because like everybody's referring me to everybody else. I think this is an area that actually deserves some work because we're kind of moving, right? In older environments an application was kind of built around the storage environment and now what we're actually seeing is a more composable declarative kind of architecture where storage works for the application rather than the application being built around the storage. I think that particular use case is really important because more and more that's actually what's driving the changes to what defines cognitive storage around the composability, the API, the orchestrator integration, all of those sort of things. So I think that kind of is sort of important and it would help if we sort of help to define some of that. I fully expect that we're going to get some feedback from the end users there. Yeah I think I agree with Quentin about if there's somebody already working on it. Let's let them own it. To that point, Kubernetes Storage SIG and Kubernetes SIG apps have been working on coming up with kind of a holistic story for snapshotting and backing up not just volumes but also applications and it is a cross SIG collaboration. Thinking about what is it going to take not just to make sure that my persistent storage is backed up and recovered but also the entire application as a whole. SIG apps are going to be putting out a cap soon for that so keep an eye on that if you're interested but some of this is being discussed in those SIGs at the moment. Yeah that makes a lot of sense. Maybe this is a good segue into our mission statement here and hopefully this will address some of these things. So what I kind of proposed as our mission statement is to enable widespread and successful storage of persistent state and cloud native environments through the following approaches. Providing valuable and objective information to the TSE end users and projects regarding areas considered in scope. Collaborating effectively with other related groups and that's the groups I enumerated below and I'm sure there are going to be others and we should actually add there that this is not an exhaustive list and helping to maintain the continued health of CNCF storage projects and identifying and filling gaps in the landscape of CNCF storage projects. So does that hopefully that makes it clear that we do not plan to you know replace any of the existing groups there are groups that are already dealing with some of the areas that are in scope for us and we're explicitly going to collaborate with them and not try and compete with them. Yeah now I agree with that. I think in all of these sort of things we just need to keep it pragmatic and practical right. It's about moving the needle forward and not not sort of just theorizing about stuff for the sake of it. And then oh so and then yeah unless there are more discussions about the mission and in and out of scope and the other related groups I've kind of stuck my feelers out and some people have thrown in their their hat into the ring to volunteer as various roles. These are the ones that I have so far. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list and if anyone else is interested please do put your hands up. Ultimately the TOC will decide who these people are but obviously if we can come forward with a bunch of people that we think are well suited to the job and who are happy to serve in these roles it makes the TOC's life a lot easier. So these are the currently the people I've spoken to. So Jiang is is officially the TOC liaison and I've been communicated with him about putting this charter together and various leads. Alex has volunteered to be a co-chair and I'm happy to be one as well if you want me. We need some more. Tech lead Saad has volunteered. I think he would make an excellent candidate. Xing is also volunteered and there is space for some more. So if you know anyone else we mentioned tonight that somebody's rearranging their house in the background there. We mentioned that it would be beneficial to have a database expert perhaps as one of the tech leads. Neither of which Saad or Xing I think call themselves database experts. Correct me if I'm wrong either of you. I've actually reached out to some of the people from Rook to find out if they're interested. Not that they're database experts but they might be the right kind of people and I agree we should talk to perhaps TIKB and or the TES and find out if anyone's interested there. I can reach out to the Kubernetes SIG apps folks as well to see if anyone there is interested. I know they've been working a lot on database operators as well. There we go. Yeah that'd be useful. If we're still looking I can send a note out to my friends over at Red Hat and we've got some people on on database here but I've got a couple of friends at Red Hat who are probably better suited to participate here. One thing I would caution us regarding databases and I think the SIG in general is that there are a lot of you know I'll call them traditional big iron relational database kind of people out there who maybe are not familiar with newer database technologies or less familiar with them and I think we need to make sure we don't end up with only uh traditional database experts. I think we either need to have people have you know a broad set of experience and skills with both traditional databases and the sort of more modern ones like TRKV and Spanner etc or we at least need to have both groups of people represented here otherwise we could end up with a a little bit of a sort of skewed perspective. It's my opinion. Yeah that's probably fair. There was quite a lot of contention in the CNCF at the time of the test coming in that it's basically MySQL and people were saying well you know MySQL is not cloud native and all that kind of stuff. So there's a little bit of optics here we need to just be aware of.  Okay cool. Quinton I mentioned in the last meeting that uh that I could I'm happy to throw my hand up as a volunteer as well if needed. How do I get a hold of you? How do I reach out to you? Oh sorry yes I think you actually sent me an email and got buried in all my other stuff. You did the right thing I just need to go and dig it out. I think what we're probably going to have to do is I think anyone who wants to put their hats in the ring here should just put you know at the end of the day as I said the TOC is going to choose these people and particularly if there's more than the number that we require there's going to be some kind of filtering process. So I would suggest that everyone put a very brief resume together just explaining why they think they would be suited to uh whatever position they're volunteering to fulfill um to to enable the the CNC sorry the TOC to to sort of make a a sensible call there. I would you know one thing I think that is a bit of a sole point in general across many CNCF projects and the TOC and CNCF in general is you know people who people who have a history of actually delivering stuff are very strongly favored. It's great to have tons of historical experience but at the end of the day if you don't have the time availability or the inclination to to actually deliver the stuff that needs to be delivered you're less useful than the people who actually crank out you know documents code evaluations what whatever the thing is that we're looking for and this is not you know in any way pointing fingers at anyone in particular but just highlight those in your in your biography to make sure that people are aware of you know the stuff that you've actually delivered in the recent past particularly if it's in the context of the CNCF that would be great or the Linux foundation or related areas. Okie dokie anything else to discuss we've got uh what's five minutes left I think we covered everything that we had on the original agenda so that's good awesome um so is it safe to say that this charter seems to be uh fairly well supported by this group uh and they know you know hugely contentious parts of it or anything that there are major disagreements on is that an accurate assessment yep sounds good to me so I can go forward to the TOC and I can say we think this is a good starting point uh we need to fill in some gaps at the bottom there and we've had another volunteer and we'll call it done uh I'll send this to Xing at least Xiang in the next couple of weeks I guess it would be great if we could announce this at KubeCon to say that we actually have a storage sig so I'll unless anyone objects I will see if we can get this voted on by the TOC before uh Barcelona that would be very cool


If you're thinking of using a new and unproven technology, say for instance, releasing genetically modified bacteria into the environment to detect and remove a contaminant like arsenic, how do you decide if it's a safe and sensible thing to do? And how do you work out in the grand scheme of things if the new tech really is better than what we're currently using to address the problems we're trying to solve? The usual way we make risk decisions is to gather and interpret all the evidence we can on what we think are the right questions, which are usually how risky is the new technology, and perhaps how can we make it safer? This rather traditional approach to assessing risk can give us answers to narrow questions, but when we're grappling with new technologies or even new uses of old technologies, there are sometimes more relevant questions we should be asking. Of course, the easiest question to ask about something new is, is it safe? But as questions go, it's actually not that helpful. Sadly, nothing is ever 100% safe, and sometimes small risks are actually well worth taking. Because of this, just asking if something is safe can sometimes be misleading, especially when the current technologies of products we're using to solve the same problem already have their own risks. In this case, something new that isn't completely safe might still be the safer option. The problem is, the choices we're trying to make are not just about the risks or benefits. In order to make smart choices, we also have to consider the problem we're trying to solve. Here we find that conventional approaches to risk assessment are good at telling us what to worry about, but what we really need are smart risk management approaches that help us understand what to do. One way forward here is an idea developed by my colleague Adam Finkel. It's called solution-focused risk assessment, and it's an approach that is particularly helpful when it comes to grappling with new and emerging technologies. Solution-focused thinking starts by asking what we can do to solve a problem, not just how bad the problem is. And when what we can do involves a new technology, this means asking what it promises and how this differs from what we've been achieving without it. This leads to a basic question. Can the new technology fulfill one or more human needs in better ways than we have at present? And by better, we mean, is it likely to reduce more risks than it potentially creates? Clearly, if we can be confident that a new technology ends up offering greater benefits and lower risks than how we do things at the moment, it's going to be more attractive than one that offers lower benefits and greater risks. And so we end up balancing the best way to get to where we want to be as a society, rather than worrying about specific risks in isolation. The advantage of this Solution-focused approach is that it focuses our attention on questions that are important for our collective future health, well-being and happiness, and away from questions that we can find answers to, but aren't that helpful. It also encourages everyone from political leaders to voters who elect them to think about innovative and ambitious solutions to challenges that we may have grown needlessly comfortable living with. For example, take disposable plastic water bottles. Depending on how these are manufactured, they may release small quantities of chemicals into the environment that act like artificial hormones and disrupt the endocrine systems of humans and animals. The US Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, has been trying to set safe levels in water for each of these chemicals for decades now, and maybe one day we'll reach an agreement on a set of acceptably safe levels for each of these substances. But even if we do reach mission accomplished on the risks from endocrine disruptors, this will do nothing about the broader environmental and climate impacts of manufacturing, using and disposing of over 50 billion bottles a year. And that's just in the United States alone. In this case, a Solution-focused approach may suggest we try to nudge people's drinking habits so that fewer disposable bottles are used, or even use subsidies or taxes or even infrastructure spending to bring back the days when cold fresh water was readily available from public water fountains on street corners and inside buildings. Dreaming up and testing waste reduce all impacts rather than simply displacing risks from one area to another is especially important when grappling with new and emerging technologies. Take synthetic biology and gene editing, for instance. These are technologies that could help us to get places we might want to be. For example, by making it easier to convert plants into fuel, or even to resurrect extinct species like the woolly mammoth, and yes, some people really do want to do this. Or even to eliminate mosquitoes that carry devastating diseases like dengue and malaria. In cases like these, focusing on individual risks like whether genetically modified mosquitoes are safe may give us some answers, but these won't be that helpful in getting to where we really want to be. Instead, using a solution-focused risk assessment approach, we can begin to talk about and agree on what we actually want to achieve. And this might include things like what the pros and cons are of current approaches like using pesticides, for instance, and where new technologies might or might not be better than the status quo. In some cases, we may find that existing ways of dealing with risks and benefits are the best option. In others, we may be surprised to discover that new technologies are actually likely to make our lives better. And most provocatively, in some cases, we may find that by asking what we can do, we'll start asking ambitious questions about what we need to be able to do. In other words, we'll start to search for solutions we would like to see beyond the ones we just happen to have. Either way, we have the opportunity to make informed choices on building a better world rather than getting tied up in knots as we chase unhelpful answers to the wrong questions. And at the end of the day, this way of thinking doesn't diminish the role of risk assessment. Rather, it empowers risk assessment to dream things that never were and say, why not?


St. Lucia and Taiwan relations continue to positively impact the lives of the citizenry through various development initiatives. Taiwan has made available a further $3.2 million in development funding, which the Peer Administration will channel through the St. Lucia community. Part of the Taiwanese funding was allocated to construct the Bashe Shouzef Human Resource Development Center in the Cashtree's South constituency. The funds will also support the government's maintenance program for sporting facilities throughout the island. An allocation was also made to support the Safe Spaces Project. As Honourable Prime Minister Filipe Jephyen underlined the priority of the safety and security of citizens in his New Year's address, and Honourable Kensen Kasmi, Minister of Youth Development and Sports also highlighted the importance of maintenance of sports facilities for youth development in his address on 41st National Sports Awards. The three projects today have not only echoed the idea presented by Honourable Prime Minister and Honourable Minister Kasmi, but also timely demonstrated the determination and execution ability of the St. Lucia government. In this regard, Taiwan as a long-standing development partner is very proud to be part of these projects. Prime Minister Honourable Filipe Jephyen on behalf of the Government of St. Lucia expressed his gratitude to Taiwan and remarked on how the funding will be directed to strengthen the island's social safety nets, develop local sporting infrastructure and improve St. Lucia's human capital. What is significant in these three projects today is all of them are people-centered projects, all of them relate to people, the Safe Space Project people, the Rehabitation of Human Resource Centers people, the Rehabitation of Sports Facilities, all of them involve people. It just shows and demonstrates that our mantra of putting people first is clear, not only in words, but in deed, and all these policies relate to people. But I'm particularly pleased about the last one, Rehabitation of Sports Facilities, because the Mindu Filipe Park is going to be done in that phase. So all the doubting Thomas is about jazz. All the doubting Thomas is about jazz at the Mindu Filipe Park. Let him rest assured that jazz will be held at the Mindu Filipe Park and the funding for the repairs to the facilities at Mindu Filipe Park will happen. So the sportsmen will get the facility repaired. The Taiwan Ambassador handed over the final tranche during a brief ceremony before the Cabinet of Ministers and senior government officials on February 27th. From the Office of the Prime Minister, Rihanna Issa.