Podcasts about vendors

Gov. Pritzker is trying to stoke fear in Chicago but some of the examples he gives are kind of odd.  Visit the Howie Carr Radio Network website to access columns, podcasts, and other exclusive content.

All links and images can be found on CISO Series. This week's episode is hosted by David Spark, producer of CISO Series and Andy Ellis (@csoandy), principal of Duha. Joining them is Daniel Liber, CISO, Monday.com. In this episode: AI security's blind spot problem Vendors don't understand the assignment Marketing budgets overshadow actual innovation Accuracy versus effectiveness Huge thanks to our sponsor, Material Security Built specifically for Google Workspace, Material is a detection and response platform that protects Gmail, Google Drive, and accounts by proactively eliminating security gaps, stopping misconfigurations, and preventing shadow IT before they turn into costly problems. See Material in action today - https://material.security/providers/google-workspace?utm_source=third-party&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=20251007-cisoseries

Our featured guest this week is Greg Foss, Manager - Threat Detection @ Datadog, interviewed by Frank Victory. News from Echostar, Space Command, DenAI Summit, CU Boulder, Webroot, Red Canary, Zvelo, Optiv, Ping Identity, and a lot more! You can find Greg and Frank at the following events if you'd like to see them in purpose:Greg: Lunch keynote at the CSA Fall Summit 2025 October 29th Frank: BSides Colorado Springs - "Pyramid of Pain - Defenders Edition" October 25th SnowFROC 2026 - March 26 and 27 University of Michigan CyberSecurity Symposium - Challenges of Training the Next Generation of Cybersecurity Professionals - October 30th Come join us on the Colorado = Security Slack channel to meet old and new friends. Sign up for our mailing list on the main site to receive weekly updates - https://www.colorado-security.com/. If you have any questions or comments, or any organizations or events we should highlight, contact Alex and Robb at info@colorado-security.com This week's news: EchoStar unloads wireless spectrum to Musk's SpaceX for $17 billion Will Colorado lose 30,000 jobs when Space Command moves to Alabama? CU Boulder ranked No. 1 for launching startups based on university discoveries Guarding your family against the latest online threats Node problem: Tracking recent npm package compromises SaaS Risk Management for Vendors in the Age of AI Cybersecurity Capabilities for Maturing Your TPRM Programs Complying with NIST SP 800-63-4 Standards: Identity as the Roadmap Redefining incident response in the age of AI Upcoming Events: Check out the full calendar ISSA Denver - Denver ISSA Chapter Meeting at Secure World: How I Got Caught: A Deep Dive Into a 800K Fraud - 10/9 ISACA Denver - October Chapter Meeting - 10/16 ASIS Denver - ASIS ROCKY MOUNTAIN TRADE SHOW and NETWORKING - 10/21 ISSA Pikes Peak - Chapter Meeting - 10/22 CSA - CSA Fall Summit - 10/29 View our events page for a full list of upcoming events * Thanks to CJ Adams for our intro and exit! If you need any voiceover work, you can contact him here at carrrladams@gmail.com. Check out his other voice work here. * Intro and exit song: "The Language of Blame" by The Agrarians is licensed under CC BY 2.0

⬥GUEST⬥Pieter VanIperen, CISO and CIO of AlphaSense | On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pietervaniperen/⬥HOST⬥Host: Sean Martin, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine and Host of Redefining CyberSecurity Podcast | On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/imsmartin/ | Website: https://www.seanmartin.com⬥EPISODE NOTES⬥Real-World Principles for Real-World Security: A Conversation with Pieter VanIperenPieter VanIperen, the Chief Information Security and Technology Officer at AlphaSense, joins Sean Martin for a no-nonsense conversation that strips away the noise around cybersecurity leadership. With experience spanning media, fintech, healthcare, and SaaS—including roles at Salesforce, Disney, Fox, and Clear—Pieter brings a rare clarity to what actually works in building and running a security program that serves the business.He shares why being “comfortable being uncomfortable” is an essential trait for today's security leaders—not just reacting to incidents, but thriving in ambiguity. That distinction matters, especially when every new technology trend, vendor pitch, or policy update introduces more complexity than clarity. Pieter encourages CISOs to lead by knowing when to go deep and when to zoom out, especially in areas like compliance, AI, and IT operations where leadership must translate risks into outcomes the business cares about.One of the strongest points he makes is around threat intelligence: it must be contextual. “Generic threat intel is an oxymoron,” he argues, pointing out how the volume of tools and alerts often distracts from actual risks. Instead, Pieter advocates for simplifying based on principles like ownership, real impact, and operational context. If a tool hasn't been turned on for two months and no one noticed, he says, “do you even need it?”The episode also offers frank insight into vendor relationships. Pieter calls out the harm in trying to “tell a CISO what problems they have” rather than listening. He explains why true partnerships are based on trust, humility, and a long-term commitment—not transactional sales quotas. “If you disappear when I need you most, you're not part of the solution,” he says.For CISOs and vendors alike, this episode is packed with perspective you can't Google. Tune in to challenge your assumptions—and maybe your entire security stack.⬥SPONSORS⬥ThreatLocker: https://itspm.ag/threatlocker-r974⬥RESOURCES⬥⬥ADDITIONAL INFORMATION⬥✨ More Redefining CyberSecurity Podcast: 

Authoritarian regimes are upgrading their playbook — from surveillance cameras and spyware to algorithmic censorship and AI-driven policing. Steven Feldstein, senior fellow at Carnegie and author of The Rise of Digital Repression, joins Bankless to map the expanding world of repression technology. We cover everything from Nepal's protest movement to China's sophisticated censorship stack, the global spyware industry, and the unsettling rise of predictive policing and AI in warfare. Along the way, Feldstein explains how financial repression and social credit systems extend state power into the economic sphere — and where crypto fits into the story of resistance.

On this episode, Pete and Julie share their POV's and insights from a week of attending the HR Technology Conference & Expo, Workday Rising, and Neeyamo's N'Gage events. Fresh from the HR tech fall event trail, they unpack a long list of product announcements, key trends and observations and opine on what it means for each vendor and the marketplace.  Vendors updates discussed in the episode include ADP, Chime, DailyPay, Flowise, G-P, HiBob, HiredScore, Insperity, Sana, SAP, Neeyamo, Paradox, SonicJobs, and Workday.  Connect with the show: LinkedIn:  http://linkedin.com/company/hr-payroll-2-0 X: @HRPayroll2_0 @PeteTiliakos @JulieFer_HR BlueSky: @hrpayroll2o.bsky.social YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HRPAYROLL2_0

Authoritarian regimes are upgrading their playbook — from surveillance cameras and spyware to algorithmic censorship and AI-driven policing. Steven Feldstein, senior fellow at Carnegie and author of The Rise of Digital Repression, joins Bankless to map the expanding world of repression technology. We cover everything from Nepal's protest movement to China's sophisticated censorship stack, the global spyware industry, and the unsettling rise of predictive policing and AI in warfare. Along the way, Feldstein explains how financial repression and social credit systems extend state power into the economic sphere — and where crypto fits into the story of resistance. ---

Artificial intelligence is reshaping the technology services landscape, with leading reports from IDC, Gartner, and new offerings from ServiceNow pointing to a future where managing AI sprawl becomes as critical as delivering AI capabilities themselves. High-performing channel partners are leaning into AI specialization, driving measurable outcomes for customers and fueling double-digit growth despite market pressures. At the same time, ServiceNow's “AI Experience” platform aims to consolidate fragmented AI tools, offering a unified interface that can streamline operations and reduce complexity. The broader market, according to Gartner, is accelerating rapidly, with spending on generative AI projected to surpass traditional software in the coming years—meaning providers who fail to deliver outcomes risk being left behind.Yet the rise of AI isn't all progress. Studies from Stanford, European labor groups, and cybersecurity organizations reveal a governance crisis brewing in workplaces. Workers are reporting a surge of “workslop”—AI-generated content that looks like productivity but creates no value—costing companies billions. Algorithmic management is eroding worker autonomy, while surveillance and data risks undermine trust in employers. To compound the problem, employees are increasingly feeding sensitive data into AI systems without adequate training, raising new security vulnerabilities. These trends highlight the urgent need for policies, training, and governance frameworks to ensure AI adds value instead of chaos.The disruption is also spilling into specific industries. In translation, human professionals are already being displaced as AI-driven tools gain adoption. WhatsApp's newly built-in translation capability demonstrates how “good enough” AI can be enough for most users, sidelining human expertise except in fields requiring deep cultural or contextual understanding. The translation sector serves as an early warning sign: as AI grows more capable, other professions—including legal research, finance, and customer support—face similar pressures. The lesson for providers is to help clients identify where AI is appropriate and where human oversight remains essential.Meanwhile, major vendors are steadily encroaching into IT services, redrawing the lines of what MSPs can offer. Acronis is embedding patch management into its backup suite, Slack is introducing AI-powered ticket deflection, GoTo and Nexthink are fusing support and analytics, and IBM is shifting developer tooling to its hosted cloud. Each move chips away at traditional MSP offerings, putting pressure on providers to adapt. The opportunity lies in integration and governance—helping customers unify fragmented tools, ensure compliance, and deliver outcomes that vendors alone cannot. For MSPs, the message is clear: evolve toward higher-value services, or risk being sidelined by the very vendors you once partnered with.Four things to know today00:00 From Growth to Governance: IDC, Gartner, and ServiceNow Show Where AI Is Headed for Partners and Customers05:07 AI at Work: “Workslop,” Surveillance, and Data Leaks Signal Rising Governance Crisis08:42 From WhatsApp to Workflows: AI Translation Disruption Signals Broader Job Shifts Ahead11:33 Vendors Expand Into IT Services: Acronis, Slack, IBM, and GoTo Redraw the MSP Value Line This is the Business of Tech.   Supported by: https://scalepad.com/dave/https://cometbackup.com/?utm_source=mspradio&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=sponsorship Webinar:  https://bit.ly/msprmail All our Sponsors: https://businessof.tech/sponsors/ Do you want the show on your podcast app or the written versions of the stories? Subscribe to the Business of Tech: https://www.businessof.tech/subscribe/Looking for a link from the stories? The entire script of the show, with links to articles, are posted in each story on https://www.businessof.tech/ Support the show on Patreon: https://patreon.com/mspradio/ Want to be a guest on Business of Tech: Daily 10-Minute IT Services Insights? Send Dave Sobel a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/businessoftech Want our stuff? Cool Merch? Wear “Why Do We Care?” - Visit https://mspradio.myspreadshop.com Follow us on:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/28908079/YouTube: https://youtube.com/mspradio/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mspradionews/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mspradio/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@businessoftechBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/businessof.tech Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Inspection Fuel 2025 was FIRE! Pun intended. And we have SO much content to share with y'all starting with this episode! We kick off the show reflecting on some Fuel highlights during our time in New Orleans, including networking opportunities we had, engaging presentations we saw, and memorable moments. We also get into the evolution of the show, the concept behind 'The Ride Along,' and the importance of vendor insights in the inspection industry. In fact, the next couple of episodes highlight one of the key vendors at Fuel, ISN. As two inspectors who use ISN daily, we were stoked to hear about all the improvements made to the Report Writer, the app, and even some of the neat time-saving AI features they're launching. Be sure to comment about you favorite Inspection Fuel highlights!  The TLDR: - Networking is a key highlight of events.  - Mardi Gras World exceeded expectations.  - The live show format was a unique experience. - Audience participation added to the event's success. - The show's name change reflects its purpose. - Riding along with inspectors is a valuable learning experience. - Vendors play a crucial role in the industry. - Feedback from the audience helps shape the show. - The venue's layout fostered community interaction. - Future episodes will feature insights from various vendors. The links: Subscribe to our newsletter here: https://pages.theridealong.show/newsletter  And leave us a voicemail here: https://www.theridealong.show  Find out more about ISN at: https://www.inspectionsupport.com      

S5E9 Retail's Best Kept Secret: Discover How RetailROI Transforms Children's FuturesIn this special replay episode of The Retail Razor Show, we shine a spotlight on the incredible work of the Retail Orphan Initiative (RetailROI)—a nonprofit transforming lives of orphans and foster children through the power of the retail industry. With a fresh introduction for 2025, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden revisit a heartfelt conversation with Greg Buzek, President of RetailROI, Vicki Cantrell, board member and retail legend, and Jeff Roster, former Gartner & IHL analyst and top retail expert, as they share the origin story, mission, and global impact of this powerful retail charity.Learn how RetailROI's Super Saturday event at NRF has become the most meaningful gathering of the year, where retailers, tech vendors, and solution providers come together to help fund clean water, education, and life skills training for thousands of children worldwide. Hear inspiring stories of transformation, including previous keynote speaker Darryl McDaniels of Run DMC, and discover how just showing up at Super Saturday can help change lives.Whether you're a retailer planning for NRF, a technology supplier and potential sponsor, or simply passionate about retail's role in social responsibility, this episode will move you to action. Join us in celebrating RetailROI's rich history and accomplishments and learn how you too can become a RetailROI Champion.

Go nuts at the Goober Games with a farmer's market run entirely by kids. The Children's Entrepreneur Market will be held Tuesday, Oct. 7, at the Floresville Event Center, 600 S.H. 97 in Floresville, from 5-7 p.m. alongside the Peanut Festival's Goober Games. Vendors must be 5 to 17 years old. Booths are available for . For information, visit Kidsmarkets.com.Article Link

All links and images can be found on CISO Series. Check out this post by David Mundy of Tuskira for the discussion that is the basis of our conversation on this week's episode co-hosted by David Spark, the producer of CISO Series, and Edward Contreras, senior evp and CISO, Frost Bank. Joining them is Jason Taule, CISO, Luminis Health. In this episode: ROI challenges  Venture capital saturation Risk aversion and organizational politics A GTM transformation Huge thanks to our sponsor, Doppel Doppel is the first social engineering defense platform built to dismantle deception at the source. It uses AI and infrastructure correlation to detect, link, and disrupt impersonation campaigns before they spread - protecting brands, executives, and employees while turning every threat into action that strengthens defenses across a shared intelligence network. Learn more at https://www.doppel.com/platform

What's the purpose of business? God designed business to be a blessing to the vendors that supply your business. What does that look like? It means ordering your supplies well in advance. It means being respectful on the phone when you're making your orders. It means paying your bills on time. It means telling others about the quality of service you receive from the vendors. If your business is blessing your vendors, then they will be a blessing to your business, because you're one of their customers. If your vendors aren't happy with how you treat them, then there's something wrong with your business. As Jesus followers, how we treat others really matters. It's one of the two things Jesus said was more important than anything else. Love God and love people. How are you treating your vendors today? 

A company spends $10M over two years on a critical software product, but after firing one vendor and hiring a second, they still have nothing to show for it. This case study details the 5-step action plan used to rescue a failing project, restore internal credibility, and get product delivery back on track. From revamping the product roadmap and redefining vendor contracts to empowering a true product owner, this episode is a masterclass in turning around a high-stakes technology transformation. Discover how to shift from analysis paralysis to momentum and learn why strategy is meaningless without an execution engine you can trust. We also uncover how the team found a surprise opportunity to build new AI products by leveraging decades of institutional data they already had. In this episode: How to create a living technology and product roadmap that aligns both business stakeholders and frontline users. The critical shift from project management (Gantt charts and deliverables) to product management (business outcomes and priorities). Actionable strategies for vendor governance, including tying payment milestones to the delivery of working software. Using incremental delivery and weekly demos to catch misunderstandings early and de-risk the development process. How to move from "analysis paralysis" to action by designing small experiments to test new AI product ideas. Unlock the full potential of your product team with Integral's player coaches, experts in lean, human-centered design. Visit integral.io/convergence for a free Product Success Lab workshop to gain clarity and confidence in tackling any product design or engineering challenge. Subscribe to the Convergence podcast wherever you get podcasts including video episodes to get updated on the other crucial conversations that we'll post on YouTube at youtube.com/@convergencefmpodcast Learn something? Give us a 5 star review and like the podcast on YouTube. It's how we grow.   Follow the Pod Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/convergence-podcast/ X: https://twitter.com/podconvergence Instagram: @podconvergence  

With Spring auctions numbers ramping up and Melbourne's property demand set to intensify, mastering the powerplays between bidders, vendors, and agents is crucial – but how do you adapt to win in this unpredictable arena? In this episode Jarrod discusses: The auctioneer/agent's tools: setting quotes, bids, and vendor insertions to shape the process Vendors as ultimate deciders: timing the reserve and using pass-ins strategically for better deals Bidders' agility: positioning, increment choices, and observing tells to outmanoeuvre rivals Post-auction tactics: walking away credibly to build leverage in negotiations A real case study where disciplined strategy turned a pass-in into a winning purchase We enjoy providing you with free insights into the Melbourne property market and property investment more broadly. Thank you for listening.  If you like what you hear, subscribe, like, rate or follow us and tell your friends and family. Investing in property makes sense.  Investing in the right property takes knowledge. To learn more visit www.wakelin.com.au  |  Instagram  |  Facebook  | LinkedIn  |  YouTube  |  Email

Hello and welcome back to the Bridgeton Beacon Podcast. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending the Bridgeton Urban Enterprise Zone Block Party — and what a day it was. The last of summer, with perfect weather, and the heart of our community out in full force.Scene SettingI strolled through East Commerce Street and Laurel, all the way to Mayor Aitken Drive, where the streets were alive with energy. Vendors, local artists, nonprofits spreading the word, and of course, the irresistible smells of grilled and fried favorites filled the air. Families moved between attractions for kids, friends gathered over food, and everywhere you looked there was a sense of Bridgeton coming together.Shout-out to LeadershipA special mention goes to Stephanie Gonzales, director of the Bridgeton UEZ. She seemed to be in two or three places at once, keeping everything running smoothly while updating the crowd from the main stage. Her energy really set the tone for the day.Activities & AttractionsAnd there was truly something for everyone. Gallery 50 offered 30-minute painting classes. Over at Steamworks, you could design your own wooden business card holders. Hopeloft transformed the McCormick Theater into a movie and craft zone. Kids lined up for glitter art face painting by Ashley Logan, while others made their way to the Kohanzig Zoo's mobile petting zoo or got a turn riding ponies from Flying First Class Equestrian Center.The Bridgeton Public Library shared free books and resources, while firefighters and police officers hosted a meet-and-greet. Nonprofits and community partners lined the sidewalks, offering information and inspiration.For the kids, there were free hamburgers and hot dogs — first come, first served — courtesy of Good Dog Therapy. And in the entertainment zone, powered by KYMO and Games on the Go, families found a free gaming truck, free haircuts, arts and crafts tables led by Girl Scout troops, live music throughout the day, and DJs keeping the crowd moving.Community & MerchantsWhat stood out most to me was the pride of our local entrepreneurs. UEZ merchants set up tables showcasing handmade art, delicious foods, and unique crafts. There was even a UEZ entrepreneur table sharing information about incentives for businesses, plus a free photo booth capturing memories of the day.ClosingGreat energy. Great people. Great merchants. All of it happening right here in the historic heart of Bridgeton, New Jersey. The Block Party wasn't just an event — it was a celebration of arts, community, and the spirit that makes Bridgeton special.This has been the Bridgeton Beacon Podcast — thanks for joining me as we highlight the people and events that keep our community shining bright.

EDR-Freeze tool suspends security software DeepMind updates Frontier Safety Framework Major vendors withdraw from MITRE EDR Evaluations Huge thanks to our sponsor, Conveyor  Security reviews don't have to feel like a hurricane. Most teams are buried in back-and-forth emails and never-ending customer requests for documentation or answers. But Conveyor takes all that chaos and turns it into calm. AI fills in the questionnaires, your trust center is always ready, and sales cycles move without stalls. Breathe easier—check out Conveyor at www.conveyor.com.

Comdivision CEO Yves Sanfort comes to Palo Alto to work with VCF teams and talks about customer adoption across the globe, from Europe, now to America's and also a APJ perspecitve. Yves also covers the AI drivers in the enterprise and moving workloads back to VCF from other Vendors.

Idea: Vendors that roam around the stands at a summer baseball game (or at other summer events) carrying a fan and a large battery (to power the fan) in a backpack that charge people money to cool them down. Also: brainstorming names for the business (Mr. Blow, etc.), the vendors ("Joe Blow", etc.), and things the vendors say ("get your fan jobs here..."); the risk of accidentally blowing sweat onto nearby people; questioning whether global warming will make summer sports like baseball die off because it's just too hot out Dan Leach (facebook.com/dan.leach.94) Lisa Green (instagram.com/lisagreencomedy https://linktr.ee/depottowncomedy) Steve Pierce Tom Walma (https://creativitywasted.com/creativitywasted x.com/thomaswalma twitch.tv/gameymcfitness) This podcast is part of Planet Ant Podcasts (https://planetant.com) This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Spartan Trifecta World Championship took place a week before Spartan Pan American Championship and there was a badass woman who won both events! It's been a couple years since we have had Annie Dube on the show and I figured this would be a great time to reach back out and catch up on how life has been going! We talk about her overcoming injuries, becoming a firefighter, the community reaction to her returning to the sport, what made her register for these events, how it feels to be the champion of both despite some life changes, what she has planned for future races, and much more! Start – 4:28 – Intro 4:28 – 10:14 – Quick News 10:14 – 10:50 – Content Preface 10:50 – 1:06:50 - Annie Dube Interview 1:06:50 – End – Outro Next weekend will be a book interview or someone who reached out about wanting to come on the show! ____ News Stories: Rylan Schadegg Memorial Fundraiser Asa is Engaged Corinna had her Baby Spartan 2026 Medal Reveal Nicole Mericle Going to UIPM Obstacle World Championships Spartan Anaheim Stadium Podiums FISO OCRWC Short Course Podiums FISO OCRWC Standard Course Podiums Savage Georgia Fall Podiums: Women and Men Ferrett Pee Secret Link Dog Twist Secret Link Fingus Africa Secret Link Drone Puppy Secret Link Car DJ Secret Link ____ Related Episodes: 300. OCR World Championships 15K with Elites and Vendors! (with Live Intro/Outro and Shoutout Compilation!) 301. OCR World Championships Team Relay Races and 100 Meter Finals with Elites! 336. Annie Dube on Making the Jump to Elite, Spartan 3K Thoughts, and Her First Savage Race! ____ The OCR Report Patreon Supporters: Jason Dupree, Kim DeVoss, Samantha Thompson, Matt Puntin, Brad Kiehl, Charlotte Engelman, Erin Grindstaff, Hank Stefano, Arlene Stefano, Laura Ritter, Steven Ritter, Sofia Harnedy, Kenny West, Cheryl Miller, Jessica Johnson, Scott "The Fayne" Knowles, Nick Ryker, Christopher Hoover, Kevin Gregory Jr., Evan Eirich, Ashley Reis, Brent George, Justin Manning, Wendell Lagosh, Logan Nagle, Angela Bowers, Asa Coddington, Thomas Petersen, Seth Rinderknecht, Bonnie Wilson, Steve Bacon from The New England OCR Expo, Robert Landman, Shell Luccketta and Jules Estes. Sponsored Athletes: Javier Escobar, Kelly Sullivan, Ryan Brizzolara, Joshua Reid, and Kevin Gregory! Support us on Patreon for exclusive content and access to our Facebook group Check out our Threadless Shop Use coupon code "adventure" for 15% off MudGear products Use coupon code "ocrreport20" for 20% off Caterpy products Like us on Facebook: Obstacle Running Adventures Follow our podcast on Instagram: @ObstacleRunningAdventures Write us an email: obstaclerunningadventures@gmail.com Subscribe on Youtube: Obstacle Running Adventures Intro music - "Streaker" by: Straight Up Outro music - "Iron Paw" by: Dubbest

Peg Gray and Connie Osborne joined Wake Up Tri-Counties to talk about the 2025 Stark County Fall Festival this weekend. Excitement is building as the Stark County Fall Festival returns to Thomas Park in Wyoming on September 20th and 21st. Attendees can look forward to delicious food, including the beloved Wyoming Lions Club Pancake & Sausage Breakfast on Saturday morning from 7 AM until noon. On Sunday, enjoy a breakfast of biscuits and gravy and eggs from 7 to 11 AM, served by Cozzi Ranch, and don't miss the community church service at 10:30 AM. Family fun takes center stage with face painting, a petting zoo, games, karaoke, and a variety of kid-friendly activities. Shoppers will appreciate an impressive array of vendors, ranging from jewelry and baked goods to unique gifts and crafts. Organizers encourage new vendors to join early for smoother planning, though spots remain open up to event time. For details or to reserve a space, contact Peggy Gray at 309-695-6575. There's something for everyone at this community tradition established in 2000. Mark your calendars for a weekend of unforgettable fun.

What would happen if EdTech stopped chasing features and aligned around two simple goals: postsecondary readiness and clear ROI for districts? Matthew Kennard, CEO of BetterLesson, joins Elana to unpack how EdTech can move beyond features and usage stats to what really matters: outcomes. He shares his path from finance to education, why accountability is essential for both vendors and leaders, and how outcome-based professional learning can drive real change. Together, they explore the Guskey framework, the need for resilient systems, and what it takes to partner with districts in a time of shrinking budgets and rising expectations.Whether you're a founder, a marketer, or a school leader, this conversation will push you to rethink how your work ties back to student outcomes.What You'll LearnWhy EdTech isn't really B2B, and how that changes the ways we successfully market and sellThe two outcomes district leaders are truly held accountable for (and how vendors can support them)How to use the Guskey framework to evaluate professional learning and product impactPractical baby steps for moving toward outcomes-based measurement without a massive budgetWhy building system resiliency matters more than point solutions in times of uncertaintyHow to help district leaders become better storytellers of impactWhy It MattersDistricts are being asked to do more with less, while showing evidence of ROI and preparing every student for a postsecondary pathway. Vendors who only talk features or usage risk being cut. As Matt puts it, our industry has to simplify what matters and hold ourselves accountable to outcomes that truly move the system forward.Show notes on our website.

Your wedding planning questions, answered! Tune in for answers to all of your tricky wedding situations, including: We're having a hard time choosing a date that works best for all of our closest loved ones - how should we decide? What's the etiquette when inviting just a couple of people from a larger social group? Are we obligated to provide vendors a meal / include them in the final head count for catering?  Food truck wedding logistics - we love this idea but feel unclear about the best way to approach the set up to make sure our guests have a smooth experience. Want small & intimate, but every event gets blown up and magnified out of control.  I feel shy, anxious, and uncomfortable in large crowds of people and would so much prefer a quieter, small group setting.  How can I manage these feelings through the next few months, and especially through our wedding itself? To submit your wedding questions, please visit our website >>> www.weddingplanningpodcast.co/contact

Should vendors leave reviews for other vendors?Ever wondered if it's a good idea to publicly praise—or criticize—your industry peers? What happens if things didn't go well? Should you tell the world, or handle it privately first? In this episode, I share the upsides of supporting fellow vendors with honest, heartfelt reviews, and touch on why negative feedback should be handled with care—and conversation—before ever going public.Listen to this new 8-minute episode for tips on when (and how) to leave vendor reviews that help grow relationships, reputations, and the industry as a whole.If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or visit my website Podcast.AlanBerg.com Please be sure to subscribe to this podcast and leave a review (thanks, it really does make a difference). If you want to get notifications of new episodes and upcoming workshops and webinars, you can sign up at www.ConnectWithAlanBerg.com  View the full transcript on Alan's site: https://alanberg.com/blog/Have you ever wondered... "What would Alan say or do about this?" - well, now you can ask my AI Alter-Ego "Ask Alan Anything" the things you'd ask the real Alan, any time of the day or night. And as a listener of this podcast, you'll save 50%, so starting at only $10 per month you can "Ask Alan Anything"!Go to www.WhatWouldAlanSay.com and use the 50% off coupon code - podcast - to start asking Alan anything today. I'm Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you'd like to suggest other topics for "The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast" please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks. Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site: Apple Podcast: http://bit.ly/weddingbusinesssolutions YouTube: www.WeddingBusinessSolutionsPodcast.tv Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sGsuB8 Stitcher: http://bit.ly/wbsstitcher Google Podcast: http://bit.ly/wbsgoogle iHeart Radio: https://ihr.fm/31C9Mic Pandora: http://bit.ly/wbspandora ©2025 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com

In this episode of Insurance Shoptalk, join host Eric Stein and guest Vladimir Vladimirov for an in-depth exploration of NowCerts and their cloud-based integration CRM and agency management system, Automate 365. In this episode, NowCerts system manager Vladimir talks though the many uses and benefits of Automate 365, including the system's ability to assist P&C agents with task like online quoting, sales, marketing, customizable reporting, and workflow automations. To learn more about NowCerts, please visit www.nowcerts.com. You can also learn more about Automate 365 at www.automate365.com. About Insurance Shoptalk: Join host Eric Stein on a journey through the dynamic world of commercial property and casualty insurance. With over 25 years of experience in the industry, Eric brings a wealth of knowledge and insights to every episode. Insurance Shoptalk is your premier destination for in-depth discussions on the latest industry trends, technology impacts, interviews with leading experts, and much more. If you enjoyed this episode of Insurance Shoptalk, follow us on our social media pages to learn the latest on commercial insurance industry.

This episode of Agency Nation Radio is the second in a special series about artificial intelligence (AI) brought to you by the Big “I” Agents Council for Technology's (ACT) AI workgroup. Host Kevin Wheeler, Eastern advisory manager at Angela Adams Consulting, is joined by Michelle O'Connor, president of O'Connor Insurance Associates in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Kimberly Fox, commercial lines account executive at O'Connor Insurance Associates. Together, they unpack what agents should know when working with AI vendors. They share real-world lessons from implementing an AI phone assistant, covering must-haves like transparency and customer support, red flags and how to measure return on investment (ROI). The conversation also explores the importance of involving your team, asking the right questions and ensuring new tech fits your agency's workflows. Listeners will walk away with practical tips to evaluate vendors and avoid costly missteps as they explore AI. Learn more about ACT. https://www.independentagent.com/agency-management/technology/ Agency Nation Radio is where insurance professionals turn on the mic and share unscripted stories about leadership, technology, marketing, success and failure—stories that helped make them the professionals they are today. From Main Street USA to the pages of Independent Agent magazine—we've got the stories you want to hear. For more, catch Agency Nation Radio on your favorite streaming platform or visit iamagazine.com/podcasts.

In this Episode of Frank Opinions, we discuss the FIRST EVER HURRICON!! Held in Hurricane, West Virginia! We talk Vendors, Special Celebrity Guests, Cosplayers, game tournaments, and what the future may hold. Let us know if you attended the event! What did you think of Hurricon? Make sure to follow us on all SOCIAL MEDIA @FrankOpinionswithAdamandTaskerhttps://www.instagram.com/frank_opinions_podcast/?hl=en

In this episode, Jim sits down with real estate pro turned relationship operator, Jarrod Guy Randolph. They talk straight about access to wealth and why your phone is a graveyard of unrealized capital. They break down Jarrod's “Buying Favor” operating system, the FAVOR network map, why most masterminds are wasting time, and how humility beats ego when you're leveling up. What You'll Learn Why the saying “your network is your net worth” misses the real key: activation How Jarrod's FAVOR framework (Friends, Associates, Vendors, Organizations, Relatives) becomes a roadmap to deals, capital, and growth Why proximity creates access, and access creates knowledge that can't be learned in a classroom How the most successful entrepreneurs lead with humility, not ego—and why giving comes before asking A proven system to make masterminds profitable: host the room, follow up fast, and become a center of influence Action Steps 1. Map the FAVOR Five Entrepreneurs can list three to five names under each category of FAVOR. Each name should be tied to a specific ask, whether it's insight, a connection, or capital. 2. Practice Give-Give-Ask Before making any ask, add value twice. Share a resource, make an introduction, or help solve a problem. On the third touchpoint, make a high-value, aligned request. 3. Host the Room At the next event or mastermind, book a dinner with 10–12 attendees. Curate the group, build real connections, and follow up within 14 days to keep momentum alive. Jarrod Guy Randolph's Powerful Word “Your phone isn't a contact list—it's a balance sheet. The moment you learn to activate it, you unlock the capital, the partners, and the opportunities you've been sitting on.” Connect with Jarrod Randolph: Instagram: www.instagram.com/jarrod_guy/ YouTube: www.youtube.com/@JGRlll LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jarrodguyrandolph/  

AI isn't fairy dust you sprinkle on your ATS latte—it's duct tape on 20-year-old tech, sold to you with a shiny new buzzword. Enter Matt Charney, the HR-tech cynic who's seen it all: Monster, SmartRecruiters, Employer.com, and enough bad vendor decks to wallpaper Vegas. In this episode, Charney calls BS on: Vendors selling “AI” that's really just 2003 automation in a new hoodie HR's obsession with “a seat at the table” (spoiler: the table's cold, and nobody saved you a chair) Why being “first to market” with AI is usually just a great way to bleed out on the cutting edge And the hilarious reality of candidates getting rejection emails before they've even finished hitting submit

Francois Daost is a W3C staff member and co-chair of the Web Developer Experience Community Group. We discuss the W3C's role and what it's like to go through the browser standardization process. Related links W3C TC39 Internet Engineering Task Force Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) Horizontal Groups Alliance for Open Media What is MPEG-DASH? | HLS vs. DASH Information about W3C and Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) Widevine PlayReady Media Source API Encrypted Media Extensions API requestVideoFrameCallback() Business Benefits of the W3C Patent Policy web.dev Baseline Portable Network Graphics Specification Internet Explorer 6 CSS Vendor Prefix WebRTC Transcript You can help correct transcripts on GitHub. Intro [00:00:00] Jeremy: today I'm talking to Francois Daoust. He's a staff member at the W3C. And we're gonna talk about the W3C and the recommendation process and discuss, Francois's experience with, with how these features end up in our browsers. [00:00:16] Jeremy: So, Francois, welcome [00:00:18] Francois: Thank you Jeremy and uh, many thanks for the invitation. I'm really thrilled to be part of this podcast. What's the W3C? [00:00:26] Jeremy: I think many of our listeners will have heard about the W3C, but they may not actually know what it is. So could you start by explaining what it is? [00:00:37] Francois: Sure. So W3C stands for the Worldwide Web Consortium. It's a standardization organization. I guess that's how people should think about W3C. it was created in 1994. I, by, uh, Tim Berners Lee, who was the inventor of the web. Tim Berners Lee was the, director of W3C for a long, long time. [00:01:00] Francois: He retired not long ago, a few years back. and W3C is, has, uh, a number of, uh. Properties, let's say first the goal is to produce royalty free standards, and that's very important. Uh, we want to make sure that, uh, the standard that get produced can be used and implemented without having to pay, fees to anyone. [00:01:23] Francois: We do web standards. I didn't mention it, but it's from the name. Standards that you find in your web browsers. But not only that, there are a number of other, uh, standards that got developed at W3C including, for example, XML. Data related standards. W3C as an organization is a consortium. [00:01:43] Francois: The, the C stands for consortium. Legally speaking, it's a, it's a 501c3 meaning in, so it's a US based, uh, legal entity not for profit. And the, the little three is important because it means it's public interest. That means we are a consortium, that means we have members, but at the same time, the goal, the mission is to the public. [00:02:05] Francois: So we're not only just, you know, doing what our members want. We are also making sure that what our members want is aligned with what end users in the end, need. and the W3C has a small team. And so I'm part of this, uh, of this team worldwide. Uh, 45 to 55 people, depending on how you count, mostly technical people and some, uh, admin, uh, as well, overseeing the, uh, the work, that we do, uh, at the W3C. Funding through membership fees [00:02:39] Jeremy: So you mentioned there's 45 to 55 people. How is this funded? Is this from governments or commercial companies? [00:02:47] Francois: The main source comes from membership fees. So the W3C has a, so members, uh, roughly 350 members, uh, at the W3C. And, in order to become a member, an organization needs to pay, uh, an annual membership fee. That's pretty common among, uh, standardization, uh, organizations. [00:03:07] Francois: And, we only have, uh, I guess three levels of membership, fees. Uh, well, you may find, uh, additional small levels, but three main ones. the goal is to make sure that, A big player will, not a big player or large company, will not have more rights than, uh, anything, anyone else. So we try to make sure that a member has the, you know, all members have equal, right? [00:03:30] Francois: if it's not perfect, but, uh, uh, that's how things are, are are set. So that's the main source of income for the W3C. And then we try to diversify just a little bit to get, uh, for example, we go to governments. We may go to governments in the u EU. We may, uh, take some, uh, grant for EU research projects that allow us, you know, to, study, explore topics. [00:03:54] Francois: Uh, in the US there, there used to be some, uh, some funding from coming from the government as well. So that, that's, uh, also, uh, a source. But the main one is, uh, membership fees. Relations to TC39, IETF, and WHATWG [00:04:04] Jeremy: And you mentioned that a lot of the W3C'S work is related to web standards. There's other groups like TC 39, which works on the JavaScript spec and the IETF, which I believe worked, with your group on WebRTC, I wonder if you could explain W3C'S connection to other groups like that. [00:04:28] Francois: sure. we try to collaborate with a, a number of, uh, standard other standardization organizations. So in general, everything goes well because you, you have, a clear separation of concerns. So you mentioned TC 39. Indeed. they are the ones who standardize, JavaScript. Proper name of JavaScript is the EcmaScript. [00:04:47] Francois: So that's tc. TC 39 is the technical committee at ecma. and so we have indeed interactions with them because their work directly impact the JavaScript that you're going to find in your, uh, run in your, in your web browser. And we develop a number of JavaScript APIs, uh, actually in W3C. [00:05:05] Francois: So we need to make sure that, the way we develop, uh, you know, these APIs align with the, the language itself. with IETF, the, the, the boundary is, uh, uh, is clear as well. It's a protocol and protocol for our network protocols for our, the IETF and application level. For W3C, that's usually how the distinction is made. [00:05:28] Francois: The boundaries are always a bit fuzzy, but that's how things work. And usually, uh, things work pretty well. Uh, there's also the WHATWG, uh, and the WHATWG is more the, the, the history was more complicated because, uh, t of a fork of the, uh, HTML specification, uh, at the time when it was developed by W3C, a long time ago. [00:05:49] Francois: And there was been some, uh, Well disagreement on the way things should have been done, and the WHATWG took over got created, took, took this the HTML spec and did it a different way. Went in another, another direction, and that other, other direction actually ended up being the direction. [00:06:06] Francois: So, that's a success, uh, from there. And so, W3C no longer works, no longer owns the, uh, HTML spec and the WHATWG has, uh, taken, uh, taken up a number of, uh, of different, core specifications for the web. Uh, doing a lot of work on the, uh, on interopoerability and making sure that, uh, the algorithm specified by the spec, were correct, which, which was something that historically we haven't been very good at at W3C. [00:06:35] Francois: And the way they've been working as a, has a lot of influence on the way we develop now, uh, the APIs, uh, from a W3C perspective. [00:06:44] Jeremy: So, just to make sure I understand correctly, you have TC 39, which is focused on the JavaScript or ECMAScript language itself, and you have APIs that are going to use JavaScript and interact with JavaScript. So you need to coordinate there. The, the have the specification for HTML. then the IATF, they are, I'm not sure if the right term would be, they, they would be one level lower perhaps, than the W3C. [00:07:17] Francois: That's how you, you can formulate it. Yes. The, the one layer, one layer layer in the ISO network in the ISO stack at the network level. How WebRTC spans the IETF and W3C [00:07:30] Jeremy: And so in that case, one place I've heard it mentioned is that webRTC, to, to use it, there is an IETF specification, and then perhaps there's a W3C recommendation and [00:07:43] Francois: Yes. so when we created the webRTC working group, that was in 2011, I think, it was created with a dual head. There was one RTC web, group that got created at IETF and a webRTC group that got created at W3C. And that was done on purpose. Of course, the goal was not to compete on the, on the solution, but actually to, have the two sides of the, uh, solution, be developed in parallel, the API, uh, the application front and the network front. [00:08:15] Francois: And there was a, and there's still a lot of overlap in, uh, participation between both groups, and that's what keep things successful. In the end. It's not, uh, you know, process or organization to organization, uh, relationships, coordination at the organization level. It's really the fact that you have participants that are essentially the same, on both sides of the equation. [00:08:36] Francois: That helps, uh, move things forward. Now, webRTC is, uh, is more complex than just one group at IETF. I mean, web, webRTC is a very complex set of, uh, of technologies, stack of technologies. So when you, when you. Pull a little, uh, protocol from IETFs. Suddenly you have the whole IETF that comes with you with it. [00:08:56] Francois: So you, it's the, you have the feeling that webRTC needs all of the, uh, internet protocols that got, uh, created to work Recommendations [00:09:04] Jeremy: And I think probably a lot of web developers, they may hear words like specification or standard, but I believe the, the official term, at least at the W3C, is this recommendation. And so I wonder if you can explain what that means. [00:09:24] Francois: Well. It means it means standard in the end. and that came from industry. That comes from a time where. As many standardization organizations. W3C was created not to be a standardization organization. It was felt that standard was not the right term because we were not a standardization organization. [00:09:45] Francois: So recommend IETF has the same thing. They call it RFC, request for comment, which, you know, stands for nothing in, and yet it's a standard. So W3C was created with the same kind of, uh thing. We needed some other terminology and we call that recommendation. But in the end, that's standard. It's really, uh, how you should see it. [00:10:08] Francois: And one thing I didn't mention when I, uh, introduced the W3C is there are two types of standards in the end, two main categories. There are, the de jure standards and defacto standards, two families. The de jure standards are the ones that are imposed by some kind of regulation. so it's really usually a standard you see imposed by governments, for example. [00:10:29] Francois: So when you look at your electric plug at home, there's some regulation there that says, this plug needs to have these properties. And that's a standard that gets imposed. It's a de jure standard. and then there are defacto standards which are really, uh, specifications that are out there and people agree to use it to implement it. [00:10:49] Francois: And by virtue of being used and implemented and used by everyone, they become standards. the, W3C really is in the, uh, second part. It's a defacto standard. IETF is the same thing. some of our standards are used in, uh, are referenced in regulations now, but, just a, a minority of them, most of them are defacto standards. [00:11:10] Francois: and that's important because that's in the end, it doesn't matter what the specific specification says, even though it's a bit confusing. What matters is that the, what the specifications says matches what implementations actually implement, and that these implementations are used, and are used interoperably across, you know, across browsers, for example, or across, uh, implementations, across users, across usages. [00:11:36] Francois: So, uh, standardization is a, is a lengthy process. The recommendation is the final stage in that, lengthy process. More and more we don't really reach recommendation anymore. If you look at, uh, at groups, uh, because we have another path, let's say we kind of, uh, we can stop at candidate recommendation, which is in theoretically a step before that. [00:12:02] Francois: But then you, you can stay there and, uh, stay there forever and publish new candidate recommendations. Um, uh, later on. What matters again is that, you know, you get this, virtuous feedback loop, uh, with implementers, and usage. [00:12:18] Jeremy: So if the candidate recommendation ends up being implemented by all the browsers, what's ends up being the distinction between a candidate and one that's a normal recommendation. [00:12:31] Francois: So, today it's mostly a process thing. Some groups actually decide to go to rec Some groups decide to stay at candidate rec and there's no formal difference between the, the two. we've made sure we've adopted, adjusted the process so that the important bits that, applied at the recommendation level now apply at the candidate rec level. Royalty free patent access [00:13:00] Francois: And by important things, I mean the patent commitments typically, uh, the patent policy fully applies at the candidate recommendation level so that you get your, protection, the royalty free patent protection that we, we were aiming at. [00:13:14] Francois: Some people do not care, you know, but most of the world still works with, uh, with patents, uh, for good, uh, or bad reasons. But, uh, uh, that's how things work. So we need to make, we're trying to make sure that we, we secure the right set of, um, of patent commitments from the right set of stakeholders. [00:13:35] Jeremy: Oh, so when someone implements a W3C recommendation or a candidate recommendation, the patent holders related to that recommendation, they basically agree to allow royalty-free use of that patent. [00:13:54] Francois: They do the one that were involved in the working group, of course, I mean, we can't say anything about the companies out there that may have patents and uh, are not part of this standardization process. So there's always, It's a remaining risk. but part of the goal when we create a working group is to make sure that, people understand the scope. [00:14:17] Francois: Lawyers look into it, and the, the legal teams that exist at the all the large companies, basically gave a green light saying, yeah, we, we we're pretty confident that we, we know where the patterns are on this particular, this particular area. And we are fine also, uh, letting go of the, the patterns we own ourselves. Implementations are built in parallel with standardization [00:14:39] Jeremy: And I think you had mentioned. What ends up being the most important is that the browser creators implement these recommendations. So it sounds like maybe the distinction between candidate recommendation and recommendation almost doesn't matter as long as you get the end result you want. [00:15:03] Francois: So, I mean, people will have different opinions, uh, in the, in standardization circles. And I mentioned also W3C is working on other kind of, uh, standards. So, uh, in some other areas, the nuance may be more important when we, but when, when you look at specification, that's target, web browsers. we've switched from a model where, specs were developed first and then implemented to a model where specs and implementing implementations are being, worked in parallel. [00:15:35] Francois: This actually relates to the evolution I was mentioning with the WHATWG taking over the HTML and, uh, focusing on the interoperability issues because the starting point was, yeah, we have an HTML 4.01 spec, uh, but it's not interoperable because it, it's not specified, are number of areas that are gray areas, you can implement them differently. [00:15:59] Francois: And so there are interoperable issues. Back to candidate rec actually, the, the, the, the stage was created, if I remember correctly. uh, if I'm, if I'm not wrong, the stage was created following the, uh, IE problem. In the CSS working group, IE6, uh, shipped with some, version of a CSS that was in the, as specified, you know, the spec was saying, you know, do that for the CSS box model. [00:16:27] Francois: And the IE6 was following that. And then the group decided to change, the box model and suddenly IE6 was no longer compliant. And that created a, a huge mess on the, in the history of, uh, of the web in a way. And so the, we, the, the, the, the candidate recommendation sta uh, stage was introduced following that to try to catch this kind of problems. [00:16:52] Francois: But nowadays, again, we, we switch to another model where it's more live. and so we, you, you'll find a number of specs that are not even at candidate rec level. They are at the, what we call a working draft, and they, they are being implemented, and if all goes well, the standardization process follows the implementation, and then you end up in a situation where you have your candidate rec when the, uh, spec ships. [00:17:18] Francois: a recent example would be a web GPU, for example. It, uh, it has shipped in, uh, in, in Chrome shortly before it transition to a candidate rec. But the, the, the spec was already stable. and now it's shipping uh, in, uh, in different browsers, uh, uh, safari, uh, and uh, and uh, and uh, Firefox. And so that's, uh, and that's a good example of something that follows, uh, things, uh, along pretty well. But then you have other specs such as, uh, in the media space, uh, request video frame back, uh, frame, call back, uh, requestVideoFrameCallback() is a short API that allows you to get, you know, a call back whenever the, the browser renders a video frame, essentially. [00:18:01] Francois: And that spec is implemented across browsers. But from a W3C specific, perspective, it does not even exist. It's not on the standardization track. It's still being incubated in what we call a community group, which is, you know, some something that, uh, usually exists before. we move to the, the standardization process. [00:18:21] Francois: So there, there are examples of things where some things fell through the cracks. All the standardization process, uh, is either too early or too late and things that are in spec are not exactly what what got implemented or implementations are too early in the process. We we're doing a better job, at, Not falling into a trap where someone ships, uh, you know, an implementation and then suddenly everything is frozen. You can no longer, change it because it's too late, it shipped. we've tried, different, path there. Um, mentioned CSS, the, there was this kind of vendor prefixed, uh, properties that used to be, uh, the way, uh, browsers were deploying new features without, you know, taking the final name. [00:19:06] Francois: We are trying also to move away from it because same thing. Then in the end, you end up with, uh, applications that have, uh, to duplicate all the properties, the CSS properties in the style sheets with, uh, the vendor prefixes and nuances in the, in what it does in, in the end. [00:19:23] Jeremy: Yeah, I, I think, is that in CSS where you'll see --mozilla or things like that? Why requestVideoFrameCallback doesn't have a formal specification [00:19:30] Jeremy: The example of the request video frame callback. I, I wonder if you have an opinion or, or, or know why that ended up the way it did, where the browsers all implemented it, even though it was still in the incubation stage. [00:19:49] Francois: On this one, I don't have a particular, uh, insights on whether there was a, you know, a strong reason to implement it,without doing the standardization work. [00:19:58] Francois: I mean, there are, it's not, uh, an IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) issue. It's not, uh, something that, uh, I don't think the, the, the spec triggers, uh, you know, problems that, uh, would be controversial or whatever. [00:20:10] Francois: Uh, so it's just a matter of, uh, there was no one's priority, and in the end, you end up with a, everyone's happy. it's, it has shipped. And so now doing the spec work is a bit,why spend time on something that's already shipped and so on, but the, it may still come back at some point with try to, you know, improve the situation. [00:20:26] Jeremy: Yeah, that's, that's interesting. It's a little counterintuitive because it sounds like you have the, the working group and it, it sounds like perhaps the companies or organizations involved, they maybe agreed on how it should work, and maybe that agreement almost made it so that they felt like they didn't need to move forward with the specification because they came to consensus even before going through that. [00:20:53] Francois: In this particular case, it's probably because it's really, again, it's a small, spec. It's just one function call, you know? I mean, they will definitely want a working group, uh, for larger specifications. by the way, actually now I know re request video frame call back. It's because the, the, the final goal now that it's, uh, shipped, is to merge it into, uh, HTML, uh, the HTML spec. [00:21:17] Francois: So there's a, there's an ongoing issue on the, the WHATWG side to integrate request video frame callback. And it's taking some time but see, it's, it's being, it, it caught up and, uh, someone is doing the, the work to, to do it. I had forgotten about this one. Um, [00:21:33] Jeremy: Tension from specification review (horizontal review) [00:21:33] Francois: so with larger specifications, organizations will want this kind of IPR regime they will want commit commitments from, uh, others, on the scope, on the process, on everything. So they will want, uh, a larger, a, a more formal setting, because that's part of how you ensure that things, uh, will get done properly. [00:21:53] Francois: I didn't mention it, but, uh, something we're really, uh, Pushy on, uh, W3C I mentioned we have principles, we have priorities, and we have, uh, specific several, uh, properties at W3C. And one of them is that we we're very strong on horizontal reviews of our specs. We really want them to be reviewed from an accessibility perspective, from an internationalization perspective, from a privacy and security, uh, perspective, and, and, and a technical architecture perspective as well. [00:22:23] Francois: And that's, these reviews are part of the formal process. So you, all specs need to undergo these reviews. And from time to time, that creates tension. Uh, from time to time. It just works, you know. Goes without problem. a recurring issue is that, privacy and security are hard. I mean, it's not an easy problem, something that can be, uh, solved, uh, easily. [00:22:48] Francois: Uh, so there's a, an ongoing tension and no easy way to resolve it, but there's an ongoing tension between, specifying powerful APIs and preserving privacy without meaning, not exposing too much information to applications in the media space. You can think of the media capabilities, API. So the media space is a complicated space. [00:23:13] Francois: Space because of codecs. codecs are typically not relative free. and so browsers decide which codecs they're going to support, which audio and video codecs they, they're going to support and doing that, that creates additional fragmentation, not in the sense that they're not interoperable, but in the sense that applications need to choose which connect they're going to ship to stream to the end user. [00:23:39] Francois: And, uh, it's all the more complicated that some codecs are going to be hardware supported. So you will have a hardware decoder in your, in your, in your laptop or smartphone. And so that's going to be efficient to decode some, uh, some stream, whereas some code are not, are going to be software, based, supported. [00:23:56] Francois: Uh, and that may consume a lot of CPU and a lot of power and a lot of energy in the end. So you, you want to avoid that if you can, uh, select another thing. Even more complex than, codecs have different profiles, uh, lower end profiles higher end profiles with different capabilities, different features, uh, depending on whether you're going to use this or that color space, for example, this or that resolution, whatever. [00:24:22] Francois: And so you want to surface that to web applications because otherwise, they can't. Select, they can't choose, the right codec and the right, stream that they're going to send to the, uh, client devices. And so they're not going to provide an efficient user experience first, and even a sustainable one in terms of energy because they, they're going to waste energy if they don't send the right stream. [00:24:45] Francois: So you want to surface that to application. That's what the media, media capabilities, APIs, provides. Privacy concerns [00:24:51] Francois: Uh, but at the same time, if you expose that information, you end up with ways to fingerprint the end user's device. And that in turn is often used to track users across, across sites, which is exactly what we don't want to have, uh, for privacy reasons, for obvious privacy reasons. [00:25:09] Francois: So you have to balance that and find ways to, uh, you know, to expose. Capabilities without, without necessarily exposing them too much. Uh, [00:25:21] Jeremy: Can you give an example of how some of those discussions went? Like within the working group? Who are the companies or who are the organizations that are arguing for We shouldn't have this capability because of the privacy concerns, or [00:25:40] Francois: In a way all of the companies, have a vision of, uh, of privacy. I mean, the, you will have a hard time finding, you know, members saying, I don't care about privacy. I just want the feature. Uh, they all have privacy in mind, but they may have a different approach to privacy. [00:25:57] Francois: so if you take, uh, let's say, uh, apple and Google would be the, the, I guess the perfect examples in that, uh, in that space, uh, Google will have a, an approach that is more open-ended thing. The, the user agents has this, uh, should check what the, the, uh, given site is doing. And then if it goes beyond, you know, some kind of threshold, they're going to say, well, okay, well, we'll stop exposing data to that, to that, uh, to that site. [00:26:25] Francois: So that application. So monitor and react in a way. apple has a more, uh, you know, has a stricter view on, uh, on privacy, let's say. And they will say, no, we, the, the, the feature must not exist in the first place. Or, but that's, I mean, I guess, um, it's not always that extreme. And, uh, from time to time it's the opposite. [00:26:45] Francois: You will have, uh, you know, apple arguing in one way, uh, which is more open-ended than the, uh, than, uh, than Google, for example. And they are not the only ones. So in working groups, uh, you will find the, usually the implementers. Uh, so when we talk about APIs that get implemented in browsers, you want the core browsers to be involved. [00:27:04] Francois: Uh, otherwise it's usually not a good sign for, uh, the success of the, uh, of the technology. So in practice, that means Apple, uh, Microsoft, Mozilla which one did I forget? [00:27:15] Jeremy: Google. [00:27:16] Francois: I forgot Google. Of course. Thank you. that's, uh, that the, the core, uh, list of participants you want to have in any, uh, group that develops web standards targeted at web browsers. Who participates in working groups and how much power do they have? [00:27:28] Francois: And then on top of that, you want, organizations and people who are directly going to use it, either because they, well the content providers. So in media, for example, if you look at the media working group, you'll see, uh, so browser vendors, the ones I mentioned, uh, content providers such as the BBC or Netflix. [00:27:46] Francois: Chip set vendors would, uh, would be there as well. Intel, uh, Nvidia again, because you know, there's a hardware decoding in there and encoding. So media is, touches on, on, uh, on hardware, uh, device manufacturer in general. You may, uh, I think, uh, I think Sony is involved in the, in the media working group, for example. [00:28:04] Francois: and these companies are usually less active in the spec development. It depends on the groups, but they're usually less active because the ones developing the specs are usually the browser again, because as I mentioned, we develop the specs in parallel to browsers implementing it. So they have the. [00:28:21] Francois: The feedback on how to formulate the, the algorithms. and so that's this collection of people who are going to discuss first within themselves. W3C pushes for consensual dis decisions. So we hardly take any votes in the working groups, but from time to time, that's not enough. [00:28:41] Francois: And there may be disagreements, but let's say there's agreement in the group, uh, when the spec matches. horizontal review groups will look at the specs. So these are groups I mentioned, accessibility one, uh, privacy, internationalization. And these groups, usually the participants are, it depends. [00:29:00] Francois: It can be anything. It can be, uh, the same companies. It can be, but usually different people from the same companies. But it the, maybe organizations with a that come from very, a very different angle. And that's a good thing because that means the, you know, you enlarge the, the perspectives on your, uh, on the, on the technology. [00:29:19] Francois: and you, that's when you have a discussion between groups, that takes place. And from time to time it goes well from time to time. Again, it can trigger issues that are hard to solve. and the W3C has a, an escalation process in case, uh, you know, in case things degenerate. Uh, starting with, uh, the notion of formal objection. [00:29:42] Jeremy: It makes sense that you would have the, the browser. Vendors and you have all the different companies that would use that browser. All the different horizontal groups like you mentioned, the internationalization, accessibility. I would imagine that you were talking about consensus and there are certain groups or certain companies that maybe have more say or more sway. [00:30:09] Jeremy: For example, if you're a browser, manufacturer, your Google. I'm kind of curious how that works out within the working group. [00:30:15] Francois: Yes, it's, I guess I would be lying if I were saying that, uh, you know, all companies are strictly equal in a, in a, in a group. they are from a process perspective, I mentioned, you know, different membership fees with were design, special specific ethos so that no one could say, I'm, I'm putting in a lot of money, so you, you need to re you need to respect me, uh, and you need to follow what I, what I want to, what I want to do. [00:30:41] Francois: at the same time, if you take a company like, uh, like Google for example, they send, hundreds of engineers to do standardization work. That's absolutely fantastic because that means work progresses and it's, uh, extremely smart people. So that's, uh, that's really a pleasure to work with, uh, with these, uh, people. [00:30:58] Francois: But you need to take a step back and say, well, the problem is. Defacto that gives them more power just by virtue of, uh, injecting more resources into it. So having always someone who can respond to an issue, having always someone, uh, editing a spec defacto that give them more, uh, um, more say on the, on the directions that, get forward. [00:31:22] Francois: And on top of that, of course, they have the, uh, I guess not surprisingly, the, the browser that is, uh, used the most, currently, on the market so there's a little bit of a, the, the, we, we, we, we try very hard to make sure that, uh, things are balanced. it's not a perfect world. [00:31:38] Francois: the the role of the team. I mean, I didn't talk about the role of the team, but part of it is to make sure that. Again, all perspectives are represented and that there's not, such a, such big imbalance that, uh, that something is wrong and that we really need to look into it. so making sure that anyone, if they have something to say, make making sure that they are heard by the rest of the group and not dismissed. [00:32:05] Francois: That usually goes well. There's no problem with that. And again, the escalation process I mentioned here doesn't make any, uh, it doesn't make any difference between, uh, a small player, a large player, a big player, and we have small companies raising formal objections against some of our aspects that happens, uh, all large ones. [00:32:24] Francois: But, uh, that happens too. There's no magical solution, I guess you can tell it by the way. I, uh, I don't know how to formulate the, the process more. It's a human process, and that's very important that it remains a human process as well. [00:32:41] Jeremy: I suppose the role of, of staff and someone in your position, for example, is to try and ensure that these different groups are, are heard and it isn't just one group taking control of it. [00:32:55] Francois: That's part of the role, again, is to make sure that, uh, the, the process is followed. So the, I, I mean, I don't want to give the impression that the process controls everything in the groups. I mean, the, the, the groups are bound by the process, but the process is there to catch problems when they arise. [00:33:14] Francois: most of the time there are no problems. It's just, you know, again, participants talking to each other, talking with the rest of the community. Most of the work happens in public nowadays, in any case. So the groups work in public essentially through asynchronous, uh, discussions on GitHub repositories. [00:33:32] Francois: There are contributions from, you know, non group participants and everything goes well. And so the process doesn't kick in. You just never say, eh, no, you didn't respect the process there. You, you closed the issue. You shouldn't have a, it's pretty rare that you have to do that. Uh, things just proceed naturally because they all, everyone understands where they are, why, what they're doing, and why they're doing it. [00:33:55] Francois: we still have a role, I guess in the, in the sense that from time to time that doesn't work and you have to intervene and you have to make sure that,the, uh, exception is caught and, uh, and processed, uh, in the right way. Discussions are public on github [00:34:10] Jeremy: And you said this process is asynchronous in public, so it sounds like someone, I, I mean, is this in GitHub issues or how, how would somebody go and, and see what the results of [00:34:22] Francois: Yes, there, there are basically a gazillion of, uh, GitHub repositories under the, uh, W3C, uh, organization on GitHub. Most groups are using GitHub. I mean, there's no, it's not mandatory. We don't manage any, uh, any tooling. But the factors that most, we, we've been transitioning to GitHub, uh, for a number of years already. [00:34:45] Francois: Uh, so that's where the work most of the work happens, through issues, through pool requests. Uh, that's where. people can go and raise issues against specifications. Uh, we usually, uh, also some from time to time get feedback from developers and countering, uh, a bug in a particular implementations, which we try to gently redirect to, uh, the actual bug trackers because we're not responsible for the respons implementations of the specs unless the spec is not clear. [00:35:14] Francois: We are responsible for the spec itself, making sure that the spec is clear and that implementers well, understand how they should implement something. Why the W3C doesn't specify a video or audio codec [00:35:25] Jeremy: I can see how people would make that mistake because they, they see it's the feature, but that's not the responsibility of the, the W3C to implement any of the specifications. Something you had mentioned there's the issue of intellectual property rights and how when you have a recommendation, you require the different organizations involved to make their patents available to use freely. [00:35:54] Jeremy: I wonder why there was never any kind of, recommendation for audio or video codecs in browsers since you have certain ones that are considered royalty free. But, I believe that's never been specified. [00:36:11] Francois: At W3C you mean? Yes. we, we've tried, I mean, it's not for lack of trying. Um, uh, we've had a number of discussions with, uh, various stakeholders saying, Hey, we, we really need, an audio or video code for our, for the web. the, uh, png PNG is an example of a, um, an image format which got standardized at W3C and it got standardized at W3C similar reasons. There had to be a royalty free image format for the web, and there was none at the time. of course, nowadays, uh, jpeg, uh, and gif or gif, whatever you call it, are well, you know, no problem with them. But, uh, um, that at the time P PNG was really, uh, meant to address this issue and it worked for PNG for audio and video. [00:37:01] Francois: We haven't managed to secure, commitments by stakeholders. So willingness to do it, so it's not, it's not lack of willingness. We would've loved to, uh, get, uh, a royalty free, uh, audio codec, a royalty free video codec again, audio and video code are extremely complicated because of this. [00:37:20] Francois: not only because of patterns, but also because of the entire business ecosystem that exists around them for good reasons. You, in order for a, a codec to be supported, deployed, effective, it really needs, uh, it needs to mature a lot. It needs to, be, uh, added to at a hardware level, to a number of devices, capturing devices, but also, um, uh, uh, of course players. [00:37:46] Francois: And that takes a hell of a lot of time and that's why you also enter a number of business considerations with business contracts between entities. so I'm personally, on a personal level, I'm, I'm pleased to see, for example, the Alliance for Open Media working on, uh, uh, AV1, uh, which is. At least they, uh, they wanted to be royalty free and they've been adopting actually the W3C patent policy to do this work. [00:38:11] Francois: So, uh, we're pleased to see that, you know, they've been adopting the same process and same thing. AV1 is not yet at the same, support stage, as other, codecs, in the world Yeah, I mean in devices. There's an open question as what, what are we going to do, uh, in the future uh, with that, it's, it's, it's doubtful that, uh, the W3C will be able to work on a, on a royalty free audio, codec or royalty free video codec itself because, uh, probably it's too late now in any case. [00:38:43] Francois: but It's one of these angles in the, in the web platform where we wish we had the, uh, the technology available for, for free. And, uh, it's not exactly, uh, how things work in practice.I mean, the way codecs are developed remains really patent oriented. [00:38:57] Francois: and you will find more codecs being developed. and that's where geopolitics can even enter the, the, uh, the play. Because, uh, if you go to China, you will find new codecs emerging, uh, that get developed within China also, because, the other codecs come mostly from the US so it's a bit of a problem and so on. [00:39:17] Francois: I'm not going to enter details and uh, I would probably say stupid things in any case. Uh, but that, uh, so we continue to see, uh, emerging codecs that are not royalty free, and it's probably going to remain the case for a number of years. unfortunately, unfortunately, from a W3C perspective and my perspective of course. [00:39:38] Jeremy: There's always these new, formats coming out and the, rate at which they get supported in the browser, even on a per browser basis is, is very, there can be a long time between, for example, WebP being released and a browser supporting it. So, seems like maybe we're gonna be in that situation for a while where the codecs will come out and maybe the browsers will support them. Maybe they won't, but the, the timeline is very uncertain. Digital Rights Management (DRM) and Media Source Extensions [00:40:08] Jeremy: Something you had, mentioned, maybe this was in your, email to me earlier, but you had mentioned that some of these specifications, there's, there's business considerations like with, digital rights management and, media source extensions. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about maybe what media source extensions is and encrypted media extensions and, and what the, the considerations or challenges are there. [00:40:33] Francois: I'm going to go very, very quickly over the history of a, video and audio support on the web. Initially it was supported through plugins. you are maybe too young to, remember that. But, uh, we had extensions, added to, uh, a realplayer. [00:40:46] Francois: This kind of things flash as well, uh, supporting, uh, uh, videos, in web pages, but it was not provided by the web browsers themselves. Uh, then HTML5 changed the, the situation. Adding these new tags, audio and video, but that these tags on this, by default, support, uh, you give them a resources, a resource, like an image as it's an audio or a video file. [00:41:10] Francois: They're going to download this, uh, uh, video file or audio file, and they're going to play it. That works well. But as soon as you want to do any kind of real streaming, files are too large and to stream, to, to get, you know, to get just a single fetch on, uh, on them. So you really want to stream them chunk by chunk, and you want to adapt the resolution at which you send the stream based on real time conditions of the user's network. [00:41:37] Francois: If there's plenty of bandwidth you want to send the user, the highest possible resolution. If there's a, some kind of hiccup temporary in the, in the network, you really want to lower the resolution, and that's called adaptive streaming. And to get adaptive streaming on the web, well, there are a number of protocols that exist. [00:41:54] Francois: Same thing. Some many of them are proprietary and actually they remain proprietary, uh, to some extent. and, uh, some of them are over http and they are the ones that are primarily used in, uh, in web contexts. So DASH comes to mind, DASH for Dynamic Adaptive streaming over http. HLS is another one. Uh, initially developed by Apple, I believe, and it's, uh, HTTP live streaming probably. Exactly. And, so there are different protocols that you can, uh, you can use. Uh, so the goal was not to standardize these protocols because again, there were some proprietary aspects to them. And, uh, same thing as with codecs. [00:42:32] Francois: There was no, well, at least people wanted to have the, uh, flexibility to tweak parameters, adaptive streaming parameters the way they wanted for different scenarios. You may want to tweak the parameters differently. So they, they needed to be more flexibility on top of protocols not being truly available for use directly and for implementation directly in browsers. [00:42:53] Francois: It was also about providing applications with, uh, the flexibility they would need to tweak parameters. So media source extensions comes into play for exactly that. Media source extensions is really about you. The application fetches chunks of its audio and video stream the way it wants, and with the parameters it wants, and it adjusts whatever it wants. [00:43:15] Francois: And then it feeds that into the, uh, video or audio tag. and the browser takes care of the rest. So it's really about, doing, you know, the adaptive streaming. let applications do it, and then, uh, let the user agent, uh, the browser takes, take care of the rendering itself. That's media source extensions. [00:43:32] Francois: Initially it was pushed by, uh, Netflix. They were not the only ones of course, but there, there was a, a ma, a major, uh, proponent of this, uh, technical solution, because they wanted, uh, they, uh, they were, expanding all over the world, uh, with, uh, plenty of native, applications on all sorts of, uh, of, uh, devices. [00:43:52] Francois: And they wanted to have a way to stream content on the web as well. both for both, I guess, to expand to, um, a new, um, ecosystem, the web, uh, providing new opportunities, let's say. But at the same time also to have a fallback, in case they, because for native support on different platforms, they sometimes had to enter business agreements with, uh, you know, the hardware manufacturers, the whatever, the, uh, service provider or whatever. [00:44:19] Francois: and so that was a way to have a full back. That kind of work is more open, in case, uh, things take some time and so on. So, and they probably had other reasons. I mean, I'm not, I can't speak on behalf of Netflix, uh, on others, but they were not the only ones of course, uh, supporting this, uh, me, uh, media source extension, uh, uh, specification. [00:44:42] Francois: and that went kind of, well, I think it was creating 2011. I mean, the, the work started in 2011 and the recommendation was published in 2016, which is not too bad from a standardization perspective. It means only five years, you know, it's a very short amount of time. Encrypted Media Extensions [00:44:59] Francois: At the same time, and in parallel and complement to the media source extension specifications, uh, there was work on the encrypted media extensions, and here it was pushed by the same proponent in a way because they wanted to get premium content on the web. [00:45:14] Francois: And by premium content, you think of movies and, uh. These kind of beasts. And the problem with the, I guess the basic issue with, uh, digital asset such as movies, is that they cost hundreds of millions to produce. I mean, some cost less of course. And yet it's super easy to copy them if you have a access to the digital, uh, file. [00:45:35] Francois: You just copy and, uh, and that's it. Piracy uh, is super easy, uh, to achieve. It's illegal of course, but it's super easy to do. And so that's where the different legislations come into play with digital right management. Then the fact is most countries allow system that, can encrypt content and, uh, through what we call DRM systems. [00:45:59] Francois: so content providers, uh, the, the ones that have movies, so the studios here more, more and more, and Netflix is one, uh, one of the studios nowadays. Um, but not only, not only them all major studios will, uh, would, uh, push for, wanted to have something that would allow them to stream encrypted content, encrypted audio and video, uh, mostly video, to, uh, to web applications so that, uh, you. [00:46:25] Francois: Provide the movies, otherwise, they, they are just basically saying, and sorry, but, uh, this premium content will never make it to the web because there's no way we're gonna, uh, send it in clear, to, uh, to the end user. So Encrypting media extensions is, uh, is an API that allows to interface with, uh, what's called the content decryption module, CDM, uh, which itself interacts with, uh, the DR DRM systems that, uh, the browser may, may or may not support. [00:46:52] Francois: And so it provides a way for an application to receive encrypted content, pass it over get the, the, the right keys, the right license keys from a whatever system actually. Pass that logic over to the, and to the user agent, which passes, passes it over to, uh, the CDM system, which is kind of black box in, uh, that does its magic to get the right, uh, decryption key and then the, and to decrypt the content that can be rendered. [00:47:21] Francois: The encrypted media extensions triggered a, a hell of a lot of, uh, controversy. because it's DRM and DRM systems, uh, many people, uh, uh, things should be banned, uh, especially on the web because the, the premise of the web is that the, the user has trusts, a user agent. The, the web browser is called the user agent in all our, all our specifications. [00:47:44] Francois: And that's, uh, that's the trust relationship. And then they interact with a, a content provider. And so whatever they do with the content is their, I guess, actually their problem. And DRM introduces a third party, which is, uh, there's, uh, the, the end user no longer has the control on the content. [00:48:03] Francois: It has to rely on something else that, Restricts what it can achieve with the content. So it's, uh, it's not only a trust relationship with its, uh, user agents, it's also with, uh, with something else, which is the content provider, uh, in the end, the one that has the, uh, the license where provides the license. [00:48:22] Francois: And so that's, that triggers, uh, a hell of a lot of, uh, of discussions in the W3C degenerated, uh, uh, into, uh, formal objections being raised against the specification. and that escalated to, to the, I mean, at all leverage it. It's, it's the, the story in, uh, W3C that, um, really, uh, divided the membership into, opposed camps in a way, if you, that's was not only year, it was not really 50 50 in the sense that not just a huge fights, but the, that's, that triggered a hell of a lot of discussions and a lot of, a lot of, uh, of formal objections at the time. [00:49:00] Francois: Uh, we were still, From a governance perspective, interestingly, um, the W3C used to be a dictatorship. It's not how you should formulate it, of course, and I hope it's not going to be public, this podcast. Uh, but the, uh, it was a benevolent dictatorship. You could see it this way in the sense that, uh, the whole process escalated to one single person was, Tim Burners Lee, who had the final say, on when, when none of the other layers, had managed to catch and to resolve, a conflict. [00:49:32] Francois: Uh, that has hardly ever happened in, uh, the history of the W3C, but that happened to the two for EME, for encrypted media extensions. It had to go to the, uh, director level who, uh, after due consideration, uh, decided to, allow the EME to proceed. and that's why we have a, an EME, uh, uh, standard right now, but still re it remains something on the side. [00:49:56] Francois: EME we're still, uh, it's still in the scope of the media working group, for example. but the scope, if you look at the charter of the working group, we try to scope the, the, the, the, the updates we can make to the specification, uh, to make sure that we don't reopen, reopen, uh, a can of worms, because, well, it's really a, a topic that triggers friction for good and bad reasons again. [00:50:20] Jeremy: And when you talk about the media source extensions, that is the ability to write custom code to stream video in whatever way you want. You mentioned, the MPEG-DASH and http live streaming. So in that case, would that be the developer gets to write that code in JavaScript that's executed by the browser? [00:50:43] Francois: Yep, that's, uh, that would be it. and then typically, I guess the approach nowadays is more and more to develop low level APIs into W3C or web in, in general, I guess. And to let, uh. Libraries emerge that are going to make lives of a, a developer, uh, easier. So for MPEG DASH, we have the DASH.js, which does a fantastic job at, uh, at implementing the complexity of, uh, of adaptive streaming. [00:51:13] Francois: And you just, you just hook it into your, your workflow. And that's, uh, and that's it. Encrypted Media Extensions are closed source [00:51:20] Jeremy: And with the encrypted media extensions I'm trying to picture how those work and how they work differently. [00:51:28] Francois: Well, it's because the, the, the, the key architecture is that the, the stream that you, the stream that you may assemble with a media source extensions, for example. 'cause typically they, they're used in collaboration. When you hook the, hook it into the video tag, you also. Call EME and actually the stream goes to EME. [00:51:49] Francois: And when it goes to EME, actually the user agent hands the encrypted stream. You're still encrypted at this time. Uh, encrypted, uh, stream goes to the CDM content decryption module, and that's a black box well, it has some black, black, uh, black box logic. So it's not, uh, even if you look at the chromium source code, for example, you won't see the implementation of the CDM because it's a, it's a black box, so it's not part of the browser se it's a sand, it's sandboxed, it's execution sandbox. [00:52:17] Francois: That's, uh, the, the EME is kind of unique in, in this way where the, the CDM is not allowed to make network requests, for example, again, for privacy reasons. so anyway, the, the CDM box has the logic to decrypt the content and it hands it over, and then it depends, it depends on the level of protection you. [00:52:37] Francois: You need or that the system supports. It can be against software based protection, in which case actually, a highly motivated, uh, uh, uh, attacker could, uh, actually get access to the decoded stream, or it can be more hardware protected, in which case actually the, it goes to the, uh, to your final screen. [00:52:58] Francois: But it goes, it, it goes through the hardware in a, in a mode that the US supports in a mode that even the user agent doesn't have access to it. So it doesn't, it can't even see the pixels that, uh, gets rendered on the screen. There are, uh, several other, uh, APIs that you could use, for example, to take a screenshot of your, of your application and so on. [00:53:16] Francois: And you cannot apply them to, uh, such content because they're just gonna return a black box. again, because the user agent itself does not see the, uh, the pixels, which is exactly what you want with encrypted content. [00:53:29] Jeremy: And the, the content decryption module, it's, if I understand correctly, it's something that's shipped with the browsers, but you were saying is if you were to look at the public source code of Chromium or of Firefox, you would not see that implementation. Content Decryption Module (Widevine, PlayReady) [00:53:47] Francois: True. I mean, the, the, um, the typical examples are, uh, uh, widevine, so wide Vine. So interestingly, uh, speaking in theory, these, uh, systems could have been provided by anyone in practice. They've been provided by the browser vendors themselves. So Google has Wide Vine. Uh, Microsoft has something called PlayReady. Apple uh, the name, uh, escapes my, uh, sorry. They don't have it on top of my mind. So they, that's basically what they support. So they, they also own that code, but in a way they don't have to. And Firefox actually, uh, they, uh, don't, don't remember which one, they support among these three. but, uh, they, they don't own that code typically. [00:54:29] Francois: They provide a wrapper around, around it. Yeah, that's, that's exactly the, the crux of the, uh, issue that, people have with, uh, with DRMs, right? It's, uh, the fact that, uh, suddenly you have a bit of code running there that is, uh, that, okay, you can send box, but, uh, you cannot inspect and you don't have, uh, access to its, uh, source code. [00:54:52] Jeremy: That's interesting. So the, almost the entire browser is open source, but if you wanna watch a Netflix movie for example, then you, you need to, run this, this CDM, in addition to just the browser code. I, I think, you know, we've kind of covered a lot. Documenting what's available in browsers for developers [00:55:13] Jeremy: I wonder if there's any other examples or anything else you thought would be important to mention in, in the context of the W3C. [00:55:23] Francois: There, there's one thing which, uh, relates to, uh, activities I'm doing also at W3C. Um. Here, we've been talking a lot about, uh, standards and, implementations in browsers, but there's also, uh, adoption of these browser, of these technology standards by developers in general and making sure that developers are aware of what exists, making sure that they understand what exists and one of the, key pain points that people, uh. [00:55:54] Francois: Uh, keep raising on, uh, the web platform is first. Well, the, the, the web platform is unique in the sense that there are different implementations. I mean, if you, [00:56:03] Francois: Uh, anyway, there are different, uh, context, different run times where there, there's just one provided by the company that owns the, uh, the, the, the system. The web platform is implemented by different, uh, organizations. and so you end up the system where no one, there's what's in the specs is not necessarily supported. [00:56:22] Francois: And of course, MDN tries, uh, to document what's what's supported, uh, thoroughly. But for MDN to work, there's a hell of a lot of needs for data that, tracks browser support. And this, uh, this data is typically in a project called the Browser Compat Data, BCD owned by, uh, MDN as well. But, the Open Web Docs collective is a, uh, is, uh, the one, maintaining that, uh, that data under the hoods. [00:56:50] Francois: anyway, all of that to say that, uh, to make sure that, we track things beyond work on technical specifications, because if you look at it from W3C perspective, life ends when the spec reaches standards, uh, you know, candidate rec or rec, you could just say, oh, done with my work. but that's not how things work. [00:57:10] Francois: There's always, you need the feedback loop and, in order to make sure that developers get the information and can provide the, the feedback that standardization can benefit from and browser vendors can benefit from. We've been working on a project called web Features with browser vendors mainly, and, uh, a few of the folks and MDN and can I use and different, uh, different people, to catalog, the web in terms of features that speak to developers and from that catalog. [00:57:40] Francois: So it's a set of, uh, it's a set of, uh, feature IDs with a feature name and feature description that say, you know, this is how developers would, uh, understand, uh, instead of going too fine grained in terms of, uh, there's this one function call that does this because that's where you, the, the kind of support data you may get from browser data and MDN initially, and having some kind of a coarser grained, uh, structure that says these are the, features that make sense. [00:58:09] Francois: They talk to developers. That's what developers talk about, and that's the info. So the, we need to have data on these particular features because that's how developers are going approach the specs. Uh. and from that we've derived the notion of baseline badges that you have, uh, are now, uh, shown on MDN on can I use and integrated in, uh, IDE tool, IDE Tools such as visual, visual studio, and, uh, uh, libraries, uh, linked, some linters have started to, um, to integrate that data. [00:58:41] Francois: Uh, so, the way it works is, uh, we've been mapping these coarser grained features to BCDs finer grained support data, and from there we've been deriving a kind of a, a batch that says, yeah, this, this feature is implemented well, has limited availability because it's only implemented in one or two browsers, for example. [00:59:07] Francois: It's, newly available because. It was implemented. It's been, it's implemented across the main browser vendor, um, across the main browsers that people use. But it's recent, and widely available, which we try to, uh, well, there's been lots of discussion in the, in the group to, uh, come up with a definition which essentially ends up being 30 months after, a feature become, became newly available. [00:59:34] Francois: And that's when, that's the time it takes for the, for the versions of the, the different versions of the browser to propagate. Uh, because you, it's not because there's a new version of a, of a browser that, uh, people just, Ima immediately, uh, get it. So it takes a while, to propagate, uh, across the, uh, the, the user, uh, user base. [00:59:56] Francois: And so the, the goal is to have a, a, a signal that. Developers can rely on saying, okay, well it's widely available so I can really use that feature. And of course, if that doesn't work, then we need to know about it. And so we are also working with, uh, people doing so developer surveys such as state of, uh, CSS, state of HTML, state of JavaScript. [01:00:15] Francois: That's I guess, the main ones. But also we are also running, uh, MDN short surveys with the MDN people to gather feedback on. On the, on these same features, and to feed the loop and to, uh, to complete the loop. and these data is also used by, internally, by browser vendors to inform, prioritization process, their prioritization process, and typically as part of the interop project that they're also running, uh, on the site [01:00:43] Francois: So a, a number of different, I've mentioned, uh, I guess a number of different projects, uh, coming along together. But that's the goal is to create links, across all of these, um, uh, ongoing projects with a view to integrating developers, more, and gathering feedback as early as possible and inform decision. [01:01:04] Francois: We take at the standardization level that can affect the, the lives of the developers and making sure that it's, uh, it affects them in a, in a positive way. [01:01:14] Jeremy: just trying to understand, 'cause you had mentioned that there's the web features and the baseline, and I was, I was trying to picture where developers would actually, um, see these things. And it sounds like from what you're saying is W3C comes up with what stage some of these features are at, and then developers would end up seeing it on MDN or, or some other site. [01:01:37] Francois: So, uh, I'm working on it, but that doesn't mean it's a W3C thing. It's a, it's a, again, it's a, we have different types of group. It's a community group, so it's the Web DX Community group at W3C, which means it's a community owned thing. so that's why I'm mentioning a working with a representative from, and people from MDN people, from open Web docs. [01:02:05] Francois: so that's the first point. The second point is, so it's, indeed this data is now being integrated. If you, and you look, uh, you'll, you'll see it in on top of the MDN pages on most of them. If you look at, uh, any kind of feature, you'll see a, a few logos, uh, a baseline banner. and then can I use, it's the same thing. [01:02:24] Francois: You're going to get a baseline, banner. It's more on, can I use, and it's meant to capture the fact that the feature is widely available or if you may need to pay attention to it. Of course, it's a simplification, and the goal is not to the way it's, the way the messaging is done to developers is meant to capture the fact that, they may want to look, uh, into more than just this, baseline status, because. [01:02:54] Francois: If you take a look at web platform tests, for example, and if you were to base your assessment of whether a feature is supported based on test results, you'll end up saying the web platform has no supported technology because there are absolutely no API that, uh, where browsers pass 100% of the, of the, of the test suite. [01:03:18] Francois: There may be a few of them, I don't know. But, there's a simplification in the, in the process when a feature is, uh, set to be baseline, there may be more things to look at nevertheless, but it's meant to provide a signal that, uh, still developers can rely on their day-to-day, uh, lives. [01:03:36] Francois: if they use the, the feature, let's say, as a reasonably intended and not, uh, using to advance the logic. [01:03:48] Jeremy: I see. Yeah. I'm looking at one of the pages on MDN right now, and I can see at the top there's the, the baseline and it, it mentions that this feature works across many browsers and devices, and then they say how long it's been available. And so that's a way that people at a glance can, can tell, which APIs they can use. [01:04:08] Francois: it also started, uh, out of a desire to summarize this, uh, browser compatibility table that you see at the end of the page of the, the bottom of the page in on MDN. but there are where developers were saying, well, it's, it's fine, but it's, it goes too much into detail. So we don't know in the end, can we, can we use that feature or can we, can we not use that feature? [01:04:28] Francois: So it's meant as a informed summary of, uh, of, of that it relies on the same data again. and more importantly, we're beyond MDN, we're working with tools providers to integrate that as well. So I mentioned the, uh, visual Studio is one of them. So recently they shipped a new version where when you use a feature, you can, you can have some contextual, uh. [01:04:53] Francois: A menu that tells you, yeah, uh, that's fine. You, this CSS property, you can, you can use it, it's widely available or be aware this one is limited Availability only, availability only available in Firefox or, or Chrome or Safari work kit, whatever. [01:05:08] Jeremy: I think that's a good place to wrap it up, if people want to learn more about the work you're doing or learn more about sort of this whole recommendations process, where, where should they head? [01:05:23] Francois: Generally speaking, we're extremely open to, uh, people contributing to the W3C. and where should they go if they, it depends on what they want. So I guess the, the in usually where, how things start for someone getting involved in the W3C is that they have some

In this episode of MSP Business School, host Brian Doyle explores the dynamics of breaking into enterprise markets with expert guest Rob Warshaw. With his extensive experience in the Fortune 10 healthcare industry, Rob offers invaluable insights into how MSPs can navigate the complexities of engaging large-scale organizations. This episode presents a deep dive into the strategic steps needed to penetrate the enterprise segment, emphasizing the significance of understanding the customer and nurturing long-term relationships. The conversation begins with touching on the necessity for MSPs to understand the distinctive nature of enterprise clients compared to smaller-scale businesses. According to Rob and Brian, those targeting the enterprise sector should anticipate a long, yet rewarding journey involving arduous procurement processes and often extended sales cycles. The episode discusses critical elements such as aligning technological solutions effectively with client needs and setting realistic timelines to ensure a successful entry into the enterprise marketplace. Key Takeaways: Understanding the Client's Needs: Companies must prioritize understanding the specific problems their enterprise clients face and demonstrate a clear capability to solve these problems. Relationships Matter: The importance of having a strategic, long-term relationship rather than just a transactional approach cannot be overstated. Establishing trust and proving genuine interest in the client's industry are vital. Sales Cycle Realities: Preparing for an extended sales process is crucial, as closing deals in the enterprise sector often demands patience and strategic planning. Preparation is Key: Enterprises appreciate vendors who exhibit preparation, industry awareness, and tailored solutions, which are often more valued than mere enthusiasm or innovation claims. Pitfalls to Avoid: Misalignment between client needs and vendor capabilities can be a quick disqualifier. Vendors need to avoid appearing naive or uninformed about the client's industry and challenges. Guest Name: Rob Warshaw LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robwarshaw/ Company: DigiStratEx Website: https://digistratex.com/ Host: Brian Doyle: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briandoylevciotoolbox/ Sponsor: vCIOToolbox: https://vciotoolbox.com

Podcast: Industrial Cybersecurity InsiderEpisode: The Critical Role of Local Knowledge in Industrial CybersecurityPub date: 2025-09-09Get Podcast Transcript →powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarizationIn this essential rewind episode, Dino Busalachi and Craig Duckworth address a fundamental challenge facing practitioners in the field: effectively securing operational technology (OT) environments through local expertise and proper data collection.The Power of Local PartnershipDino emphasizes a crucial principle that often gets overlooked in cybersecurity implementations: "The only way you can act local is you've got to work with those folks that are in those plants every day, all day."This insight highlights why external cybersecurity consultants must forge strong partnerships with on-site operational teams who possess intimate knowledge of their industrial environments.These local experts understand the nuanced details that can make or break a security implementation. This includes everything from vendor schedules and machine operations to maintenance windows and downtime planning.They know when critical systems are most vulnerable and which processes absolutely cannot be interrupted.Chapters:00:00:00 - Why Local Collaboration is Critical for Cybersecurity Success00:01:07 - Meet Dino and Craig: Experts in IT/OT Integration00:01:49 - Unpacking the Challenges of IT/OT Convergence00:02:28 - Why IT and OT Teams Often Struggle to Align00:04:48 - Building Collaborative Frameworks for Stronger Cybersecurity00:07:33 - The Role of CIOs and CISOs in Driving Change00:08:44 - Navigating the Complexities of Diverse Plant Environments00:10:23 - Partnering with Vendors to Enhance Security Outcomes00:11:16 - Key Questions to Evaluate System Integrators Effectively00:16:35 - Using Tabletop Exercises to Align IT and OT Teams00:22:20 - Closing Thoughts: Bridging the Divide for Unified CybersecurityLinks And Resources:Want to Sponsor an episode or be a Guest? Reach out here.Industrial Cybersecurity Insider on LinkedInCybersecurity & Digital Safety on LinkedInBW Design Group CybersecurityDino Busalachi on LinkedInCraig Duckworth on LinkedInThanks so much for joining us this week. Want to subscribe to Industrial Cybersecurity Insider? Have some feedback you'd like to share? Connect with us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube to leave us a review!The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Industrial Cybersecurity Insider, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.

When "Last Dance" isn't Donna Summer.

Send us a textWhat's the point of gates, guards, and security cameras if you're letting hundreds of unscreened workers into your community?  On this week's episode of Take It To The Board podcast, host Donna DiMaggio Berger talks with security expert Mark Hall to reveal the alarming blind spot in most residential communities' protection plans. After spending over two decades in law enforcement, Mark identified a critical vulnerability: communities invest heavily in perimeter security while opening their gates to thousands of unknown service providers each year. This realization, coupled with a horrifying incident where an air conditioning technician with a criminal record took a family hostage, led him to create the Safe Communities Vendor ID Program. The program's findings are eye-opening. Since 2016, they've identified and prevented 81 registered sex offenders and over 900 recently convicted burglars and thieves from accessing participating communities. Donna and Mark walk listeners through the program's three-tiered screening protocol, which includes five-year bans for theft-related offenses, ten-year bans for violent crimes, and lifetime bans for sexual offenders and homicide perpetrators. They explain how the program accommodates immigrant workers through foreign government ID verification, addresses identity verification challenges, and operates without cost to associations or residents.  If your community is serious about security, listen now to learn how you can close this critical gap. Conversation Highlights Include:The security gaps in the marketplace that inspired the creation of the Safe Communities Vendor ID programDetails on the program's screening protocolsHow Safe Communities communicates with vendors after screening employees, including reports and follow-upsAddressing concerns about second chances for individuals with prior convictionsThe frequency with which employers fail to use rigorous screening protocolsTraining programs and ongoing evaluations offered to vendors to stay updated on best practicesSafeguards in place to avoid mistaken identity and minimize legal liabilityHow the program has grown since its inception in 2016Vendor screening expansion into industries beyond community associationsRelated Links:Podcast: Checking In On Background Checks: What's In, What's Out and What's Questionable? with Robert E. Sanchez of Sarma | Becker & PoliakoffArticle: Law.com Op-Ed: Smile, You're on Condo Camera—Florida's New Law on Recording Zoom Board Meetings | Becker & Poliakoff

In this Insuring Cyber podcast excerpt, the discussion highlights one of the biggest hurdles facing insurance regulators: defining the type of risk AI presents. Regulators are taking a … Read More » The post Defining AI Risk: A Key Challenge for Insurance Regulators appeared first on Insurance Journal TV.

In this Insuring Cyber podcast excerpt, the discussion highlights one of the biggest hurdles facing insurance regulators: defining the type of risk AI presents. Regulators are taking a … Read More » The post Defining AI Risk: A Key Challenge for Insurance Regulators appeared first on Insurance Journal TV.

In this Insuring Cyber podcast excerpt, the discussion highlights one of the biggest hurdles facing insurance regulators: defining the type of risk AI presents. Regulators are taking a … Read More » The post Defining AI Risk: A Key Challenge for Insurance Regulators appeared first on Insurance Journal TV.

Dr. Len Tau, aka the Reviews Doctor, is on the podcast. With Kiera, he goes into the most critical nuts and bolts of making sure your practice stands out (or at least keeps pace with) online reviews amid AI. He explains jargon terms like ranking power and factors and velocity of reviews, whether or not you should actually be responding to reviews of your practice, and a ton more. Visit SuperchargeYourDentalPractice.com and enter the code RAVING to save $100 on registration for Dr. Tau's annual conference. About Dr. Tau Dr. Len Tau thrives on helping practices maximize their online reputation, marketing, and social media strategies. As a speaker, Len is known for his lively and engaging presentations packed with ready-to-use strategies. He regularly travels the country sharing his marketing brilliance and passion for practice growth with audiences. As a consultant, he offers practice leaders with real-world solutions tailored to fit their specific challenges and opportunities. Len loves to help doctors and their teams understand and implement successful online systems to build their practice. He currently serves as general manager of the Dental for Birdeye Reputation Marketing Software. Selected as one of Philadelphia's Top Dentists by Philadelphia Magazine, he continues to experience growth year after year in his fee-for-service practice focusing on general, cosmetic, reconstructive and implant dentistry. Following his father into the dental profession, Len graduated from Tufts University School of Dental Medicine and continues to pursue ongoing continuing education opportunities. He has had the privilege of serving patients for two decades. He is an active member of numerous professional organizations including the American Dental Association, the Pennsylvania Dental Association, the Academy of General Dentistry, the Eastern Dental Society, the Northeast Philadelphia Dental Implant Study Club, and the American Academy of Clear Aligners. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Kiera Dent (00:00) Hello, Dental Team listeners. This is Kiera and today I am so excited. This is one of my dear friends. We've known each other for several years in the industry. I'm super freaking pumped. I'm going actually be at his event next year in September. Little teaser. Stay tuned. He's got an amazing event he does every year in September. I have Dr. Len Tau. He is one of my faves. He is better known ⁓ as an authority in the dental consulting world, reputation marketing, and a practice growth. He's recognized by dentistry today as a top dental consultant for eight straight years.   He is the author of Raving Patients and 100 plus tips to 105 star reviews in a hundred days. Like this man knows how to do it. He's one of my faves. We really do collaborate on so many fun things. After 20 plus years in clinical practice, he now helps dentists nationwide, increase revenue, case acceptance and visibility. He leads the dental vision at BirdEye, hosts the Raving Patients podcast and runs the Supercharger Dental Practice Conference, which is the one I was alluding to that we're gonna be at next year in September, empowering practices to thrive in today's competitive landscape.   He's truly one of my faves. And today we're gonna dig into like, how do you get online reviews? But Len, welcome. I'm so happy to have you on the podcast. How are you today?   Dr. Len Tau (01:06) I'm good, thanks for having me, I'm excited to be here.   Kiera Dent (01:08) Of course. And this just came about because Len like, let's just do a little teaser. You're prepping full like steam ahead right now for your event that's coming up in September in Florida. ⁓ I love like the last time you and I were on the podcast, we talked about you in clinical dentistry. And then we reconnected after some time and you've left the chair, you're living your best life and you full blown gone into the event space. So just like, I know we're gonna get into like online reviews and how AI is changing that it's going to be just a really, really fun episode today. But tell us a little bit like   How is it going from like full blown dentist in the chair to now full blown events, like running these awesome events that we're super excited to be a part. Just kind of give me a little insight to that.   Dr. Len Tau (01:46) Well, it's been, it's been a lot of, a lot of fun. It's been very different, obviously, you know, for 23 years, I practiced dentistry, um, for about 12 of those, 13 of those who was full time. And then I went part time in 2017 until I sold and retired in 2022. Um, but one of the things I've grew up on in dentistry was going to dental events and, the big, the ones, the small ones, you know, all over the country and as a dentist first, and then as a vendor.   Kiera Dent (02:08) Mm-hmm.   Dr. Len Tau (02:15) Um, since 2013 or 14, so a long time in the space. know, one of the things that really hit me was that the events are not really put on very well. They're not, um, you know, whether you, if you're a dentist, there's issues when you're a vendor, there's issues. And I said, you know what? I want to change the game. And, um, one of my goals when I retired from dentistry was to start putting on events. So in 2023, um, in, in September, we did an event in Delray had 208.   Kiera Dent (02:25) Right.   Dr. Len Tau (02:44) Dennis there, 33 sponsors. was, first day was business, second day was marketing. Excuse me. First day was marketing. Second day was business. Had a 13, 14 speakers. It went off better than I could ever imagined. I then moved to the last year in 2024 to Scottsdale. And we were at the Scott Resort and Spa, which is a beautiful hotel and the event was good. It wasn't great. Definitely moving to different coasts.   I felt there was not as much, know, engagement, excitement about the event. So I, my family and my wife and I decided, Hey, we're going to do this. Let's have people come down to me. I live in beautiful, you know, part of Florida. we're having this year's event and the next three of them at super at, ⁓ at pure 66, a brand new hotel, ⁓ in Fort Lauderdale. It's literally half hour from my house, five miles from the airport, easy to get to. So this year event is September 26th and 27th.   Kiera Dent (03:32) Bye.   you   No.   Mm-hmm.   Dr. Len Tau (03:45) We've got 14 speakers, ⁓ mixture of business and marketing. So we've got people talking about social media, about content. We have people talking about saving money on taxes. We're talking about how to become a fee-for-service practice. ⁓ So a lot of different great content and top speakers, Steve Rasner, Paul Goodman, ⁓ Jeff Buski, ⁓ Richard, Rich Maddow. So some real, real heavy hitters. And then some people who people haven't really heard of, Melanie Diesel, who's new in the dental industry.   So, but I like to do it differently and my events are very high end. You come, you're going to see things you probably have never seen before. I give a ton of time to the vendors so the vendors love me because they make sure that they get integration or interaction with the attendees. So you're going to be speaking in 2026, same weekend at September 25th and 26th in 2026, same hotel, pure 66.   Kiera Dent (04:28) Sure.   Yeah.   Dr. Len Tau (04:40) We're ramping things up right now. We're literally a month out from the events. still have people signing up. I still have people wanting to reach out as sponsors. And it's, it's, it's, is the fun time for me. Cause when I'm done, I'm, you know, I get a couple of months of break and then I start promoting 2027 again. So ⁓ it's been a good time. I really enjoy it. And I find that I've kind of ⁓ created something that's very different and the attendees really enjoy it and the vendors really enjoy it. So if I can make everybody happy,   Kiera Dent (04:45) No.   Dr. Len Tau (05:09) That's all I'm looking to do here.   Kiera Dent (05:11) ⁓ and Len, I hope the audience, if they can't see it, they can hear it. I think it's so fun because I mean, I've seen you in different spaces in your career, in your life. And there is just this like giddy, like younger version of Len that I feel is emerging of like, it's like giddy boyhood, like excitement of I'm excited to put these on. I'm excited to do these events. And it just makes me so happy for you. And what I think I'm hearing is yes, attendees are happy. Vendors are happy. But I also hear that Len is very happy and to do something   in dentistry is just very, very fun. It's very exciting. And so we're jazzed. I'm really excited. I love good events. I love great time. I love to help. love business marketing. Everybody can take that. That's not Kiera's jam. Like I, that's why I wanted to bring you on. You guys are very good at marketing. You're very good at that space. but to talk about how to help people have their best lives to grow the practices that they want to grow. I think you and I are so synergistic in that. So we're super excited and I love, I mean, I'm not going to highlight the fact that there were   a couple of sixes in that is September 26 at Pier 66. You guys hopefully like, I like the alliteration. Don't put anything weird on it guys, but I do appreciate that you made it easier. September six and nines flipped upside down are a six. Like hopefully everybody can remember September 26, Pier 66. It'll be a good time in 2026. I mean, we got four lines, so we're okay. We've at least got four sixes, not we didn't end on three, but I really hope an exciting step. We'll make sure we put some info for people.   For this year and for next year, I think it'll be a fun time. Dental A Team will be there, so come hang out with us. ⁓ Len, I'm super excited. I will not spoil secrets, but a lot of the things he told me for the events, I will say he does put his heart and soul into it. So Len, excited about that. Thank you for sharing. Good luck for this year. We're gonna be rooting you on this year and next year. And now let's pivot. Let's go into like your jam. You're in BirdEye, you're in marketing, you're on online reviews. AI has come into the scene. Practices are changing.   I also will say, I hope everybody listens to you of their like succession story. You hung up the hand piece, but you are still full steam ahead in dentistry. And so I hope people see that like there is no path to dentistry. Like you just, it's a, it's a beautiful world that you're in. So let's talk though, online reviews, AI, how is this working? How do we make sure that practices are still being visible? Chat GPT is on, on the prowl.   There are clients signing up with us now that have found us on chat. GPT, which is so random. It's changing how people have been doing things. Walk me through. What are you seeing with these online reviews? The importance, how to bring AI in? Like, let's just kind of go in a rift on how practices can still be visible with AIs. Like just showing up to the scene.   Dr. Len Tau (07:43) So I wanna talk about chat CPT for a second. ⁓ I refer to it as my best friend. ⁓ It helps me edit. No, I haven't named it yet. No, I haven't named it. ⁓ you have?   Kiera Dent (07:50) Have you named it? I've got to just ask Len. Have you named? I have! Me and Chet,   I had a name and now her name is Wanda. I don't know why, I don't even know where Wanda came, but people are like, here, are you hanging out with Wanda again? Cause I agree. Like they're our best friends. So go on Len. I can't wait to hear what you name your Chet GPT cause mine is currently Wanda.   Dr. Len Tau (08:06) I'll have to, I   have to name it now that I have to think of something. ⁓ but no, I started using it. I'm like, this is really helpful and it's only gotten better. And, just to give you an idea is, ⁓ my wife and I, and my son, my son just graduated high school. He's literally just started his freshman year at, university of Florida on a free ride. ⁓ smart, smart ass kid. I'm very proud of him. But, you know, and I travel a ton, but I travel a ton for business and I made a commitment. I think I told you that,   Kiera Dent (08:25) Boo? Yeah.   Dr. Len Tau (08:35) during the summer when he was going away for school, I was not going to travel. So from March to literally next week, beginning of September, I haven't traveled at all for business. we did plan some really great travel for our personal lives. And one of the things we did was we had a cruise, a 17 day cruise to Europe. ⁓ And when I decided I did not want to do the excursions to the cruise, cause they're really expensive and you're with all these people. I prefer to kind of just go and tour myself.   Kiera Dent (08:44) It's awesome.   Dr. Len Tau (09:05) So I use ChatGPT in every city. And I said, I'm going to the city. This is what I'm going to get in. This is the cruise I'm going on. It got the cruise itinerary. And I said, I want to set up private tours in every city with different people. And it helped me pick the best tour guides. They referred me to a website called Tours by Local, which is an amazing website that you can meet people who are local that will take you around.   show you the city and it was amazing. It was amazing. So I thank Chachi PT for doing that because I wouldn't have known about half these things if I didn't do it. And in fact, one of the women, and actually the very first place you went to, which was in Split, Croatia, which was beautiful. I told her that literally that's kind of how I went down this road was I asked Chachi PT, what should I do in Split? And they said, you need to use this tour guide. She's the highest rated tour guide and has the best reviews on tours by local. like,   What's towards by local? And that started this whole thing. So she was, she was amazed to hear that. So, ⁓ I have been using Chad GPT for a long time, like I said, and even now it is people I know type in, know, get me to the best dentists in the area. And it's very much based on reviews. So you have to be a highly rated practice. you may not believe in reviews and if you do, think you're not smart, but you know, if, if you want to be at the forefront of where people are looking,   Kiera Dent (09:58) Yeah.   Yes.   Dr. Len Tau (10:25) You have to generate reviews in a significant amount. Velocity now, which is how often you're getting them, is one of the biggest ranking factors on Google, whether you want to believe chat GPT or not. ⁓ But you have to get reviews. You can't, you know, rest on your laurels and say, well, I have enough because you never have enough. Okay. And, ⁓ and you've got to let Google rank you high. And there's been a big discrepancy in the industry, a big, I don't want to say a misunderstanding.   Kiera Dent (10:43) read.   Dr. Len Tau (10:52) But I've been in the review space now since 2013, so 12 years. And in the past, dentists thought that if they get reviews, they're going to rank. And that's not the way it is anymore. If you have reviews, but don't pay attention to the other ranking factors, you actually don't rank well. And that's a problem. So, chat GPT AI is so important, but you still got to dominate Google. You still got to get to the top of the pages.   And that's really where the direction is going. and if you aren't there now and you are ignoring it, you're never going to get there. So I would love to talk to you about our list in instruct or educate the listeners and viewers of these ranking factors that they need, need to pay attention to, or they're going to be left behind when it comes to ranking on Google.   Kiera Dent (11:27) Yeah.   absolutely. And I'm excited for this too, because, I did notice that you've got to like, AI is just crawling the web. That's where it's getting, it's being taught. It's crawls it. It looks through all of it. And so agreed with you. have a lot of clients and like, we want the secret pill of marketing. And I might get your reviews up. Like it is constant and consistent that if you get those reviews up and you bring pieces to the table, that people literally like that's what's going to rank you higher. So I'm excited, Len to, to dig in deeper because it is like how   getting more reviews, but to hear that there's more beyond just the reviews really can help these offices like get the best bang for their buck, help more practices. And I'm like, it used to be when I first started consulting when I used to tell offices get to like 100 Google reviews. It is now I'm pushing people like five, six, 700 reviews that you need to be getting ranked into. And I don't know if you're seeing like a cutoff line or if it matters on that. So I'm really excited to dive into like, what are the rankings? What are the pieces? Is there a difference? But I'm like now   100 reviews, when I look at somebody I'm like, hmm, like if there's another dental practice that has maybe 400, 500 new clients come on, the first thing I do is I go look them up to see how many reviews do you have? And I'm shocked at how many dental practices actually are not showing up when I Google their names and they're like, no, no, care, we're here. And I'm like, but if I'm a prospective new client that doesn't work in your practice and I don't see you all the time and I just tried to find you and I'm looking for you.   How many patients who are not looking for you are not finding you as well. So yeah, take us away, and I'm super curious, very intrigued by this. It's fascinating. And I'll also say, because AI is new, feel like people got like a reset slate. Like, hey, you can actually get back into the game if you haven't been into the game, if you just start playing now. If you don't, I agree with you. I do think that you will unfortunately get obliterated without trying if you don't get into the game now.   Dr. Len Tau (13:28) 100 % so and I couldn't agree with you more. So the best thing to do here is if you're listening to this, I want you to go to a Google search and I want you to type your practice name in. Okay, so that's the first thing to do. Right.   Kiera Dent (13:39) and not in your office. Don't do it in   your office. Go somewhere else. Like try it somewhere else.   Dr. Len Tau (13:44) Right, well, and 100%, that's another thing is that if you're gonna look up your ranking specifically, you do not wanna do that from your office location, okay? Because you're not gonna get real results. You also wanna go into incognito mode or private browsing mode on your phone or your computer if you're doing that to check ranking. But this is not specifically about ranking. This is more about how you appear online. So go to Google and type in your practice name. Not your name unless it's the name of the practice, but your business name, okay?   Kiera Dent (13:52) Yes.   Mm-hmm.   Dr. Len Tau (14:13) and it doesn't have to be what's registered with the state board. It's how you, when you answer the phone, what you say, okay? Pennsylvania Center for Dental Excellence was my practice name, okay? So you wanna look yourself up. So these are some of the ranking factors that Google looks at. Obviously one of them is your total number of reviews you have. Definitely a ranking factor, but the total number has not been as important as some other factors as well. So.   Kiera Dent (14:20) Mm-hmm.   Dr. Len Tau (14:40) Average number of reviews in the industry right now is about 350. It used to be like 100 was the golden number. Now 350 is the average in the industry. So are you average? Are you below average or are above average? Okay, that's something to look at. The second ranking factor, which is even more important is the velocity of reviews. So how many reviews, how often you're getting them. Okay, so if you're getting once every two weeks, not enough. If you're getting them once every week,   Kiera Dent (14:46) Yes.   Dr. Len Tau (15:10) Not enough. You don't need them every single day, but two or three every single week is ideal. Okay, because you think two or three every week gives you eight to 15 a month times 12 months is 100 reviews a year, which is a nice number. Okay, so you have to have that velocity. All right. Third ranking factor is the total score, your average number of stars. So   I would like you to be anywhere from 4.6 to five stars. Okay. I don't think you have to be only five stars. think there's a negativity related to that. If you're only five star reviews, but I also don't want you to below 4.5. Okay. ⁓ And if you're at 4.3, 4.2, or even 4.1, another better review or two, and you're to be in the threes. And that's really where you don't want to go. Cause you lose a huge percentage of patients who may come in if you're less than four stars. Okay. Another ranking factor.   is the primary category. So how do you know your primary category? If you look under your Google, your name, will say right where the stars is, will say, hopefully dentist in your town or dentist in your county or dentist in your city. Okay. So your primary category should be dentist because we're a dental practice. Okay. If you're an oral surgeon, you may want it to be oral and actual facial surgeon. If you're an endodontist, want it to say endodontist. You don't want it to say dentist if you're a specialist. Okay.   ⁓ That's a big ranking factor and I'll give you an example. I, ⁓ my wife had some plastic surgery over the last couple of years and we were referred to that doctor. So we didn't need to search for him. We were referred to him. went in, we liked him, we used his services. ⁓ And of course, being a plastic surgeon, I talked to him about reviews. He now uses BirdEye, but he had me speak in an event that he holds down here in Boca Raton.   And I talked about this exactly. And I asked everybody, cause it was a small group. What is your primary category? And he goes, he said to me, literally, he says, I'm listed as a nurse practitioner. He wasn't listed as a plastic surgeon. He was listed as a nurse practitioner. So his categories were all messed up. So when you actually typed in plastic surgeon near me, he never showed up because his category was wrong. So primary category is a very important ranking factor as well. Now you also have to make sure your secondary categories are also. ⁓   Kiera Dent (17:15) No.   Dr. Len Tau (17:35) ⁓ under ⁓ are there as well as under the proper categories. So secondary categories, if you're a dentist, dental clinic, teeth whitening services, denture care center, orthodontist, if you're doing aligners, if you're endo, you're doing root canals, you can have endodontist. If you do periodontist, can do periodontist. You want to make sure you have nine secondary categories. Okay, if you don't have them, you want to add them.   Now, how do you add them? It's very easy. You go to Google using ChatGPT or anything and say, how do I add secondary categories to my Google business listing? Okay. It will tell you exactly like a recipe how to do it. You need to add those secondary categories. All right. And if you want help doing it, you can always reach out to me. The last ranking factor, which is really important is making sure that the practices name, address, and phone number is consistent. Okay. So just to be clear, most   website companies do not do local SEO. They do website SEO, which is making sure the website is SEOed so the website ranks higher on the organic rankings. We're talking about getting the Google business page ranking higher, which the website companies are not focused on. So when it comes to the name, address and phone number, is it consistent? You have to be consistent. And this is a Google requirement.   It is not a patient thing. It's not a me thing or you thing. It's a Google requirement that this data is consistent. So the name is obviously important. So if you have the and or the ampersand, you may find things inconsistent. When it comes to the address, if you have, you know, South State Streets, Unit 510, you can have South or S, you can have Street or ST, and then you can have Suite, Unit, Number, or STE.   All these variations need to be consistent. So one of them has to be done and one and stuck with. And then if you are using a tracking number for whatever reason on your Google business listing, you may find your inconsistent there as well. So when you make everything consistent and you get a higher velocity of reviews, guess what happens over time? You rank higher on the maps. And when you rank higher on the maps, you get more visible for patients to find you. So that's where the secret sauce is. And   Not that this is a sales pitch about BirdEye, but that's exactly what BirdEye does. BirdEye does those. We check all those boxes for you. And then what ends up happening is a practices get more reviews. But more importantly, when they ask patients how they find them, they're going to see that they found them because of their ranking online and the reviews drove them to the practice. So that's how this whole thing plays a role in getting a practice more visible and credible.   Kiera Dent (20:06) Thank   Wow. So I was over here like taking a lot of notes, which I really loved. I love the number, the 350 at the average, the velocity, like three to five per week you were saying. It doesn't need to be an everyday, but I do agree like them consistently coming through the total score, the 4.6 to five primary category, secondary category, making sure we have nine. And then you were talking about like the practice name, phone number, all of that has to be consistent. So the addresses have to be the same. And that's going to help you rank higher.   Did I miss anything? Those are my notes, Len. And I'm just curious, like, did I catch them all? Because there was a lot of pieces to consider. And then I have some follow ups as well. So like, did I miss anything in that list?   Dr. Len Tau (21:02) No, I   think you got it all there.   Kiera Dent (21:06) Okay, so hopefully that was a good recap for everybody. If you were listening, I tried to like summarize everything he said, because I really feel that those are super valuable pieces to know. Now, Len, there's a couple of things that happen and I'm very curious of what you've seen. Maybe you know, maybe you don't know. It's just a riff for me genuinely curious over here. Does it impact for the business to respond to the reviews? Because I know there was like a big misnomer out there like for a while, like you have to respond to every single review that helps you rank higher. What's the   What's kind of the lay of the land right now responding to the reviews that come in?   Dr. Len Tau (21:39) So there's been a big push over the years to respond to reviews. And there's also been those naysayers who don't want you to respond to reviews. So I want to make this very clear. When you respond to a review and you acknowledge them as a patient, you are technically violating HIPAA. Okay. Now by the letter of the law, if you do that, you violated HIPAA and can be in trouble. Now in all the years I've been doing this, I've only seen one   Kiera Dent (21:49) Mm-hmm.   Dr. Len Tau (22:08) example of a positive review being responded to and the dentist got in trouble. Okay. So if someone writes a review for you and it's five stars and you say, thank you so much for your feedback. We were glad you had a great experience in our practice. Okay. You technically violated HIPAA there because you acknowledged that they came into the practice. I don't think you'll ever run into any problems with that. I don't, I've never seen any instance when a, when a practice has got into trouble. But again, by the letter of the law, it's a violation.   Here's where the person ran into a problem. Okay. So the review in question, the patient wrote, I'm so happy with my appearance after I went to so-and-so's dental office. I think they were in Texas. The dentist responded, we're so happy that you, thank you so much for your review. We're so happy that you loved our magic needles. Okay. So it, from what I understand is the patient had Botox or   dermal fillers placed and that's what they call their magic needles. So the patient wrote, wrote a letter to the practice saying, I didn't appreciate you letting the world know that I had Botox done and asked for the review response to be taken down, which the dentist immediately did. Took it down and apologized, but it really pissed the patient off and the patient sued the dentist and won. Okay. Because the dentist went out of their way to   Kiera Dent (23:08) Mm-hmm.   Right.   Dr. Len Tau (23:33) you know, release private information that wasn't supposed to be done. So in that case, you shouldn't be doing that. Okay. Now on the same note, I would be very careful responding.   Kiera Dent (23:37) Mm-hmm.   Dr. Len Tau (23:45) to a review that's left by a negative, a negative review that's written by a patient. I would be very careful responding publicly to that because it's very hard to respond without violating HIPAA. So a simple response like, we're sorry to hear about your experience. Please contact the office to discuss the concerns as we're unfortunately unable to comment due to HIPAA release privacy stuff. That's fine. But.   Again, I just not sure it's the best thing to do. So you have to be careful with negative reviews. What it doesn't do is we really haven't found any relationship between responding and ranking. Okay, so you have to, I always leave it up to the people to respond. I like using AI to respond as well, because I think it comes up with HIPAA compliant and really good responses. ⁓ But you have to decide what you want to do for your own practice.   Kiera Dent (24:16) Mm-hmm.   Interesting.   That's actually really helpful to know. ⁓ Okay, good feedback for people to ponder and decide what they want to do on. The second piece is   some people lose their Google My Business and they're not able to be found. ⁓ And I don't know if you have reasons why. I don't know if it's from like a name change or it's inconsistent. So like a lot of offices have a lot of reviews, but when you go to search them, they're hidden on Google My Business. Like it will show up on the person's side, but nobody externally can find it. Do you have any ideas of like what causes that or what offices can do if they're struggling with that?   Dr. Len Tau (25:11) So I want to clarify that what question you asked there. I'm sorry to ask a question when you asked the question was when you say that you're saying that when they search for their Google business listing, they can't find it or when someone is searching for the office, they're not visible on the maps.   Kiera Dent (25:15) Hey, that's okay.   So when they're searching, so if I just go into Google and I type in like my perfect smile, the website might link, but the Google My Business with all, and they might have like 150 Google reviews, like it might be, like they've got them all and the office can see it when they like log in as like, this is, you own this, but they've lost it and it's no longer visible publicly. Do you know what causes that or how they can get that back? It's okay if you don't, I'm just genuinely curious. Cause I know some offices struggle with this, especially with like name changes of practices.   going through different ownerships. ⁓ Some of them have told me it's like when I changed the name of my practice, it no longer showed up. Like we have all these reviews, but we're not showing up. Do you know what causes that or how practices can get back being visible?   Dr. Len Tau (26:02) Yep. Now that you   asked it that way, so that usually means that your Google business listing has been suspended. And if you can't find it on search, but you see it, means it's suspended in most cases. Name changes, address changes, other things you do can cause it to be suspended. There are, if you look up on use chat GPT, ⁓   and say, why is, why can your Google business page be suspended? There is a list of different reasons why it can get suspended. ⁓ if you're getting reviews the wrong way is a big one. So, like you should not be incentivizing for reviews. And I'm talking about incentivizing the patients. You shouldn't be getting reviews in your physical office space because there's IP address conflicts and location services on the patient's phone. So if you're doing that, not only will you can potentially lose reviews, but you can't get it suspended, but you can look on.   Kiera Dent (26:37) Mm-hmm.   Dr. Len Tau (26:55) on chat GPT or Google and just say, what are the reasons that your business page can be suspended? And they're there. So usually you have to ⁓ re-approve it or re-verify that page. And there's certain things you do. You'll have to take a video of yourself in front of the practice, showing the address, showing the name of the business on the door. So there's things you will have to do to get it over to Google. So they'll re-verify you. And then once it happens, there's a good chance they'll unsuspend the listing. But that happens for that reason.   Kiera Dent (27:24) Gotcha. Okay. That's super helpful because I know a few offices have struggled with that. So was just curious for that. All right. This has been so helpful to figure out rankings. It's been helpful to understand. ⁓ My last question as we wrap up today on reviews has been so helpful, Len, is how do offices go about like, what are your recommendations? Yes, bird eye, swell, podium. Like there's a lot of review in Weave. I do, I usually recommend using an external one outside of things. think that they like, if they're just, if that's what they do, they're going to be experts at it.   But how can offices ethically and appropriately, like obviously great patient experience, but how do they increase these Google reviews? What are some of the best tactics you've seen to help these offices out?   Dr. Len Tau (28:04) So being biased, I mean, I'm a true believer in BirdEye because we help with the reviews and the ranking part. ⁓ Swell, which is a great product. know the guys who swell really well. A lot of their doctors don't rank well because they don't focus on the listings part of it or the ranking part of it. ⁓ I'm not a fan of Wee from a review perspective because they swell BirdEye and Podium, make it very easy. Weave doesn't. It's just the way we do it with our three other products. ⁓   I always say this, you can get reviews any way you want. The most effective is gonna be use some software, simple as that. But it all starts with the practice and it all starts with, I like to create a reputation culture in the practice, which means you know that every time a patient comes in the practice, that they're going to be evaluating you and reviewing you potentially. And you've gotta be on your best behavior, you've gotta put a happy smile on your face, you gotta treat them like they're the...   Kiera Dent (28:40) Mm-hmm.   Dr. Len Tau (29:00) king of the world, okay? You gotta roll out the red carpet. And if you don't do that, they may write a bad review, okay? But if you don't create that reputation culture, I think it's gonna be hard to get the practice to really accelerate the reviews. So creating that reputation culture using great verbiage skills. I love calling it feedback, not a review. If you call it a review, it sounds like you're begging for it. ⁓ The feedback conversation is much more comfortable to have. So, you know, it's an interesting situation, but if you don't ask, you don't get.   So you've got to ask. I think if you ask and you combine it with a really good software, you'll get a really good number of reviews. If you don't ask, you don't get. It's that simple.   Kiera Dent (29:30) Mm-hmm.   Yeah.   ⁓ well, that was so great. I appreciate this so much. And it's fun to hear about how AI is helping. It's fun to hear about how you still have to be great on Google. So ⁓ I just appreciate you. I appreciate you being here. I appreciate the knowledge you shared. appreciate for offices. I hope they take action and Len any last thoughts, how people can connect with you if they want more help on this. know ⁓ like truly in my opinion, this is the simplest marketing. Everybody wants to like sexy magic pill of marketing. And I'm like, no, it's like really great experience. Ask for the reviews, ask for the feedback.   like rank so that way people can find you I've had offices that had like three four or five new patients and they're like I need this marketing I need all these things which I'm not here to say not to do it but I will say great reviews will boost you very quickly so Len any last thoughts you've got how people can connect with you because it's been truly just an incredible episode today   Dr. Len Tau (30:26) So ⁓ I'm around the country a lot. So you can always connect with me in person if I'm at some of these events. If you wanna come to Supercharge, you can connect me there. SuperchargeYourDentalPractice.com You can use the code RAVING to save $100 on registration. ⁓ We also have some scholarships available. So if you do wanna come, you can reach out to me personally. So ⁓ my cell phone's all over the internet. The easiest way, if you have any questions, you want advice, you want help, I'm the guy to reach out to. My phone number is 215.   Kiera Dent (30:40) Awesome.   Dr. Len Tau (30:55) 292-2100. And my best email is Len, L-E-N, at drlentau.com, which is D-R-L-E-N-T-A-U.com. And you can email me, you can text me, you can call me, tell me you heard about me here and you need some advice. I'm more than happy to offer it to you. I do it all the time. ⁓ I love when people reach out to me because they know I'm an expert. So I do it kind of as a favor to people. ⁓ But no, you reach out to me, I'm happy to give advice.   Kiera Dent (31:23) amazing. Len, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I'm super excited for Supercharge 2025 and especially 2026. So everybody snag that. And truly, I hope you take action from today's podcast. This is easy ways for you to boost your marketing, be found and seen online. And Len, thank you for joining me today. I truly, truly appreciate you.   Dr. Len Tau (31:41) Thank you for having me, Kiera, I appreciate it.   Kiera Dent (31:43) Of course. And for all of you listening, thank you for listening and I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.  

Part of the Southern Sounds of Celebration special series of Take on the South, this is the second of five episodes that focus on the 2025 Worm Gruntin' Festival in Sopchoppy, Florida. Here we learn more about some of the business sides of the festival, including community impact, the participation of vendors, and the popular worm-themed t-shirts that are sold each year at the festival.

H1: UAD 3.6: Blessing or Bother? A Practical Guide for Residential Appraisers Rollout begins September 8, 2025. Whether UAD 3.6 is a blessing or a bother depends on your practice focus. If you live on the GSE side of the house, mastering the nuances is unavoidable—and worth your time. If your work leans to estates, divorces, tax appeals, and Yellow Book assignments, you'll encounter less immediate pressure. In this episode of The Appraiser's Advocate, we explain what's changing, why software and client timelines may feel bumpy at first, and how to prepare without panic. Vendors, lenders, and AMCs are learning too; we'll cover realistic expectations for staggered adoption so you can keep cash flow steady and clients confident. What you'll learn What UAD 3.6 actually changes (dynamic report, structured data, packaging) Who really needs it now (GSE work) vs. where it's less urgent (non-GSE assignments) Transition pains to expect (software readiness, lender/AMC ramp-up) How to protect your practice (flag awareness, workflows, templates, client education) Professional guardrails—keep ethics first, maintain E&O, and know when to call counsel Need a hand? Email me: tim@theappraisersadvocate.com But no matter what happens, keep your ethics foremost, pay your E&O insurance premiums, have an administrative law attorney on speed dial, and contact me at tim@theappraisersadvocate.com when I can be of service to you.  Thanks!  

In this episode of The Jira Life, we're joined by Chris Cooke to talk about CollabSoft Ventures and their role at TEAM '25 Europe.Chris shares how CollabSoft is investing directly into the Atlassian ecosystem, including initiatives that provide funding and support for small Marketplace vendors who want to grow, innovate, and scale their apps. As Chris put it, they're essentially “handing out free money to small vendors.”We'll dive into what this means for the community, how vendors can get involved, and why CollabSoft Ventures believes in building up the next generation of Atlassian Marketplace innovators.If you're an app builder, vendor, or partner curious about new opportunities, this is a conversation you won't want to miss.Thank you to Revyz for backing us up and making The Jira Life possible. https://www.revyz.io/The Jira Life=====================================Having trouble keeping up with when we are live? Sign up for our Atlassian Community Group!https://ace.atlassian.com/the-jira-life/Or Follow us on LinkedIn! / the-jira-life Become a member on YouTube to get access to perks:https://www.youtube.com/@thejiralife/...Hosts:Alex "Dr. Jira" Ortiz / alexortiz89 / @apetechtechtutorials Rodney "The Jira Guy" Nissen / rgnissen https://thejiraguy.comSarah Wright / satwright Producer:"King Bob" Robert Wen / robert-wen-csm-spc6-a552051 Executive Producer: Lina OrtizMusic provided by Monstercat:=====================================Intro: Nitro Fun - Cheat Codes / monstercat Outro: Fractal - Atrium / monstercatinstinct

When Craig Foster talks about artificial intelligence, he begins with scale. Pax8, the enterprise marketplace where he serves as CFO, connects vendors like Microsoft and CrowdStrike with 43,000 managed service providers. Those MSPs, he tells us, serve between 700,000 and 800,000 small and midsize businesses worldwide.Against that backdrop, Foster describes how AI is reshaping both internal operations and external opportunities. Inside Pax8, teams are experimenting across functions—from customer support to accounting—to automate what was once manual. The company, he tells us, has set a target “to do 20% more with 20% less,” relying on AI tools that are already available. Efficiency gains are not hypothetical; they are part of the current planning cycle.Externally, Foster sees what he calls “agentic marketplaces” emerging—ecosystems where AI modules act as labor components. Vendors are already building such agents, and Pax8 is designing its own. “We're a marketplace,” he tells us, “so we need to incorporate those different… AI components and enable our downstream clients for efficiency.” He believes this wave, unlike earlier technology cycles, is reaching SMBs with unusual speed.The finance leader is also watching economics evolve in real time. Data aggregated across Pax8's network shows strong interest, but pricing remains unsettled. Foster compares today's uncertainty to the early days of API marketplaces, when usage-based models became standard. The question now, he tells us, is how to split value between provider and customer—whether by consumption, per interaction, or shared outcomes. “That's probably the biggest challenge in industry right now,” Foster says.

After a flood of AI art was seen at Atlanta's Dragon Con, the Fan X team in SLC has decided to prohibit vendors from bringing in and selling  computer generated art entirely. Greg and Holly discuss this and more about their favorite spooky flicks with Host of KSL Movie Show, Andy Farnsworth and Movie Critic Rachel Wagner.

AI is everywhere. Vendors pitch it, consultants hype it, but how do dealers actually make it work inside the store? In this episode of the Dealership Fixit Podcast, Jacob Berry sits down with brent wees, a certified AI trainer, strategist, and founder of IdeaMeetPlan, to cut through the noise and get practical.Brent shares why most dealers overthink AI, how to start small with quick wins in sales, service, and marketing, and why creating the right prompts and agents can turn AI into a real teammate for your business. If you've been wondering how to speed up your store, save time, and finally understand what AI can do for your business, this conversation is your roadmap.Visit Brent's site: https://www.ideameetplan.com/ai-workshops/Connect with Brent: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brentwees

On this episode, Pete and Julie share their POV's and insights on a rush of HR tech marketplace updates and activity making headlines to wrap up the summer months of 2025!  Pete and Julie share their thoughts on recent acquisitions, product announcements, and news from vendors across HCM, EOR, recruiting, fintech, and more.  Vendors mentioned in the episode include Dayforce, Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, DailyPay, Chime, Deel, Coupa, Flowise AI, Paradox, and SmartRecruiters. Links to stories mentioned: MIT Study: The GenAI Divide, State of AI in Business 2025:  https://mlq.ai/media/quarterly_decks/v0.1_State_of_AI_in_Business_2025_Report.pdf Story on Super Mom, Super Commuter Rachel Kaur: https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/indian-origin-racheal-kaur-flies-to-work-malaysia-supercommuting-13862272.html Connect with the show:    LinkedIn:  http://linkedin.com/company/hr-payroll-2-0  X: @HRPayroll2_0 @PeteTiliakos @JulieFer_HR BlueSky: @hrpayroll2o.bsky.social  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HRPAYROLL2_0

Welcome to Day 22 of the Double Your Profit SeriesThe go-to series for contractors, home service owners, and small business entrepreneurs. Today, we're diving into one of the fastest ways to improve margins without cutting jobs, service quality, or growth: Vendor Negotiations. If you had to find 10% savings in your business today, where would you look first?That's right — your vendors.

In today's episode I chat with Clare Saum, Marketing Director at Discovery Park of America about an exciting upcoming event: Pediatric Day. This day connects families with a wealth of local resources and services to support children's health, learning and well-being.• When: Saturday, Sept. 13, 2025, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.• Where: Discovery Park of America (Union City, Tennessee)• What's happening: Vendors and organizations will be located throughout the park with information and fun, hands-on activities for families. Children can pick up a passport, collect a sticker from each organization and receive a fun activity prize when completed.• Admission highlight: Thanks to our sponsor, Pediatric Place of Union City, and Dr John Bates admission for children ages 17 and under is covered that day.Key messages• Follow Discovery Park of America on Facebook and Instagram for updates @discoveryparkuc

Topic Segment - What's new at Black Hat? We're coming live from hacker summer camp 2025, so it seemed appropriate to share what we've seen and heard so far at this year's event. Adrian's on vacation, so this episode is featuring Jackie McGuire and Ayman Elsawah! News Segment Then, in the enterprise security news, Tons of funding! SentinelOne picks up an AI security company weeks after Palo Alto closes the Protect AI deal Vendors shove AI agents into everything they've got Why SOC analysts ignore your playbooks NVIDA pinkie swears to China: no back doors! ChatGPT was allowing shared chat sessions to be indexed and crawled by search engines like Google Who is gonna secure all this vibe code? Who is gonna triage all these hallucinated bug reports? Perplexity and Cloudflare duke it out When you try to scrub your shady past off the Internet, it might just make things worse. All that and more, on this episode of Enterprise Security Weekly. Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/esw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-419

Can we have a real talk about AI agents?A new Gartner study showed that more than 95% of companies pushing AI agents..... aren't. Vendors, startups, Saas companies pivoting and savvy marketers are shoving Agents down our throats like hot food in a buffet line. But guess what? Most of it is shin marketing. Or lies. Want to know the real landscape around AI agents, minus the B.S.? Good. Then join us as we cut through the fluff. Newsletter: Sign up for our free daily newsletterMore on this Episode: Episode PageJoin the discussion: Thoughts on this? Join the convo and connect with other AI leaders on LinkedIn.Upcoming Episodes: Check out the upcoming Everyday AI Livestream lineupWebsite: YourEverydayAI.comEmail The Show: info@youreverydayai.comConnect with Jordan on LinkedInTopics Covered in This Episode:AI Agent Hype Versus RealityGartner Study Exposes Agent WashingDefining True AI Agents vs WorkflowsPrevalence of Fake AI Agents Market$4 Billion AI Agent Investment RisksMajor Tech Companies' AI Agent StrategiesAgentic AI Adoption Failure RatesNarrow vs General AI Agent Use CasesSpotting Fake Agents in Enterprise SoftwareThe Importance of AI Literacy for AgentsTimestamps:00:00 "AI Insights for Business Leaders"05:51 Future AI Agents: Definition and Potential06:58 "AI Workflow vs. True Agent"11:34 "Agent Tech's Uncertain Future"14:53 AI Dominates Decision-Making by 202818:15 "Beware AI Agents Hype"24:18 The Chaos of Undefined AI Agents25:31 "Agentic AI FOMO in Business"31:16 AI Training Essential for Teams32:12 Debunking AI Agent MythsKeywords:AI agent, AI agents, agentic AI, agentic AI marketing, AI workflow, pre built automation, chatbot, automation tools, robotics process automation, computer vision, large language model, agent washing, Gartner study, generative AI, AI-powered workflow, agent capabilities, virtual browser, virtual desktop, command line tool, Terminal, AI powered marketing automation, Microsoft Copilot Studio, Google agent space, OpenAI agent mode, Anthropic Claude, Meta superintelligence lab, Salesforce agent force, agentic model, O3, Gemini 2.5 Pro, startup AI agents, narrow AI agent, general AI agent, autonomous agentic AI, enterprise software, investment scam, business decision makers, C-suite, AI strategy, technical reality vs marketing hype, technology adoption failure, FOMO AI investment, AI literacy, AI-powered business processes, scalable AI solutions, narrow task-specific agent, Aqua hire, agent definition, advanced reasoning, planning capabilities, memory systems, adaptive AI, context awareness, workflow automation, business productivity AI, agent integration, AI investment trends, enterprise AI adoptionSend Everyday AI and Jordan a text message. (We can't reply back unless you leave contact info) Ready for ROI on GenAI? Go to youreverydayai.com/partner