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A Glimpse Into the Future: What Sales Will Look Like 5 Years From Now
A great article on the evolving world of sales. Aivars Lode avantce.
By Tom Searcy
What will the future bring for sales professionals?
Sales expert Tom Searcy looks into his crystal ball to share his predictions for what trends will dominate the market in 2018.
One of the responsibilities of leaders is to help their teams not only plan for the future, but anticipate it. I spend a great deal of my time helping business leaders see that future in the larger market context beyond just their own industry. Here's a small glimpse into what I believe the next five years will look like in the world of selling:
1. There will be fewer traditional sales people
The market forces of digitization, mobilization, and purchasing governance are going to dramatically change the ways in which buying and selling occur. This will transform the role of the traditional sales person and diminish the need for that position. That does not mean that there will be fewer jobs per se in the world of revenue generation, but those jobs will be different than that from what we now call "sales." Here's why:
- Less prospecting--Traditional direct prospecting methods will have lower yields to the point that sales people performing direct prospecting will become cost prohibitive.
- Fewer client meetings--Prospects and clients will have less time and interest in considering new vendors and going through the traditional face-to-face presentation cycle for considering providers.
- More structured purchases--The procurement process, purchasing department, and online auctions will continue and expand in use to include smaller size contracts.
- Disintermediation--Buyers will seek additional ways to go direct to providers and manufacturers, diminishing the need for and use of manufacturer reps, dealers, and distributors.
- Leveling the playing field--Buyers will turn more items that have been considered value add into minimum requirements thereby decreasing the need for involved explanations and comparative analysis.
The net of these trends will be fewer sales people on the road calling on clients directly.
2. The focus of buyers will finally shift from price to integrated outcomes
This may sound like good news at first, but, the reasons that this will occur need consideration.
- Competitive pricing exercises will have squeezed out what is available in margin discounting. This means that other than spot quoting, more products and services will be treated as commodities and will thus be included in structured purchase processes.
- Commodities that have standardized COGS will be "traded" not bought and sold. This means that the activity of quoting will replace the more traditional roles of sales people who provide needs assessment, solution matching, and price justification.
3. The roles in the revenue generation chain will become more specialized.
These roles will include, but not be limited to:
--Although not titled as such, this will be the role of many of the people with sales titles. Their real role will be to facilitate quoting of commodities and near commodities in the roles titled "Account Management," "Inside Sales" or "Customer Service."
--Solution architects will continue to be in high-demand for opportunities in which the prospect has been qualified for a diagnostic session. Customization and tailoring of pre-packaged and modular solutions will be the choice for companies who want to limit the risk and cost of completely built-from-scratch approaches.
--This function of collaborative coordination between customers and providers including all of the supply chain management, enterprise resource planning, and logistics will grow in importance for the larger contracts in the market.
--This area will continue to evolve as the technologies adapt to the filters and barriers organizations put between buyers and your revenue generators. Social media, outsourced meeting makers, earned media, and other mechanisms are entering and developing in the market for the single purpose of getting higher up the food chain in the buying organization as a way to bypass the structured purchase.
Urgency or perceived urgency will trump process. When clients have real problems in a hurry, they will eschew all formality to solve a problem now. Companies that are positioned effectively for rapid response in the marketplace will be able to capitalize on opportunities.
Evaluation of prospects will continue to drive fast-growth company decisions. Smart companies do what they do best, and avoid doing things that will stretch them beyond their capabilities. An effective Target Filter will be crucial to continue to sort through the dearth of leads and glean only the high-value opportunities.
Guarantees and proven speed to results will still earn a higher price than similar commitments over longer time periods. Companies in the market continue to move closer to Just-in-Time mentalities around need satisfaction, and JIT has moved closer to "NOW" than ever before.
Communication skills at all levels will be valued as companies align their business development organization with the prospect's purchasing organization.
Effective and efficient written and verbal communication is a greater requirement when other differentiators have been commoditized.
Trust will still be more important than bona fides. At the end of the day, buyers have to trust the company that they are going to work with because it is the buying group's collective careers that are on the line if they get it wrong.
4. Compensation for sales people will change significantly
As the partitioning of the sales process and subsequent specialization of roles occurs, the commission-based compensation for selling will also change. This will mean a move to less commission-only and high-commission compensation models and more of a salary and bonus model with compensation more broadly shared by all of the participants.
5. What will not change
In the world of sales, much of the above is heresy. However, when I look at the companies who are growing in the top 10 percent of their industries, many of the changes described have been embraced and implemented. This picture of the future is incomplete, of course. It is also not absolute. There will continue to be direct prospecting efforts, just less. There will continue to be traditional sales people and approaches, just fewer.
Posted by Avantce News at 10:29 AM No comments:
Big Data's Biggest Challenge? Convincing People NOT to Trust Their Judgment
Will big data make decisions for you? Aivars Lode avantce
by Andrew McAfee | 8:00 AM December 9, 2013
Here's a simple rule for the second machine age we're in now: as the amount of data goes up, the importance of human judgment should go down.
The previous statement reads like heresy, doesn't it? Management education today is largely abouteducating for judgment—developing future leaders' pattern-matching abilities, usually via exposure to a lot of case studies and other examples, so that they'll be able to confidently navigate the business landscape. And whether or not we're in b-school, we're told to trust our guts and instincts, and that (especially after we gain experience) we can make accurate assessments in a blink.
This is the most harmful misconception in the business world today (maybe in the world full stop). As I've written here before, human intuition is real, but it's also really faulty. Human parole boardsdo much worse than simple formulas at determining which prisoners should be let back on the streets. Highly trained pathologists don't do as good a job as image analysis software at diagnosing breast cancer. Purchasing professionals do worse than a straightforward algorithm predicting which suppliers will perform well. America's top legal scholars were outperformed by a data-driven decision rule at predicting a year's worth of Supreme Court case votes.
I could go on and on, but I'll leave the final word here to psychologist Paul Meehl, who started the research on human "experts" versus algorithms almost 60 years ago. At the end of his career, he summarized, "There is no controversy in social science which shows such a large body of qualitatively diverse studies coming out so uniformly in the same direction as this one. When you are pushing over 100 investigations, predicting everything from the outcome of football games to the diagnosis of liver disease, and when you can hardly come up with a half dozen studies showing even a weak tendency in favor of the clinician, it is time to draw a practical conclusion."
The practical conclusion is that we should turn many of our decisions, predictions, diagnoses, and judgments—both the trivial and the consequential—over to the algorithms. There's just no controversy any more about whether doing so will give us better results.
When presented with this evidence, a contemporary expert's typical response is something like "I know how important data and analysis are. That's why I take them into account when I'm making my decisions." This sounds right, but it's actually just about 180 degrees wrong. Here again, the research is clear: When experts apply their judgment to the output of a data-driven algorithm or mathematical model (in other words, when they second-guess it), they generally do worse than the algorithm alone would. As sociologist Chris Snijders puts it, "What you usually see is [that] the judgment of the aided experts is somewhere in between the model and the unaided expert. So the experts get better if you give them the model. But still the model by itself performs better."
Things get a lot better when we flip this sequence around and have the expert provide input to the model, instead of vice versa. When experts' subjective opinions are quantified and added to an algorithm, its quality usually goes up. So pathologists' estimates of how advanced a cancer is could be included as an input to the image-analysis software, the forecasts of legal scholars about how the Supremes will vote on an upcoming case will improve the model's predictive ability, and so on. As Ian Ayres puts it in his great book Supercrunchers, "Instead of having the statistics as a servant to expert choice, the expert becomes a servant of the statistical machine."
Of course, this is not going to be an easy switch to make in most organizations. Most of the people making decisions today believe they're pretty good at it, certainly better than a soulless and stripped-down algorithm, and they also believe that taking away much of their decision-making authority will reduce their power and their value. The first of these two perceptions is clearly wrong; the second one a lot less so.
So how, if at all, will this great inversion of experts and algorithms come about? How will our organizations, economies, and societies get better results by being more truly data-driven? It's going to take transparency, time, and consequences: transparency to make clear how much worse "expert" judgment is, time to let this news diffuse and sink in, and consequences so that we care enough about bad decisions to go through the wrenching change needed to make better ones.
We've had all three of these in the case of parole boards. As Ayres puts it, "In the last twenty-five years, eighteen states have replaced their parole systems with sentencing guidelines. And those states that retain parole have shifted their systems to rely increasingly on [algorithmic] risk assessments of recidivism."
The consequences of bad parole decisions are hugely consequential to voters, so parole boards where human judgment rules are thankfully on their way out. In the business world it will be competition, especially from truly data-driven rivals, that brings the consequences to inferior decision-makers. I don't know how quickly it'll happen, but I'm very confident that data-dominated firms are going to take market share, customers, and profits away from those who are still relying too heavily on their human experts.
Europe needs data protection, not data protectionism
95% of the planets data has been created in the last 2 years. Aivars Lode avantce.
By: Neelie Kroes
A strong and trusted cloud, with clear rules – the cloud isn't going away, so we better make it safe
A culture of open data and open access to scientific results – we can produce so much more value from data when we give the original data away
A shared commitment to cybersecurity – we need better capabilities, a culture that shares responsibility for this problem, and more cooperation between countries and companies
The digital revolution is now driven by data. The Economist and others have called "big data" the next industrial revolution, and for good reason.
The next generation of innovation in manufacturing, healthcare, academic research or public services will be possible because we find new ways to harness and learn from data. Just as machines started to augment or replace our muscle power 200 years ago, machine analysis can now also supplement our thinking.
With that opportunity to do more, make more and avoid more mistakes, why is so much of the world lurching into a fear-driven debate about personal data and online surveillance?
The answer is obvious. Big data is a challenge to our comfort zone. Today we produce more data every two days than all humans did up until 2000. The scale of online surveillance is greater than many people ever realized. And it is a surprise to learn that even allies spy on each other. In this respect, I understand people's fears.
But let's also be mature about data.
We should not sit like rabbits in the headlights in the face of scandals, or allow trust in the Internet to collapse. You don't fight unacceptable surveillance by shouting or through a European Surveillance Agency (I explain why in this interview with France 24 – fast forward to 13 minutes). You fight it by funding research into secure systems (as the EU is doing with itsHorizon 2020 programme), supporting new standards and transparent contracts for data services, teaching people that in the online world you either pay with data or cash for a service, and putting in place legal requirements for companies and governments to take cyber risks seriously.
That said, proper and clever use of data requires a lot more than data protection laws. If your home or office has been burgled, you don't just call a lawyer: you get a better lock.
Many great data innovations don't rely on personal data at all. Translation technology likeSysTran and Google Translate are good examples, and they remind us that data shouldn't stop at borders. I support data protection not data protectionism.
Let's acknowledge that people won't use what they don't trust. And from that starting point of high security, let's see data as an opportunity. It is an opportunity to make our lives easier and grow our economies.
Europe and the world need:
I want Europe to be connected, competitive, open and secure. That won't happen if we run away from data
Software Deals Likely, MKM Says; Lists Potential Buyers, Targets
Software Deals Likely. Aivars Lode avantce
2013-11-18 16:29:13.791 GMT
By Beth Mellor Nov. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Software may see more deals as conditions are ripe for a new round of consolidation, MKM analyst Israel Hernandez says. * Consolidation driven by weak organic growth facing cash- rich, large tech cos., need to address shifts to cloud computing, SaaS, big data, software-defined networking * Expects most deals to fall in $1b-$5b market cap range, though cannot rule out larger deals * Potential buyers in sector include IBM, Cisco, Oracle, SAP, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Intel, Microsoft, Juniper * Potential targets include Citrix, Red Hat, Informatica, Tibco, Qlik Technologies, Teradata, Check Point Software, F5 Networks, Fortinet * Also sees recent security IPOs as potential targets, including Imperva, Palo Alto Networks, Proofpoint, Qualys, FireEye, Barracuda Networks * NOTE: In July, FBR said security stocks likely to see more consolidation after Cisco's acquisition of Sourcefire
Germany: SAP's software licensee conditions are INVALID
SAP licenses are invalid in a court Germany found. Aivars Lode avantce
By | OUT-LAW.COM 5th December 2013 08:31
Court rules they're 'contrary to EU principles' after complaint from reseller
A court in Germany has ruled that terms that software giant SAP stipulated in its software licensing contracts were invalid after finding that they ran contrary to EU copyright principles.
The regional court of Hamburg upheld complaints made about SAP's licensing terms by German software reseller Susensoftware GmbH. Susensoftware had claimed that SAP had engaged in unfair business practices by deploying licensing terms that unfairly restricted the reselling of SAP software.
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Munich-based intellectual property law expert Igor Barabash of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said that the Hamburg court had referred to a decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in a dispute between rival software providers Oracle and UsedSoft before determining that SAP's licensing terms were unduly discriminatory.
In a statement sent to Out-Law.com, SAP said that the resale of used software would still be subject to conditions. The company did not comment on whether it plans to appeal against the ruling.
Businesses wishing to use original SAP products are required to agree to licensing terms set by the software developer. The licensing terms at dispute in the ruling gave SAP the right to prevent the transfer of a software licence between an initial licensee and a third party in certain circumstances.
Under the terms, initial licensees of SAP software needed SAP's consent before they could transfer its licensing rights to a third party. The third parties had to provide a written declaration that they would use SAP's software in line with the licensing terms SAP had set out. SAP reserved a right to refuse the transfer of software from the initial licensee to a third party if it deemed the use of its software by the new user to be contrary to its legitimate interest.
However, the regional court in Hamburg invalidated the clause (ruling in German) after ruling that it was not compatible with EU copyright principles. Under the so called principle of exhaustion software owners generally lose the right to control the distribution of their copyrighted computer programs following the 'first sale' of that material within the trading bloc, "with the exception of the right to control further rental of the program or a copy thereof".
SAP said that press reports in Germany following the ruling had wrongly given the impression that SAP customers could transfer its software without any restrictions. It said initial licensees would still be prohibited from transferring only some of the licenses they bought from SAP to third parties. Uniform splitting of volume based licenses purchased is banned, in line with the CJEU's ruling in the Oracle and UsedSoft case, it said.
A second clause contained in SAP's licensing agreement required users of the software to inform SAP if they were using its software in a way which exceeded what was provided for under that agreement. Under the terms, businesses were obliged to purchase additional licenses from SAP to cover this additional use.
The regional court in Hamburg invalidated that clause too on the basis that it required buyers of SAP software to acquire additional licenses exclusively from SAP and not from third party resellers such as Susensoftware. The clause was unduly discriminatory towards buyers of SAP software, it ruled.
However, SAP said that, in practice, the company had only ever applied the clause to initial licensees and not to third party acquirers of the software.
"The Regional Court of Hamburg clearly refers to the CJEU case in its reasoning and says that the two clauses in the terms and conditions are unduly discriminating against SAP customers and are not in line with the decision in the Oracle and UsedSoft case," Barabash said.
In July 2012, the CJEU ruled that software owners exhaust their rights to control the resale of their copyrighted products after they have sold them within the EU, regardless of whether the sale concerns a physical product or one downloaded from the internet. It said that, as a result, the original purchaser of the software can sell on 'used' copies of the software to others but that they must delete any copy they have made for their own use when they make that sale.
However, the Court said that the original purchaser cannot divide up the number of licenses for the software they buy from the copyright owner and then sell on the right to use those licences that they do not need.
"The interesting thing about the new decision from Hamburg is that it is not a software developer that was initiating legal action to protect its software market through eliminating used license resellers, as was the case in the Oracle and UsedSoft case," Barabash said. "The positions of the attacker and the defendant are switched. It was a used software reseller claiming that a software developer was violating general copyright principles and putting resellers at a great disadvantage through the use of invalid and restricting terms and conditions."
Barabash said that the German Act Against Unfair Business Practices allows businesses to bring claims against other companies even where there is no direct legal relationship between the parties.
The expert predicted that SAP would file an appeal to the court's ruling in the hope that, even if the original ruling is upheld, the higher court will provide more detailed guidance on the admissibility and inadmissibility of restrictions in licensing agreements.
"It has been unclear until now, in light of the CJEU's ruling in the Oracle and UsedSoft case, whether there were loopholes software developers could use to avoid their licensing terms being affected by the judgment in that case," Barabash said. "It seems, however, that German courts will look to implement that judgment in a very strict way in a manner that will benefit resellers."
50% of angels regret investments made this year
Just because there is a big market does not mean you will get it. Angels regret their investments! Aivars Lode avantce
Rebecca Grant
Dec. 4 - 5, 2013
Angel investors invest approximately $20 billion into 60,000 companies a year, but a recent survey shows that 46% regretted making an investment in 2013.
The data comes from Worthworm, a company that uses analytics to "take the guess work" out of "premoney" startup valuations. It designed its tools for entrepreneurs and angel investors to smooth the pitching and negotiation process.
Worthworm's survey examined the attitudes and outlooks of American angel investors in an attempt to find out what they like and dislike.
"While we often hear about pitching angel investors, we don't often get insight into their top reasons for investing and what turns them off," Worthworm cofounder Alan Lobock said. "What entrepreneurs really need to hear is what will end a meeting with a potential investor before it even starts. Our research clearly shows that angels believe the majority of entrepreneurs do not do their homework before stepping through the door."
A sample of 100 angel investors was asked why the invest, how many investments they regret, the top reason for that regret, the most important factors in a funding proposal, and more.
The No. 1 reason (by far) that angels regretted investments was due to a financial projection that as overly optimistic.
Startup valuations have soared to the highest levels in a decade.Pitchbook found in its recent report on venture capital trends that valuations for seed-stage companies have increased by 63% since 2008. Inflated valuations are frustrating for angel investors, who essentially get less bang for their buck.
One of the challenges here is that early stage valuations are hard to peg.
Startups like to pretend their companies are worth $12 million just because they went through Y Combinator or because the "total addressable market" is a gazillion dollars. The reality is that in the early days, before major traction or revenue, valuations are a lot of smoke, mirrors, and wishful thinking.
Worthworm's survey found that high premoney valuations, bad fit between investor and startup management, and flawed strategies were the main sources of regret.
Forty-nine percent of respondents cited sustainable competitive advantage as the most important factor in a funding proposal, followed closely by relevant experience of the cofounders. Their biggest frustrations with proposals were overly optimistic financial projections, and unrealistic premoney valuations.
Angel investments are on the rise, but they are still highly risky.The odds of a positive return are less than 50 percent, and angels are often motivated by factors other than money.
Investors would basically prefer if entrepreneurs didn't blow a lot of hot air. Considering that angel-funded startups are significantly more likely to survive at least four years and raise additional financing, its in entrepreneurs' best interest to be honest and back their claims up with real information.
Amazon, Facebook, Google give Cisco's switches the COLD shoulder
Even Cisco is being disrupted by amazon google and facebook. Aivars Lode avantce
By | Jack Clark 18th November 2013 13:43
Microsoft and cloudy pals go DIY as networking giant's stock plummets
Networking giant Cisco lost around $10bn in market value last week as investors sold out in response to weak earnings and poor growth projections. Worse yet, some of its biggest customers – from Amazon and Google to social network giant Facebook – are implementing technologies that will allow them to reduce their dependence on the networking giant.
This spells some serious trouble ahead for the company with a shift in how some of its biggest customers buy networking equipment.
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Meanwhile, spending on mobile devices is rising at the expense of traditional PC purchases, which in turn encourages the use of apps operated by or hosted on platforms owned by these companies – and they don't like Cisco.
Switching up
Amazon Web Services, for instance, is building its own networking switches so it doesn't have to rely on the "black box" technology produced by companies such as Cisco, Amazon's chief technology officer Werner Vogels confirmed to The Register.
"It is clear that networking has for a very long time been a black box. They don't even come with APIs," he explains. "This is the history that forced us to really look at way networks are laid out and build [devices] and do [it] ourselves. Also the cost – everything else in our data centre [is] more efficient."
Google is thought to have been operating its own custom networking gear as well for several years, and has recently loaded its own custom software-defined networking technology onto its wide-area networks. In September, 2012, a mysterious "Pluto" switch meant for Google turned up at a branch office in Iowa due to a shipping error.
Social web giant Facebook is also fleeing the company by working with a cross-industry group to develop a specification for an "open" switch that will be made by a low-cost original device manufacturer like Quanta or Wiwynn.
What unites these customers is that they are part of a new wave of companies that have grown sufficiently large that they have a motivation to control everything in their supply chain: and control is something that Cisco always tries to keep for itself so it can extract lucrative service fees from punters.
Cisco, and contemporaries Juniper and Brocade, have built closed switches and routers for decades to help companies shuttle around data center traffic. They have closely guarded the inner features of their technology, and every release with it brings a wealth of new features for their platforms that requires a legion of people armed with certifications and arcane experience to manage.
Economies of scale...
Now, some of the world's biggest data centre operators are running away from the traditional companies, and going to Asian device manufacturers for low-cost gear designed by their own teams.
Whenever we've asked Cisco about this looming threat, the company typically argues that these people have reached a scale that they no longer form the majority of Cisco's target market.
There are two critical problems with this market: these companies, especially Amazon Web Services and Google via Compute Engine, are cannibalising on-premise IT spend as companies move to their compute clouds, and by pioneering these new approaches the fleeing firms will create an ecosystem of accessible, low-cost Cisco-beating kit.
In Cisco-land, all businesses need pricey networks to deal with a deluge of devices and "the internet of things". All of these businesses operate their own networks, and will need glossy equipment for complex tasks.
In reality, many businesses IT departments are being hollowed out by cost-cutting and cloud shifts, and small businesses may not operate any hardware at all. Large enterprises, meanwhile, are growing to the point that they can now command the economies of scale that let them do their own hardware – Goldman Sachs, for instance, is a member of Facebook's open hardware scheme.
There's also the recent issue of revelations around NSA spying, which may severely impact Cisco's ability to sell to governments that feel the US may want to compromise them. By example, Cisco's sales to China have been plummeting.
In fact, the only cloud market we can see growing as a consequence of all of these shifts are those operated by telcos. Cisco will continue making wads and wads of cash here, but will it be enough to replace the hollowing out of the market as a consequence of a major shift to mobile devices and clouds? Doubtful.
Cisco may also say there are some markets that will never use the cloud due to security concerns, and will have a need for the types of serviceable kit operated by Chambers & Co. That may very well be true, but the awarding of a $600m private cloud contract for the CIA to Amazon indicates that even the most secure workloads may shift to these new IT suppliers.
All these factors seem to favor the custom networking schemes of the larger providers, and where large providers go the rest of the world tends to follow, as we have seen in the widespread adoption of Linux, lower-cost storage hardware, scale-out systems like 'NoSQL' databases and the Hadoop analytics stack, and others.
'Networking is so ridiculously expensive' – Amazon exec
Clearly, Cisco will be around for a long time, but resentment has built up against the company and its contemporaries like Juniper and Brocade for maintaining high prices and high service fees at a time when the cost of storage and servers has plummeted.
Now, people working at places like Amazon are lighting the blue touch paper that could blow up core elements of Cisco's business.
"Networking is so ridiculously expensive... Look at the ratio of all servers, networking and everything - server cost is going down very rapidly and networking cost is frozen in time," says Amazon Web Services distinguished engineer James Hamilton. "What that means is ratio of costs for networking are skyrocketing."
For this reason, Amazon is building its own networking gear and software. Since then, "the price has phenomenally changed. We're now on the right glide path – it's now on a Moore's law path," he said.
Both Amazon and Facebook have also been frustrated by the slow turnaround time for getting requested features put into products. This, and undocumented features playing havoc in its facilities, motivated Facebook to start an Open Compute Project scheme to design new switches.
"Nothing in the data center stack should be immune from [the] impact of open source," says Facebook's hardware and supply chief Frank Frankovsky. "There was already a lot of pent-up demand for something like this."
Microsoft, also, has lifted its networking control features within Azure up and away from its underlying switches. Though we don't know whether Redmond is building its own hardware, we do know that it's trying to reduce its software dependency (and licensing cost) on Cisco.
Cisco's response to all of this has been the creation of "Application Centric Infrastructure" which will closely couple hardware and software together in a proprietary, obscured manner. One Cisco employee said you could possibly term the tech "hardware-defined networking".
Since some of the industry's most advanced customers – ones who deal with problems that appear at scale years before the rest of the world – are going in the opposite direction, seeking freedom where Cisco seeks control, we suspect Cisco's strategy may be borne of the necessity to support shareholders rather than punters. ®
How Munich rejected Steve Ballmer and kicked Microsoft out of the city
Open source the begining is here. Aivars Lode avantce
By Nick Heath
"Our main goal was to become independent." Peter Hofmann, project lead
Peter Hofmann speaks about Munich's open source migration at the Linux Tag conference in Berlin.
Image: Stefan Krempl
"If you're staying with Microsoft you're getting more and more overwhelmed to update and change your whole IT infrastructure." Peter Hofmann Making sense of the IT zoo
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer came to Munich and made the case for sticking with Microsoft software.
Image: James Martin/CNET
"We planned a slow migration, carrying out the migration and the development of our LiMux client in parallel." Peter Hofmann
Munich focused on The IT Evolution as the logo for its custom Linux platform.
Retooling for Linux
This screenshot of LiMux shows the major customization that Munich has done to Ubuntu.
"We thought from the start we would have other organisations follow us but it's really not easy." Peter Hofmann Cost
Freedom to work
Victory Gate is a symbol of the City of Munich. Its Linux migration declared victory in October 2013.
Image: iStockphoto/tzeiler
"We are using the community way of support." Peter Hofmann What does the future hold?
Picturesque Munich is regularly ranked as one of the world's most liveable cities.
Image: iStockphoto/Björn Kindler
Breaking up with Microsoft is hard to do. Just ask Peter Hofmann, the man leading the City of Munich's project to ditch Windows and Office in favour of open source alternatives.
The project took close to a decade to complete, has seen the city wrestle with legal uncertainties and earned Munich a visit from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, whose pleas to the mayor of Germany's third largest city not to switch fell on deaf ears.
Munich says the move to open source has saved it more than €10m, a claim contested by Microsoft, yet Hofmann says the point of making the switch was never about money, but about freedom.
"If you are only doing a migration because you think it saves you money there's always somebody who tells you afterwards that you didn't calculate it properly," he said.
"That was the experience of a lot of open source-based projects that have failed," Hofmann noted. They were only cost-driven and when the organisation got more money or somebody else said 'The costs are wrong' then the main reason for doing it had broken away. That was never the main goal within the City of Munich. Our main goal was to become independent."
Munich is used to forging its own path. The city runs its own schools and is one of the few socialist, rather than conservative governments, in Bavaria.
Becoming independent meant Munich freeing itself from closed, proprietary software, more specifically the Microsoft Windows NT operating system and the Microsoft Office suite, and a host of other locked-down technologies the city relied on in 2002.
The decision to ditch Microsoft was also born of necessity. In 2002 the council knew official support for Windows NT, the OS used on 14,000 staff machines at the council, would soon run out. The council ordered a study of the merits of switching to XP and Office versus a GNU/Linux OS, OpenOffice and other free software.
As well as being tied to Windows upgrades, Munich faced becoming more tightly locked into the Microsoft ecosystem with each passing year, Hofmann said.
"Windows has developed from a pure PC-centred operating system, like Windows 3.11 was, to a whole infrastructure. If you're staying with Microsoft you're getting more and more overwhelmed to update and change your whole IT infrastructure [to fit with Microsoft]," according to Hofmann, whether that be introducing a Microsoft Active Directory system or running a key management server.
Free software was ruled the better choice by Munich's ruling body, principally because it would free the council from dependence on any one vendor and future-proof the council's technology stack via open protocols, interfaces and data formats.
The prospect of such a high profile loss, and other organisations following Munich's lead, spurred Microsoft to mount a last ditch campaign to win the authority back. A senior sales executive at the time told general managers in EMEA "under NO circumstances lose against Linux." Steve Ballmer himself took time out of a skiing holiday to make a revised offer in March 2003, followed two months later by Microsoft knocking millions of Euros off the price of sticking with Windows and Office.
The lobbying failed to change Munich's mind, and in June 2004 the council gave the go-ahead to begin the migration from NT and Office 97/2000 to a Linux-based OS, a custom-version of OpenOffice, as well as a variety of free software, such as the Mozilla Firefox browser, Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail client and the Gimp photo editing software. It became known as the LiMux project, after the name for the custom Linux OS the council was rolling out.
Nine years is a long time for a desktop migration by anyone's standards, but the LiMux project was always going to be more than a simple transition.
Originally planned as a soft roll out that would be complete by 2011, the project was extended when it became clear that the migration to free software would be more challenging than first thought.
The complexity came down to the way IT was managed at Munich: twenty two different units handling IT for different parts of the council and each with differences in the Windows clients and other software they used, varying patch levels and no common directory, user, system or hardware management.
"[The council] had 22 different units with their own IT, with totally different kinds of systems for the networking, operating and user directories. It was all a big zoo," said Hofmann, adding there was no detailed overview of the hardware each user relied upon or the software they needed to do their job.
Without a clear picture of its IT estate, Munich found it was taking too long to deal with unexpected problems thrown up when rolling out LiMux.
"If you set up an old PC with the new system you'd start recognising 'Whoops, that isn't there or there's hardware that needs to be reconfigured' and at that stage that's clearly too late. You have to know what's going on before you roll it out."
Munich chose to standardise processes for capturing each department's infrastructure and requirements and for testing and release management, at the cost of adding several years to the project's completion date.
"That took a large amount of time to get over these heterogeneous systems," said Hofmann.
A single unit was put in charge of maintaining and supporting the LiMux client, as well as implementing and providing common tools for user and system management.
The nature of the project had changed, from a desktop migration to cleaning up much of Munich's IT infrastructure and the way it was managed – a move in keeping with the council's motto for the project: "Quality over time".
In spite of the delay in completing the project, Hofmann said the authority had always planned to take its time.
"We never planned to carry out a big bang migration. From the start we planned a slow migration, carrying out the migration and the development of our LiMux client in parallel."
The time taken to complete the project is one of many reasons that Microsoft has attacked Munich's move to LiMux. A report criticising the project, produced by HP for Microsoft, claimed the Redmond software giant could migrate 50 to 500 desktop PCs per day if upgrading to a Microsoft OS and office, suite compared to the eight per day it said was being achieved under the LiMux project.
However, by Hofmann's reckoning, that slow and steady migration is one of the reasons the project has largely managed to stay within its budget with minimal disruption. The project finished within budget in October 2013, with more than 14,800 staff migrated to using Limux and more than 15,000 to OpenOffice.
A myriad technical challenges emerged as Munich tried to reconfigure an infrastructure littered with proprietary formats and protocols to play nicely with LiMux and free software.
Large chunks of the software used by the council were built using Microsoft technologies. For example, a sizeable proportion of Microsoft Office macros were written in Microsoft's programming language Visual Basic, while other departments were tied to Internet Explorer by a dependence on ActiveX. This preponderance of lock-in interfaces was described as "awful" in 2010 by then deputy head of the LiMux project Florian Schiessl.
As would be expected, the council has had to shell out a chunk of change on getting applications to work on LiMux – a custom-build of the Ubuntu flavor of Linux – some €774,000 as of last year.
At the time the migration started, the council used about 300 common office software programs, such as web browsers and e-mail clients, and 170 specialised apps tailored to different roles performed by the council. These specialised apps ranged from large-scale IT systems down to macros and templates linked to Microsoft Office.
Understandably, migrating these apps to run on the LiMux OS is one of the areas where choosing LiMux over Windows cost Munich, with the work on migrating apps to LiMux costing €200,000 more than porting them to a newer version of Windows.
Offsetting that is the estimated €6.8 million savings the council says it had made as of last year from not having to licence a new Microsoft OS and office suite.
The lion's share of Munich's applications, about 90 per cent, are accessible via LiMux. Most have been ported, while others are running as web apps, inside virtualised containers or via terminal servers.
A small number of apps have proven impossible to port, make accessible or switch away from – particularly software whose use is mandated by the German government – and have to be run directly on Windows machines.
While the council has weaned itself off the majority of Microsoft technologies, Munich still experiences friction where it rubs against proprietary software in widespread use elsewhere.
One of the main complaints from Munich staff using LiMux and OpenOffice is about incompatibilities with Microsoft Office. Documents, spreadsheets and other files display some fonts, pictures and layouts differently in OpenOffice than in Microsoft Office, and changes to some documents are not properly logged.
Munich hopes to ease some of these problems by moving all its OpenOffice users to LibreOffice, a process which will get underway at the end of this year. Munich has worked with other users of LibreOffice, including authorities in the German city of Freiburg and the Austrian capital Vienna, to pay for updates to LibreOffice that should improve interoperability with Microsoft's office suite.
The complexity of moving from proprietary software after years of being a Microsoft shop might explain why more organisations haven't followed in Munich's footsteps, and why some, like the German municipality of Freiburg, have given up on their own shift to open source. Last year Freiburg scrapped plans to move to OpenOffice claiming it would have cost up to €250 per seat to resolve interoperability issues.
"We thought from the start we would have other organisations follow us but it's really not easy," said Hofmann.
Hofmann's warning against justifying the jump to free software on cost alone seems well-grounded given how hotly Microsoft has contested costings for the programme.
Microsoft claims that, by its estimation, the LiMux project would have cost considerably more than Munich has said. The HP report for Microsoft put the project's price at €60.6m, far more than the €17m Microsoft claimed it would have cost to shift to Windows XP and a newer version of Microsoft Office.
Munich stands by its assertion that it has cost the council less to drop Microsoft than it would have to have stuck with it, and says Microsoft's figures are based on bogus assumptions.
The final cost will be released at the end of 2013, but in August 2013 Munich said it had cost €23m to shift to LiMux and OpenOffice. Munich says this is far less than the estimated €34m it said it would have cost to upgrade to Windows 7 and newer versions of Microsoft Office.
Where does the truth lie? Well Munich makes a good case for why much of the work carried out during the LiMux project would have been necessary if the council had decided to opt for a newer version of Windows, and how it has saved money on top.
By choosing to swap to LiMux and OpenOffice Munich was able to keep using its old PCs for longer, something that Hofmann said would not have been possible if it had chosen some of the recent versions of Microsoft Office and Windows 7.
Extending the lifespan of its PCs in this way had saved the council some €4.6m as of last year, according to its official figures.
And by Munich's reckoning, the same standardisation of the council's tech infrastructure and administration would have eventually been necessary whatever the OS and office suite chosen, said Hofmann.
Training thousands of the council's staff to use a new OS and software is another area where Munich believes the council would have faced equivalent costs for both Microsoft and LiMux – claiming it would have set them back €1.69m regardless of the system.
"If we would have switched to Microsoft Office, the costs for the e-learning platform would have been the same, and the new GUI for MS Office would have required the same amount of training," said Hofmann.
"[In fact] the GUI in OpenOffice is much more like MS Office 2000 than the new MS Office GUI."
Similarly the €6.1m bill for personnel to oversee the migration process would have remained the same regardless of whether the council moved to LiMux or a future Windows OS, in Munich's estimation. Currently up to 18 people work at any one time work on development and maintenance tasks relating to the operating system and office software for LiMux and Windows.
While many businesses might balk at the thought of not having a support contract to pick up the pieces when their OS and office software goes wrong, Munich feels far from adrift, said Hofmann.
A team of just 25 people at Munich develop, roll out and provide final support for the Ubuntu-based LiMux client. A larger number of people look after the everyday administration of the city's PCs but far fewer than the 1,000 people cited in the Microsoft/HP report as implementing the LiMux project.
The authority doesn't have a support deal for the LiMux client, but instead handles support itself with the help of various free software communities, such as those supporting Ubuntu, KDE, LibreOffice and OpenOffice.
"We are using the community way of support," said Hofmann. "We are finding it to be effective, mostly."
The model is allowing the council to help develop the software it uses in order that it better suit its needs.
"If you're only a customer with a support contract, it doesn't give you the ability to change how things are put into Ubuntu or LibreOffice," said Hofmann.
"That becomes more possible when you work with the community."
The same staff who develop LiMux are also responsible for the last level of support, Hofmann said, adding the authority prizes the freedom it has to work out how to resolve problems on its own.
"We had an issue with OpenOffice in the past and a support contract wouldn't have helped us because nobody else has this sort of problem, so we would have had the choice to live with it or forget about it," said Hofmann.
Instead Munich paid a company to resolve the issue for them, and put the patch upstream.
"The only downside is there's no-one to blame when things do go wrong, but what's the advantage of that?" Hofmann said.
Now that the migration to LiMux is complete, Munich plans to continue developing LiMux (the next version is due out in summer 2014) and continue to incorporate changes made to the Ubuntu LTS release it's based upon. The authority will also continue to identify opportunities to migrate other apps to run on the LiMux client so it can further reduce its Microsoft footprint.
Now that Munich is on a path to freeing itself from proprietary ties, Hofmann says he sees no compelling reason for the authority to ever go back.
"We saw from the start that if you're only relying on one contributor to supply your operating system, your office system and your infrastructure, you're stuck with it. You have to do what your contributor tells you to. If they say 'There's no longer support for your office version', you have to buy and implement a new one. You're no longer able to make those kinds of decisions by yourself."
He is hopeful that Munich will show other large organisations that it is possible to make the jump to free software and, while it is a difficult and time-consuming process, making it happen doesn't mean shutting down your IT.
"It's the best thing you can do. I've been asked 'How come you say you're up and running when Microsoft says you're already dead'," he said.
Hofmann's response: "It is possible to do an open source migration and still have the citizens not left alone. We're far from being dead."
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Dena April 4, 2018 Commentary, Information
Skagit officials stoke resentment of Swinomish pursuits of sovereignty and treaty promises
Elaine Willman autographing her book for an attendee, at her May 20, 2017, workshop held in Sedro Woolley, Wa.
By Sandy Robson
Elaine Willman brought her anti-tribal sovereignty, anti-tribal treaty rights campaign to Skagit County, Washington, on May 20, 2017. She conducted what was billed as a "Workshop on Water & Property Rights: Resolving Conflicts With a Tribal Government," that was held in a banquet room at the Tequila Azteca restaurant, in the city of Sedro-Woolley.
Standing outside, visible to cars driving along Central Avenue, and to workshop attendees as they approached the restaurant parking lot, were approximately 40+ Native and non-Native people who came there that day to participate in the "Stand Up Against Hate!" rally, organized by Red Line Salish Sea (formerly known as the Bellingham #NoDAPL Coalition), in opposition to Willman's event, and in support of tribal rights. The group stayed outside on the sidewalk along the side of the restaurant, in front of the window, through which, workshop attendees and Willman, could see the group gathered outside.
Participants in the "Stand Up Against Hate!" rally, organized by Red Line Salish Sea in opposition to Elaine Willman's May 20, 2017, workshop, and in support of tribal rights, held in Sedro Woolley, WA.
Willman is recognized by many as a national leader in the anti-Indian movement, and she is a current executive board member and former chair of the Citizens Equal Rights Alliance (CERA). Individuals and groups in the modern anti-Indian movement disavow and/or deny tribal sovereignty, and they seek to terminate tribal governments and break federal treaties signed with Native American tribes. According to Dave Lundgren, a federal Indian law attorney, CERA is a hate group. In an April 2, 2014, Indian Country Media Network article, Lundgren wrote: "The hate group Citizens Equal Rights Alliance (CERA), and those like it, use similar tactics to disguise their fear of brown people in positions of authority. They disguise their fear and hatred with bogus legal arguments designed to rile up local resentment and to enlist new uninformed members and contributors."
I attended the first hour or so of Willman's workshop, and then left to go outside to the "Stand Up Against Hate" rally. I stood for approximately fifty minutes with the people who had gathered outside the event venue to demonstrate against what many view as her anti-Indianism, and I listened to what their speakers had to say. Tribal supporters held banners and signs that featured phrases such as "Honor Treaty Rights"; "Respect Native Rights"; and "I Support Tribal Sovereignty." Several days after Willman's event, I watched video recordings of various parts of the workshop which were subsequent to my departure from her talk.
Click any image below to page through and read Stand Up to Hate! rally banner messages.
Promoting anti-Indianism
Screenshot photo of May 2, 2017, Facebook post on the Skagit County Citizens' Alliance for Property Rights Facebook page, featuring flyer advertising Elaine Willman's May 20, 2017, workshop in Sedro Woolley, WA.
Willman's May 20 event was sponsored by the Skagit County Citizens for Property Rights (CAPR), and was promoted by various conservative groups such as the Skagit County Republican Party, and Saturday Morning Live/Liberty Road, a website blog with an affiliated Facebook page run by Kris Halterman, a former board member of the recently defunct "Whatcom [County] Tea Party." Halterman also promoted the event multiple times on her KGMI weekly conservative talk radio show, Saturday Morning Live (SML), and had Willman on as a guest on her May 6, 2017, program.
Willman stated on that May 6, SML show that she consults with government officials. A Skagit County official, Senior Deputy Prosector Will Honea, was present for a portion of Willman's May 20 workshop. Also in attendance was Washington State Representative John Koster (R-Arlington), who some may remember had made headlines in 2012, during his unsuccessful run for Congress at that time, when he said, "the rape thing" is not a good enough reason for a woman to have an abortion.
During Willman's workshop, a fair amount of the discussion centered on the current situation between Skagit County government and the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community (SITC), a federally recognized Indian Tribe with about 900 members, whose reservation is located on Fidalgo Island, in Skagit County.
The SITC has been working with the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), a bureau within the U.S. Department of Interior (DOI), to make a number of amendments to the Swinomish Constitution, and the process the tribe has followed is set out in its Constitution, as well as in federal regulations, under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior.
Willman told her audience, "Emotions and money is [sic] fueling this. And, emotions, goes money, goes to politics, goes to takeover. And, I really see this area being the equivalent of a coup." After seeding that alarming idea to the audience that there is some kind of coup underway by the SITC, she provided no information to substantiate her claim, and moved on immediately to another subject.
Willman's willingness to assault tribal treaties and tribal sovereignty, coupled with her connections with the far right, such as property rights groups, anti-Indian activists, and Tea Party groups, proved to be the desired combination by those kinds of groups in Skagit County to rally resentment against the SITC in terms of the ongoing debate there between the SITC and Skagit County government.
A look inside Willman's workshop
Upon entering the restaurant's banquet room at about twenty-five minutes before the scheduled 10:00 AM start time for Willman's workshop, I was immediately asked to sign in, which I did. People were starting to trickle in, and I sat down at one of the round tables. There was a handout placed at each seat around the table. Willman was already in the front of the room, and was autographing a copy of her book, "Slumbering Thunder: A Primer for Confronting the Spread of Federal Indian Policy and Tribalism Overwhelming America," which was displayed on a rectangular table situated at the entrance of the room, along with the other book she authored, entitled, "Going To Pieces: The Dismantling of the United States of America."
Since I had arrived early to the workshop, I looked at the 12-page handout on the table placed in front of my seat, and started reading it. The first paragraph read: "How often do we hear that 'Treaties are the supreme law of the land,' or that American Indian tribes are 'First Nations?' Do tribal governments in the United States have 'aboriginal rights' since 'time immemorial?' Well in light of a new Era that calls for America First, I think that clarifying some of these grandiose terms is in order. After all, it's very difficult to have 567 'First Nations' in One Nation – America First."
The term "America First" was used three times in Willman's handout, reverberating President Donald J. Trump's usage of that term and concept in his January 21, 2017, inauguration speech.
Table displaying Elaine Willman's two books for sale during her May 20, 2017, workshop held in Sedro Woolley, WA.
Also on the table display alongside her books, was a used, wadded-up paper towel; two mostly-drained mugs of coffee; a single stack of cards featuring a property rights entity known as "This West is OUR West"; and an index card with a running tally of the number of Willman's books sold at the workshop. Upon my exit from the workshop, approximately one hour after Willman's talk had begun, I took a photo of the index card noting the book sales tally which showed there, so far, had been a total of twelve books sold.
In looking at the stack of "This West is OUR West" cards on the table, each one featured the entity's logo with its slogan underneath which read: "Uniting Western States – Protecting Our Rights." There was a website address listed as well as a mailing address of P.O. Box 3601, Kalispell, Montana 59903. That mailing address is also the listed address for a Montana-based nonprofit property rights entity called the Western States Constitutional Rights, LLC.
According to a February 2, 2017, letter to Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), from Western States Constitutional Rights, LLC, its group's mission is: "to promote the protection of private property rights held by western United States property owners against reckless federal, state and local government laws, regulations and policies. Its members are irrigators, landowners and business owners located on or near the Flathead Irrigation Project situated within the Flathead Indian Reservation, and from other areas in northwestern Montana, but their concerns are widely shared by many citizens throughout the western and rural United States."
Attorney Lawrence Kogan, managing principal of the Kogan Law Group, PC of New York, New York, is legal counsel to Western States Constitutional Rights, LLC. The September 7, press release directed all media inquiries to the Kogan Law Group. Kogan and Willman have been working together, trying to undermine tribal sovereignty and tribal treaty rights since she moved from Wisconsin, in 2015, to live on the Flathead Indian Reservation, in Western Montana, after Montana approved the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT) and State of Montana water compact. At that time, the compact still needed subsequent congressional and other authorities' approval, which Willman and Kogan were fighting against.
Sparking a fire with fear
According to a February 22, 2017, GoSkagit.com (the online version of the Skagit Valley Herald) article, it was a December 1, 2016, letter from the Skagit County Board of Commissioners sent to Fidalgo Island property owners that sparked the current debate regarding at least one of the SITC's proposed amendments to their Tribal Constitution.
Screenshot photo of December 1, 2016, letter from Skagit County Board of Commissioners sent to Fidalgo Island Property owners.
The opening line of the Skagit County commissioners' December 1, letter read: "We are writing you because your property appears to be within an area of land over which the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community ("Swinomish") is asserting tribal jurisdiction."
The letter went on to say that the SITC had filed papers, at that time, with the DOI's BIA, seeking approval of a Swinomish constitutional amendment to be voted on by SITC members, and if approved, the amendment could annex those property owners' properties into the Swinomish Reservation. The commissioners stated Skagit County government's opposition to what they called, "the Swinomish reservation expansion plan," and attached a November 28, 2016, letter they sent to Stanley Speaks, Regional Director, and Greg Norton, Tribal Government Specialist, both with the BIA, Northwest Region. The letter voiced the commissioners' objection to one of the proposed amendments to the SITC's constitution under consideration by the DOI's BIA.
A vote for tribal self-governance
Screenshot of YouTube video of Swinomish Indian Tribal Community Chairman, and National Congress of American Indians President, Brian Cladoosby giving the February 2017, State of Indian Nations address
On May 23, 2017, members of the SITC voted in a Secretarial election, to amend their tribe's Constitution, approving all of the 29 proposed amendments. The DOI has 45 days from the date of the vote to approve or disapprove the amendments.
A May 25, 2017, GoSkagit.com article reported, "Brian Cladoosby, tribal chairman, said the vote will bring the constitution into the 21st century by removing paternalistic language that was mandated by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) after the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. The bureau has recently advised tribes to remove that language."
The SITC issued a May 24, 2017, press release which stated:
"The amendments specific to the territory and jurisdiction of the Tribe do not change the Swinomish Reservation boundary, impact property ownership of the Tribe or others in the community, or expand the Tribe's authority under Federal law. In a recent letter from the BIA's Northwest Regional Director to local landowners, the Director stated, 'Amending a tribal constitution cannot and will not allow for a tribe to expand its reservation boundaries. Establishing or expanding reservation boundaries is a separate process and is entirely different than the governing tribal body amending its governing documents for the betterment of the tribe. Further, there is no mechanism under federal regulation to 'annex' properties into a reservation and put them under tribal jurisdiction as some have suggested."
The press release, quoted SITC Chairman Brian Cladoosby: "As a result of this election, we can now move ahead on our path towards fully reclaiming our status as a true sovereign nation. No longer will we have to get the blessing of the BIA just to carry out basic governance."
Some county officials and residents in Skagit County, along with the Tesoro Refining and Marketing Company LLC, which operates the Shell oil refinery in Anacortes, at March Point, the Samish Indian Tribal Council, and other local Skagit entities have voiced opposition to one of the amendments proposed which, among other things, would eliminate from the Swinomish constitution, reference to an 1873 executive order by President Ulysses S. Grant, that, according to the Swinomish tribe, unlawfully diminished its reservation boundary.
SITC leadership does not view the amendment, that would eliminate reference to the executive order, as expanding its tribe's reservation boundaries. The February 22, 2017, GoSkagit.com article referenced above, reported, "According to Swinomish Chairman Brian Cladoosby, his tribe has always maintained the border of its reservation is indicated in the Point Elliott Treaty of 1855, in which the boundaries would extend to all of March Point and west nearly to Sharpes Corner. This doesn't, however, mean the Swinomish are asserting governmental control over that region, he said in an interview in December." The article went on to say, "Cladoosby has maintained that, legally, only Congress has the authority to set reservation boundaries, which would make both the executive order and the court rulings irrelevant."
Conference teaches local control against federal agencies
So, after the Skagit County commissioners caused some County residents to become alarmed about the SITC wanting to amend their Tribal Constitution, that has been exacerbated by Skagit County officials, property rights groups such as Skagit County CAPR; Elaine Willman; Kris Halterman on her SML talk show on KGMI radio; and the Skagit County Republican Party which had featured Willman as a special guest speaker, at its May 6, 2017, Lincoln/Reagan Day Dinner.
Screenshot photo of Skagit County's Board of County Commissioners webpage.
Skagit County's three commissioners: Ron Wesen, Ken Dahlstedt, and Lisa Janicki, and the county's prosecutor's office, have been critical of what they view as the SITC leadership's supposed attempt to expand its reservation's boundaries, to claim jurisdiction, and to annex properties into a reservation and put those under tribal jurisdiction, by amending its Tribal Constitution. The County's commissioners and prosecutor's office have been very active on this issue, even so far as to dispatch their senior deputy prosecutor to America's heartland earlier this year for some extracurricular education being dispensed at a conference in Kansas.
During the May 6, SML radio program on which Willman appeared, she told listeners there was an organization in Kansas that she said she was affiliated with, which had asked her to look at federal Indian policy issues so recommendations could then be made to the Trump Administration. While Willman never mentioned the name of the organization in Kansas that she had referenced in general, the most probable one would be a group called, "Kansas Natural Resource Coalition" (KNRC). Willman was listed a presenter at KNRC's annual conference that was held March 28-March 30, 2017, in Dodge City, Kansas. The conference brochure showed that Willman would be presenting on the "Jurisdictional conflicts between Indian tribes, local government & agriculture from EPAs 'Treatment As States' Policy."
Screenshot photo of Kansas Natural Resource Coalition's "Bringing Decision-making Home Conference" brochure.
Public records recently obtained from Skagit County, show that Senior Deputy Prosecutor Will Honea, had submitted an "Out-Of-State Travel Request" for $982.00 for travel expenses for the 2017, conference (March 28-30), held in Dodge City, Kansas — the same conference, at which, Willman was a listed presenter. Documents show Honea's travel request was approved on March 3, 2017, by County Administrator Tim Holloran. Ultimately, Honea did not end up traveling to Kansas for that March conference.*
The conference brochure stated:
"The KNRC Bringing Decision-making Home Conference will demonstrate the effectiveness of County land use planning and planning processes as tools for engaging federal agencies in decisions and rulemakings. The conference will educate decision-makers on local prerogatives, heighten national interest in local land use planning, and forward local-control philosophies in the national marketplace of ideas."
Skagit deputy prosecutor stirs coals of fear and resentment
Arguably, since fear was ignited by Skagit County officials about the SITC's endeavor to amend its constitution, Honea has been responsible for the lion's share of shaking up the fiery coals of fear and resentment now burning around that issue. Honea has sent multiple letters on behalf of Skagit County, to officials with the DOI, the BIA, and the SITC. In those letters, Honea has been antagonistic toward the SITC leadership.
Screenshot photo of Kris Halterman's May 20, 2017, blog post, published on her Saturday Morning Live Liberty Road blog website.
He also appeared as a guest on the May 20, 2017, Saturday Morning Live program with the show's host Kris Halterman. Skagit County posted a link to that May 20 program on its County's webpage which provides a list of links to related documents under the header, "Proposed Swinomish Indian Tribal Community Expansion."
During the program, Honea and Halterman discussed the proposed amendments to the SITC's constitution, and he used the media opportunity to make a number of negative comments about the SITC leadership.
Honea claimed, "It's been very clear, uh, Swinomish are extremely hostile to agriculture." And, Honea purported: "Swinomish leadership have been very focused on uh, uh, I would say, disrupting and dismantling the agricultural land base in Skagit County." While he boasted that he "could go on for hours" about the actions by Swinomish leadership "aimed at agriculture," the only basis he provided for his claims was to say that what he alleged was reasonably not even up for debate, and suggested that people can simply, "go and ask any farmer in Skagit Valley if they feel attacked."
Honea told listeners that with the other three tribes located in Skagit County, the County has "this great, warm relationship." He added, "we facilitate their business objectives, uh, work on habitat projects together." He went on to make some seemingly odd and inappropriate remarks for a County attorney to make:
"Swinomish have been very, um, conflict oriented, this is not, uh, my idea, er, just, an, it's certainly observable by the evidence and the facts, but it, it, if you look at their own planning documents, uh, they brought in a Western Washington University professor a number of years ago by the name, uh, Nick Zaferatos, uh, Dr. Zaferatos, so, sort of an ominous name, I guess, but, um, if you look at the, the, the planning documents he wrote for the Swinomish tribe, they're very much focused on, um, ideas, uh, from people like Saul Alinsky, and, um, kind of the hard social justice left, and it's very focused on, uh, pernicious, constant conflict."
Honea did not provide any explanation as to why he thought that the name 'Zaferatos' is an ominous sounding name.
That alleged "pernicious, constant conflict," according to Honea, is the basis for the relationship between the SITC and the rest of the community.
He also told Halterman and her program listeners that SITC leadership brought in what he characterized as, "very radical attorneys, lawyers who aren't from this area, sort of the A-Team of, um, you know, tribal activism." Honea said that the effects on the Skagit County community have been "really damaging," and said that has really damaged relationships between tribal and non-tribal communities.
During the radio show, more than once, Honea pushed the idea that Swinomish leadership presupposes that everybody who is not Swinomish is going to pack up and leave. And, he said the SITC leadership also claims "jurisdiction over any land that is tribal, uh, Swinomish territory, and then they changed the definition of 'territory' in this proposed constitutional amendment to any land quote 'in which the tribe now or in the future has any interest.'" Honea called those proposed changes "terribly ambiguous changes that appear to be claiming jurisdiction over, um, most of our County, off-reservation."
Honea's words counterproductive to positive relationship with Swinomish
While Honea advocated for the need to come together, his actions as Senior Deputy Prosecutor relating to the Swinomish constitutional amendments issue have been counterproductive to that idea of the need for coming together that he preaches to the public. From listening to the characterizations, claims, and allegations about SITC leadership, made by Honea during the SML show, and from reading what he has written in letters to federal agencies, to the SITC leadership, and in comments he has posted online, it seems that he is the one who has damaged the relationships between the SITC leadership, and non-tribal communities and Skagit County government officials.
For example, in a June 14, 2017, letter from Honea to the DOI, he stated:
"Under its current leadership (Chairman Brian Cladoosby), SITC has, since the mid-90s, pursued a broad-ranging and programmatic effort to assert direct control over the Skagit River ecosystem at the expense of its democratically-elected governments, asserting rights over taxation, land use, water rights and a broad range of issues on a constant and ongoing basis, with contentious litigation the norm, costing our county many millions of dollars in legal costs and deeply damaging relations between tribal and non-tribal communities."
Looking at that above characterization of Honea's from a different perspective, one could say that the SITC leadership has had to expend great effort and substantial monies to protect its tribe's treaty rights and tribal sovereignty — and after those difficult struggles, some in the non-tribal community still want to assign blame to the tribe for simply having defended those treaty rights already secured to its members by our federal government.
Click on any text graphic below to enlarge one of Will Honea's online comments and to page through additional comments.
Subsequent to Elaine Willman's May 20, workshop, Honea made numerous online comments on social media posts that related to the workshop and to the Swinomish constitutional amendments issue. When he was commenting on those two subjects, even though he was using his personal Facebook profile, he often made those comments in the voice of his county deputy prosecutor role, which, when cast under that light, can cause such remarks to appear questionable and unprofessional.
Skagit County Deputy Prosecutor Will Honea
While I was sitting at one of the round tables in the banquet room during the workshop, Willman was about twenty minutes into her speaking, when Honea arrived and entered the room, and sat down at one of the open seats at my table.
I was familiar with Honea's name from my having seen him comment online on various news articles relating to tribal treaty rights, and on social media comment threads in which tribal treaty rights were referenced. In some of his online comments, Honea has indicated that treaty rights are "special rights," which aligns with Willman's (and CERA's) rhetoric on that subject — although, he has stated in another online comment that he is "not a member of CERA, nor a supporter."
Click on any comment shown in the text graphic below to enlarge one of Will Honea's Facebook comments he made on a May 4, 2016, Skagit Breaking News Facebook page post about a group in Skagit County protesting the tribal commercial fishery on the Skagit River.
Honea stayed at the workshop for approximately 30 to 40 minutes. When he left the banquet room, Skagit County CAPR's Gary Hagland, who had the mic at that time, remarked to the audience, "Anyway, I was just gonna say that our lawyer just left the room, Will Honea."
From my perspective, it felt like Honea had come to the event to make an appearance, to demonstrate to Skagit County residents in attendance at the workshop who are opposed to the SITC constitutional amendments, that he is in their corner, fighting for them against the SITC leadership, which he, and many there that day, have cast as their common foe, supposedly threatening their future.
County's actions bring focus to painful, shameful history of treaty violations
A letter dated January 30, 2017, signed by SITC Chairman Brian Cladoosby, addressed the people who had been sent the December 1, 2016, letter from the Skagit County commissioners. The January 30, letter started off by saying:
"Last month, the Skagit County Commissioners sent a letter to you about the Swinomish Tribe and our proposed Constitutional amendments. Sadly, the County was misinformed and their letter was not accurate.
"Their inaccurate letter has caused a lot of needless distress, confusion, and anxiety, all of which could've been avoided if the Commissioners had simply contacted the Tribe before sending out the letter. But since the County did not, I am writing to say to you what I would've said to the commissioners, if they had called."
Included in the letter was a list of 13 "Frequently Asked Questions" about amending the Swinomish Constitution. Question number 10 was, "Why am I hearing so much about this now?"
The answer provided to that particular question, I think, sums up aptly, the SITC's endeavor to amend their Tribal Constitution, and it cuts through the animosity that has developed as a result of assumptions and fearmongering on the part of a handful of Skagit County officials, Skagit County CAPR, Elaine Willman, and some others:
"It's no secret that the United States has broken its promises to Indian Tribes across the country time and time again. The President's [Ulysses S. Grant] attempt to take away part of our reservation and other violations of our Treaty are a painful part of our history. It is a story we have been telling for generations to anyone who would listen.
"We can't be sure why the County has decided to publicize our issues with the Reservation boundary now. But we believe it's important for others to know this shameful history, and we are grateful that the County has focused public attention on this."
Screenshot photo (taken from SITC website), page 1, of January 30, 2017, letter signed by SITC Chairman Brian Cladoosby.
*Clarification: Information in this article, originally published July 8, 2017, was clarified July 11, 2017. A previous version of this story did not make it clear that while Skagit County Administrator Tim Holloran approved Senior Deputy Prosecutor Will Honea's March 3, 2017, "Out-Of-State Travel Request" to attend a March 28-30, 2017 conference in Dodge City, Kansas, according to information provided by Mr. Honea, on July 10, 2017, in the comment section below this article, he did not end up traveling to that conference.
Readers can link to a webpage on the "This West is OUR West" website which provides the links to the 3-part video recording of Elaine Willman's May 20, 2017, workshop, held in Sedro Woolley, Washington: http://www.thiswestisourwest.com/?Keywords=Willman&display=search&newSearch=true&noCache=1
Posted in Commentary, Information and tagged Bellingham #NoDAPL Coalition, Brian Cladoosby, CAPR, CERA, Citizens Alliance for Property Rights, Donald Trump, Elaine Willman, John Koster, Kansas Natural Resource Coalition, Kogan Law Group, Kris Halterman, Lawrence Kogan, Lincoln/Regan Day Dinner, Red Line Salish Sea, Saturday Morning Live, Sedro-Woolley, SITC, Skagit County, Skagit County Board of Commissioners, Skagit County Republicans, Skagit County Senior Deputy Prosecutor, Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Tea Party, This West is OUR West, Will Honea. Bookmark the permalink.
'Go forth and generate revenue': Examining public records related to the Center for Economic and Business Research's 'Employment at Cherry Point' reports
Sen. Ericksen traveled to Peru, drumming up more business for his company PacRim Bridges
Sheriff Elfo's campaign urges supporters to join new Christian conservative social media platform
Local Trump devotees launch Christian conservative social media platform
Which leaders will stand up against the politics of hate?
40th Legislative District Bellingham #NoDAPL Coalition Bill Elfo CAPR CERA Charles Munoz Charlie Crabtree Christopher Hladick Citizens Alliance for Property Rights City of Bellingham Common Threads Northwest D.C. Dakota Access Pipeline Debra Lekanoff Derek Forbes Dick Donahue Donald J. Trump Donald Trump Doug Ericksen Elaine Willman Environmental Protection Agency EPA EPA Region 10 Office Farm Workers Ferndale Gun Violence H-2A Visa Program Honesto Silva Ibarra Howard Barnett Human Rights Jay Rodne Jennifer Locetta KGMI King5 KIRO 7 Kris Halterman L&I Lynden Tribune Marianne Holsman Meridian High School Michael Petrish Native Americans Native American Treaty Rights November 2018 Election PacRim Bridges PDC Public Disclosure Commission Ray Gilbride Red Line Salish Sea Sarbanand Farms Saturday Morning Live Senator Doug Ericksen Skagit County Skagit County Republicans Social Justice Social Media Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Student Safety Sumas The Bellingham Herald The Fourth Corner The News Tribune Tim Eyman Tony Larson Washington Department of Labor & Industries Washington State Attorney General's Office Washington State Legislature Washington State Senate Washington State Senator WBA We Speak Whatcom Business Alliance Whatcom County Whatcom County District Court Whatcom Republicans
Water protectors targeted by WBA president's false alarms

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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BADHAAI HO: The first song of the film, Badhaaiyan Tenu, leaves you in splits!
FILMFARE AWARDS 2019: Ranbir, Alia, Ranveer & Ayushmann are the actors of the year!
Here are the winners from the 2019 Filmfare Glamour and Style Awards!
1911: Has Ayushmann Khurrana been replaced by John Abraham in this sports drama?
Here's how Andhadhun has defeated films like Sanju and Raazi!
The first song of Ayushmann Khurrana and Sanya Malhotra's Badhaai Ho, Badhaaiyan Tenu, will leave you in splits! A new member is all set to join Khurrana's family but its the mother who is pregnant. Now this news has left everyone perplexed, whether to feel ecstatic or embarrassed. Have a look at the song right here:-
The film is all set to release on the 19th of October, 2018. The trailer has received unanimous appreciation from the audiences and hopefully, the film too should be able to live up to the expectations.
Related Topics:Ayushmann Khurrana, Badhaai Ho, Badhaaiyan Tenu, Sanya Malhotra
Tiger Shroff & Alia Bhatt set the stage & screen on fire in the Hook Up Song!
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The teaser of Bharat's next song, Chashni, featuring Salman Khan & Katrina Kaif, OUT NOW!
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Boot Kickin' Mayhem (Country Music)
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Adam Lambert To Perform Special Livestream Show From Los Angeles' Roxy Theatre
Andrew Wendowski January 13, 2021
International superstar Adam Lambert is set to perform a special show for fans on his birthday, to be livestreamed globally on January 29th from The Roxy Theatre – Los Angeles' legendary venue on West Hollywood's Sunset Strip. Adam Lambert Live is presented by NoCap and will see the artist perform songs from his latest album Velvet, plus selections from his catalogue of hits, and more!
Two live performances will take place and be livestreamed worldwide at 12pm PT and later at 7pm PT to allow for global viewing. Tickets are on sale now (priced at $18.50) and are available to purchase at https://nocap.show/adamlambert, where fans can also order exclusive show merchandise.
Of the shows, Adam said: "I'm so excited to be putting on a show for my fans worldwide. Live performance has always and will always be at the heart of what I do, so I'm so happy we've found a way for it to persist safely in place of my cancelled Las Vegas residency and European tour. The show will be a real celebration, with new songs from Velvet plus plenty of our older favourites, and some brand-new surprises. I look forward to the party we all deserve from wherever in the world you may be!"
Velvet is Adam Lambert's fourth studio album, released in the Spring of 2020. The highly-anticipated full-length includes popular singles 'Superpower', 'Roses' (featuring Nile Rodgers) and title track 'Velvet' – watch the video here.
Adam was due to perform a 5-date Las Vegas residency at the Venetian last Spring and The Velvet Tour in Europe (including London's Wembley Arena) in the Autumn, but these were unable to go ahead due to Covid-19. Further global dates with Queen (Queen + Adam Lambert) on The Rhapsody Tour were postponed until 2021.
TICKETS ON SALE HERE
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Not only Urwa but Gohar Rasheed also schooled Swara in a series of his tweets. According to Gohar since Swara couldn't outshine her co-actresses like Kareena Kapoor and Sonam Kapoor that is why she made such ignorant comments to get public's attention. If this is the case, then it surely worked out for her as her Twitter and Instagram is flooded with hatred from Pakistani fans and she definitely got enough attention from the Pakistani media as well.
What is surprising is that Swara forgot her visit to Pakistan where she seemed to have forgotten the beauty of New York and Istanbul in-front of Lahore. People trolled the actress for her hypocrisy.
This incident has surely disappointed the Pakistani fans who were looking forward to watch the movie and all those who were vouching for it and were against its ban.
National Dish Of Pakistan – Do you Know?


HABIT Perennial; caespitose; clumped densely. Culms erect; 60 cm long. Culm-internodes distally glabrous. Leaf-sheaths scaberulous; puberulous. Ligule an eciliate membrane; 3–7 mm long; scarious; obtuse. Leaf-blades deciduous at the ligule; involute; 20–30 cm long; 1–3 mm wide. Leaf-blade surface puberulous; hairy adaxially. Leaf-blade apex attenuate.
Panicle contracted; linear; 30–40 cm long. Primary panicle branches appressed.
FERTILE SPIKELETS Spikelets comprising 1 fertile florets; without rhachilla extension. Spikelets lanceolate; laterally compressed; 4–5 mm long; breaking up at maturity; disarticulating below each fertile floret. Floret callus pubescent.
GLUMES Glumes persistent; similar; shorter than spikelet. Lower glume lanceolate; 3–4 mm long; 0.75 length of upper glume; membranous; without keels; 1 -veined. Lower glume lateral veins absent. Lower glume surface asperulous. Lower glume apex acuminate, or setaceously attenuate. Upper glume lanceolate; 3.5–4.5 mm long; 0.9 length of adjacent fertile lemma; membranous; without keels; 1 -veined. Upper glume lateral veins absent. Upper glume surface asperulous. Upper glume apex acuminate, or setaceously attenuate.
FLORETS Fertile lemma lanceolate; 4–5 mm long; membranous; without keel; 3 -veined. Lemma apex acuminate; awned; 1 -awned. Principal lemma awn flexuous; 20–40 mm long overall. Palea 1 length of lemma; 2 -veined.


If your device is not visible as a USB device then we need to analyse the HW and host controller configuration, it's not a driver matter as the driver has nothing to connect to.
We'd still need to know which kind of device (model and manufacturer) you are trying to connect and any information about how the device is connected (adapters or hubs).
The tool output should be attached.
Carlo - I am using the very latest driver for this device, which is U224-001. The latest driver is over a year old and is 2.6. Sounds like folks with other drivers are experiencing similar issues.
That did the trick! I didn't get the popup as part of installation, but uninstalling and reinstalling got me to where I could click the "Allow" button and enable the extension.
I have the latest-get mac mini, exporting to several screens at our church, and the USB 2.0 adapter outputting to a screen. I recently updated to 10.13 and updated to the latest software for the adapter.
Upon startup, all screens are dark, with no response. Once I unplug the adapter, I'm able to log in again and access everything, but plugging it back in immediately hijacks the system.
I have been in contact with Tripp Lite support who say that the driver is currently only supported through 10.11. No word on when it might be addressed.
I've just installed the 4.0 driver and did not need to perform any unblocking - no prompts, no message to allow or anything.
I've found that if i have 1 external display connected, everything works fine. The moment I attach a second external display, the system tries to go into Mirrored mode and given that it is not currently working, everything fails. Is there a workaround for this?
For the bug itself, it would be very helpful if you could raise a defect with Apple.
I am unable to use the displayLink (even though it is detected) in HighSierra.
I'd play with different resolutions in System Preferences->Displays to ensure a valid resolution is selected.


This all-new, critically-acclaimed production of The Mikado premiered in New York in January 2017. The production represents a great deal of work between New York Gilbert & Sullivan Productions and the Asian-American theatrical community in New York and serves as an example of a cooperative effort to promote diversity, equity, and inclusive practices with classic works of art.
Free Pre-Show Talk 6:00-6:40 pm.


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Discover new local adventures with…
Things to doBooks
Discover new local adventures with '10,000 Steps a Day in L.A.'
Photo illustration by Kay Scanlon/LANG
By Michelle Mills | mjmills@scng.com | San Gabriel Valley Tribune
November 11, 2015 at 4:55 p.m.
Walking doesn't have to be a chore.
"Walking should be fun," says Paul Haddad. "I can't see walking on a treadmill. It's one reason I love Los Angeles: You can walk almost any day of the year and just be outside."
Los Feliz resident Haddad is a television writer, executive producer and author of a young-adult novel. He recently published "10,000 Steps a Day in L.A." (Santa Monica Press, $17), a book highlighting 52 walking adventures throughout the Los Angeles area, including strolls through Eagle Rock, the Hollywood Hills, the Arroyo Seco, Sepulveda Dam, Venice and El Segundo. Each walk includes information on terrain, dog friendliness, parking, picnic spots and more, along with a clear map and thorough directions. The book includes lore on local history, architecture and other areas of interest.
The concept of walking 10,000 steps, or roughly five miles, a day has been around since the 1960s, Haddad says. And seeing new things is one way to make the activity more enjoyable.
"People respond well to new places. That's why travel is so exciting," Haddad says, adding that friends often come to him for suggestions on new or different places to walk.
"I always pride myself on finding the hidden treasures of Los Angeles and exposing people to the unsung places and hidden places they may not know about. I was always looking to write a book with that angle," Haddad says. "It wasn't until recently when I became obsessed with walking 10,000 steps a day that I realized I could put both ideas together."
Finding his way
Haddad balances the walks in "10,000 Steps" geographically between the San Fernando Valley, South Bay and Los Angeles basin, also dividing them between urban and natural settings. He not only included outings with which he was familiar, but sought out places he'd heard about as well, such as Corriganville Park in Simi Valley and the nearby Santa Susana Railroad Depot and Museum.
But the walk Haddad was sure to include is one of his favorites. It traverses Hollywood Boulevard between Western and La Brea avenues in Hollywood and encompasses the Hollywood Walk of Fame, TCL Chinese Theatres, Capitol Records, El Capitan Theatre and other landmarks. Surprisingly, instead of admiring these spots, he implores his readers to look elsewhere.
"I became fascinated with all the historic buildings that have faces embedded in the masonry. These buildings were built in the '20s and '30s and I also felt that some of the other buildings were very unappreciated. So in the walk in my book, I'm asking people to look up instead of down at the stars on the sidewalk. I call it my anti-tourist Hollywood Boulevard walk," Haddad says. "This is what captures the essence of this book: We're going to show you the unexpected. Things are hiding in plain sight that you never really stopped to look at."
More favorite walks
Two of his other favorite walks can be found in Altadena and San Pedro. The trip through Altadena includes a search for an old poppy field made famous on postcards and exploring part of the path of the Mount Lowe Railway. In San Pedro, which Haddad calls the "Rodney Dangerfield of L.A. communities: It doesn't really seem to get the respect it deserves," you can climb into old machine gun bunkers along the coast, visit Sunken City and enjoy a beautiful view of the ocean.
Haddad's dog, a terrier mix named Porter, accompanies him on most of his outings.
"Porter's favorite is any walk where there are lots of squirrel sightings, so the walks in Griffith Park are his favorites. He does that multiple times a week with me. He also loves the beach walks. I think he loves the salty air, the different smells and he loves water, so any walk where he can jump in the water he's for it," Haddad says.
New places to go
Haddad's longtime friend Mark Turner of Sherman Oaks also enjoys hiking with his pit bull mix dog Monkey. They have their own favorite walks, but have been on many new adventures with "10,000 Steps."
"There are a lot of places I didn't know about that are in this book," Turner says. "I'm familiar with some places, like Elysian Park, but I didn't know it as a great hiking place. And if you follow the guided tour in the book, it takes you to these really cool places, like these obscure gardens that nobody goes to and you get to have these great views."
Turner appreciates the historical background included with the walks in the book, as well as the restaurant suggestions. He also likes that "10,000 Steps" is arranged in such a way that you can take the walks in any order you wish.
"The great thing about L.A. is you haven't seen everything, and you can go on a different adventure. That's what I love about this book. You may not be able to get out of town for a weekend, but you can spend three hours doing an adventure in a place you've never been to. And what's really the difference? You're exploring, and it's a lot of fun to discover these places. I've started to wear out my book, too," Turner says.
Haddad is donating proceeds from "10,000 Steps" to TreePeople and the Los Angeles Conservancy. His second young-adult novel will be published next year.
Michelle Mills | reporter
Michelle Mills has been an entertainment and features reporter for the Southern California News Group since 1999. She has interviewed such notables as Weird Al Yankovic, Glen Campbell, Alice Cooper, Debbie Allen, Ernest Borgnine (during an earthquake) and Adam Young (Owl City). She was the 31st Occasional Pasadena Doo Dah Parade Queen reigning 2007-2009. She is a professional belly dancer (swordwork is her specialty) and also studies Polynesian and Tahitian dance.
mjmills@scng.com
Follow Michelle Mills	@mickieszoo
Travel: It's high tide again for Southern California's cruising scene