Podcasts about Cherwell

My Story  Talk 12 Brasenose College Oxford 1959-62 (Part 3) Welcome to Talk 12 in our series where I am reflecting on God's goodness to me throughout my life. This is now the third talk about the years I spent at Oxford. So far we have talked about life at Oxford, its academic programme, and my spiritual experience while I was there. Today I'm going to share with you my developing relationship with Eileen, our decision to get married shortly after I graduated, and how the Lord led us straight into pastoral ministry rather than going to Bible college first. Keeping in touch Throughout the two years after Eileen and I met, we had seen each other almost every day. Clearly, this could not continue while I was at Oxford, but we kept in touch as much as was then humanly possible. Of course, in those days there were no mobile phones. In fact, access to landlines was not easy, and anyway, it was extremely expensive. So Eileen and I kept in touch with each other by writing letters four or five times a week. We also managed to see each other every two weeks. As I have mentioned already, the terms at Oxford were only 8 weeks long, so by going home for the weekend after four weeks, and by Eileen travelling up to see me for the weekend after weeks two and six, we were able to see each other on a fortnightly basis. This was very clear evidence of Eileen's commitment to me as the journey on our Lambretta scooter through the busy traffic of central London was by no means easy. Obviously, we made the most of those precious weekends. On Saturdays we would often explore the surrounding countryside on our scooter or even travel further afield visiting pretty Cotswold villages like Bibury and Bourton on the Water. Or in the summer we loved getting into one of the punts moored by Magaden Bridge and heading up the Cherwell where we picnicked on the home-made sausage rolls and egg and bacon pie that Eileen had brought with her from home. On Sundays, of course, we went to church together before Eileen made the 60-mile journey back home to be ready for work on Monday. Of course, during the college vacations (which totalled half the year), the situation was completely different. I was able to see Eileen every day again. During the week, this was in the evenings as Eileen was at work during the daytime. And I was too, at least during the weeks that the schools had their holidays. As the Oxford terms were far shorter than the school terms I was able to earn some extra money by teaching in a local secondary school, which was to prove valuable for my future ministry as I was gaining experience in teaching children of a different age group from those I had taught in the years before I went to Oxford. But apart from working hours, Eileen and I saw each other every evening and every weekend. Sundays were taken up with church twice in the day, and midweek we regularly attended the Tuesday night prayer meeting, the Thursday night Bible study, and the Friday night youth meeting. We were desperate to learn more about our Pentecostal experience and the way the Pentecostal churches did things. In fact, whatever we were doing, our relationship with each other was from the start intimately connected with our relationship with the Lord and his will for our lives, even when we went on holiday. As I have already mentioned, our first holiday together was at a Christian Endeavour Holiday Home in Devon in 1959 just before I went up to Oxford. The following year we decided to explore the Lake District together. We travelled the three-hundred-mile journey on our scooter, stopping overnight in Aintree with one of Eileen's aunts, before finally arriving at a CE Home in Kents Bank near Grange-over-Sands. We had each visited the area before, but never together, and that fortnight was a wonderful opportunity to enjoy fellowship with other Christians as well as marvelling at the beauty of God's creation as we made daily trips into different parts of the Lakes. In 1961 we decided to go further afield and to spend four weeks touring France and northern Spain. So we exchanged our 125cc Lambretta for a new 175 which we trusted would cope well with the distances we would be travelling laden with two tents and all the paraphernalia required for camping. However, the moment we set off we both had some misgivings as the weight of luggage at the rear of the scooter made it harder to handle the machine safely, but undaunted we proceeded with caution and arrived safely at Southend airport where we had booked a flight on a cargo plane to northern France. Our first night in France was spent in a cow field with the kind permission of the farmer. We were both experienced campers, Eileen with the Girl Guides and I with the Boys' Brigade, but we had never before been woken by the sound of cows champing round our tent pegs and we quickly agreed to depart as soon as possible, particularly as there were no ‘facilities' available! We determined that after that we would make sure to check into proper camping sites. We travelled down the western side of France, stopping first at Paris for the weekend, camping in the Bois de Boulogne and visiting the thousand-strong Assemblies of God Church in the Rue du Sentier led by pastor André Nicole. Little did I know it then, but that was to be the first of many visits to French assemblies later in my ministry and sparked my interest in what the Holy Spirit was doing in European countries. In Angouleme we discovered that our GB plate had fallen off and, knowing that we were legally required to display one, we visited a garage there and asked if they knew where we could get a replacement. It was then that I realised how inadequate my A Level French course had been. Although we had studied numerous French authors, it was of little practical use to us now as no one had told us how to say the alphabet in French! Finally, by writing the letters down I managed to let them know what I wanted and learnt that in French GB is pronounced Jay-Bay. They told us that they could make us one, but it would take a couple of days. As a result, we had to travel further each day than originally planned which meant that we were both rather saddle-sore at the end of each day. We crossed the Spanish border between Biarritz and San Sebastian and immediately discovered that what we were doing was culturally unacceptable. Eileen was getting hoots and wolf-whistles from passing motorists because she was wearing trousers and not riding side-saddle! Of course, this would have been extremely dangerous bearing in mind the distances we were travelling each day and, at the risk of causing offense, we decided that we had no option but to carry on as we were. Extremely tired when we reached Burgos we decided to spend the night in a hotel and enjoy the luxury of proper beds. We did the same in Madrid for two or three nights before heading for Barcelona by way of Zaragoza. But before we reached Barcelona our scooter broke down on a mountain road and reluctantly I had to leave Eileen by the roadside with the scooter while I hitched a lift in a Citroen deux-chevaux into a village called Jorba to get help. It took two days to get the scooter fixed and by the time we eventually reached our campsite at Rosas, on the Mediterranean just north of Barcelona, it was already dark. A day or so later we arrived in Perpignan in southern France, intending to travel on up the eastern side of France on our way back home. But the scooter broke down again, and after two days camping at the back of an Esso station, we were compelled to return to England by train, leaving our scooter to be brought home courtesy of the RAC. Fortunately, it was still under warranty and was repaired by Lambretta after it finally arrived back in England some six weeks later. That holiday was the last we were to have together before we were married the following year and, in some ways, was a preparation for it. Like the holiday, married life is wonderful, but not without its unexpected events, delays, and difficulties. We were learning to face problems together, to be patient with each other, and to trust in the Lord to bring us through. Perhaps that's why I tend to advise young couples, wherever possible, to go on holiday together before deciding to get married. But that brings me to how I decided to propose to Eileen. Engagement and Marriage It was during my first term at Oxford. We had been ‘going out' together for two years, seeing each other almost every day. But we had never talked about marriage. I think that must have been because I was very conscious of how serious marriage is. Divorce in those days was far less common than it is today and for me, as a Christian, it would not have entered my head. I knew that marriage would be for life. What's more, I knew God had called me to serve him, and choosing the right partner was vitally important. So I was reluctant to commit myself. But just before I went to Oxford my father had a word with me. You'd better make your mind up about that girl, David. It would not be fair to keep her waiting for three years while you're at Oxford, if your intentions are not serious. Of course, I knew he was right. I had to make up my mind. The problem was, I didn't want to give her up, but I didn't want to marry her if she wasn't the right one for me. Finally I did what I should have done much sooner. I decided to pray about it. I got down on my knees in my bedroom at Oxford and told the Lord my dilemma. I told him that I would gladly marry Eileen if she was God's choice for me, but if not, I would give her up. And as soon as I said that prayer I received an overwhelming peace and an assurance that Eileen was the girl I was to marry. So, the next time I was home from Oxford, after a long and passionate kiss, I said to her, You will marry me, won't you, darling? Yes, those were my exact words! To which she replied, Oh yes! Of course I will. So we decided to get engaged the following summer after my first year at Oxford, knowing that the earliest we could expect to marry would be after I had graduated. After gaining her father's consent, we organised a wonderful garden party to celebrate our engagement on 2nd July, 1960, and eventually were married by Pastor Alfred Webb at Bethel Full Gospel Church, Vicarage Road, Dagenham, on 28th July, 1962. And the specially invited organist for the occasion was none other than Laurie N. Dixon, LRAM, the friend through whom I had first heard about the baptism in the Holy Spirit.    Our move to Colchester After our honeymoon in Cornwall, we moved directly into our first home, a bungalow in Colchester, where I had accepted the invitation to take over the pastorate of the small AoG church there. Colchester will be the subject of our next talk, but first I need to explain why we did not consider ministry in a Baptist church and why I did not go to Bible College as originally planned. With regard to the Baptists, the explanation is simple. Once we had been baptised in the Spirit, neither of us had attended our Baptist churches apart from perhaps an occasional visit. This was largely because the minister of Hornchurch Baptist was not sympathetic to a Pentecostal understanding of scripture, and the new minister of Elm Park Baptist had stated that the Pentecostals' exegesis of Acts was entirely unwarranted. Against this, my parents had told me that Leslie Moxham, our former Baptist minister at Elm Park, had noticed such a difference in me since I was baptised in the Spirit that he had said, If the baptism in the Spirit can make that much difference to David, I want it too. Leslie was later baptised in the Spirit and eventually became an AoG minister working with my friend Colin Blackman in the Tunbridge Wells assembly. And although, as we were to discover later some Baptists were beginning to get involved in the Charismatic Renewal, it was evident to us that our future lay with the Pentecostals rather than with the Baptists. But why didn't I go the Bible College before taking on a church? The answer is that I tried to. Early in 1962 I applied to London Bible College. There was a section on the application form where you were required to give an account of your experience of Christ. So I mentioned not only how I had become a Christian, but also how Jesus had baptised me in the Holy Spirit. My interview lasted about an hour, most of which was taken up with what I believed about speaking in tongues. Was it for today? And if it was, was it for everyone? As a result, I received a letter a few days later saying that they felt I would do better to apply to a Pentecostal bible college! Interestingly, their rejection of my application is mentioned in Ian Randall's history of LBC, Educating Evangelicals. The AoG Bible College was then at Kenley in Surrey. Its principal was Donald Gee. I had had a brief conversation with him after a meeting at the East Ham Easter Convention, and he had promised to send me the application form. But this never arrived. I also heard it rumoured that the lady teaching English at Kenley, on hearing that an Oxford graduate might be coming, had, presumably jokingly, commented that he'll be probably teaching me! This, together with the fact that some of my Pentecostal friends were telling me that I didn't need to go to Bible college, because I had got it – whatever that meant! – caused me to wonder if that was the direction I should be heading. So I said to the Lord, If you really don't want me to go to Bible College, let someone offer me the pastorate of a Pentecostal church. And within a week, I had my answer. I received a letter from the Colchester assembly asking if I would be their pastor. There was a bungalow available for rent for six and a half guineas a week (£6.51) towards which they were prepared to contribute £5.00. Apart from that, they could offer nothing, and it was understood that I would need to seek full time secular employment. But that's something for next time.  

Why do these two historic university cities appear in so many murder mysteries? Books mentioned in this episode: — The Masters by C.P. Snow — Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis — Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh — Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm — Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers — The Case of the Gilded Fly by Edmund Crispin — The Cambridge Murders by Dilwyn Rees — Death at the President's Lodging by Michael Innes — An Oxford Tragedy by J.C. Masterman (£825.00) — Death on the Cherwell by Mavis Doriel Hay — Murder at Cambridge by Q Patrick — Police at the Funeral by Margery Allingham — The Incredible Crime by Lois Austen-Leigh — Last Bus to Woodstock by Colin Dexter — Trick of the Dark by Val McDermid — Case Histories by Kate Atkinson — Cambridge Blue by Alison Bruce — Fall of Angels by Barbara Cleverly — Invitation to Die by Barbara Cleverly — James Runcie's Granchester stories — Rory Clement's Tom Wilde series Support the podcast by joining the Shedunnit Book Club and get extra Shedunnit episodes every month plus access to the monthly reading discussions and community: shedunnitbookclub.com/join. NB: Links to Blackwell's are affiliate links, meaning that the podcast receives a small commission when you purchase a book there (the price remains the same for you). Blackwell's is a UK bookselling chain that ships internationally at no extra charge. To be the first to know about future developments with the podcast, sign up for the newsletter at shedunnitshow.com/newsletter. The podcast is on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram as @ShedunnitShow, and you can find it in all major podcast apps. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss the next episode. Click here to do that now in your app of choice. Music by Audioblocks and Blue Dot Sessions. See shedunnitshow.com/musiccredits for more details. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My Story   Talk 10   Brasenose College, Oxford, 1959-1962   Welcome to Talk 10 in our series where I'm reflecting on God's goodness to me throughout my life. Today we begin on the years that I spent at Oxford between 1959 and 1962.   For me, life at Brasenose College began on Thursday, 8th October 1959, exactly one month after I had been baptised in the Holy Spirit. I travelled there by car with Eileen and my parents, who, after helping me unpack and settle into my room at the top of staircase 11, prayed with me before returning home. This was the beginning of an entirely new phase in my life. It was the first time that I was living away from home. I would be making new friends and be challenged by new ideas.   But there are some things which remain constant in our lives no matter what else may change. I knew that my parents loved me. I knew that Eileen loved me, and that I loved her. And I knew that God had a purpose for my life and that I was now at Brasenose as part of that overall plan. So I had confidence that all would be well.   The fact that I would now be reading PPE (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics) did not faze me, even though I had never studied any of those subjects before. My original purpose in accepting the place I had been offered had been to widen my sphere of knowledge before eventually concentrating on theology in order to prepare for the ministry.   And PPE would certainly do that. But there was far more to being at Oxford than the course I would be studying. There was the social and recreational life which I greatly enjoyed. And it was a great opportunity to interact with people of all faiths and none and to share my faith with them. Opportunity, too, to tell other Christians about the baptism in the Holy Spirit, and to meet other Pentecostal students and spend time in prayer with them for the supernatural gifts of the Spirit. And it was also a time when my relationship with Eileen would be strengthened even though we would be apart for weeks on end.   As I can't cover that in just one talk, today will be aboutlife at Brasenose, its domestic arrangements, its social life and sporting activities, and the academic programme and its challenge to my faith.   Next time I'll share in more detail about my spiritual experience including how the Lord led me into leading others into the Baptism in the Spirit, how I began to exercise spiritual gifts, and how we began the Students' Pentecostal Fellowship. And later I'll tell you about my developing relationship with Eileen which led to our marriage immediately after I had graduated and how I ultimately decided not to go to Bible College as originally planned, but to accept the pastorate of the Assemblies of God Church in Colchester.     Life at Brasenose When I arrived at Brasenose in October 1959 it was almost three years since I had been there previously in November 1956 when I had taken the scholarship examination. Back then I had never seen any of the students' rooms, as we were staying in a boarding house in the Woodstock Road. So I wasn't quite sure what to expect. But as soon as I entered my new room, I was pleasantly surprised. It was larger than my bedroom at home, was well furnished and overlooked one of the quads with a view of the Radcliffe Camera and the University Church of Saint Mary the Virgin in the background.   Students were usually allocated a room in college for the first year of their studies, and sometimes for the second year too, when you had opportunity to choose what room you would prefer. During my first year I discovered that the room beneath me was even larger than the room I was in and had the benefit of a bedroom separate from the main room which was used as a sitting room as well as a study.   So when I was offered the chance to live in college for a second year I opted for this room which proved to be extremely useful when we were holding prayer meetings for those interested in seeking spiritual gifts. But more of that next time. For my third year I lived ‘in digs' in a boarding house on the Botley Road, just 50 yards away from the Elim Pentecostal Church which I attended throughout my time in Oxford.   Meals at Brasenose were, in my opinion at least, of a high quality and I was introduced to dishes which I had never tasted at home. These included jugged hare and braised haunch of venison, the only meals I took a positive dislike to, probably because the meat was hung for several days before it was cooked which resulted in a rather unpleasant smell. Fortunately, we were allowed to sign out in advance for any evening meal, provided we dined in college at least five times a week.   Dinner was a rather formal occasion at which we were required to wear our gowns, and which was preceded by a Latin grace which began with the words: Oculi omnium spectant in te Deus. Tu das illis escas tempore opportuno… which means The eyes of all wait upon you O God. You give them their food in due season, and is taken from Psalm 145:15. Sadly, however, I'm not sure that many people took it seriously, even if they should have known what it meant, bearing in mind that at the time Latin at O level was still an entrance requirement for Oxford University.   Breakfast and lunch were far less formal occasions. Grace was not said and there were no requirements about a dress code or attendance. There were, in fact, very few requirements about life in college. Apart from academic regulations, what rules there were related to the time of day you had to be back in college and the time at which any female guests had to be out!     The gate in the porters' lodge was the only means of access to the College. It was locked at midnight and anyone seeking access after that would be reported to the Dean and a fine would be automatically payable. However, this could be avoided if you were agile enough to scale an eight-foot wall without being caught, something of course I never had to try!   As far as the ladies were concerned, they had to be out by 10pm. This, I imagine, is no longer relevant, as, like most Oxford colleges, Brasenose rightly accepts female students as well as men. But by the time I left Oxford the ‘swinging sixties' had hardly begun, and there was still at least a nominal acknowledgement of Christian moral values.   For residential students there was also a rule about the minimum number of nights you had to be in college over the course of a term. Any absence without permission from your ‘moral tutor' would be reported by your ‘scout'. Scouts, who were usually much older than the students, originally were little more than their servants and before my time would clean your shoes if you left them outside the door of your room.   Even in my time they were referred to by their surname only, whereas they had to refer to me as Mr Petts and address me as Sir. This was something I deplored, a tradition which harked back to the old upstairs/downstairs attitude of the aristocracy still very prevalent in the early decades of the last century. If you've ever watched Downton Abbey you'll know exactly what I mean.   Social and sport Probably the most frequent social activity at Oxford was drinking coffee and staying up until the early hours of the morning discussing religion or politics or whatever else was currently in the news. Of course, whenever I could I took the opportunity to share my faith with anyone who would listen. Most of these discussions took place either in my room or that of fellow students whose accommodation was close to mine.   And at least one of those students came to faith in Christ during his first term at Brasenose, largely through the ministry of Keith de Berry, the rector of St. Aldate's Church, but I like to think that my testimony also played a part in his decision to give his life to Christ. He went on to gain a first class degree in Chemistry and continued at Oxford to do a D.Phil., (the Oxford version of a PhD). Now, after more than sixty years he is still a committed Christian and once told me that his scientific research had only confirmed his faith in Christ.   Of course, late night discussions were by no means the only occasions when there was opportunity to witness to the truth of the gospel. So whether it was punting on the Cherwell on a lazy summer afternoon, or in the changing room after a football match, or playing tennis or table tennis (for which, in my final year, I was captain of the College team), I was always eager to share my faith.       But that doesn't mean that I was constantly ‘Bible bashing'. Far from it. I remember how on one occasion, when our team was playing tennis against another college, my doubles match had been delayed for some reason. Consequently, it looked as though I would be late for our Students' Pentecostal Fellowship prayer meeting.   But it was a three-set match, and we had lost the first set six-love and were losing the second set four-love. We had only to lose two more games, and the match would be over, and I could get off to the prayer meeting which by then had already started. But throwing away the match would hardly be fair to my partner and would not have glorified God.   Then I realised that my friends would wonder where I was and would be praying for me, wherever I was or whatever I was doing. Which inspired me to say to my partner,               Come on, John. We're going to win this match.   And we did. The level of our tennis suddenly improved, and, having lost ten games in a row, we went on to win all the next twelve, taking the match by two sets to one (4-6, 6-4, 6-0). I'm not sure that John believed my explanation that this was probably the result of answered prayer, but because of that experience I am personally convinced, not only that God is interested in every tiny detail of our lives, but that such experiences bear testimony to others of the reality of our faith.   Academic programme The academic year at Oxford began in early October and finished towards the end of June. Each term lasted just 8 weeks which meant that the long summer vacation provided the opportunity for students to get a summer job or travel abroad or, where necessary, to catch up on their reading.   Reading was, in fact, a major part of learning, and the world-renowned Bodleian Library situated virtually on the doorstep of Brasenose, provided access to millions of books and other printed items. Guidance as to which books to read was given in tutorials when your tutor would set you an essay to write in time for the following week, when you would read your essay to him and he would make appropriate comments.   At the beginning of term, he would also recommend what lectures might be helpful. Attendance at lectures was entirely optional, whereas attendance at tutorials was a compulsory part of one's course. The standard of lecturing varied immensely, some academics having very poor communication skills. As a result, attendance would steadily diminish week by week and in one case I remember the series was terminated early ‘due to an indisposition' on the part of the lecturer!   In my day, the system of assessment at Oxford, for PPE at least, was by written examination. After ‘prelims' (preliminary examinations) which were taken in March in your first year, there was no further examination until ‘finals' which were taken in the June of your third year.     I was required to take at least two papers in each subject, Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, plus two further papers of my choice. I opted to take these in Philosophy as this was my favourite, despite the fact that it had been the most challenging to my Christian faith.   For example, during my second year I had been asked by my tutor to write an essay on the ontological argument for the existence of God. This was one of the arguments used by the philosopher René Descartes in an attempt to prove God's existence. During the course of my essay I said something to the effect that although philosophy cannot prove the existence of God it cannot disprove it either. It was at this point, as I was reading my essay to my tutor, that he interrupted me by saying: Oh, I don't know. I think if you mean by ‘prove' what we normally mean by ‘prove', and if you mean by ‘God' what we normally mean by ‘God', then we can probably disprove God's existence. But perhaps we can talk about it another time. This was the first time in my life that I had been confronted with such an outright denial of God's existence, and my tutor's statement shocked me deeply. It challenged everything I had based my life upon. I felt numb. As soon as he had left the room I instinctively wanted to call out to God for help. But what if my tutor was right and there was no God to call out to? But I called out anyway:             God, if there is a God, HELP! And He did! I walked into my bedroom and picked up my Bible and opened it. It fell open at Psalm 119, verse 99. My teacher had told me that he could prove that there is no God. Who was I to challenge the statement of an Oxford tutor? But in that verse the Psalmist said: I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes. I came later to realise that by reading the Bible the most simple believer can gain more understanding of the things that really matter than all the intellectual rationalising of the philosopher. That verse brought immediate reassurance to my heart. It was not just the content of the verse that reassured me – though it certainly did – but the fact that, of all the verses there are in the Bible, I should turn at random to that very one. This was surely no coincidence. God had spoken to me in a remarkable and powerful way. And as the years have gone by I have learned how to counteract the arguments of the atheists. I'm so glad now that I did not abandon my faith back then. People will always be bringing up challenges to our faith, but just because I don't know the answer doesn't mean that there is no answer! And until I know what it is, I just need to keep on trusting the One who said, I AM the truth.  

I'm back in Oxford to bring you a special one-off return to Oxford this week at Cherwell Boathouse. It was there that I sat down with head chef Paul Bell to talk about his journey, his cooking, and all things Cherwell Boathouse. He runs one of Oxford's longest-running and most beloved restaurants right on the river and balances punting, fine dining, events and more. Listen in for an insight into those challenges, how the industry has changed throughout his career, and more. Thanks again to Paul for the chat and to you all for listening. Be sure to head over to the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for more and subscribe so that you never miss an episode from these series. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/oliver-hall/message

Suzanne Kianpour is an Emmy-nominated BBC journalist. She has reported on the frontlines of conflict all around the world, with her recent work including coverage of the protests in Iran following the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini. Additionally, Kianpour is the creator and host of “Women Building Peace”, a BBC series that connects women trying to bring peace with lived experience in conflict zones with women who are globally influential. In collaboration with the Cherwell, we invite Suzanne about her experience as a frontline journalist, the Iranian protests, and the future of civil action and conflict resolution.  Image credits: Motivate Talent

It's Wednesday, January 18th, A.D. 2023. This is The Worldview in 5 Minutes heard at www.TheWorldview.com. I'm Adam McManus. (Adam@TheWorldview.com) By Jonathan Clark Muslims bombed Congo church service, killing 17 and injuring 39 A bomb went off on Sunday during a church service at an Evangelical church in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa. Forces allied with the Islamic State took responsibility for the attack which killed at least 17 people and wounded 39 more. Churches in the central African nation face extreme pressure from Islamic groups. Militants are known to raid villages, destroy church buildings, and kill hundreds of Christians. Last week, Voice of the Martyrs added the Congo to its list of most dangerous countries for Christians in its 2023 Global Prayer Guide. China's bleak economic future because of previous one-child policy China's population officially dropped for the first time since 1961, according to new figures released yesterday. Compared to 2021, the number of people in the country dropped by 850,000 last year, and over a million fewer babies were born. China's death rate was up to 7.37 deaths per 1,000 people, the highest it's been since the Cultural Revolution in 1974. The effects of China's former one-child policy and 400 million aborted babies are expected to continue such population decline. The fast-aging population also indicates a bleak economic outlook for China. Proverbs 1:31 says of those who reject the fear of God, “they shall eat the fruit of their way, and have their fill of their own devices.” British teacher's union targets Christian math teacher The U.K.'s Teaching Regulation Agency is seeking to remove a Christian math teacher from his profession. In 2017, the Cherwell School in Oxford dismissed Joshua Sutcliffe for allegedly “misgendering” a student. In other words, the teacher referred to the student by their biological sex. The school took further offense at Sutcliffe's opposition to faux homosexual marriage. The Evangelical teacher was also running a voluntary Bible club attended by over one hundred students which Cherwell shut down. Sutcliffe told Christian Concern the school publicly shamed him for his actions. SUTCLIFFE: “I've been sat in detention now for six days. And it's like solitude. It's like I'm being publicly shamed.  I'm seeing my students that I see every day. I'm thinking, ‘Well, what am I supposed to do? I've been asked to sit here. I listened to the instructions of the head. What am I supposed to do?' I'm just sat in the office.” 11 Reps. and 2 Senators in U.S. Congress are homosexual or bisexual A new study by the Pew Research Center found the 118th U.S. Congress has a record number of members who openly identify with sexually perverted lifestyles. Two senators and 11 House representatives now say they are “lesbian, gay, or bisexual” up from only one Congress member nearly forty years ago. Eleven of the openly homosexual members are Democrat; two are Independent, and one is Republican. 64th city declares itself Sanctuary City foe the Unborn Last Thursday, the City Council of Little River-Academy in Texas unanimously approved a Sanctuary City for the Unborn ordinance. It's the 64th city in the nation to do so. The ordinance bans abortions and abortion drugs within city limits. The measure also prohibits killing unborn babies that are residents of the city regardless of where the abortion would take place. Texas abortions have dropped by 99% Meanwhile, abortions in the Lone Star State have dropped by 99% since the overturning of Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022. New Texas health data show the state had 2,596 abortions in June, 68 in July, and only three in August. Inflation eased up slightly The U.S. government reports inflation eased up slightly last month. December's Consumer Price Index decreased to 6.5% compared with a year before. It marks the sixth straight month of inflation decline. The falling cost of gasoline made up the largest decline in the price index. U.S. cancer deaths down 33% A new study from the American Cancer Society found that cancer deaths in the U.S. are down 33% over the last 30 years. The study estimated this has meant 3.8 million fewer deaths. Cancer mortality rates peaked in the 1990s. Since then, the rates have been coming down with better cancer detection and treatment. McManus interview of Eric Metaxas on Letter to the American Church On today's edition of Generations Radio, I guest host for Kevin Swanson to interview Eric Metaxas, the author of a new book entitled Letter to the American Church. Listen to his comparison between the German church in the Nazi era and the American church today. METAXAS: “The parallels are astonishing! And it's why I had to write this book because I said, ‘Knowing what I know, having written the book on Bonhoeffer, being familiar with what happened in Germany in the 30s, I see such clear parallels with the American church today.' I said, ‘I've absolutely got to write this book. “First of all, you have a Christian nation that is secure in its cultural Christianity, that cannot even begin to imagine the evil that lies ahead, and is therefore absolutely slow in seeing what is happening, and where the silence of the church is leading. In other words, the German church could see bad things, but they thought, ‘You know what? It's not our role to speak up. We're not supposed to be political, Romans 13.' “They had all exactly the same excuses that American Christian leaders have today in being quiet and saying that ‘that's not our lane.'  What followed, because of their silence, is one of the most unimaginable horrors in history!” Take a listen to the whole interview at Generations.org/radio. 40 Indiana prisoners came to Christ and got baptized And finally, a sheriff's department in Indiana celebrated the baptisms of over 40 incarcerated men and women at the end of last year. A post from the Decatur County Sheriff's Department said, “Chaplain Dave Burnett . . . baptized nearly 40 men and women after a personal, public profession of Jesus Christ in their lives. Over the past four years, nearly 300 men and women have given their lives to Jesus Christ while incarcerated at the Decatur County Detention Center. All glory to GOD!” Jesus said in Luke 15:17, “I tell you, there will be more joy in Heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” Close And that's The Worldview in 5 Minutes on this Wednesday, January 18th in the year of our Lord 2023. Subscribe by iTunes or email to our unique Christian newscast at www.TheWorldview.com. Or get the Generations app through Google Play or The App Store. I'm Adam McManus (adam@TheWorldview.com). Seize the day for Jesus Christ.

Someone called OxShagger thinks he has come up with the perfect Valentine's surprise for Oxford students, but is the way he has gone about "bookworms with benefits" really a good idea? Robot security guards are trundling the streets of - you guessed it - America. And a writer of paranormal bully romances (no, we don't know what that means either) returns from the grave...All this and much much more is discussed in the latest edition of the "Smashing Security" podcast by computer security veterans Graham Cluley and Carole Theriault, joined this week by Host Unknown's Andrew Agnês.Warning: This podcast may contain nuts, adult themes, and rude language.Sponsored by:Bitwarden - Bitwarden vaults are end-to-end encrypted with zero-knowledge encryption, including, the URLs for the websites you have accounts for. Migrate to Bitwarden for a more secure password manager. ManageEngine PAM360 - A fully functional privileged access management suite that offers a holistic picture of all the privileged devices, users, and credentials in the IT infrastructure. From managing and governing access to all your enterprise resources to automating the access management life cycle in your organization, PAM360 does it all.NordLayer - NordLayer safeguards your company's network, securing and protecting remote workforces as well as business data. It can even help you ensure security compliance. Get your first month free.Episode links:Dating site for horny Oxford students slammed for privacy violations - Cherwell.OxShag will not be running this term as creator says they ‘made some poor choices' - The Oxford Tab.Dysfunctional: OxShag to shut down amid controversy - Cherwell.Oxford University dating website for staff and students shut down after ‘huge data breach' - The Times.CES 2023 Robots: Humanoid Helpers, Coding Pups and Farming Planters - CNet.One of America's most hated companies hired a security robot. It didn't go well - ZDNet.Robot security downtown getting lots of attention, KHON2 News - YouTube.4 New Contracts for 8 Machines to Kick Off New Year at Knightscope -...

Steve Rodda is the CEO of Stoplight, a global API design and documentation platform that helps SaaS companies design, test, mock, & document APIs. For several years he has held various leadership roles in engineering and product management, leading large organizations like SolarWinds and Cherwell. Along with discussing trends in how companies are designing and documenting their APIs, in this interview Steve shares:   What it means to be an API-first company, and what API first means today.What “Design-First" means when it comes to APIs, and processes and tooling to use in the design phase of building an API.Best practices for security, building a developer experience, and maintaining and supporting API design and documentation over time.Advice for getting buy-in internally to invest in developer experience.Recommendations for collecting qualitative and quantitative feedback on the developer experience.You can also read the transcript here: https://www.pandium.com/blogs/recent-trends-in-api-design-documentation-management --To access more content on integrations, APIs, and technology partnerships, check out our blog and resources page here: Download the Report on the State of Integrations and APIs at 400 SaaS Companies: https://www.pandium.com/resources/download-the-report-on-the-state-of-integrations-and-apis-at-400-saas-companiesPartnerships & Product Management Resources: https://www.pandium.com/resource-center-- To network with others working on building integrated SaaS tech partnerships apply to join our 1100+ member group here: https://www.saasecosystemalliance.com/

Join us for an Oxford-based mystery, our final read of the season - Death on the Cherwell - Mavis Doriel Hay. Spoiler alert! We will be revealing whodunnit so read before you listen. In Mystery Business, Maddy hands over all the treats. Han is delighted to receive green Penguin crime classics, and the new Agatha Christie t-shirt (from the Women's Prize for Fiction). We swap thoughts on Why Didn't They Ask Evans, currently on BritBox, and Han shares her initial takeaways from Death in Paradise. In Queens of Crime, Maddy enlightens Han with the details of the Wagatha Christie case. Han reveals some wild QofC social media interaction. We also discuss secret societies, aggressive swans and winning over university porters. Mystery Mentions The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side - Theatre Production Murder Underground and The Santa Klaus Murder, both by Mavis Doriel Hay Post After Post-Mortem - E.C.R. Lorac The Horizontal Man - Helen Eustace Daughter of Time - Josephine Tey Jonathan Creek The Mystery of Wagatha Christie article - thanks to our ami, Mary for the link. Thank you again mes amies for joining us this season. We will now be taking a short break, and our next episode will be the special Summer Shermozzle! Follow our social media for the release of our Season 4 reading list. We will return in September. Keep sleuthing! In the mood for more mystery? Check out Season 1 Episode 2 - Murder Underground (also by Mavis) Follow us on Instagram: @missingsalmoncase Follow us on Facebook: Missing Salmon Case page Share with a friend: The Unsolved Case of the Missing Salmon Send us your Queen of Crime: missingsalmoncase@gmail.com This podcast is created, produced and edited by Maddy Berry and Hannah Knight. Our music is sourced from Melody Loops and composed by Geoff Harvey.

David Apple and Rich Longo highlight the benefits of working with Flycast Partners.

Senior Consultant Chris Brunson, explains the uses for a self-service portal and what to consider when creating one.

Rich Longo and Bobby McCullough talk about an article on Data Decay.

Bobby McCullough and Rich Longo talking about the loss of IT employees during the "Great Resignation".

Senior Consultant, Dean Peirce of Flycast Partners, talks about the capabilities of Cherwell's translation support. This is the audio version of the VLOG post.

Jacob lives out his dream and gives us just the gist of Cher. No further description necessary. Skip to the story! Approx 18:04 We give you Just The Gist, but if you want more, there's this: Here's a nice, succinct doco about Cher's life up to 1998  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGWrxldROLw  Here's another doco from 2003, worth a view  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8zY9JnGl0U  Listen to Cher's interview with Andrew Denton in 2018  (in which Cher talks about teaming up with Meryl Streep to reduce a woman from assault)  https://podcasts.apple.com/cz/podcast/cher/id1459220847?i=1000443335147  Watch and adore Cher, Georgie and Georganne have an intimate chat sitting on the same couch like three sisters, so close, and all finishing each other's sentences in the documentary “Dear Mom, Love Cher”  https://tv.apple.com/au/movie/dear-mom-love-cher/umc.cmc.2hfqeiden8wvse2vemzz4kjyh?action=play  Watch the trailer for the movie that sent Sonny and Cher bankrupt, “Chastity”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dmQyPKEWxA  "She's not just a girl, she's an experience…" Get a taste of the Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour with Ronald Reagan and a young innocent Michael Jackon  https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3r2645  Watch a full episode of Cher's solo show, in which her future husband / ex-husband Greg Allman is a guest star https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsihHU95etc Watch Cher's medley of soul anthems performed with Elton John and Bette Midler on the “Cher” TV show in 1975  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p5kUaR3D04  Behold Cher's magnificent one-woman performance of West Side Story from her special in 1978 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLq6k6Ckafg  Cher + Dolly Parton + gospel medley = life shifting perfection  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVGs41Mik1E  Just… Cher performing a medley with David Bowie (I'm not crying, you're crying)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPlN8RBP-Ws  Cher with the Jackson Five (we know you're still crying, and it's ok) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGBJfnsT75E  Cher's disco moment - Take Me Home (can't believe Rosie didn't know this song, but OK)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ3giJ0BPOw  Cher putting her true love Rob Camiletti on full display in her video for “I Found Someone” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WttpvJVjLE  Cher's informercials, and the parodies, are all on this site  http://ruthsreport.blogspot.com/2020/11/that-time-cher-destroyed-her-career.html  Cher's eulogy for Sonny. It's heartbreaking, but such a beautiful tribute (and Cher is still so effing FUNNY and gets a lot of laughs)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fba-YxHIm6c  Watch the full Cherwell tour  https://vimeo.com/449975168  Enjoy Cher calling Letterman an asshole in 1986 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrX1ZFpvk14  Be moved by the time Sonny and Cher reunited in 1987 on Letterman  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4EaFzRVjlM  The brilliant profile by Tim Elliot on Jock Zonfrillo in Good Weekend: https://www.smh.com.au/national/he-s-very-nice-the-only-problem-is-chef-marco-pierre-white-on-jock-zonfrillo-20210714-p589q3.html Follow us on Insta! @JustTheGistPodcast @RosieWaterland @JacobWilliamStanley Email us your suGISTions! JustTheGistPodcast@gmail.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One of Flycast Partners' senior consultants, Cristy Castano talks with us about SLA and SLM's.

Ivanti is an IT software company that recently acquired Cherwell. Cherwell empowers organizations to improve service experiences and automate workflows using data that spans different contexts and business units. The result is very often much-needed digital transformation. Now we are going to find out how Cherwell customers are at the center of Cherwell's solutions from Lori Marshall, Vice President Of Product Management and Christine Moore, a Product Analyst from Cherwell Software acquired by Ivanti.

Hear the team at Flycast Partners talk about where they see the organization going in the future.

What are some things that have helped Flycast Partners evolve?

What did you first think of Flycast Partners?

When the preview for musical artist Sia’s debut film Music was released---- it received backlash from individuals on the autism spectrum. But it also sparked a conversation about neurodiversity. This hour, we talk about how the mainstream portrays autism. In the film Music, the central character “Music” is played by Maddie Ziegler, a neurotypical actress leading many to ask, why couldn’t someone on the autism spectrum be cast to play this role. How should we approach portraying autism and other disabilities in film and television? We want to hear from you. We also hear from Connecticut’s Child Advocate, Sarah Eagan on how schools are addressing educational needs of student with disabilities during this pandemic. GUESTS: Sarah Eagan - Child Advocate for the State of Connecticut Charlie Hancock - Student at Oxford studying human sciences and news editor at Cherwell, Oxford's independent student newspaper Sara Luterman -  freelance journalist covering disability policy, politics, and culture Support the show: http://wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When the preview for musical artist Sia’s debut film Music was released---- it received backlash from individuals on the autism spectrum. But it also sparked a conversation about neurodiversity. This hour, we talk about how the mainstream portrays autism. In the film Music, the central character “Music” is played by Maddie Ziegler, a neurotypical actress leading many to ask, why couldn’t someone on the autism spectrum be cast to play this role. How should we approach portraying autism and other disabilities in film and television? We want to hear from you. We also hear from Connecticut’s Child Advocate, Sarah Eagan on how schools are addressing educational needs of student with disabilities during this pandemic. GUESTS: Sarah Eagan - Child Advocate for the State of Connecticut Charlie Hancock - Student at Oxford studying human sciences and news editor at Cherwell, Oxford's independent student newspaper Sara Luterman -  freelance journalist covering disability policy, politics, and culture Support the show: http://wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rich Longo and Bobby McCullough talk about vulnerabilities with Dell Laptops spanning back to 2009.

Bobby McCullough explains the three factors that are driving digital transformation.

Bobby McCullough and Rich Longo talking about the ever-expanding role of the CIO in company culture and customer satisfaction.

Bobby McCullough talks with Rich Longo about Information Weeks IT Network on "Healthcare still seeing a high level of attacker activity".

When the preview for musical artist Sia’s debut film Music was released---- it received backlash from individuals on the autism spectrum. But it also sparked a conversation about neurodiversity. This hour, we talk about how the mainstream portrays autism. In the film Music, the central character “Music” is played by Maddie Ziegler, a neurotypical actress leading many to ask, why couldn’t someone on the autism spectrum be cast to play this role. How should we approach portraying autism and other disabilities in film and television? We want to hear from you. We also hear from Connecticut’s Child Advocate, Sarah Eagan on how schools are addressing educational needs of student with disabilities during this pandemic. GUESTS: Sarah Eagan - Child Advocate for the State of Connecticut Charlie Hancock - Student at Oxford studying human sciences and news editor at Cherwell, Oxford's independent student newspaper Sara Luterman -  freelance journalist covering disability policy, politics, and culture Support the show: http://wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When the preview for musical artist Sia’s debut film Music was released---- it received backlash from individuals on the autism spectrum. But it also sparked a conversation about neurodiversity. This hour, we talk about how the mainstream portrays autism. In the film Music, the central character “Music” is played by Maddie Ziegler, a neurotypical actress leading many to ask, why couldn’t someone on the autism spectrum be cast to play this role. How should we approach portraying autism and other disabilities in film and television? We want to hear from you. We also hear from Connecticut’s Child Advocate, Sarah Eagan on how schools are addressing educational needs of student with disabilities during this pandemic. GUESTS: Sarah Eagan - Child Advocate for the State of Connecticut Charlie Hancock - Student at Oxford studying human sciences and news editor at Cherwell, Oxford's independent student newspaper Sara Luterman -  freelance journalist covering disability policy, politics, and culture Support the show: http://wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bobby McCullough, Flycast Partners SE, talks to us about the value of "Enabling Your Workforce for the Digital Workplace". He talks about the effects it can have on security, productivity, etc.

Bobby McCullogh, a Flycast Partners SE, explains what Value Stream Management is.

Flycast Partners SE Bobby McCullough talks about the AIOps and the future of DevOps in IT.

Bobby McCullough and Rich Longo talk about Bobby's latest article on Automation versus Autonomous.

In this episode, Bobby discusses "What is New in IT Security".

February Lunch and Learns You Won't Want to Miss (Adam)

Bobby discusses an article titled "Where Cloud Adoption is Still Needed". He provides some insight on where it began where it is headed at an accelerated rate.

Bobby takes us through an article on "Ten Things IT Leaders learned in 2020".

When the founders of Cherwell Software set out to develop an intuitive platform to automate service management workflows across the enterprise, they realized the importance of no-code development and put it at the heart of that platform. The platform is designed to enable organizations to achieve higher levels of IT operational maturity, which is a modern take on doing more with less. Cherwell’s IT Service Management capability provides IT teams a pathway to greater IT operational maturity through pre-built, accessible and easy-to-implement workflows representing best practices for ITSM. No hand-coding required.Join us on February 4th as our presenter, Thomas Scheel, to learn more about Cherwell's no-code development.

If we were asked to boil down our discussion with CFO Gary Golden to a single word, our answer would be: “judgment.” It perhaps goes without saying that having good judgment is a prerequisite for every finance leader, and the quality frequently tops the list of reasons that CEOs give when asked to describe what sets apart one CFO candidate from another. Still, the word comes to mind not because Golden uses it—which he does multiple times—but because he routinely draws our attention to the “decision-making” central to every CFO position and the experiences that have helped to shape the judgment that he uses to make sound business decisions. Golden’s professional life began as a lawyer in a Dallas law firm, where his goal was to become a top mergers and acquisitions attorney, but along the way he jumped to American Airlines.  “One of the reasons I left private practice for American is that they had a reputation for moving lawyers onto the business side of things,” explains Golden, who says that attorneys frequently found finance to be a convenient door-of-entry at American. “Interestingly, at American, my mentors were not really attorneys, but I found mentors inside the finance organization,” remarks Golden, who says that his legal experience has served him well as he has taken on a number of different CFO roles. “When you start training as a lawyer, you have a very detailed ‘what can go wrong?’ orientation that I have found to be very helpful to me as a CFO because you’re always thinking about what can blow up and you want to have this orientation that forces you to anticipate next steps,” comments Golden. “Many times, you find yourself making judgments on things, and you decide not to do things even though you would really very much like to,” remarks Golden, who frequently uses the word “judgment” interchangeably or alongside “deciding” or “decision-making”—as in the sentence “As a CFO, your decision-making judgment is critical.” –Jack Sweeney Leave rating & review   Signup for our Newsletter GET MORE: Order now The CFO Yearbook, 2021   

Chris Roberts, back for his second time, is our feature guest this week. News from Purina, ClueJay, Conga, MeetMindful, Root9B, Cherwell, Red Canary, Ping Identity and a lot more! Support us on Patreon! Fun swag available - all proceeds will directly support the Colorado = Security infrastructure. Come join us on the new Colorado = Security Slack channel to meet old and new friends. Sign up for our mailing list on the main site to receive weekly updates - https://www.colorado-security.com/. If you have any questions or comments, or any organizations or events we should highlight, contact Alex and Robb at info@colorado-security.com This week’s news: Join the Colorado = Security Slack channel Colorado is one of 2021's top 5 states to retire in Purina invests in five startups through its Pet Care Innovation Prize contest Conga Appoints Grant Peterson as Chief Product Officer Report: Hackers Leak Data of 2.28 Million MeetMindful Users Deloitte Acquires Root9B to Bolster Cyber Threat Hunting Capabilities for Clients 2 Colorado software companies scooped up in major acquisitions Hindsight is 2020: gearing up for the Threat Detection Report The Enormous Costs of Identity Theft Discover the (ISC)² Community! Job Openings: Ping Identity - Security Sr Program Manager Ping Identity - Business Analyst, Information Security Ping Identity - Product Security Engineer Lares - Principal Penetration Tester Nordstrom - Director, Vulnerability Management Cleanshelf - Junior Security/IT Operations Analyst JumpCloud - Security Engineer - Incident Response Check Point Software - AppSec Architect Arrow - Cyber Security Systems Engineer / eDiscovery Analyst Upcoming Events: This Week and Next: Colorado Springs Cybersecurity - First Friday (Virtual) - 2/5 ISSA Denver - February Meeting - 2/10 ASIS - WIS : COFFEE CHAT WITH CHRIS FRUCHEY - 2/11 View our events page for a full list of upcoming events * Thanks to CJ Adams for our intro and exit! If you need any voiceover work, you can contact him here at carrrladams@gmail.com. Check out his other voice work here. * Intro and exit song: "The Language of Blame" by The Agrarians is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Current event topics in IT presented by Booby McCullough

What is being discussed in IT this week?

Our newest Client Development Representative, James Cardillo, talks with Rich about his background and interests.

Nathan George, President CEO of Flycast Partners, shares what you can expect from our organization in 2021.

The Flycast Partners Executive Team shares its 2021 goals with Rich Longo.

Join us as the Flycast Partners BDR Team share their 2021 Goals with Rich Longo.

Kyle Hamilton, Sales Engineer at Flycast Partners, shares his goals with Rich Longo.

Welcome our newest member to our Project Management Team Vaness Little-Racca. She shares a little bit about her life with us in her discussion with Rich Longo.

Christmas Eve 1874. As people make their way home to see friends and family, many swarmed to London stations to start their journey. Several hours after a train left London, it derailed over a canal bridge, and the disaster takes the lives of 34 people.What led to the disaster which ruined Christmas in a sleepy Oxfordshire village?Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/SignalstoDanger)

Flycast Partners Sales Engineer, Kyle Hamilton, talks about what he will be covering on our December 17th BMC RemedyForce Tips and Tricks Webinar.

Rich Longo interviews Flycast Partners newest Client Development Representative Benjamin Sanchez.

Rich Longo and Lamon Wade of the Flycast Partners Project Management Team, talk about all that they are most thankful for this Thanksgiving.

Pam Boyd and Glenn Martin of the Flycast Partners North American L1/L2 Support Team share what they are most thankful for in 2020.

The Flycast Partners Account Management team share what they are thankful for in 2020. Here Brenda Puff, Brett McKenzie, Daniel Heckman, Lance Garret, and Richard George all chat with Rich Longo about what is most special for them this Thanksgiving.

Ethan Collins of Flycast Partners BDR team chats with Rich Longo about what he is thankful for 2020.

A few of the Flycast Partners Senior Consultants talk about what they are thankful for in 2020. Join Rich Longo with Jerry Huscher, Bill Griffis, Nic Cunningham, and Chris Brunson as they talk about the good of 2020.

Julisa Coria, Senior Marketing Specialist at Flycast Partners, and Rich Longo talk about the things they are most thankful for this Thanksgiving 2020.

Flycast Partners CEO, Nathan George, and COO, John Postorino, talk about what they are most thankful for this Thanksgiving 2020.

Scott Breadmore, Sales Director at Cherwell Software

Meet Flycast Partners latest family addition, Adam Montgomery. Hear all about where Adam came from and what led him to Flycast Partners.

Episode 28 is an interview with Rae Ann Bruno. Rae Ann is the President of Business Solutions Training, Inc (BST), an organization focused on training and consulting in various areas of ITIL, Knowledge-centered Service (KCS), Service Desk Improvement, Internal Marketing, Metrics and ITIL Process Improvement. Rae Ann was inducted into the HDI Hall of Fame in 2017 and was named one of Cherwell's IT Legends that same year. Rae Ann delivers session 601: Wow Your Customers, Don’t Just Satisfy Them at SupportWorld Live—A Digital Experience. https://supportworldlive.com The SPOCcast logo, podcast theme, and all content are the property of HDI, a part of Informa Tech. ©2020 HDI, all rights reserved.

Thomas Scheel explains a new automated workflow capability that he and the team created fro the Cherwell ITSM Tool.

Pierre Aeschlimann of Cherwell, shares with us the import things to think about when replacing your ITSM tool. Many organizations like yours have invested in ITSM software with the goal of modernizing your IT operations, improving productivity, and in the process, enhancing overall experience for your employees. Years later those same organizations are now asking themselves, have I achieved those goals? Is the value delivered worth the high price? It’s these questions that have dominated discussions within many organizations today. Sound interesting? We can help.

This is an updated version of the article initially published in 2019. Now, the information is relevant as to May 2020. The debate over at which one is better, Cherwell or ServiceNow, seems to be eternal, and no one can answer the question. Each year, many Cherwell and ServiceNow alternatives appear, and it has become […] The post Cherwell vs ServiceNow — A Feature Comparison appeared first on Help Desk Migration Service.

Oxford lockdown sound recorded by Giulia Biasibetti. "Walking along this strip of land between the upper and lower levels of the river Cherwell, one is completely immersed in nature." Part of the #StayHomeSounds project, documenting the sounds of the global coronavirus lockdown around the world - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/covid19-sounds

How do companies like Dell, SAP and LinkedIn build successful B2B influencer marketing campaigns that translate into real business ROI? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, TopRank Marketing CEO and Co-Founder Lee Odden talks about B2B influencer marketing and what it takes to build influencer campaigns that deliver measurable marketing results.  Lee uses his own agency, TopRank Marketing, as a laboratory where he tests new influencer marketing strategies that he then rolls out to clients like SAP and Cherwell Software. In this episode, he shares advice on how businesses can partner with influencers, and what kinds of results to expect. Highlights from my conversation with Lee include: TopRank Marketing is a B2B digital marketing agency focused on content, search and influence. Lee sees B2B influencer marketing as an opportunity to give subject matter experts a platform to talk about things they're really passionate about, and do it in a way that is a win for both the influencer and the business with which they're partnering. The best influencer campaigns bring together and curate credible voices in a way that gives them value from an exposure standpoint and at the same time are very "infotaining" to experience on the consumer side. With B2C influencer marketing, very often brands are simply feeding the message to the influencer. By contrast, with B2B influencer marketing, brands are giving the influencers - who are experts on a topic - a platform to create and share a message of their own. For companies interested in using influencer marketing, Lee says it is important to begin by identifying the business or marketing problem they are trying to solve. The next step is then to identify the topic about which the business wants to be influential. This is often in the form of a topic cluster, much like you might see in SEO. Once that topic has been identified, Lee and his team use three criteria to identify the right influencers: 1) Topical relevance (the degree to which that individual's own content that they're publishing is a match at a relevance level to the topic of influence that they're targeting); 2) Resonance (the degree to which that topic of influence actually resonates with the influencer's first and second level network); and 3) Reach (network size). Lee says that the process of identifying influencers is similar in many ways to the process of search engine optimization because influencer marketing is optimizing for both findability and credibility. Unlike B2C influencer marketing, B2B influencers do not always expect payment. It really depends upon the type of influencer you are working with and the level of commitment you are looking for. Lee suggests starting small and working with unpaid influencers before committing to larger paid partnerships. Lee has built strong relationships with a variety of B2B influencers and credits his success to something he calls "influencer experience management," which is essentially the process of ensuring the influencer has a positive experience working with the brand while also obtaining a high return on their contribution. One way he does this is by shortening the time horizon between the influencer's investment and effort and the return that they see, as well as by delivering longer term value. When it comes time to promote influencer content, Lee says it is important to be emphathetic to the influencer in developing a mix of media and messaging that you can supply to them and which they will want to promote. Timing is also important and it is critical to have sufficient volume of promotion right at the launch of a campaign in order to trigger social algorithms to show the content at the top of the feed. In terms of results, Lee says that if you are new to influencer marketing, you shouldn't expect that your first campaign will deliver a large number of leads, BUT you should plan to use the assets you develop in your lead gen campaigns and over time, you will see results. He suggests thinking of your first campaign as a pilot, and then building from there. Resources from this episode: Visit the TopRank Marketing website Check out the TopRank Marketing blog Follow Lee on Twitter Connect with Lee on LinkedIn Listen to the podcast to learn how to build a successful B2B influencer marketing strategy. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm Kathleen Booth and I'm your host. And today, my guest is Lee Odden who is the CEO of TopRank Marketing. Welcome Lee. Lee Odden (Guest): Hey, it's great to be here, Kathleen. Lee and Kathleen recording this episode. Kathleen: I am so excited to have you here. I've been following you online for a very, very long time. And this is one of my favorite things about hosting a podcast, is it gives me an excuse to meet and talk to people who I would otherwise never have a reason to get to know and pick their brains on really interesting marketing subjects. So, looking forward to doing that with you today. Lee: Well, I'm going to have to reciprocate. I'm going to have to reciprocate because I'm really... I'm interested in picking your brain too, so. Kathleen: Well, let's do it. Let's get to the picking. Lee: All right. About Lee Odden and TopRank Marketing Kathleen: So, for my listeners who may not be familiar with you, can you tell my audience a little bit about yourself and who you are, what you do, what TopRank does and really how did you wind up where you are today? Lee: Well, that's quite a story and I'll make it short. So, I'm the CEO of TopRank Marketing. We're a B2B digital marketing agency focused on content, search and influence. We create experiences that inspire people basically. And we started as a PR firm in 2001. I joined as an SEO guy at the time and started to really explore the confluence of content and PR/earned media and earned media and owned media and how we can surface a relevant audience, not only buyers but also journalists, through optimization. And I remember that kind of combined into this sort of hybrid mix of services that we have today where we are serving clients like Dell, LinkedIn, SAP. We've done work for Oracle and Adobe and lots of other really cool B2B technology brands. We're based in Minneapolis where it is wonderfully cold and snowy. We are in the heart of winter a little bit earlier than normal, but that's okay. That makes for some a very fun running in the morning. And that's one thing about me, I've become a runner in the last 12 months or so. Kathleen: Do you have some of those tracks things for your running shoes that they have the little springs on the bottom? Lee: I didn't. So, I opted to get some... oh God, what are they called now? Something One One, Kona One One, anyway. So, these are some special shoes that are made - they're actually a trail running shoes made for the winter. Kathleen: Oh, wow. Lee: So, it's a hybrid between a trail running shoe and a hiking boot basically. So, it's got a huge foam foot bed but with super grippy Vibram soles. And I ran in the ice this morning and it worked great. So yeah, I'm an all-weather runner. Kathleen: Oh, that's great. I used to be a runner. But things have caught up with me and my knees decided that I would no longer be a runner. So, now, I am an avid spinner Lee: There you go. Kathleen: But I miss running and I missed it. I used to love running in the snow. It's so pretty and it's such a great way to experience, snowy world. Lee: Absolutely. I spent many years not doing very much at all being very much a computer geek type person sitting behind a desk. And so, while a lot of other people my age are in your seat... in the situation you described where their hips or their knees or their ankles or various tendons have gone caput, I don't have that. So, hopefully, I have another 20 years or so of the joy and the euphoria that comes right from the... all those endorphins firing after a great run. And what's really interesting about what I found about running and really a big fitness focus for me over the last year and a half or so is the parallels to marketing. You know what I mean? Because it's just kind of interesting and very curious. I think the people expect to lose weight overnight because they tried a new exercise program or meal or diet plan. And people sometimes look at marketing tactics and feel the same way. A lot of inbound marketing tactics actually like SEO and content. It just doesn't work that way. You've got to invest, you've got to commit and all those other things. So, there's a lot of interesting parallels I think between fitness and marketing performance. Kathleen: So true. And you just gave me the perfect segue into my next question, which is that you and I really first connected around this because you reached out and asked me to participate in your B2B marketing fitness guide, which was related to MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum. I was speaking there and you were putting together a guide that essentially did tie marketing and fitness together and were asking for almost sort of submissions around that. And it's funny because when I got that email from you, I was like, "Yes, I have always thought this too" that with fitness, we all know what we're supposed to do, right? We know that we're supposed to regularly exercise and this and that. It's just that so few people actually do it. And it's the same thing with marketing. We pretty much all know what we're supposed to do. But so, few companies and marketers actually managed to do it consistently on a regular basis over time. So, I thought that was genius. But the other thing that really what's interesting to me as I interfaced with you and your team around that project was just the whole process that you put together and how incredibly thorough it was, how thoughtful and detail oriented it was. Watching you execute that and the way that you worked with the different contributors and influencers on the project to me was fascinating. And so, that's what I was excited to dig into today since then I've learned that you do this kind of influence our work not just with your own company but with all kinds of clients. And so, I would love to talk about that with you. B2B influencer marketing Lee: Sure, sure. It's one of the joys of what I get to do and that is to shine a light on people with great talent. And it's in the context of Influencer Marketing. But really, it's interesting to me to have an opportunity, create conversations to create opportunities or architect opportunities where people can talk about things that they're really passionate about, situations where they can add value. And then, as puzzle pieces, pull them together into an experience that really showcases them in a really positive, optimistic light. And ultimately, I'm after a 360 win situation. This brings me great personal and professional joy to get to do that. So, there are opportunities for marketing obviously when trying to create thought leadership or customer acquisition or we have other obviously traditional marketing objectives. But how can we create value for people first? How can we bring together and curate super credible voices, experienced voices together in a way that gives them value from an exposure standpoint? But at the same time, because of the story behind it all, it's very infotaining to experience on the consumer side, right? And so, people enjoy consuming the information, they are inspired to share it, people that contribute enjoy consuming the information and they too are inspired to share it. And ultimately, becomes more successful as a result. Kathleen: So, this is really interesting to me because you think about this term "Influencer Marketing" and it's a very broad catchall for a lot of different things. And I think most people think of influencer marketing and they're probably thinking of things like somebody pays a Kardashian to plug a product on their Instagram feed or the Fyre festival. There is certainly that kind of influencer marketing where you're just really paying to put your product or service in front of that person's audience. But then, there's this whole other world that I think you've tapped into which I think is the more interesting one. And I love that you refer to it as an experience. But what I noticed about the way that you managed this particular project that, that got this going was that it wasn't the typical, "Hey, you have an audience. I want to get in front of it." What will it cost? It was, "We're creating something and we want you to be a part of it." And the big takeaway I had was that every... I kept speaking only for myself as somebody who participated. I felt like I had a sense of ownership in it, right? Because I played a part in creating it. And I think that's a very different angle to Influencer Marketing when your influencer has a feeling of ownership actually co-create the content with you seems to lead to a very different outcome. So, maybe you could just talk about that a little bit. Because I just feel the spectrum of Influencer Marketing. Lee: Absolutely. One of the big challenges of our time in the marketing world is the growing distrust consumers have of brands. And so, our opportunity as marketers is to bring forward as much authentic information and create as many authentic experiences as possible. So, rather than treating people who are credible experts -- and in the case of B2B influencers, we are really talking about credible experts as opposed to people who self-anoint them, an influencer who are really good at taking selfies and all that other silly stuff -- so, what we're looking at is inviting them to contribute to a thing that's bigger than ourselves, right? Where in some cases, it really is changing the world, it's a movement. Others' work, we've done with SAP and the United Nations around some initiatives around the United Nations around purpose. And it's like pretty remarkable. Where I mean, these influencers are just CEOs of major corporations and celebrities sometimes and then... and other folks. But on the other hand, it's other folks who are working in their industry and they've really established the respect. And they also have that domain expertise too. So, rather than feeding them a message, rather than treating them like an ad by which is where the B2C world tends to focus, we're rather trying to help them. First, we identify them as the credible person around the topic and that that topic resonates with their audience. That's our data informed homework we do beforehand. And then, once we invite that person because they are credible and there's evidence that they are credible, we do invite them to contribute and we want to hear their authentic, authentic voice. We want to hear what their opinion is in the context of an overall story. And then, whatever they say is perfect because it's real. And that's what people are looking for. And that's why I think it turns into that experience that is not only good for the contributors, but it's obviously a good experience for the audience that we're out there to attract and engage. Getting started with B2B influencer marketing Kathleen: I love that. And trust really is at the heart of business. When people are buying from you, they're buying because they trust you. And that authenticity is the biggest thing that fuels that... You named a lot of the different companies that you work with. It's an incredibly impressive list. I imagine there are many clients and prospective clients who come to TopRank and they talk about wanting to do some form of influencer marketing. Can you talk a little bit about what those first conversations look like -- when you engage with someone or consider engaging with someone? I imagine that influencer marketing is not necessarily right for everyone and, or you have to have the right set of expectations. So, how do you suss that out? Lee: Yeah, that's a great question because people come in from a variety of perspectives. So, a lot of the time people come in from a marketing or demand gen perspective. And in that case, they may say influencer marketing outright because they've pulled themselves through education, around industry information or conferences or whatever and have come to the conclusion that this is something that will help them get solve a marketing problem. And so, really, what we're after first is defining what that marketing problem is because it's not always an exact match. You know what I mean? Also, we have people who have interpreted what the expression influencer marketing means and then, for example, if they see it only as an ad. We had a company recently that said, "We have 30 days." There's been some positive news in our industry that would be good and a good reflection on our brand and the problem that we solve as a company. And so, we have 30 days to quickly... I want you to find some influencers, run a campaign and take advantage and sort of ride the wave of this positive news in the industry. It's like, "no." But we're very focused on organic and authentic advocacy and engagement, not on just paying people who are willing to say something nice and it's not legitimate or genuine, you know what I mean? And also, the timeframe makes no sense. 30 days is crazy, especially in a B2B context. So, the first thing we're looking for is to really understand what it is that business is... what's the business problem or the marketing problem they're trying to solve? And the degree to which partnering with credible experts can help solve that problem. And the interesting thing is, from a demand gen lead gen standpoint, that is totally reasonable. And it is possible within a short period of time to find people who the right kind of people who can contribute to that outcome. It's not always possible. You do have to look for data, you have to look for evidence of people who are already actively advocating for the brand and that actively publish, that are respected in the industry. And when you have the good fortune of finding those combination of traits, then, you can reach out to them, invite them to contribute to something and have a reasonable expectation that one of the outcomes from that content you collaborate on is going to result in some sort of MQL. And usually, in a B2B case, it's a download or a trial or demo or something like that. On the other hand, there are people from PR who come in. And it's influencer relations to them, not influencer marketing. So, they think of it from an analyst relations standpoint. They're thinking more thought leadership. They're not looking at conversions. They're not looking at lead gen per se. They're looking at building the influence of the brand, building the reputation of the company and even ways in which they can elevate the influence of their key opinion leaders and senior executives. Well, that's a very different approach and is also appropriate as a collaboration with industry influencers. It's just executed in a very different way. So, we find out what it is that it needs to be solved and then we apply the expertise and knowledge and the networks that we've already built with all these different influencers in the different industries, especially in B2B industries and then architect a plan on how to do that. Identifying the right influencers with whom to partner Kathleen Booth: So, if you get someone in who has the right expectations and it's a good fit and you think influencer marketing makes sense, one of the things I'm curious about is, how do you identify the right influencers? I assume there's obviously a component of, they need to have something of a following. But I imagine there's probably more to it than just that. Can you talk about that a little bit? Lee: Absolutely. In fact, one of the biggest failures that people make is, when they do focus only on popularity. It's easy to do that, but everyone's doing it. And of course, it can be faked. It doesn't happen as often in B2B as in B2C. So, to identify the right influencers, starts with topic specificity. What is it that you want to be influential about? What topics are going to matter to your customers or to the audience that you're after? The association of that topic of influence amongst influencers is something that can then elevate the brand and can give the marketing message more credibility, more reach and more engagement. So, we have to understand what those topic or topics are. Usually, it's a topic cluster. There's a primary and derivative topics -- something similar to what you might do with SEO for example. And once we identify those topics, then we use a variety of approaches to brainstorm influencers -- everything from interviewing people at the brand to looking at CRM data to social data. But ultimately, we're going to use a platform that is crawling the social web platforms like Traackr, T-R-A-A-C-K-R. I spell it just because it's easy that... not spell that right. And so, what they're doing is they have a database of millions and millions of people on all the things that they're sharing and what their followers are interacting with. And so, the minimum criteria, the data points that we're looking at are topical relevance, the degree to which that individual's own content that they're publishing is a match at a relevance level to the topic of influence that we're after. Second, we're looking at resonance, the degree to which that topic of influence actually resonates with their first and second level network, right? Because we don't want it to be weird that they start talking about Apple mice or something like that and they never talk about that. And then, the third thing is reach, of course, which is network size. There are other elements like audience characteristics and what kind... do they publish their own blog? Do they publish to industry websites? Do they speak at conferences? Are they a book author? And there are other sorts of signals that are both online and offline that we may consider according to the situation. And increasingly, we're starting to bring in SEO metrics. So, we want to know sometimes where there's someone isn't a recognized entity by Google, right? And so, are they on Wikipedia? Are they showing up in... from an SEO perspective provided that the reason why we're doing the campaign has SEO expectations. We'll look for those criteria. That's not always the case, but increasingly it is because there's a lot of congruence between topic specificity as it relates to SEO and topic specificity as it relates to influence. You want to help someone be the best answer. And what we like to say is we're optimizing for findability. But we're also optimizing for credibility. So, all those factors come into play and identifying well, who's the right match, right? And obviously, there are other things, and I know that I could probably write a book all just about this but we want to make sure that the type of content we have planned is a match for obviously what they publish. So, YouTubers -- video, right? Bloggers -- text. Podcasters -- audio, and so forth. And making sure that we're really aligning from a value standpoint what that influencer has demonstrated through their interactions with their community and the values that brand stands for. All those things factor in to picking the right person. And still, after a campaign or two, it may turn out to be that that person is not a fit because influence is temporal. It is not permanent. It goes up and down and it is very important to revisit these... some of these criteria on an ongoing basis and that's something most brands are not doing. Working with influencers Kathleen: I hear a lot of marketers talk about influencer marketing and they're intrigued by it. They love the idea of it. They see the potential. But I think sometimes what stumbles them or causes them to stumble is the actual, like, execution. How is this going to work? And for somebody who's listening and they're thinking, "This sounds great, I love this idea, I'm willing to go out and find these influencers that combine the credibility with the popularity and all of the other things you just mentioned", this is a two-part question. First of all, what kind of expectations should they have around, should I be paying these people? And if so, how much? And the second part is, if they're not getting paid, what are the odds they're going to actually say yes to participate? Lee: Sure. So, getting paid or not paid especially, now, we happen to focus on B2B, so that's where my most of my experience lies. In B2C, if someone has a significant level of popularity and experience being an influencer for brands, almost all the time they're going to want to be paid. In a B2C scenario, where people don't get paid, maybe you have a cause-oriented marketing initiative. So, the influencer is part of the same cause or initiative that your brand is interested in and you come together to make a big difference and that's something where they may just volunteer their time because you believe in the same thing. In B2B, it's less common for influencers to be paid. There's a lot more content and when you look at the full customer life cycle at a B2B scenario, there's just so much more content involved as increasingly buyers are pulling themselves through that sales cycle or through that process before they ever contact sales. So, what you would pay an influencer for is what you would pay a consultant for in a lot of cases. So, for example, well, let's look at this. When I reached out to you and some of the others, you know I mean, they were super credible, it was a really a great group of people that shared a quote, a 50 to a hundred words, that's not normally a paid thing. Plus, we have a great reputation in our industry for making people look really good. We put them in these interactive experiences and it really does showcase and everyone gets... it's really valuable for them and they can monetize that exposure in other ways by being more credible at their job. It could contribute to book deals, it could contribute to paid speaking gigs or consulting gigs and so on and so forth. So, on the other hand, if I asked someone to... well, for example, I'm working with Brian Solis on an industry report as an analyst. I'm paying him. I mean, he's an influencer but he's also an analyst. Kathleen: But that's what he does for a living, right? Lee: So, he's doing work. Yeah, exactly. And that's a good distinction too. So, there are different types of influencers. There are "brandividuals" and I would say Brian is one of them. These are professional influencers. They are making it their business to continually collect intelligence to do analysis, to be a thought leader in their industry. So, they also publish and they actively engage in the network. And they're able to do this in a way that creates much value that it just makes sense to engage them on a paid basis. So, I mean, sometimes this manifests as a keynote presentation or they may emcee a whole track at your user conference. They may do a webinar for you that is hyper focused on something that you can monetize through lead gen. Or they could create a whole eBook or they could do a video series. We engage influencers like Tamara McCleary for example, who is the host for a season of podcasts for SAP called Tech Unknown. And you've got to listen, if you get a chance to listen to season two, just the first episode just dropped. It is so cool. We're talking about supply chain management and it's actually interesting. It's actually, it's amazing. You go from a farm in Thailand somewhere to a coffee shop and it's all audio. It's like you're listening to an NPR well-produced show but it's a podcast. And influencers are involved both as a host and as guests. So, the host is probably a paid situation whereas the guests are not because they're only on for one show, for one interview or whatever. So, hopefully, that makes sense. So, I think a lot of people just starting out feeling optimistic. They can start off by identifying people who are already advocates for their brand that are also influential and simply invite them to do something simple, share a quote, share commentary about a report, share some insights. Or at this time of year, some trends. And start things that way and see how that goes. And you can build from there. Building win-win influencer partnerships Kathleen: Yeah. And if I hear you correctly, part of it is also making it a great experience for that person who contributes. It's not just asking and getting the information, it's the follow-up that you do, the way that you help that person leverage their involvement in order to achieve their own goals. Whether that's building their personal brand or as you... I think you mentioned publishing a book or getting a speaking gig. I feel like there's that whole, you called it earlier a 360 win. How do you make it a win for them as well? Lee: I think that absolutely. And we call that "influencer experience management." So, customer experience is so much of a, a term, or it's in the vernacular of marketers these days of selling platforms and marketing services or whatever. And we apply those same ideas to the influencers that we work with because so many of them are organic sorts of collaborations and value exchanges that we have to. It's very important that we make it easy for them to do their best for them to enjoy it and to get a disproportionately high return on their effort. And that spells a win for everyone. It really, really, really does. Examples of TopRank influencer campaigns Kathleen: So, assuming that I wanted to do an influencer campaign. I'd love to just talk through what... how this work, what are some of the better frameworks for them and what kinds of results I could expect. And I guess the best way to tackle this might be to do it through some examples because I know that you've used your own company as a bit of a laboratory to try out new strategies and figure out what is going to work well and what isn't. And then, you tend to roll that out to some of your clients. Maybe you could share some of those examples and talk through the kinds of results you've gotten? Lee: Sure. So, excuse me, one of the earlier examples, I think it was 2012 or so, we approached, or Joe Pulizzi and I were talking. So, he's the founder of Content Marketing Institute, Content Marketing World conference. We were talking about how we might collaborate together. Because previously, our blog is fairly popular and we had been a media sponsor for quite a few conferences as a blog which at the time was very... you had to be actual magazine or have a massive email list or something like that. So, I had great success with that kind of collaboration with events and publications. And we were talking about what we could do together. And I thought, well, how about if I do this? Now, today, this is going to sound so unique. But at the time it was fairly unique. So, I thought, well the conference has, I think it was a secret agent was a theme somehow. I don't know if that was a theme of the conference. But oh, know what it was. So, I suggested, how about if I reach out to somebody of the other speakers and invite them to share their expertise as a preview to the conference. We'll publish this before the event and it'll attract attention to the conference. At one level, that was like, "Yeah, duh, that makes sense. Okay, great." But what I knew as a speaker is that this is a multi-track conference. And nothing is more disappointing to showing up at a multi-track conference and finding out that three or four other super popular people are speaking at the same time as you and there's only 25 people in your seats. So, I empathized with the speakers in this way. And so that is part of the context of my invitation to some of the really popular speakers that I didn't have a relationship with as an invitation to give them exposure, immediate return on their effort, opportunity is really what that was. And I learned a lesson in this. So, I started out thinking, I would just do 10 question interviews and publish the interviews on our blog. That was the format of the content I had in mind. I sent out these 10 questions to quite a few of the speakers and only one responded. And that was a big failure. So, one of the questions was, can you share one secret about content marketing? And I thought, I'm going to try this again. And so, I repositioned a question. I said, I asked it as if I was a character, I said, "You're a secret agent and you've just returned from a meeting with your handler and now you have a secret that will save the content marketing world. What's that one secret?" And these people who had no time for the 10 questions rapidly responded, many in character, "This is agent 35. Here's my secret from technology company X, Y, Z." And we got, I don't know, 30s or 25 responses. And so, we use the vintage James Bond sort of theme where you have an aged folder with coffee stains on it. And the red-letter stamps secrets as an eBook aesthetic that Joe Kalinowski at Content Marketing World created the cover. And then, we took that cover's inspiration and created all the interior aesthetics and everyone loved it. They had all these graphics and we positioned them as the little Polaroid photos and all this stuff. So, it was, what is it, 40,000, 50,000 views over the weekend on SlideShare alone. It was the featured content on SlideShare and other speakers at the conference were talking about it because it dropped right before the conference. So, that really set the stage for events and content, the people speaking at events and content, as something where we could create immediate value for people, right? Because, the hypothesis was not what can we get from people, it was what value can we create for people. But we've got to shorten the time horizon between their investments and effort and the return that they see. And we also want there -- because it would be digital content -- we want there to be an ongoing or long-term return as well, hopefully. So, that was the framework for what we still do today. And actually, that was the framework for the project that you contributed to as well. Kathleen: Yeah, it sounded- Lee: And so, there's lots of other examples like that. Yeah. Kathleen: Yeah. And kudos to you for recognizing a huge pain point because yes, I have spoken at many a multi-track event and there's nothing worse than there being three tracks and the other two guys have packed rooms and you're like, "Okay, you five people, we're going to have a really interactive session because there are so few of us." Lee: Yeah, exactly. Promoting influencer marketing content Kathleen: So, that's great. What I thought was really interesting is, a lot of what you talked about is, it really is leveraging the classic principles of marketing. Because when you talked about reducing the number of questions that you asked, it's the same principle behind how many forms do you put in a... or fields you put in a form. If you asked for 15 things, not a lot of people are going to respond. You asked for two things, you're going to get a lot more. So that makes a lot of sense. But I think one of the most interesting aspects of this to me is, how you enabled the share-ability. Because I know you did this with the one I participated in as well. And you talked about the graphics and making it really cool kind of Polaroid picture like things. Can you maybe talk through how you... what happens once the piece is done? In other words, what assets do you deliver to the contributors and how do you follow up with them to encourage sharing? Lee: So, the, the magic of promotion starts in the planning. So, I talked about topic specificity as it relates to search and influence. So, we use search data as a reflection of demand and we use other data sources to kind of get an idea of what questions are people actually asking around the topic, the brand wants to be known for. And that actually informs the influencers we pick but also the questions we asked them to give insights about. So, there's information architecture if you will, to the way the content is curated and then structured that follows through then to the promotional assets that are delivered, right? So, for example, if I worked with you on a future project, I'm like, "Kathleen in inbound marketing, inbound marketing." So, I'm going to ask you about inbound marketing. And then, in a promotion asset it may be an infographic, it maybe an interactive infographic. We often repurpose content into promotional videos. Actually, I've got a great example for you to just... we did a conference, had a game theme. All right. So, we decided to use 8-bit video game as an aesthetic. And then, we did these promo videos where we literally turn the influencers who contributed into these 8-bit characters and you could... and then, it had the music like the Mario Brothers music... and the left to right and the scene moving behind them and whatever. And so, we use those as a promotional videos and we gave static images, we gave the video content to the influencers to share. And of course, we shared that on our own network as well. And obviously, we pre-write social messages. And that is an art all by itself because the social message you would give to the industry is a completely different social message you would give to someone that works at that brand or to the influencers themselves, right? People often mistake that influencers only want to self-promote and they'll give them a graphic with their own photo in it and it's like, no, in certain cases that is... the last thing in the world they want. But if you give them a graphic with a photo of all the influencers that they are participating with, now, that is motivating because by association, that'll lift their credibility. Otherwise, it just looks like gratuitous chest beating. Kathleen: It's so awkward when you're like, "Look at me. I'm doing this thing." Lee: Yeah. And so, it's being empathetic. That empathy is instrumental obviously in marketing but especially with promotion. And so, there are promotional assets that are a mix of media and messaging. There's also a timing that comes into play. As we all know, social algorithms will emphasize engagement within a very focused period of time. So, when there's a launch, we want to architect as much organic sharing as possible around that very specific launch time so that algorithms will respond and then feature that content higher in the feeds and that sort of thing. What kinds of results can you expect from B2B influencer marketing campaigns? Kathleen: So, at the end of the day, you run a campaign like this. What kind of results does it deliver? Lee: So, again, results and metrics and all that obviously are tied to the goals of the program. While some people will start with a campaign sort of idea, really what it is, it's a pilot. And what you should expect from a pilot where you don't have an influencer program in place already is simply to create great relationships with the influencers to have created content that you can repurpose for demand gen efforts, which could lead to the lead gen that you're after. But as far as the actual influencer content on that pilot, that is a top of funnel thought leadership type of expectation, that's the reasonable expectation. And again, like I say, you can repurpose that content for demand gen efforts. You can deconstruct that influencer content and use its ingredients to put in other demand gen and lead gen types of efforts long-term. But I wouldn't expect leads off of a pilot. I really wouldn't. That said, we have had pilots do really well. There's a company, it is an IT service management industry called Cherwell software. The very first pilot we did for them, or the pilot we did for them, I don't know, they're 15 influencers talking about... is reacting to a report, an industry trends report that they had produced. And so, the influencers are reacting to that data and the content of that report, we put it together as an eBook. We gave them compelling content to share that one campaign because obviously, you were encoding all those URLs that they're sharing. That one campaign was responsible for 22% of their pipeline for the entire year. Kathleen: Wow. Lee: It's an award-winning campaign. Demand Gen Report gave it the Killer Content Award offer that year. In fact, well anyway, I'll stop there. But we're continuing to work with them- Kathleen: I want a link to this campaign so I can check it out and put it in the show notes by the way. Lee: Absolutely. Yeah. And so, that can happen. But that's not typical. And the thing is, when you do a pilot like this and you don't have influence or relationships already, I mean, it only makes sense that you're just opening the door to this as a tactic. It's kind of like, if you know about SEO. Obviously, if we optimize something and we get a couple of links, we're not expecting a flood of leads after a month, that's crazy. Or even a quarter, it takes time to earn it. Now, if your starting point is one where you have a super mature website and you've got hundreds of thousands of links in all kinds of content and you're just making some technical mistakes, you can fix those things and have great expectations. Same sort of thing in influencer marketing. If you already have really great relationships and credibility with industry influencers, but you're just not activating them in an effective way, we can see that. And then, we can architect an experience for them that will result in the thing that you're actually after. So, it really depends on the goal. It depends on the starting point. But ultimately, no matter where you start, we can get there, right? There's a phased approach that you can take, a maturity escalation that you can follow or a path of escalation and maturity that you can follow that can take you from experimenting to being processed and transactional to be more relationship focused, ultimately, being... having momentum and being fully integrated. Companies that are nailing B2B influencer marketing Kathleen: Now, you mentioned Cherwell as an example of a really successful campaign. Are there other companies or specific campaigns that spring to mind if somebody is listening to this and they want to go out and see a living breathing example of how this was done in the wild? What should they look at? Lee: Absolutely. So, another great example is a SAP has as a Tech Unknown podcast. I mentioned that before. So, just if you Google "TechUnknown" as one word or "SAP Tech Unknown," you'll see season one has been out there and we just crushed it with the downloads or they crushed it with the downloads. And so, Tamara McCleary was the host inviting industry experts from within and with outside the organization and just really talking about topics of interest to their buying audience. Same thing with Dell technologies where Mark Shaffer and Douglas Carr, are the influencer hosts and they're interviewing people within Dell technologies, group of companies as well as outside experts about things that their audience will care about. Also, another podcast example I'd love to share is 3M. 3M publishes the largest study of science on the planet, right? It's the study, State of Science Index study. And as a complement to that, we started a podcast where their chief science evangelist, Jayshree Seth, I'm hoping I'm saying your name right, is the host. And then, she interviews people from astronauts to educators other intellectuals or practitioners in business that work in the field of science to help people understand how science impacts our lives. And again, I think we're on season two of that. So, audio wise it's a great opportunity. Episodic content bodes really well I think for influencer engagement because it creates a platform you to have guests. And it's a very natural metaphor for what people already know to be exposed to different ideas and for you to invite people who can add to your sort of portfolio of influencers. Because when you create that interview experience, the experience can inspire advocacy long after that episode has dropped for that person as they go about talking about things of interest in the industry. We also create a lot of interactive assets. So, the marketing, fitness, the B2B marketing fitness thing that you were part of was a slightly interactive. There was a conference where I... the topic, what was the topic? Break Free of Boring B2B. So, in fact if you search "Break Free Boring B2B," you'll find this. And so, I gave a challenge to my team and our designers came up with a couple of designs and one of them was basically, it would be 150-foot-tall grizzly bear with lasers coming out of his eyes lighting up the city. I was like, "Okay, that sounds great." And so, we used that as the aesthetic for this interactive infographic that featured experts in B2B talking about how to not be boring, how to break free of boring B2B marketing. And we also created a promotional video, which was as or more popular than the actual inner infographic. So, that went over. Well, people talked about it and I could show it on my mobile phone and people are like, "Oh, that's amazing. Can I take a picture of you holding that infographic on your phone." Which turned into new business for us. But that also instigated a series of interviews, which we are publishing twice a week now through January where we interviewed people about the series is called Break Free B2B or Break Free B2B Marketing. So, I mean, what a topic, right? It's universally interesting. How can we break free of status quo? How can we break free of legacy mindsets? How can we break free to greater results? So, there's so many things that we can talk about. So, that one influencer generated infographic initiated an ongoing series of episodic content. And it's really that episodic content that's creating all the momentum. So, I know that's a whole bunch of ideas there. But I think what's common amongst all of them is, one, topic specificity, meaning that we know the brand wants to... they stand for something that the customers care about and we find people who are influential around those ideas that have something of value to contribute. But first, we're creating value for them as a reason to contribute. And all of them are experiential, right? They're experiential at their audio capture, they're interactive if it's static capture or heck, we've even done virtual reality experiences that feature influencers. So, it's something that is experiential for the influencer and it's experiential for the consumer, the audience that you're after. And then, ultimately, because of those meaningful, relevant experiential characteristics, they are productive. They have impact and they deliver on a return on the investment. Kathleen: Those are all great examples. And I'm really actually looking forward to checking them out because I think there are lots of brands that kind of check the box and have a podcast for example. But as a podcaster myself, I've really come to appreciate how much strategy there needs to be behind what you're podcasting about and how that fits in with your broader goals and then how that informs who you have on. Like, there's a lot of work that needs to be done before you sit down in front of the microphone and start talking. And so, can't wait to check a couple of those out and see what they're all about. Repurposing influencer content Lee: Absolutely. And one of the great things about all of this is of course the re-purposing opportunities, because when you are planning to repurpose as part of the content planning itself, atomizing or deconstructing the influencer content into ingredient content is easier. And it gives you a library of a resource to draw from to add to your sort of recipes, if you will, to follow the metaphor of other content types that you're creating. So, if you're contributing an article to an industry publication, you go, "Oh yeah, I talked to Kathleen and she said that really smart thing and I've already got that saved. I'll pop that into that article and contributing to Forbes." And are you going to be disappointed that you show up in Forbes? Probably not. Six months after you actually gave the quote in the first place. So, it's something that is the repurposing opportunity is great because it creates more value from a marketing standpoint. But also, it's a way of showing love to your influencers long after their original contribution and it keeps that love alive, which is super, super important in an organic relationship. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: Absolutely. Well, I feel like I could talk about this forever with you because there are so many good nuggets here. But we do not have forever. And so, before we wrap up, there are two questions that I always ask all of my guests. We'd love to hear your answers on these. The first is that on this podcast we do talk a lot about inbound marketing. And I'm curious, having worked with so many different companies, is there one particular company or individual that really stands out who's just killing it with inbound marketing right now? Lee: I think I racked my brain around this a lot. And one company that I think that has had a long view of this and is doing really, really well that we work with is LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. So, about five years ago, Jason Miller, who was at LinkedIn at the time -- now he's at Microsoft, had tasked us with finding and interviewing influencers for a new guide he was putting together called The Sophisticated Marketer's Guide to LinkedIn. That one guide, five years ago, which had a 21,000% ROI, had become a sub-brand for LinkedIn. So, if you Google the expression Sophisticated Marketer's Hub, you will find an index of what that one guide has turned into. eBooks, podcasts, a video show, a print magazine, blog posts, obviously social -- they even repurposed the podcast into an actual book. They have learning courses. They verticalized a lot of this content for other specific industries and they're just... I think they're just doing an amazing job at creating a micro brand around this idea of the Sophisticated Marketer's Guide to fill in the blanks as it relates to LinkedIn as an inbound marketing exercise. Kathleen: It's fascinating how it has blossomed and sort of mushroomed into this other thing entirely over the years. Marketing is changing so quickly. That's the biggest complaint I hear from marketers is they can't keep up with it all. How do you personally stay educated and keep up with the changing landscape? Lee: Oh, that's a secret, Kathleen. I can't really... I'm just kidding. My network is the number one source for sure. Also, my team. One of my great joys in life is getting to meet with my team and talk about challenges and successes that they're having. And I learn an awful lot about that. I'm also afforded the opportunity to experiment with our agency. I'm still very much a marketing practitioner. So, whatever time I can carve out for experimentation is a great learning experience. I also subscribe to different topics, not so much websites but to topics so through social channels, there is content around marketing that surfaces to me. There are some individuals that I'll follow. Obviously, people like Ann Handley as an example. Certainly, I speak at a lot of events and rather than just... dine and dash as it were, I like to come in and I stay and I sit in on sessions. And also, competitive intelligence. I'm a big fan of understanding what the market is doing, not just direct... they're not just other marketing agencies, but also other businesses and really doing a lot of reflection and analysis on what seems to be working for other companies in the industry and creating some lessons at our company. We do quite a bit of knowledge transfer, lunch and learns and other structured learning opportunities. And so, all these sorts of things keep me accountable to sharing knowledge with my team and they are sharing knowledge with me as well, right? So, it's very dynamic situation, very symbiotic in that way. And yet, I still feel like I only know 10% of what I need to know. Kathleen: Oh amen. I have the same problem. There's never enough time. But, yes, it does definitely. I mean, you have an amazing network. And certainly, people like Ann Handley, et cetera, these are people that you can learn so much from. So, I love that idea. But I think for somebody who doesn't have a network, they could probably even approximate what you're doing by putting together a really curated Twitter feed or set of blogs they follow of people that clearly know a lot and absorb it that way as well. So, that's a great strategy. Lee: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I can't underestimate the value of experimentation. And whether you're able to do the experimentation yourself or if you happen to be working with an agency and you can carve out a little budget for experimentation, I highly recommend it. How to connect with Lee Kathleen: Yeah. Now, if someone's listening and they want to learn more about Influencer Marketing or they want to reach out and ask a question or somehow get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to connect with you online? Lee: Well, people can certainly come visit us at toprankmarketing.com. And there, they can find our blog, which has many, many articles over the last five or six, seven years around Influencer Marketing, especially B2B Influencer Marketing. And you can certainly connect with me on the Twitter, L-E-E-O-D-D-E-N on LinkedIn or lee@lee.to. You know what to do next... Kathleen: All right. Great. I will put all those links in the show notes. So, if you would like to learn more or connect with Lee, head over there and you'll find all of those contacts. And if you're listening and you liked what you heard or you learn something new, we always appreciate a five-star review on Apple podcasts so that other people can find the podcast as well. Kathleen: And if you know someone else doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next interview. Thank you so much, Lee. This was a lot of fun and very informative. Lee: Thanks Kathleen.

What is the Dark Matter which makes 85% of the matter in the Universe? We have been asking this question for many decades and used a variety of experimental approaches to address it, with detectors on Earth and in space. Yet, the nature of Dark Matter remains a mystery. An answer to this fundamental question will likely come from ongoing and future searches with accelerators, indirect and direct detection. Detection of a Dark Matter signal in an ultra-low background terrestrial detector will provide the most direct evidence of its existence and will represent a ground-breaking discovery in physics and cosmology. Among the variety of dark matter detectors, liquid xenon time projection chambers have shown to be the most sensitive, thanks to a combination of very large target mass, ultra-low background and excellent signal-to-noise discrimination. Experiments based on this technology have led the field for the past decade. I will focus on the XENON project and its prospects to continue to be at the forefront of dark matter direct detection in the coming decade. Professor Elena Aprile is Professor of Physics at Columbia University in New York City. After obtaining her undergraduate degree in Physics in Naples, Italy, she earned her PhD at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She started her research on noble liquid imaging detectors under the mentorship of Professor Carlo Rubbia, first as a student at CERN and later as postdoc at Harvard University. At Columbia, she pioneered the development of a Compton telescope for gamma-ray astrophysics based on a liquid xenon time projection chamber. She later turned her attention to the dark matter question proposing the XENON project for its direct detection using liquid xenon as target and detector medium. She founded the XENON Dark Matter Collaboration in 2002 and has served as its scientific spokesperson ever since; her international team includes more than 170 scientists and students representing 24 nationalities and 22 institutions. Aprile has been principal investigator on more than 20 research grants worth nearly $30 million over the last three decades and holds a patent for a vacuum ultraviolet light source. She has served on numerous panels and committees, for NASA, NSF, DOE, Fermilab, CNRS, ERC, etc. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society since 2000. In 2017, she received an honorary degree from the University of Stockholm. She is the recipient of the 2019 AAS Lancelot Berkeley Prize.

What is the Dark Matter which makes 85% of the matter in the Universe? We have been asking this question for many decades and used a variety of experimental approaches to address it, with detectors on Earth and in space. Yet, the nature of Dark Matter remains a mystery. An answer to this fundamental question will likely come from ongoing and future searches with accelerators, indirect and direct detection. Detection of a Dark Matter signal in an ultra-low background terrestrial detector will provide the most direct evidence of its existence and will represent a ground-breaking discovery in physics and cosmology. Among the variety of dark matter detectors, liquid xenon time projection chambers have shown to be the most sensitive, thanks to a combination of very large target mass, ultra-low background and excellent signal-to-noise discrimination. Experiments based on this technology have led the field for the past decade. I will focus on the XENON project and its prospects to continue to be at the forefront of dark matter direct detection in the coming decade. Professor Elena Aprile is Professor of Physics at Columbia University in New York City. After obtaining her undergraduate degree in Physics in Naples, Italy, she earned her PhD at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She started her research on noble liquid imaging detectors under the mentorship of Professor Carlo Rubbia, first as a student at CERN and later as postdoc at Harvard University. At Columbia, she pioneered the development of a Compton telescope for gamma-ray astrophysics based on a liquid xenon time projection chamber. She later turned her attention to the dark matter question proposing the XENON project for its direct detection using liquid xenon as target and detector medium. She founded the XENON Dark Matter Collaboration in 2002 and has served as its scientific spokesperson ever since; her international team includes more than 170 scientists and students representing 24 nationalities and 22 institutions. Aprile has been principal investigator on more than 20 research grants worth nearly $30 million over the last three decades and holds a patent for a vacuum ultraviolet light source. She has served on numerous panels and committees, for NASA, NSF, DOE, Fermilab, CNRS, ERC, etc. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society since 2000. In 2017, she received an honorary degree from the University of Stockholm. She is the recipient of the 2019 AAS Lancelot Berkeley Prize.

Everyone loves BHAGs. Big. Hairy. Audacious. Goals. BHAGs are a great tool that can help your team discover its limits and realize where it can improve. No one knows this more than Scott Gainey, CMO at Cherwell Software. In this week's episode of CMO Confessions, Scott guides us through the basics of BHAGs, the use of data for developing goals and shares in our grief over just how many marketing emails we all get.  Sit back and relax, it’s our Fourth of July edition of CMO Confessions. Follow Cherwell Software on Twitter: @Cherwell Follow Scott Gainey on Twitter: @scgainey Follow ON24 on Twitter: @ON24 Learn more about ON24: www.on24.com

Sam Gilliland on how he brought the “Traveling Gnome” to Travelocity, and on becoming CEO of Cherwell.  “If you add value with a human touch, great, let’s keep that human touch. If you’re not adding value there, let’s automate it.” Sam Gilliland, CEO, Cherwell Cherwell, with 500 employees and based in Colorado Springs, provides IT Services Management to clients around the world.  I wanted to interview its new CEO, Sam Gilliland, to learn about “the man who brought us the Gnome” (Travelocity), and the difference between growing into a substantial CEO role, and stepping into the role of CEO another business, which he recently has done.  You’ll enjoy our conversation about balancing “human touch” vs. automated service. 

“People are human and make decisions based on emotional factors.”  Ann Boyd is vice president of corporate communications for Cherwell Software. She describes herself as a purpose-driven person and believes in inspiring people – and companies – to do things differently in the world. Ann is a professional communicator and brand strategist, focusing on facilitating her own and others’ understanding – whether it's about an organization, a technology, a person, or an issue. She has been at the intersection of technology and change management throughout her career. Whether working in media and analyst relations for Microsoft’s server software and first eBooks, or at AOL, witnessing our society's collective adaptation to rapid technological transformation, Ann has always been fascinated by the ability of technology to advance us and push us forward. Listen And Learn: Her approach to storytelling. How to create an “impact thread.” The importance of articulating your competitive differentiation in the marketplace. Her three-pronged approach to growing a brand. Why brands need to connect to something bigger than themselves. How your social presence can amplify your voice in the marketplace.   TO LEARN MORE ABOUT CHERWELL SOFTWARE, CLICK HERE. TO FIND ANN BOYD ON LINKEDIN, CLICK HERE.

In this episode: David and Drew Reck, and Daxton and Wyatt Wood are our feature interviews this week. News from 1up, RemoteLock, Amazon, JumpCloud, Carbon Black, OverWatchID, Cherwell, Sumo Logic, Automox, Facebook, Slack, CyberGRX, Apple, Navigant, ThreatX, Ping Identity, Webroot, ProtectWise, SecureSet, Coalfire, Optiv and a lot more! Space Soldiers Stationed in the Springs? US Space Command may be based in Colorado. 1up is opening up in Robb’s neighborhood. Colorado’s got a lot of tech jobs. ThreatX hires execs. Ping sells to banks. Webroot’s streak hits 19. ProtectWise sees the future of AI. SecureSet tells us certifications are worth it. Coalfire teaches us about mobile payments. Optiv teaches us the difference between SecOps and DevOps. And a lot more! Support us on Patreon! Fun swag available - all proceeds will directly support the Colorado = Security infrastructure. Come join us on the new Colorado = Security Slack channel to meet old and new friends. Sign up for our mailing list on the main site to receive weekly updates - https://www.colorado-security.com/. If you have any questions or comments, or any organizations or events we should highlight, contact Alex and Robb at info@colorado-security.com This week’s news: Join the Colorado = Security Slack channel Trump revives U.S. Space Command, likely based in Colorado 1up Arcade Bar Adds Third Location in Greenwood Village Colorado Economic Development Commission incentives garner more than 6,800 new jobs in 2018 Colorado ranks No. 2 for contribution to tech economy 25 Denver tech companies that are hiring in 2019 Navigant: Cybersecurity will define leaders in intelligent building market ThreatX Names CFO, COO 12 of 12 Largest U.S. Banks Work with Ping Identity Webroot’s Nineteenth Quarter of Double-Digit Business Growth The benefits and limitations of AI in cybersecurity - Help Net Security SecureSet blog - Yep, Certs Are Worth It Coalfire - What You Should Know About the Changing Nature of Telephone-Based Payments Optiv blog: SecOps vs. DevOps in the Information Age Job Openings: Ping Identity - Manager of Security Operations and Engineering Ping Identity - GRC Analyst Specialized - Head of Security and Architecture S&P Global - Director, Information Security – IAM Product Manager Comcast - Sr. Manager, Network Security Recurly - Senior Security Engineer Xcel Energy - IAM Specialist/Engineer Ball Aerospace - Technical Intern - Information Assurance/Information Security PWC - Cybersecurity & Privacy-Strategy & Risk-Manager University of Colorado Boulder - Open Rank Faculty Positions in Cybersecurity FBI - Special Agent Upcoming Events: This Week and Next: ISSA Denver - January Chapter meetings - 1/8-9 CSA January Chapter Meeting - 1/15 NCC - Meet & Greet - 1/16 SecureSet - Capture the Flag - 1/16 ISC2 Denver - January 2019 Meeting - 1/17 CTA - Insights Series | Keeping up with Innovation: The 2019 Top Emerging Technologies to Watch - 1/17 ISACA Denver - January Meeting - 1/17 Other Notable Upcoming Events SnowFROC - 3/14 Rocky Mountain Information Security Conference (RMISC) - 6/4-6 View our events page for a full list of upcoming events * Thanks to CJ Adams for our intro and exit! If you need any voiceover work, you can contact him here at carrrladams@gmail.com. Check out his other voice work here. * Intro and exit song: "The Language of Blame" by The Agrarians is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Today, we are joined by consultant Dean Pierce and he talks about the new features of the Cherwell platform. Listen today!

In this episode: Justin Tibbs, Chief Security Officer for Red Sky is our feature interview this week. News from: Sears, Newmont Mining, SendGrid, Twilio, Innovation Pavilion, Cherwell, Otter, Webroot, Virtual Armor, Richey May and a lot more! Seriously, we have a rat problem Tons of fun news this week, including: Denver makes a much grosser top 10 list. The Sears near me is closing. Newmont gets new digs, Twilio buys SendGrid! Support us on Patreon! Fun swag available - all proceeds will directly support the Colorado = Security infrastructure. Come join us on the new Colorado = Security Slack channel to meet old and new friends. Sign up for our mailing list on the main site to receive weekly updates - https://www.colorado-security.com/. If you have any questions or comments, or any organizations or events we should highlight, contact Alex and Robb at info@colorado-security.com Local security news: Join the Colorado = Security Slack channel Denver among 10 most rat-infested cities in U.S., according to report Sears files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Belleview Station in suburban south Denver nets second F500 company Twilio to Acquire SendGrid Centennial incubator whose CEO was sued for sexual assault ceases operations Software firm Cherwell has big plans to grow Denver office Cyber expert: Data, personal security requires constant attention Webroot Enters VPN Space, Launches Webroot WiFi Security Recapping DerbyCon 8.0 Increase in Mobile Phishing Scams Targeting Apple ID Users 2018 ISSA International awards Job Openings: Ping Identity - Cloud Security Architect Denver Public Schools - ISO Great West Financial - Director Security Strategic Initiatives Educause - Director of Cybersecruity Program S&P Global - Cyber Security – Incident Response Lead Western Union - Senior Information Security Analyst, Application Development Visa - Cybersecurity Analyst, Applied Cryptography Webroot - Information Security Analyst DISH Networks - Senior Security Systems Admin Red Sky Consulting - Technical Recruiter Upcoming Events: This Week and Next: GDPR Meetup - Data Privacy By Design: Securing Your Employees – Customers – Service Providers - 10/23 Ada Lovelace Day Celebration Denver – Women in STEM - 10/24 SecureSet - Capture the Flag - 10/24 ISSA COS - Mentorship Program October Meeting - 10/24 ISC2 Pikes Peak - October Chapter Meeting - 10/24 ISACA - Internal Audit Innovation - Leveraging Technology and New Methods to Build an Internal Audit Group of the Future - Joint Meeting with the IIA - 10/25 2nd Annual Cyber Synergy - 10/25 COS Cybersecurity - Cybersecurity for Small Business Summit - 10/26 COS ISSA - Miniseminars - 10/27 SecureSet - Hacking 101: Microsoft PowerShell - 10/29 CTA - Security+ Training 10/29- 11/2 Cybersecurity in the Future: What every organizational leader needs to know - 10/30 SecureWorld Denver - 10/31-11/1 CTA - PM Day of Service from PMI Mile Hi - 11/1 ISSA Denver - Oil and Gas Special Interest Group Meeting - 11/1 SecureSet - HUNT Hacking 101: Intro. to Wi-Fi - 11/1 COS First Friday Cybersecurity Social Mixer - 11/2 Other Notable Upcoming Events CTA - Apex Awards - 11/7 CSA - CO Fall Summit - 11/8 View our events page for a full list of upcoming events * Thanks to CJ Adams for our intro and exit! If you need any voiceover work, you can contact him here at carrrladams@gmail.com. Check out his other voice work here. * Intro and exit song: "The Language of Blame" by The Agrarians is licensed under CC BY 2.0

In this episode: Jay Prassl, founder and CEO at Automox is our guest this week. News from: Four Winds Interactive, Gusto, Healthgrades, HomeAdvisor, Ibotta, Ping Identity, SendGrid, Workday, Xero, Conga, CDOT, Threat X, Cherwell, Swimlane, Coalfire and a lot more! Next DenSec meeting in Paris? Denver has a new direct flight to Paris! Why wouldn't it, with all our small business growth and masses of tech jobs? Conga makes an acquisition, SamSam really played havic at the CDOT, and some local tech companies got paid this week. Support us on Patreon! Fun swag available - all proceeds will directly support the Colorado = Security infrastructure. Come join us on the new Colorado = Security Slack channel to meet old and new friends. Sign up for our mailing list on the main site to receive weekly updates - https://www.colorado-security.com/. If you have any questions or comments, or any organizations or events we should highlight, contact Alex and Robb at info@colorado-security.com Local security news: Join the Colorado = Security Slack channel New direct flight Denver - Paris Denver tops in the nation for small-business growth, says new report Silicon Valley tech workers, Denver wants you — says a new marketing campaign Conga reveals another acquisition SamSam ransomware estimated to cost up to $1.5 million so far as CDOT continues to recover Threat X lands venture capital, aims to double in size this year Cherwell Software of Colorado Springs adds $172M from existing investor KKR Swimlane Selects Lastline to Augment its Automated Security Platform RMISC 2018: The Biggest Security Conference in the Region Coalfire Blog: Sleuthing the Cloud: The Challenges of Forensics in Cloud Environments Job Openings: Ping Identity - Senior Security Analyst Ping Identity - GRC Analyst Pulte Financial Services - Security Intern LogRhythm - Senior Engineer, Compliance Research Splunk - Principal DFIR Analyst (Can Be Remote/US Location) Cognizant - Associate Director, Corporate Security Architect Prologis - IT Governance, Risk & Compliance Manager Redwood Trust - IT Risk & Compliance Analyst Optiv - Sr. Director, Office of the CEO Upcoming Events: This Week and Next: ISSA Denver April Meetings - 4/10-11 NCC - Beyond Bitcoin: Crypto Currency & Blockchain for Beginners - 4/10 SecureSet - CYBERSECURITY CAREER TRENDS: Nadean Tanner, CISSP, MCITP From Rapid7 - 4/12 ISSA COS - April Meetings - 4/17-18 SecureSet - Career Conversations: Kevin Ford, Cyber Risk And Security Specialist At CyberGRX - 4/19 ISACA - Annual meeting - 4/19 Other Notable Upcoming Events Women in Security Denver - 4/24 Rocky Mountain Information Security Conference - 5/8-10 BSides Denver - 5/11-12 Colorado Springs - Cyber Security Training & Technology Forum (CSTTF) - 8/22 View our events page for a full list of upcoming events * Thanks to CJ Adams for our intro and exit! If you need any voiceover work, you can contact him here at carrrladams@gmail.com. Check out his other voice work here. * Intro and exit song: "The Language of Blame" by The Agrarians is licensed under CC BY 2.0

An introduction to the student newspapers at Oxford University. Cherwell and the Oxford Student are two student run newspapers with a long history in Oxford.

Meet Josh Caid, employee #2 at Cherwell Software. Josh is Cherwell’s Chief Evangelist, and brings a passion for creating software that makes people’s day-to-day lives better by solving real-world problems. Listen in to find out how a professional musician went from guitar riffs to software dev.